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?

That drop box report is quite shocking. They know it is linked, and yet there has still been no public health announcement or targetted supplementation programme. For such simple info, which in my experience, a lot of educated and intelligent people arent even aware of..witness how many mumsnet threads on vit d, and people still dont know about it.

Our pharmacy has plenty in every strength, and most.health food shops have it. No one associates it with protection from corona, so there has been no run on it here in west london. So many BAME in nhs, supermarket supply, transport. Yet no one is even aware it could help. I asked someone at a supermarket till, a postman, and an older gentleman in the park if they knew to take vit d, and quite honestly no one had the faintest idea although they worried about other aspects of catching it.

I suffered with horrible chest infections every year up until I moved to Greece when they suddenly stopped. DD seems to be the same. Greece seems to be handling the crisis far better than us

Ok, so here's a summary of a pre-published research paper from Imperial College, London and University of Birmingham

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

They have sent out a summary above with a poster calling for hospitals to urgently analyse serum D3 levels from covid 19 patients. Their paper is a meta analysis, which means that it collates masses of data from previous studies involving 1000s of cases.
Summary:

1. Winter Vitamin D deficiency is common in northern latitudes above 20 degrees and (Apr - Sep) in southern latitudes 20 degrees below the equator.
2. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses in the past have displayed very strong seasonality with winter appearances Severe Covid-19 outbreaks have happened above 20 degree winter latitudes whereas outbreaks in the southern summer hemisphere have been mild and case fatalities relatively low. Case fatalities show a striking relationship to latitude.
3. The most severe outbreak in the north has been Italy where it is noted vitamin D deficiency is one of the highest in Europe.
4. Japan is an outlier in the north, with only a very mild outbreak and has the lowest incidence of Vitamin D deficiency thanks to its high fish-content diet
5. Research suggests covid 19 can lead to a cytokine storm (where the patient's lungs fill with fluid).
6. Research shows that Vitamin D acts to limit the cytokine storm and limit lung inflammation.

There's a shed load of extra evidence which I've not had time to summarise.

Bump.

I've had time to interpret the latitude graph above.
The red line is the number of world deaths occurring at a specific latitude on 22nd March (it would be interesting to see an updated plot).

The blue bar chart shows the total population at that latitude.

The significance of this is as follows:

If covid 19 affects all people in the same way no matter where they live, on average, the number of deaths would have the the same peak latitude as the population peak latitude- but it does not.

You can see clearly that the death peak is at approx 40 degrees north whilst the population peak is at approx 20 degrees north.

This means there is a bias towards people dying the further north they live - well a bias towards people living between the 40th and 50th parallel, north. London, Madrid, Lombardy and New York all lie in this region and have all come out of a long, dark, cold winter.

We all know that vitamin D levels are lowin these regions, unless diet counterbalances this - see Japan, Scandinavia, Iceland etc .

For all other info, including vit D suppression of cytokine storms, this is the study for the multiple data analysis related to this:
www.dropbox.com/s/ka7h4fbi7xdz9s9/Covid-19%20and%20Vitamin%20D%20Information.pdf

I guess they need to remove the older people from a chart and look at 20-40yo maybe who you wouldnt generally expect to die from pnemonia. Also maybe exclude drs and nurses.

Also links to low vit d and both t2 diabetes and asthma...

I take a 4000IU tablet each day with a magnesium tablet. Should I be adding a K2 supplement to this?

If it hasn't been posted already, Dr John Campbell's video on evidence for using Vit D3 to prevent Covid-19 is worth watching.

It will save us all money if everyone was supplied with vit d. We used to have it fortified in margarine so now it needs fortified elsewhere as most people dont eat margarine anymore.

@supercee sorry not sure about K2

@CrunchyCarrot -yes it's a great video, I just wish Public Health England would watch it and take careful note.

It's interesting because I don't think he mentions covid 19/coronavirus once - are NHS health specialists being gagged about this, I really don't know.

I wonder about overweight people abd these fat soluble vitamins. If say their diet is poor low in the vitamins and high in fat. Will their body store all this fat but when it looks to break down anything for vitamins there is none there?
Or were people meant to store up fat etc over the summer but have less food over winter so using up their fat stores. But that doesnt happen now.

Re the asthma vit d they didnt find a link in denmark or NZ i think so there may be other factors like weight/genes

Quite interesting

www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-15/coronavirus-risk-higher-for-obese-people

"In one of two new studies released this week, COVID-19 patients who were younger than 60 and had a BMI between 30 and 34 were twice as likely as their non-obese peers to be admitted to the hospital for acute care instead of being sent home from the ER. They were also 1.8 times more likely to require critical care in a hospital’s intensive care unit.

More severe obesity posed an even greater risk to COVID-19 patients in this under-60 age group. When these patients had a BMI of 35 or higher, they were 2.2 times more likely than their non-obese peers to need standard hospital care and 3.6 times more likely to end up in the ICU.

“Obesity appears to be a previously unrecognized risk factor for hospital admission and need for critical care,” wrote the authors of the study published this month in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. But that only applies to relatively younger patients; among those ages 65 and older, there was no link between obesity status and hospital care."

I have been taking Vitamin D supps for the past 3 years and in that time have only had one cold. People in work have even commented that I’m never sick. I’m always telling people to take Vit D.

Still, vitamin D3 deficiency alone can't explain why there are so many more men dying from Covid-19 than women. I'll be really interested to know what the reason/s behind that is/are.

Do we think that women are more likely than men to take vitamins? I do.
Also re gender, I read somewhere that higher testosterone (ie most men) is a risk factor. Anyone else heard this?
The other thing I heard from Italy is that men are a lot more likely than women to be smokers... I wonder if that’s true in the UK too.

This whole vitamin D thing has only just clicked with me and that Dr Campbell video is incredible. Well worth a watch of the full 20 mins. I have posted two packs of D3 to my shielded mum and dad and they are now on it.

Men? Various theories - perhaps fatter than women once they reach 60 with the fat over the tummy area which is risky and probably less designed to have fat, whereas women naturally have more as they have babies etc.

Also some suggest they don't wash their hands and may be not as clean as women (sorry men..... ), perhaps they are out more and more women are at home generally in life.

In some countries they smoke more than women although I am not sure smoking is now seen as a huge risk factor if at all although you would expect it would be as covid 19 is all about the lungs.

Today the medical people said it was age, being ill and being male that were 3 things they were sure made this worse. They said they were not sure about skin colour and were looking into it urgently.

Hospitals will (or should) have been requested to test blood serum levels of vitamin D3 from covid 19 patients. People with darker skin are more prone to vitamin D3 deficiency. Especially in colder, darker climates and in winter. Vitamin D3 has been shown to limit cytokine storms and protect the pulmonary system - it is a vital link in the immune response.

Public Health England delayed a response to the disproportionate BAME deaths. Probably because they waiting for the analysis results.

Here is a pre-published research paper from Imperial College, London and University of Birmingham - we are talking about very reputable scientists here

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

They have sent out a summary above with a poster calling for hospitals to urgently analyse serum D3 levels from covid 19 patients. Their paper is a meta analysis, which means that it collates masses of data from previous studies involving 1000s of cases.
Summary:

1. Winter Vitamin D deficiency is common in northern latitudes above 20 degrees and (Apr - Sep) in southern latitudes 20 degrees below the equator.
2. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses in the past have displayed very strong seasonality with winter appearances Severe Covid-19 outbreaks have happened above 20 degree winter latitudes whereas outbreaks in the southern summer hemisphere have been mild and case fatalities relatively low. Case fatalities show a striking relationship to latitude.
3. The most severe outbreak in the north has been Italy where it is noted vitamin D deficiency is one of the highest in Europe.
4. Japan is an outlier in the north, with only a very mild outbreak and has the lowest incidence of Vitamin D deficiency thanks to its high fish-content diet
5. Research suggests covid 19 can lead to a cytokine storm (where the patient’s lungs fill with fluid).
6. Research shows that Vitamin D acts to limit the cytokine storm and limit lung inflammation.

There’s a shed load of extra evidence which I’ve not had time to summarise.

I take d3 as I lobs in Scotland and sunlight is in short supply up here. We’re still only about14-16c each day.

As we discussed further up thread, there is no doubt that vitamin D is important, but it is really really important that people pay attention to their metabolic health. It is almost impossible to have good metabolic health if you are obese. It inflames the body.

www.europeanscientist.com/en/article-of-the-week/covid-19-and-the-elephant-in-the-room/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

@hamstersarse

Granted, evidence has shown that obesity, heart disease, blood pressure and age all play their part in accentuating the risk.

But how can you account for the (very) disproportionate BAME data and the very low death rate in the southern hemisphere,

see
www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

The BAME dis proportionality is a very important flag which is worrying Public Health England immensely - watch them answer (or rather not answer) questions about this in the daily briefing.

They did say yesterday they have just commissioned people to look into the BAME issue and I do not think they are avoiding the issue. I presume it is due to vit D or increased obesity and diabetes risks/genes.

Two things everyone on MN can do if over weight is try to eat a lot less in this pandemic and where possible get out in the sun with no suncream on. Today looks like the first day I cannot get out in the sun for a while as there is none but I have been doing this for the last few years specifically because I think vit D is best taken in from Spring to Autumn in the UK from direct sunlight.

Apart from soy stuff, cerearl (which are mostly junk carbs), orange juice and liver which I never eat, I eat a lot of this

"Foods that provide vitamin D include:

Fatty fish, like tuna, mackerel, and salmon.
Foods fortified with vitamin D, like some dairy products, orange juice, soy milk, and cereals.
Beef liver.
Cheese.
Egg yolks."

The best way to get D is from sunlight because it’s not actually a vitamin. It’s almost impossible to get enough from food even if you eat fish/meat. (Perhaps unless you are an Inuit who lives on fish).

Vitamin D is actually a hormone rather than a vitamin; it is required to absorb calcium from the gut into the bloodstream. Vitamin D is mostly produced in the skin in response to sunlight and is also absorbed from food eaten (about 10% of vitamin D is absorbed this way) as part of a healthy balanced diet.