I recently watched this fascinating lecture on the relationship between Vitamin D deficiency and severe Covid-19 and thought it well worth sharing.

 

I am a very strong proponent for supplementing your diet with Vitamin D and have been doing so since 2010. In the UK, the guidance is that you should do so between late autumn to early spring if you are white, and all year round if you are black or Asian (i.e. have melanated skin). I currently supplement during the winter with 3 x 1000iu D3 tablets a day, spread over three meals, although when I lived in Scotland, I actually took 6 x 1000iu tablets a day. I have tried various different brands and definitely notice a difference between the cheapo brands and the better ones, and now use Solgar.

I say notice a difference because the reason I started taking Vitamin D was to help with my asthma. I had mainly grown out of my asthma (unless I was sick) but in 2009, I developed what I call “winter asthma”. It actually corresponded with a move to Scotland and I didn’t realise it was that until the following year, as I spent that first Scottish winter thinking I had one really long illness. It wasn’t until my asthma suddenly started getting worse again in September 2010 that I started to suspect it was some kind of weird allergic-type response to the winter.

Since then, I have experimented with supplementing my diet with differing amounts and types of Vitamin D and now control the winter asthma very well through a combination of Vitamin D, and turmeric and black pepper. Although, in respect of the latter, it would be considerably cheaper if I just drunk some golden milk every day, but the only (goat’s) milk I imbibe is in the form of homemade ice-cream. 😎 I take the supplements from mid-September until mid-March and they almost completely alleviate my symptoms. I want to stress how severe the winter asthma is if I do not do this: I need to take my Ventolin around 20-30 times a day. (I refuse to take the steroidal inhalers, much to several medics annoyance.) So it is no small thing (to me at least) that I am able to achieve such good results through supplementation with natural products.

What I found really interesting about that video above, is how the elderly are unable to synthesise Vitamin D adequately, even during the summer months. This was news to me, but shows how vital it is for those of us in the northern hemisphere to supplement our diets with this vitamin for its proven anti-inflammatory, immune boosting, and blood-glucose regulating functions, to name a few, especially as we get older and are also at risk of bone and muscle loss and attendant falls and fractures (link to PDF) as a result of Vitamin D deficiency. This is even more important for black and Asian people. Frankly, this is precisely the kind of preventative health product that should be free on the NHS.

As I have said elsewhere, and as should be evident from the fact that I am also a Personal Trainer, I care very much about my health and have approached it proactively since I was young. Thankfully, I seem to have some kind of innate orientation towards wellness and have always understood that to be well meant to actively work towards health in a continuous sense. Wellness and health have always been a journey for me, something I seek, and in seeking, largely achieve.

In large part I think this orientation is because I have several chronic diseases – asthma, a very serious and rare form of eczema, and hay fever – which modern medicine can’t really do anything about. As such, I have had to learn how to minimise and control the symptoms of the diseases I am forced to live with. I have tried to do this, as much as is possible, without the use of drugs, as I have never bought into the notion of “side effects”. I do not agree that we should sideline and ignore the usually negative effects of a drug we are asked to take. (Although the avoidance of drugs has not always been possible for my asthma and hay fever, alas.)

This has meant staying physically active to ensure my lung capacity was as good as it could be for an asthmatic, and not allowing it to deteriorate by becoming sedentary through a fear of exercise induced asthma. I have therefore always exercised regularly, and even more so since I passed 30 and vanity kicked in. I currently use the gym three times a week primarily for strength training, do a lot of yoga at home, and engage in active travel (i.e. cycling and walking) whenever possible. I also go through phases of being a keen runner, although I am not currently in one.

Luckily, I also have a very healthy relationship with food and have always understood that food is primarily about nutrition: it is the equivalent of the fuel in our tanks. So as much as your car won’t run if you pour manure in it, I have always grasped that my body won’t work properly if I put shite in it.

This was especially compounded by the development of a very rare and very, very severe form of eczema when I was a teen. After spending months in bandages and in chronic pain, all the while using stronger and stronger steroids to no avail, it was suddenly and totally resolved in two weeks after being put on an exclusion diet by a naturopath. It was a very illuminating experience which clearly demonstrated the direct link between what I put in my body and the (negative) consequences for my health.

In respect of nutrition, I was a vegetarian for around 20 years, but started eating meat again in my 30s and feel much better for it (sorry, animals). I now follow the kind of diet promoted by Dr Zoe Harcombe, although I was largely eating that way before I came across her excellent book The Obesity Epidemic. I am also totally obsessed with my gut microbiome after reading both Ed Yong’s I contain Multitudes and Alanna Collen’s 10% Human. Recently I came across the Public Health Consortium who also seem to have some great, easy to use resources on how to eat to increase your health; for instance, real food on a budget (PDF).

My diet now consists of a small amount of grass-fed and free range meat and fish, eggs, sheep and goat dairy, nuts/seeds, and as many fruit and vegetables as I can. I cook from scratch, rarely eat processed foods, and consume only a very small amount of cereals and grains. I also want to point out that I have spent most of my life on a pretty low income, so I know for a fact that you can eat healthily on a budget if you spend some time planning your meals and cook from scratch. In my case, I do most of my shopping in one of the budget supermarkets and spend the savings I have made on quality meat and fish from Field & Flower.

I am telling you this not to be self-righteous or sanctimonious but because I think that knowing I have done just about everything I can to promote and take care of my health has meant that I have not lost myself to COVID-fear like many people I know. If I get it (I got it), then I know that my body is in the best place it can be to fight off the infection, just as it is to fight off any infection (etc.) that I may have. We cannot control viruses; aside from the fact that they are microscopic organisms invisible to the naked eye, they are a part of the ecology of Earth and, by extension, our bodies. We can only make sure that our bodies are in as best condition that they can be for our age, to ensure that we stay as fit and as healthy as possible, for as long as possible.

The fact remains that many of the modern diet and lifestyle-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure/hypertension, and excess weight and obesity (PDF) that we eat and sit our way into, are causing people to be more at risk of serious complications from a COVID-19 infection. That is over and above the risk that those diseases already pose to us. For instance, blindness, miscarriage, heart disease, and kidney problems for diabetics; strokes, heart disease, kidney disease, and dementia for hypertensives; and all of those things plus 13 different types of cancers for obese and overweight people.

Given that all of these diseases can either be prevented, reversed, or radically improved by taking a proactive approach to your health (i.e. a real food diet and plenty of exercise), why has the pandemic not resulted in people (as far as I can tell) taking more responsibility for proactively managing their health? Although I suppose, given the fact that every year in the UK 166,000 people die from cancer, 26,000 people die from complications to do with their diabetes, and 75,000 people die from complications due to hypertension, perhaps it is a bit much for me to expect that a mere pandemic would make people start thinking about taking responsibility for their health…

Being healthy and living an active life is not hard, it just takes commitment. It just takes a desire to be well and an orientation towards life. It just takes a basic level of personal responsibility and agency. If that sounds like too much work to you, then you need to ask yourself why you court death. And if you don’t, then really start living.

This rather striking graph was taken from the most recent COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report from Public Health England. (09/09/21 – link to PDF. Graph is on page 18.)

What this demonstrates quite clearly, and many of us have known anecdotally for several months now, is that being double vaccinated doesn’t stop you catching, and one would presume, transmitting the virus. If it doesn’t stop you catching and transmitting the virus, why are so many people supporting the erosion of the civil and human rights of those who have chosen not to take the vaccine? It makes no logical or rational sense from a health perspective.

I oppose segregation in general, mainly because I am a scholar of racism and work on other forms of discrimination. But even if you don’t share a general moral and intellectual opposition to discrimination, how can you justify “health”-based apartheid on the basis of the available data? When your double vaccinated neighbour could just as easily transmit COVID to you as your unvaccinated one.

The vaccine does seem to be protecting those who have taken it against developing more severe forms of COVID-19 and on the basis of that evidence, it would seem sensible that those who worry about their own vulnerability to the virus should take the vaccine. But your fears about your own health should not, for both moral and data-led reasons, cause you to support the erosion of the civil and human rights of those who do not share your fears.

 

Who mainly works in care homes? Working class women who are often from the global majority or who are often migrants.

Just because they are doing a job that you don’t want to, it doesn’t mean that you own their body.

Mandatory vaccinations are a crime.

The truth is that, when you made the decision to put your loved one in a care home, you made a decision to put your life first. If not, you would have decided to do the hard work of caring for your loved one yourself.

Now, in the most splendid hypocrisy to date, you refuse the right of care workers to make the same decision. You refuse the right of a care worker to put themselves first for a change.

The solution here is not to force someone to undergo a medical procedure they do not want, it’s to take your loved one out of the care home and do the hard work of caring for them yourself.

Have you said no to that? Do you think it is a preposterous suggestion? Well, know this: whatever reason/s you have conjured up to reject the idea (your job? your time?), you are valuing higher than the bodily autonomy of another human being.

I am writing this because I don’t think there is any sensible, middle-ground opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine programme. Because ordinary people who simply choose not to have the vaccine have to speak in hushed whispers to one another for fear of being shouted down by angry pro-vaccine zealots, for fear of being quietly disowned by people they have known for years, or for fear of being associated with conspiracy theorists who think there are microchips in the vaccine.

So I am writing this for you, friend. For the person who simply is reluctant to have the vaccine for their own sensible reasons. For me, that is because I intensely distrust the government, both local and national, because I know they do not have our best interests at heart. By “our”, I mean the proles, the workers, the people who are not rich, the people who are less than not rich, the people who aspire for a different kind of world and a different kind of life than the one we are all incentivised to work ourselves to death for. All you have to do is look at the inherently unequal power structures in society to know it is true that the state abhors us. All you have to do is be poor and have any contact with any of the branches of the state to know that we are less than cared for. All you have to do is have a very important job but get paid next-to-nothing for it, to discover that in this world, this world that “claps for you”, this world thinks it owns your body just because you look after its nan.

I am also not having it because I am old enough to remember the Thalidomide scandal. I am not having it because we simply do not know the long-term effects of the vaccine and I don’t care how much the “professionals” claim it’s safe: they are lying at worst, and engaging in positive, magical thinking at best, unless they also have time machines. I am not taking it because the UK government currently offers us a £120,000 Vaccine Damage Payment if we are disabled because of it, and my health is worth much more than that. I am not having it because I have had COVID. I know what it is and what it does and, for me, it’s nowhere near as bad as the flu. And are you out there shouting at me, condemning me, seeking to curtail my civil liberties, seeking to control my body, because I also refuse the flu jab every year? Why do we not talk about the “long flu” – my scarred and damaged lungs – the same way we talk about “long COVID”, my rotating tendonitis?

I am not having it because I am, myriad chronic illnesses aside, a healthy 46-year-old. I am healthy and confident in my health because I take my health seriously. Because I have taken responsibility for my health my entire life. Because I eat healthily and care about nutrition, because I get plenty of exercise, because I don’t drink or take drugs excessively, because I am always a healthy weight, and because I generally do not pollute my body with junk food. Because I have taken the time and effort it takes to be healthy all my life. I do not believe in quick fixes to health: I believe health is a lifestyle, whether that’s good or bad. Health is how we live: mentally, physically, and emotionally. And I have prioritised my health all my life. Have you?

I mean seriously, have you?

Because I look about me and I see a lot of people who are not of a healthy weight (under, over, and obese), who do not exercise, who eat the worst kinds of processed and refined foods, who eat and drink vast quantities of sugar (whether in the form of refined sugar or in the form of carbohydrates/cereals/grains), who eat and drink awful chemicals that are impossible to pronounce in their so-called “convenience foods”, who smoke tobacco, and who drink a lot of alcohol or take a lot of drugs (OTC, prescription, or recreational). I look at those people and I know they do not take their health seriously. They do not prioritise their health. They do not put their health first. So tell me, why should I? Why should I put their health before mine? Why should I take responsibility for their health by taking a vaccine I do not want, when those people cannot do even the most basic level of proactive health management for themselves?

If anything, this pandemic should have been a wake-up call for people in respect of how they approached their health. Because there are a lot of people with no genetic underlying health issues who have lost themselves to COVID-fear, and why? For many of them, it is because they know they have never prioritised their health, never ensured they live a healthy life in a healthy body, and now they are afraid that they have made themselves vulnerable or at risk. And I am sorry to those who are immunocompromised or at risk through no fault of their own, but their health is still not my responsibility, any more than my asthma or osteoarthritis or scarred lungs (etc.) is theirs.

So you want me to take the vaccine? Here’s what I want:

• I want you to live a healthy lifestyle: physically, mentally, and emotionally.
• I want you to eat healthy, nutritious real food.
• I want you to learn about nutrition if you do not know what it means to eat healthily, or if you think eating healthily takes too much time or too much money. I want you to learn how to cook from scratch.
• I want you to exercise regularly. I want you to move. I want you to make sure your exercise is sustained and includes strength training, cardiovascular training, flexibility, and balance training.
• I want you to stop drinking so much or taking so many drugs that you damage your body.
• I want you to maintain a healthy weight.
• I want you to stop putting yourselves in situations that are so stressful to you that you damage your health. And if you do not know how to do that, then I want you to notice the structures in society that make it impossible for you to stop and, in turn, stop supporting them.

When you’ve done all of that, en masse, for at least the next decade of your lives, get back to me. When you’ve demonstrated by your actions that you prioritise your health and take full responsibility for it, then get back to me and ask me again to take the vaccine. But until then, please go ahead with your cheap, quick fixes that enable you to carry on with your fundamentally unhealthy lives with your head in the sand, but do not expect me to do the same.

I choose life, a healthy, fundamentally honest one, which enables me to view my fellow humans as something other than vectors for disease.