Should the Government be handing out free doses of Vitamin D NOW?

[LWJ70]

I have recently discovered (from reading very new scientific abstracts) that low Vit D levels leave us more prone to respiratory tract viruses. Most people only associate it with a healthy skeleton. After a long, cold winter, millions of us could be slightly deficient. Our most vulnerable section of society is unable to make use of the sunlight, which is beneficial.Could this explain the greatly differing pathways of coronavirus throughout the globe? Read these abstracts:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30675873
clinmedjournals.org/article...ases-and-epidemiology-jide-3-030.php?jid=jide

Difficult to decipher the abstract's stats without looking at the full paper. It is a summary from 25 previous studies with a grand total of 11,321 participants. It is published by US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health with a big participation from the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London.

One thing is clear though:

''Vitamin D supplementation was safe, and it protected against ARIs overall. Very deficient individuals ................... experienced the benefit.

(ARI = acute respiratory infections)

I am amazed why this info is not being published in the wider public domain. Instead we have celebrity workouts, toilet rolls and memes.

Elderly people in sunny climates are probably not aware that they have afforded themselves a greater fighting chance to survive coronavirus.

There are 5.4 million people in the UK above the age of 75 years. The majority of them are locked in their houses (or they would prefer to be). If they leave their houses to buy vitamin supplements from a pharmacist, they could be exposed to the coronavirus. This is not far-fetched- a coronavirus can survive nine days or more on plastic/metal surfaces. Many parts of the UK are at a perfect temperature now for viral stability. If two thirds of infected people are asymptomatic, the infection is already everywhere.

My point is, why doesn't the NHS select the most vulnerable and make a mass delivery of Vit D or a broad spectrum of supplements?

@FallenMadonnawiththeBadBoobies, (love your user name by the way!) I take a Vit D supplement too.

I'm going to read the whole thread when I have time, there is so much I have to learn about this. I know my elderly mum has to take it, advised by GP. Thank you - I did kind of assume that the amount of time I spend gardening, and the healthy diet would be enough, and the extra supplement was back up.

Thanks again @LWJ70 for your extensive research on this topic. It’s so interesting and helpful to people. Hopefully it will raise the profile of just how important Vit D is for health.
That graph showing northern V Southern Hemisphere is startling. Just as the Southern Hemisphere had just come out of summer we’d just come out of winter as Covid hit. The irony of that cannot be ignored.

THE EVIDENCE IS NOW OVERWHELMING

YOU CANNOT IGNORE THE DATA

PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND
SAGE
NHS
DOMINIC CUMMINGS

THERE IS STILL TIME TO ACT
THOUSANDS OF VULNERABLE/BAME LIVES CAN STILL BE SAVED BY MASS ADMINISTERING VITAMIN D NOW

UK IS NOW IN THE TOP FEW COUNTRIES WITH THE HIGHEST DEATHS PER MILLION

DOING NOTHING = CULPABLE HOMICIDE

THE EVIDENCE IS NOW OVERWHELMING

1.First covid 19 blood serum data published in the world.
Clinical study by Philippine Mark Alipio. He took the data from 212 covid patients and ranked their symptoms: mild, ordinary, severe, critical.
Here are his results (see attached):
mild symptoms = 86% had normal levels of D3, 1.3 % had insufficient levels of D3
ordinary symptom = 26% deficient, 44% insufficient
severe = 40% deficient, 29% insufficient
critical = 32% deficient, 26% insufficient, 3% normal

OK I hear you say, it could be because those patients already had underlying conditions which rendered them deficient in the first place. But this is significant data.

Study is here:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484

Two things really stand out for me. This is a study of 212 Philippines nationals living in SE Asia. This is one of the BAME communities who have sadly disproportionately died of covid in the UK:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/coronavirus-exerts-heavy-toll-on-filipino-community-in-uk

2.Liverpool University Study - see attached graph
'When mortality per million is plotted against latitude it can be seen that all countries that lie below 35 degrees North have relatively low mortality. Thirty-five degrees North also happens tobe the latitude above which people do not receive sufficient sunlight to retain adequate vitamin D levels during winter. This suggests a possible role for vitamin D in determining outcomes from COVID-19. There are outliers of course – mortality is relatively low in Nordic countries – but their vitamin D deficiency is relatively uncommon, probably due to widespread use of supplements.'

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/apt.15777

1. Recent call from three UK based NHS scientific and clinical researchers for hospitals to urgently analyse serum D3 levels from covid 19 patients:

www.dropbox.com/s/ka7h4fbi7xdz9s9/Covid-19 and Vitamin D Information.pdf?dl=0

Masses of evidence.

Hundreds, literally hundreds of clinical, peer reviewed scientific and medical papers that show clear evidence of vitamin D3 suppressing the worst symptoms of viral respiratory diseases :

-vitamin D3 suppresses cytokine storms

• Vitamin D3 prevents hypoxia

-One of vitamin D3's role in the immune system relates to ACE2. ACE2 enzyme supresses cytokine storms and Vit D3 goes to the receptor gene and activates ACE2 production. If there's not enough vit D3 patient continues with acute respiratory distress syndrome. -vitamin D3 is a key hormone (yes hormone!) in the immune system -studies on previous coronaviruses have shown ACE2 receptor is on the X chromosome , covid has much higher male mortality , males have XY, females XX.

VERY, VERY small sample of recent, peer reviewed proven clinical studies/research papers:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4488782/
clinmedjournals.org/articles/jide/journal-of-infectious-diseases-and-epidemiology-jide-3-030.php?jid=jide
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376709/
ec.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/ec/7/12/EC-18-0184.xml
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3756814/
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5340372/
imj.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Optimisation-of-Vitamin-D-Status-for-Enhanced-Immuno-protection-Against-Covid-19.pdf
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30675873

Meanwhile, this statement has been added to the NHS web page on vitamin D three days ago:

There have been some news reports about vitamin D reducing the risk of coronavirus. However, there is no evidence that this is the case.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/vitamins-and-minerals/vitamin-d/

@feelingverylazytoday

The government can't hand out everything for free. Most people can acquire vit D safely from the sun from April onwards. Perhaps that's why we're being allowed to exercise outdoors.

The UK is very near to being the country with the highest death rate per million IN THE WORLD

There are 410, 000 people in care homes who cannot pop to Boots.

There are 4.5 million people aged 75 years and older in England, representing 8.2% of the total population. Most of these people are isolating.

Your post is very naive and extremely detached with the reality of the UK's situation.

THE EVIDENCE IS NOW OVERWHELMING

YOU CANNOT IGNORE THE DATA

PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND
SAGE
NHS
DOMINIC CUMMINGS

THERE IS STILL TIME TO ACT
THOUSANDS OF VULNERABLE/BAME LIVES CAN STILL BE SAVED BY MASS ADMINISTERING VITAMIN D NOW

UK IS NOW IN THE TOP FEW COUNTRIES WITH THE HIGHEST DEATHS PER MILLION

DOING NOTHING = CULPABLE HOMICIDE

It's all possibilities and risk reduction. Doesn't mean the government should supply it for free.

The second vitamin D3 blood serum study in the world has been published yesterday.
It was a study of 780 Indonesian covid patients.

These are the conclusions of the study:
• Majority of the COVID-19 cases with insufficient and deficient Vitamin D status died.
• The odds of death was higher in older and male cases with pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D levels.
• When controlling for age, sex, and comorbidity, Vitamin D status is strongly associated with COVID-19 mortality.

When compared to cases with normal Vitamin D status, death was approximately 10.12 times more likely for Vitamin D deficient cases (OR=10.12; p

Noone is disputing anything about vitamin d, seriously the post was about whether the government should force it for free and no they shouldn't. End of the day people have to take accountability for making sure they stay healthy and have the right levels of vitamins etc. We are not a nanny state.

Cycling, it’s one of those things that is a very cost effective public health intervention, the benefits are massively out of proportion to the costs. It will save billions from the public purse in terms of healthcare, it will massively improve economic productivity as fewer sick days are taken and people’s work performance is not impeded due to sickness/fatigue/depression etc. Most importantly it saves lives and improves quality of life across the population for an investment of pennies per person. Nothing “nanny stat-ish” about saving taxes and improving public health & wellbeing at the same time. I don’t have any specific evidence for this, but I strongly suspect that high levels of vitamin D across a population reduces the R0 reproductive number of a virus trying to spread through it. Each person with a good vit D level acts as a firewall impeding its spread through the population.

So your bashing your decision on no evidence

You could argue vitamin c is important for healthy immune system, that would save lots of money too let's give that for free

Oh and also calcium for healthy bones imagine how much we could save with that!

Not to mention all the b vitamins too

Let's just give everyone everything for free! Why ask people to spend money on keeping themselves healthy, its only the price of a monthly netflix subscription after all. But no couldnt ask people to give up that amount of money or eat properly in the first place.

You can get vitamin d from red meat, some fish, and sunshine. Surely youd build it up quicker naturally, than popping pills. If you have sufficient vitamin d, is there any point taking more?
There is also strong evidence that covid causes clotting. Should we be distributing blood thinners or aspirin to all aswell?

Cycling, you are being ridiculous. The whole point is that something cheap and noninvasive could skew the rate of infection and the mortality rate, and.most.of the.susceptible population dont even KNOW TO TAKE IT!!

Why is everyone being so obtuse? We are being told so stay at home, ie not go out except for short period of exercise. At a time when we would normally be outside making vit d. But we cannot because some of us, are indoors, especially BAME keyworkers, and those who are shielding. Hence.thevonly vit d is from SUPPLEMENTs. Read the nhs website which tells us all to take a supplement in winter. Yet a lot of people are not, cos of.faulty public.health info.

Are the people typing in capitals alright? Because they sound a bit hysterical.

"Hence.thevonly vit d is from SUPPLEMENTs."
No it's not. You can get vitamin d from diet too. It's not just reliant on sunshine. Cant people who are shielding sit in their gardens or by a window?

No. There is such a thing as personal responsibility. How much hand holding do people want?

Unless you’re eating an ancestral diet of kilos of oily fish per week, it is impossible to get even vaguely sufficient vitamin D through diet. And 7.7 billion people eating that much fish would clear the oceans out in a week. The amount of vitamin D in eggs and milk doesn’t begin to touch the sides in terms of optimal requirements.

People have also been told to cover up an slather themselves in factor 50+ for decades and that message is still the predominant one. So yes, most people are deficient, especially during winter cold, flu & noro season.

Rickets, osteomalacia and osteoporosis have all seen an upsurge in recent years. You could even say that there’s a pandemic of vitamin D deficiency that quite closely mirrors the current viral one. Hmm giving out £5 bottles of D, or shutting down most of the economy for several months, building new hospitals, purchasing 000’s of ventilators, losing dozens of highly trained doctors and nurses, not to mention the human tragedies behind the numbers. No brainer high reward for minimal cost.

Okay.then, for the.nay sayers, why isnt public health england reminding people to SIT in the sunshine between 11 and 3 uncovered for 30 mins, and sit.by.an Open window in sunshine if shielding, no garden then? Because at least 20 percent of the population.have.no idea that they should do this. Its an information problem then, but it is still a problem. Replace info with free vit.d, but.TELL them.

Of course you can get enough vitamins from diet and sunshine. People really do dramatised things on here. Weve had a few weeks of nice weather, doubt hot enough that people have slathered on factor 50. The majority of people will have enough vitamin d.

Darker skinned people, older people, night shift workers, people living at northern latitudes, people who cover for cultural reasons, people living in cloudy/polluted environments, people who live in high rise flats and dense urban housing, factory/office workers are all people with difficulty making vitamin D, either biological or situational. Pregnant/breastfeeding women and obese people have increased requirements.

Also, the sun can only cause the skin to make vitamin D when it is above 31.5 deg in the sky. So that means only a few minutes are available around the solar noon in March and October, and expanding out to about 11 & 3 April to September. You need daily exposure on most of your body, eg short shorts & vest top for most of your daily requirements and to have stores to see you into the winter.

Re: food. An egg yolk has a mere 37 iu. A decent supplement will have 2500 to 5000 iu so you can see the shortfall. Wild salmon fares much better at just under 1000 iu per 100g. Has to be wild though, as farmed salmon has minimal amounts. £££ for most people. Unfortunately trying to get your 2.5 to 5 K iu per day, you run into both the methylmercury contamination and overfishing problems.

So that adds up to ~98% of the population who aren’t farmers or landscape gardeners being vitamin D deficient, especially in winter when viruses are rampant. Chucking a few supplements at people or suffering the economic impacts of pandemic induced recession, I’m no accountant or actuary, but I can see what is cost effective, by a long chalk.

How do people know that they should learn about something if they are unaware of it’s significance in the first place? You can have the whole internet and world libraries at your disposal, but if you aren’t aware that there’s something important you should be learning about, you won’t seek it out. Hence why at the very least the govt should be initiating a public information csmpaign.

Because all it takes is to ask the question what is a healthy diet? Or what do I need to eat to be healthy? It's not beyond the wit of a person to stay from thay point.

Thays whayvwe all do if we need to know something, how do I wash my car? How do I bake bread? What do I need to do in an interview.
Besides it is not like noone has not been a doctor ever in their life or never had a blood test done ever. Another way to find out.