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Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

mdpi.com

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Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#131

Post by fy20 »

If Vitamin D had such a major effect, I would have expected death rates from Southern Europe (Spain, Italy specifically) to be a lot lower than from Northern Europe (e.g. UK, Germany).

From my anecdotal experience people in Southern Europe spend a lot more time outside (in parts of Spain you can still go to the beach now, where I live there is snow on the ground...), and older people seem more active and able to live independent lives (i.e. not in a care home).

Of course this doesn't mean Vitamin D isn't at play. The one thing this pandemic has taught me is it seems there is very little we know about how it works :-) Maybe production from sun exposure in older people drops greatly, so the difference in sun exposure has little effect on overall Vitamin D levels.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#132

Post by themihai »

g42gregory wrote: post #120
xenophonf wrote: post #81

MDPI follows an author-pays model, which incentivizes it to accept all submissions instead of publishing only good-quality work. In fact, this publisher is highly suspect, as it has allegedly pressured peer reviewers to accept low-quality work for publication in the recent past: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/open-access-editors-r... https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/be... I would trea…

I think that easy and inexpensive treatment methods are getting very skeptical reception by the medical community. My sense is that this is the training from the medical school, which in turn, is influenced (to a degree of course) by the pharmaceutical companies.

I think the inexpensive treatments are abused by many different actors because they carry little or no cost to develop, thus there is reason a to be sceptical. For example you can find a lot of supplements that claim to cure various cancers and many have been proven to have no effect. People even claim that objects or they by themselves cure diseases.

If not much money or effort has been put into a 'treatment' you have reasons to sceptical, don't you think? It's like working in the financial services and someone is trying to sell you a $10 e-book that will make you rich in 1 year. It could do the trick but I bet you would be sceptical.

Testing/clinical trials usually cost a lot and even if the treatment it's not great, at least you have some hard data that you can rely on.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#133

Post by lsllc »

fy20 wrote: post #131

If Vitamin D had such a major effect, I would have expected death rates from Southern Europe (Spain, Italy specifically) to be a lot lower than from Northern Europe (e.g. UK, Germany). From my anecdotal experience people in Southern Europe spend a lot more time outside (in parts of Spain you can still go to the beach now, where I live there is snow on the ground...), and older people seem more active and able to live…

There was a large difference between northern and southern Italy described in this paper (from June so maybe things have changed since then). Note that northern Italy only has a slightly higher population density that the authors didn't think was significant.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13299

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#134

Post by HelenePhisher »

aksss wrote: post #106
zamfi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but a large fraction of the English-speaking northern hemisphere does not receive enough sunlight in winter months for the skin to produce Vitamin D.

I often arrive at our offices in the dark, and then leave after dark. In the meantime I'm in a windowed corner office but like others have said - filtered light. I take 10k IU's of vitamin D per day. Absent that, my natural (un-supplemented) vitamin D tests come back with a level about 20+ (30-100 being the desired range).

What are your levels when you use supplements?

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#135

Post by adrianN »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #102
xenophonf wrote: post #81

MDPI follows an author-pays model, which incentivizes it to accept all submissions instead of publishing only good-quality work. In fact, this publisher is highly suspect, as it has allegedly pressured peer reviewers to accept low-quality work for publication in the recent past: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/open-access-editors-r... https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/be... I would trea…

Well, you'd be surprised how much great research doesn't make it into Nature, et al. I wouldn't discount the paper purely because of that.

"Treat it as if it were a preprint" is different from discounting the paper.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#136

Post by bagacrap »

Ragib_Zaman wrote: post #13

I highly recommend watching this video: https://youtu.be/Kvh4D_osFXs Sunlight gives us vitamin D and nitric oxide (which improves blood flow and reduces hypertension). Vitamin D is crucial for the functioning of our immune systems, and the 1000IU dosage of many supplements is laughably small. A light skinned person in a singlet standing outside at noon for 30 minutes will produce between 10,000IU and 20,000IU in thei…

this is great advice for the summer, but doesn't work so well in the winter, when the UV index is a small fraction of summer values and air temps are not conducive to skin exposure.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#138

Post by outworlder »

westwing wrote: post #76
stordoff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I've seen the NHS mention it quite a few times. Example: > People with dark skin, such as those of African, African-Caribbean or south Asian origin, will need to spend longer in the sun to produce the same amount of vitamin D as someone with lighter skin. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/how-to-get-vitamin...

It can be mentioned as a footnote, because it is scientific fact. However, given the vastly higher death rates among people with darker skin, it should be shouted from the rooftops. Unfortunately, this would put into question the narrative that anything but systemic racism may be to blame. Furthermore, pointing out that people with darker skin are not adapted to live up north could easily be misconstrued as an anti-i…

> Furthermore, pointing out that people with darker skin are not adapted to live up north could easily be misconstrued as an anti-immigration stance.

True. That can easily happen. Reason enough to not push that angle, at least not directly. There are other ways of phrasing that.

Besides, for humans, there's no longer such a thing as "being adapted" to the environment, at least not in that limited sense. This is not an Earth versus Mars thing, it's just a matter of latitude.

If natural abilities were such a big factor, we wouldn't need clothes in Norway or Canada to survive in those places, in winter. But we do. Plus heating.

Humans are not "adapted" to live in all environments on Earth, at least not without tools, which includes clothing. So, if your skin is light and you are in an area with high insolation, cover up more and try to spend less time in the sun. Add some sunscreen too. If the skin is darker, do the opposite. Add some supplements as needed. Done. Adapted to the environment.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#139

Post by wolco2 »

jberryman wrote: post #90
Exmoor wrote: post #3

I must admit I was completely ignorant of the effects of Vitamin D deficiency on common illnesses such as the flu as well as how unbelievably common that deficiency is for people living in much of the northern hemisphere. Will it cure COVID19? No. But do I think there's a decent chance it will improve my outcome while simultaneously improving my ability to fight off other viruses. I am honestly completely shocked tha…

> I am honestly completely shocked that we haven't seen governments and the media increasing people's awareness of this issue. The fact that it hasn't been picked up by journalists and public health officials should rather be reason for you to be skeptical of early research cherry-picked by random programmers on the internet... the same people that were blowing up HN with hydroxychloroquine stories just a few months…

In fairness what the media deeds important and accepts as truth is as cherry-picked by some random newsroom editor.

That's why you see things like the Iraq war everyday on tv and then never again. People are still blowing themselves up over there. There is always a bigger story with a greater theme that uses daily news stories to paint a broader picture.

People who seek out truth themselves are more likely to find it.

Re: Vitamin D insufficiency may account for almost 90% of Covid-19 deaths

#140

Post by nradov »

bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #126
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> black people are disproportionately impacted by COVID. Serious question: I thought the African-America community in America was affected by COVID-19 disproportionately due to blacks being more likely to be having comorbidities. Is that not the case?

That's likely also the case, but aside from the melanin-vitamin-d angle, there's been some work suggesting a genetic susceptibility to covid for people with significant recent SSA ancestry.

On the other hand it seems a major genetic risk factor for COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals, and that should be less common among Sub-Saharan Africans.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2818-3

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