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Photo by Colin Maynard
By Jo Nova
Imagine we were spending $200 million to inject pregnant women and vaccinate babies against RSV, and the real cause of many of the life threatening cases was just low vitamin D?
RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus) is something nearly everyone catches by the time they are two years old. It’s like a bad cold. We’ll go on to catch it every few years for the rest of our lives, and it’s really only a problem for babies and the very old.
In the last week by some odd coincidence, the BBC, ABC and CBC all have stories promoting the idea of saving babies with RSV vaccines which often cost $300 dollars each (USD). The government rollouts are being promoted with free advertising on news programs that pretend to be journalists. But not a single journalist asked the obvious question — if most babies recover just fine, what is different about the babies that struggle. Could it be that low vitamin D puts them at risk?
Two studies suggest that babies with low vitamin D are, by golly, 5 to 10 times more likely to need intensive care.
Vitamin D3, Cholcalciferol.
[…]
How many people have died of a vitamin D3 deficiency in the last 20 years?
If you are deficient in Vitamin D3, you may reduce chronic inflammation just by taking this five cent supplement and getting a bit of sun. A new study finds evidence that low levels of Vitamin D are not just linked, but cause the dreaded chronic inflammation which is so tied to aging that researchers talk about inflammaging in medical papers. The term captures the diabolic systemic effects of inflammation that accelerate aging, dementia and heart disease and a whole alphabet of other conditions. But don’t wait for your CDC, NHS, or AHPRA-approved-doctor to tell you. The global anti-inflammatory drugs market was worth USD 94 billion a few years ago. Imagine what it would do to that market if everyone sorted out their vitamin D levels?
Since Covid exacerbates inflammation, and people who are obese find it very hard to get their vitamin D blood levels up, it fits that aging, inflammation, obesity and low vitamin D3 make for a bad combination with SARS-2. And if inflammation causes some cases of Long Covid, then it seems to me that vitamin D3 may help with that too.
[…]
Click to enlarge | Paper
Just imagine that 17% of dementia cases could be prevented with a new drug that cost five cents, had a huge safety margin, and virtually no risk?
The study from the University of South Australia looked at data from 294,000 people in their 60s in the UK, and followed them for a median of 11 years or so. Researchers even controlled for time spent outdoors, types of physical activity, and the amount of oily fish they ate to try to cover for other benefits from these activities.
Seems to me, that if Ministers of Health were interested in actual health, they might be offering free Vitamin D tests, free supplement bottles, lessons in school and public awareness programs. They might even offer testing clinics in shopping centre car parks or free bottles at the RSL and Bowls clubs. Crazy idea right? In the world you thought you were living in, the treasurer might be chasing them down to forecast savings on public health spending ten years from now by keeping 1 in 6 out of nursing homes. Instead our Departments of Health are apparently keen to approve patented drugs with few clinical benefits […]
Did someone say there’s a hospitalization crisis?
…
There is a crisis. People are getting stuck for days extra in hospitals and even dying because of nutrient deficiencies that we could easily solve.
A new study from Istanbul shows that even if we negligently fail to correct Vitamin D deficiencies before people get sick, we can still save half of the ones who might die with a cheap vitamin, pumped in hospital for about 1/5000th of the daily cost of an ICU bed.
The mortality rate in the unsupplemented group from 2020 was 11%, but in the supplemented group in 2021 it was 5.5%. Imagine what the mortality rate might be if these people weren’t deficient in the first place?
The study shows us that there is a causal connection between low Vitamin D and more severe Covid. It also shows what a train wreck our medical systems are. For the price of a few dollars we can free up a lot of hospital beds and stop a lot of deaths, and we’ve known this might be the case since the beginning, and we’re still not doing it? The incentives are so screwed in our healthcare systems that […]
How badly do our Health Ministers want to reduce Covid infections and deaths? Not much. If they were at all serious — before they hand out free vaccines, they’d hand out free Vitamin D supplements.
In a study conducted in a Galilee hospital, 26 percent of vitamin D-deficient coronavirus patients died, while among other patients the figure was at 3%. — Times of Israel
If only black lives mattered? Dark skins are so much more likely to be deficient, this is one of those absolutely easy wins for any politician, yet none of them are doing it?
Nearly half the people in the study were deficient, and half of those who were seriously deficient in Vitamin D would go on to develop a severe case. These were the people with levels below 20 ng/ml. Of all the people above that, only 10% would get a severe case. And just being “above 20ng” would still be classified as moderately deficient by many measures, yet it made such a huge difference.
It was a life and death thing — the mortality rate was 25%, fully five times higher for those who fell below the 20ng/ml bar.
The Israeli study […]
If a new drug reduced deaths by 10% it would almost get a Nobel Prize — that is, as long as it made someone rich.
A free antiviral shining down on you?
At the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona 930 people who turned up with Covid were randomly asked to take a vitamin D3 (calcifediol) treatment or a placebo. Of them, 551 were given four doses of Vitamin D3 over the next four weeks. The other 379 luckless people got the chance to be randomized controls..
The lucky ones got 20,000IU (or 20 normal vitamin D3 tablets) on day one, then 10,000 IU (ten normal tablets) on four other days in the next month. (Technically, the big dose was given was given on day one followed up with half doses on day 3, 7, 15, and 30.)
In the hapless control group as many as 80 people (21%) would go on to need Intensive Care (ICU). And 57 people of the original 379 would end up dying, or about 15%.
Of the 551 people given five dollars worth* of Vitamin D (that’s the cost online) only 30 (5%) would go on to need the ICU, and all up 36 […]
Given that people with dark skin are more likely to be deficient in Vitamin D, wouldn’t studies like these be the best way to show that black lives actually matter? Would you like training in cultural sensitivity or to avoid the intensive care unit?
A free antiviral shining down on you?
In the Castillo study in Spain, 76 patients were randomly assorted into Calciferol treatment ( 0.532 mg Vitamin D ). Of the 26 who didn’t get it, 13 were admitted to the ICU. Of the 50 who got Vitamin D doses on days 1, 3, and 7 — only one ended up in the ICU. It’s worth noting that all patients got HCQ as well, and azithromycin too.
A second study tested 500 people to find out if they were deficient and followed them to see if they caught Covid.
Why has it taken 6 months of pandemic to do these small studies?
Before the pandemic came there was already ample evidence suggesting that it mattered. Vitamin D influences over 200 genes. Its levels also correlate with lower rates of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease, dental caries, preeclampsia, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. […]
It’s really quite a scandal.
Missing out on the Sunshine Vitamin?
Historians will marvel that societies that were advanced enough to stream reality-tv-shows at 100 million bits per second, were also so backwards that half the population was deficient in Vitamin D — something that costs 6 cents a dose or comes free from the sun. Nearly 60% of older Germans were deficient, and the ESTHER study puts a fine point on how much that matters. Almost 10,000 people were followed for 15 years in Germany, and during that time about half the people who died of respiratory illnesses might not have died if they had enough Vitamin D.
In this German study 44% did not have adequate Vitamin D and about 1 in 6 people have levels so low they are clinically deficient.
Imagine if someone found a drug that stopped nearly half of all influenza deaths?
Right now, the Northern Hemisphere has higher levels of Vitamin D than most months which is quite likely reducing the death rates. The message needs to get out about Vitamin D before the next Northern Winter.
Morethan half the population is deficient.
In terms of respiratory diseases, those whose […]
Wow. If this is confirmed, Coronavirus is almost a disease of Vitamin D deficiency
Missing out on the Sunshine Vitamin?
Hot off the press: A new Indonesian study of 780 people with Coronavirus found that people with a Vitamin D deficiency were much more likely to die. We discussed Vitamin D at length a few weeks ago, so we already knew Vitamin D is associated with a lower rate of respiratory illness, but the results here are quite remarkable.
Of those who died most (85%) had a co-morbidity, the real surprise is that even more than that, 96% had low Vitamin D levels. Of those who survived, most people had normal Vitamin D levels. Only 7% of survivors had low or deficient Vitamin D. That is quite a split.
Vitamin D deficiency was very common among these Indonensian patients. Half of those measured did not have enough Vitamin D in their blood. Of those that did, 96% survived, and only 4% “expired”. Vitamin D looks like a good protector.
After controlling for known risk like being old, or male or having high blood pressure, a Vitamin D level described as deficient (less than 20ng/ml) was associated with a 10 […]
Missing out on the Sunshine Vitamin?
We’re throwing billions at Coronavirus but missing cheap wins.
After masks and soap, the next bargain to reduce the impact of coronavirus is Vitamin D supplements.
Vitamin D deficiency is so common it’s an epidemic affecting a billion people around the world. Ponder that half the population of many western nations are clinically deficient by the end of winter. Add that to a novel virus and consider that higher Vitamin D levels reduce the risk of respiratory tract infections like influenza by as much as 40%.
As Grant et al say:
“Low vitamin D status in winter permits viral epidemics.”
Vitamin D levels also correlate with lower rates of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease, dental caries, preeclampsia, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. Vitamin D influences over 200 genes. It’s so crucial, it was likely the reason northern Europeans evolved whiter skin. The lack of sunlight and the introduction of grains in diets (as opposed to eating liver and whales) meant that Europeans weren’t getting enough D from either food or sun. The selective pressure was so strong that lighter skin rapidly took over all the northern […]
I like to keep an eye on research on keeping our brains intact (even if it’s not far past the leeches-and-arsenic stage). Here is a tiny trial showing a bit of promise. After years of testing drugs on Alzheimer plaques without much luck, as far as I can tell, this study had the radical idea of doing a bit of everything that had seemed to delay Alzheimers — like exercise, dumping the carbs, mini-fasts, fish oil, meditation and things like that. Unlike the drug trials, this one actually seemed to work and surprisingly for as many as 9 out of 10 patients (there were only ten patients, that’s not a ratio). It’s quite neat that it did work. It has lots of potential (though not much in the way of profits for big-pharma). However it was only six months long. It may not be slowing the plaques, but then if it restores functional memory, that’s rather the point (though I worry those plaques are coming back later).
Nonetheless, if you like the idea of saving your brain. Worth reading the list below, just so you know and pass it on to those with an interest. Anything that helps, especially when […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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