On Vitamin D

Tank Green/ September 17, 2021/ COVID-19, Health, Thoughts

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.