Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients • Hacker News Board

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#221

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #132

JohnBooty wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's exactly the opposite. During quarantine, you have far fewer people spending most of their waking hours in huge concrete coffins. How many people even get to see the sun during a typical workday, much less spend time in direct sunlight?

In big cities like NYC people get sunlight during their commute, but get no sunlight when cooped up in a small apartment. Vitamin D deficiency has been long proven to inhibit proper functioning of the immune system, but this isn't widely known which is a huge failure of the press and the authorities.

    In big cities like NYC people get sunlight during 
    their commute

Perhaps you have only seen NYC in movies. You can spend a lot of time commuting in NYC without any direct sunlight hitting your skin whatsoever.

Not sure when you think they're soaking up all this sunlight. Sitting in a train car? ...that's underground? Or inside a bus? Or is it when they are walking between tall buildings?

New Yorkers are not exactly known for their tans, even in summertime.

    but get no sunlight when cooped up in a small apartment

You were not forced to stay in your apartment, even in NYC. You were always allowed to leave. Of course, most businesses are/were closed, but you are/were certainly allowed to walk around. Many people also have access to their apartment rooftops.

Perhaps more relevantly, of course, most Americans do not live in places like NYC where they have difficulty accessing sources of sunlight. I live in a suburb of a different American city and we are getting much more sunlight during quarantine. It's much easier to take walks and sunlight breaks during the daytime.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#222

Post by James_Henry » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

carlosfvp wrote: post #131

PudgePacket wrote: post #90

> Patients were administered oral vitamin D3 1000 IU OD I've seen multiple sources say that 1000 IU of vit D is usually insufficient to boost levels, with suggestions of up to 5000 a day. My mothers doctor put her up to 2000 a day because 1000 did nothing to her levels, which were already low.

How did the doctor know her vitamin levels were low? I once asked a doctor if the vitamins in our body can be measured, and he said it can't be done, is not something you can measure.

It depends on what vitamin or mineral you are testing.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#223

Post by valarauko » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #144

valarauko wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for Vit D and B12, the healthy levels were determined by establishing levels in "healthy" cohorts. Deficiency diseases for both of these vitamins are relatively rare, so it is easier to establish a wider "safe" range, rather than "deficiency" ranges. There's been a great deal of debate on safe Vit D levels, and the consensus (such as it is) is that a serum level of 30 ng/mL is likely optimal. Yet there are m…

Are there really no better studies than just those that categorize "healthy" cohorts & establish standards from that? That would presume a linear causal relation between "health" and vitamin levels in the body which would flip the order of operations - you want to establish a linear causal relation before you start recommending levels.

Well, establishing a linear causal relation isn't always possible, at least not ethically. The recommendations have to balance average dietary intake, tolerable upper limits, and what would constitute an adequate intake that is both necessary and sufficient. For Vitamin C, for example, toxicity is probably in the 2-3 grams range, while just 10 mg/day is sufficient to overcome symptoms of deficiency. So what should the recommended daily allowance be? You don’t want to set it at the minimum level, to allow for individual variances and greater needs among particular groups. You also don’t want to set it artificially too high. Different agencies and countries draw that line differently. Japan sets it at 100 mg/day, while India at 40 mg/day. The Indian agencies have to be cognizant of the fact that given average Indian diets, setting the "healthy" level at 100 mg/day would artificially pathologize most Indians who do not suffer from Vit C deficiency symptoms.

The situation is more complicated with recommendations around vitamin D. The most obvious and extreme abnormality associated with low D is bone demineralization. This is largely alleviated by levels above 12 ng/mL. Yet when you look a cohort of healthy young Caucasian coast guards, their vitamin D levels are 30 ng/mL. So what do you set as the recommendation: the level required to prevent symptoms, or the levels seen in (some) healthy people, but with no obvious health advantages? Most groups have tended to split the difference: set the minimum at 20 ng/mL, and the “optimal” at 30 ng/mL. Is there a health benefit with supplementing if the level is below 10 ng/mL? Quite likely. Is there a health benefit supplementing if your level is at 20 ng/mL? Probably not.

The picture is even further complicated if you consider that the healthy cohort of young white coast guards in Hawaii is not representative of the population at large. Multiple studies have looked at healthy black and brown cohorts from tropical environments, and find most average around 20 ng/mL.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#224

Post by kaycebasques » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

FYI this site provides helpful "top 10" lists of foods that naturally contain a lot of vitamins and minerals (or are fortified). E.g. here's the Vitamin D list: https://www.myfooddata.com/articles/high-vitamin-D-foods.php

P.S. I learned a fascinating factoid from that Vitamin D list. You might be aware that standing out in the sun for 20 minutes is a good way to generate Vitamin D. Supposedly the same process happens by leaving crimini mushrooms out in the sun for 20 minutes before eating them.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#225

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

WillDaSilva wrote: post #198

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. The Western diet primarily has very little variety in it. 55% of our diet comes from boxes/processed food which is almost entirely made up of only 3 things: Oil, Processed flour, sugar, and maybe some dairy. The vast majority of our diet is: meat, dairy, oil, sugar and flour. Oil and Sugar have 0 nutrients. Highly processed flour has little nutrients, but it does have some: the problem it's super deficien…

I think you're confused about the meaning of "nutrient". Oils, or more generally fats/lipids, are macronutrients[1], as is the case with sugar and "highly processed flour". A diet with a variety of different foods (whether they come in boxes or are "processed" is irrelevant in general) and a good balance of macronutrients and micronutrients is healthy. I'd say the largest public health issue related to this is that m…

I mean, it has not micronutrients: minerals and vitamins.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#226

Post by gridlockd » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

valarauko wrote: post #170

gridlockd wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet there are many studies that show healthy individuals with serum levels The problem is that any apparently healthy individual may still develop a chronic disease decades down the line. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440113/ > There's been a great deal of debate on safe Vit D levels, and the consensus (such as it is) is that a serum level of 30 ng/mL is likely optimal. If you look at dark-skinned h…

>The problem is that any apparently healthy individual may still develop a chronic disease decades down the line. Sure. My impression is that sub 10 ng/mL levels warrant supplementation. However, I have also seen studies that included wrist X-rays of subjects to determine bone loss, and most subjects were sub-20 ng/mL with acceptable bone densities. This was a study in Indians, and another study in rural healthy Indi…

> Rather importantly, they note that while parathyroid hormone levels are inversely proportional to Vit D serum levels, they start to go up with high levels of Vit D.

...in that particular polynomial fit.

> Keeping PTH levels low is likely beneficial. The Nairobi study found PTH levels were lowest in people with vit D levels around 30 ng/mL.

The minimum of the polynomial fit is around 35. If you look at the scatter plot, there are only six samples near 50 ng/ml and they're all over the place. You can not draw your conclusion from that. There's no significant deviation between 40-50 ng/ml.

My question is, why would the body stop producing Vitamin D around 40-50 ng/ml if 30 was optimal? Why not stop earlier?

> Keeping PTH levels low is likely beneficial.

Not sure where you get that.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#227

Post by youwouldntcar » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #142

cj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study mentions 1,000 IU D3 dosage. A quick google turns up a rough figure of 60,000 IU "daily for multiple months" can become toxic. You're probably right, most things taken at 100x the normal dose for long period of time are toxic. (Water included)

Just anecdotal observation, I have been taking 40,000 IU D3, 800mcg K2, 400mg Magnesium among other things, daily for 3+ years, no issue. I had to work my way up to that. I've been reversing calcium buildup in my vascular system to lower my CaC score. I know of many people doing the same thing, some longer than I have been. We are all doing good. I also stay well hydrated.

800mcg K2 sounds extremely low for 40,000 IU D3, shouldn't you be taking 1800mcg K2?

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#228

Post by youwouldntcar » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

valarauko wrote: post #172

cj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this to treat a medical condition? I'm curious why an acute high dose would be preferable over a lower dose taken daily.

No obvious medical condition, other than a vit D serum level of 15 ng/mL. Depending on who you ask, that's a deficiency. I'm personally less convinced. It's not quite an acute high dose. The body produces the equivalent of 10,000 IU per day in high sun exposure, so 60K per week tries to achieve that level. I believe the high dosage is simply convenience. The 2K IU daily dose is pretty common as well.

has it had any impact on your mood?

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#229

Post by ethagnawl » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #200

ethagnawl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I was filthy rich I would get nutrient levels measured once a week. This sounds similar to what services like Viome ( https://www.viome.com ) do. Though, their intervals (at least Viome's) are much longer.

Sounds helpful from the marketing text but pretty expensive. If they could get that cheaper you could get people signing up out of curiosity. But when you see they want $200-$600 for this you start to get suspicious: what are you actually getting? Is it vetted by somebody? Etc.

> pretty expensive

Agreed. For whatever it's worth, I have a few friends who swear by it. I have no idea how dynamic our bodies needs are, but presumably you could make the price more reasonable by signing up, getting yourself on track, cancelling and then checking back in after 1/2/N years.

Re: Study of the effect of Vitamin D, Magnesium and Vitamin B12 on Covid-19 patients

#230

Post by wegs » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #29

arghzzz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, taking 3 vitamins is almost entirely harmless.

Many things are almost entirely harmless, but before recommending you do them anyway, you probably want to look at whether there's any point. Turning round in a circle three times before you leave the house is almost entirely harmless, and there's no evidence that doesn't stop you getting coronavirus...

This is a question of decision-making in the face of uncertainty. We have evidence this helps. It's not conclusive evidence.

The odds of turning round in a circle three times helping are 0.000000001%. The odds of DMB helping are probably less than 50%, but more than 5% at this point. The cost is minimal.

Generally, one does an ROI calculation. To mix units and otherwise have zero rigor:

Return: P(treatment helps) * how much

Investment: P(treatment hurts) * how much + financial cost

My math on most cheap interventions, including vitamin D, are that they're obvious no-brainers, if done competently (e.g. not taking 600,000 IU per day, or sunburning oneself on a crowded beach -- dumb stuff like that always comes up in counterarguments).

Without math: There's evidence (although not proof) that they might help. They can't hurt.

I do a lot of things like that. When COVID19 first showed up, I was super-careful about contact transmission, large droplet, and aerosol, although I had no evidence which of those dominated. Were some of the things I did a waste? Indubitably. Was it a good idea to do that together? Without a doubt.