1) Use the app DMinder to monitor your sun exposure and check vit D is available naturally - generally the sun is too low in winter in the northern hemisphere to generate any D, so you have to supplement or go to Hawaii for winter… 😎
2) Have blood tests done to measure your D levels until they stabilise - probably needs 3-5 tests a year - especially if you need to supplement in winter which most will need. Get your blood to 60-100 iU range and keep it there.
3) Don’t use sunscreen - it blocks the D. Just stay out in the sun for 20 minutes- that’s all you need unless you have very dark skin. Your body can’t absorb more even if you stay out for hours..
4) Don’t shower with soap / lotion after sun. It stops the D from being absorbed through the skin. Just shower with no soap until the next morning.
Hi Wayne, It is extremely challenging to understand all that is and is not going through the minds of the majority of doctors regarding vitamin D, and nutrition in general. They have a very difficult job, with an inhuman number of things to remember and somehow use in the best possible ways for every individual health concern. They have enormous responsibilities but are often highly constrained in what they can do, by insurance, administration rules (in hospitals), official guidelines and by a general sense of what is normal for other doctors to do in similar circumstances.
Yet, doctors are the ones everyone needs to trust and rely upon regarding health decisions, including nutrition, as well as regarding treatment. Their work, their own health and the health of all their patients would be immensely better if everyone had enough 25-hydroxyvitamin D.
Your initial 18 ng/mL is typical for people who do not supplement vitamin D3 properly. See the Quraishi et al. 2014 graph at the start of: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ . The pile of dots at the lower left is my attempt at depicting the distribution of 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels of most people, at if they haven't had any significant UV-B skin exposure recently (or if they have, but have brown or black skin), when they don't take any vitamin D3 supplements. There's very little in food or multivitamins and UV-B increases the risk of skin cancer, so so proper supplements are the only proper approach. (Skin cancer kills a lot of people here in Australia, it is not taken seriously enough in many other countries.)
The graph shows much elevated risks of post-operative infection (the test subjects were all morbidly obese, but that probably does not raise the concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D their immune system needs) according to pre-operative 25-hydroxyvitamin D. All the levels above about 2.5% indicate that the immune system's performance is degraded, by 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels being below about 50 ng/mL
Your 40 ng/mL is a big improvement. 105 ng/mL is not a concern, but is probably more than is needed for immune system function, unless (and this is very common) you suffer from one or more inflammatory auto-immune conditions. Then, this may be a significant benefit, if done according to the Coimbra protocol (see also the McCullough and Batcheller protocols) cited and discussed at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/06-adv/ Pete Batcheller is a retired US Navy fighter pilot and Commander. His Coimbra-like protocol has helped thousands of people with cluster headache and migraine: http://www.clusterheadaches.com/ and https://vitamindwiki.com/Cluster+headaches+substantially+reduced+by+10,000+IU+of+Vitamin+D+in+80+percent+of+people . Dr McCullough takes about 50,000 IU vitamin D3 a day to suppress his psoriasis. These high intakes require some monitoring of calcium and parathyroid hormone, limited or no calcium supplementation, and a variety of other measures to guard against disturbances of calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism - see the Coimbra and Amon articles cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/06-adv/#01-higher .
.
I am a 1955 model, 70 kg 154 lb (let's just ignore the 72 kg my scales insist on - I have been staying up late and not exercising enough, writing about vitamin D) and I take 0.125 mg 50,000 IU vitamin D3 a week (7,143 IU/day) plus 200 IU from a multivitamin. I am sure my 25-hydroxyvitamin D level is above 50 and I guess that it is most likely below 100 ng/mL and unlikely to be anywhere near 150 ng/mL. That's good enough for me - I have not bothered to get it tested. This is me as an electronic technician mentioning my own approach, not pretending to give medical advice or suggesting that you should rely on anything I write. Please read the research articles and draw your own conclusions - or rely on the conclusions of suitably qualified people who have also read the research my web pages cite.
I’ve fired several of my last docs. One when I refused a medication and told her my plan for lifestyle and nutrition changes and she agreed still called it in and my Rx was waiting at Walgreens. Doc”You’re fired” The rest didn’t listen to me but just wanted to give me drugs. I don’t trust internal medicine doctors and conventional doctors at all. Maybe for broken bones. Good experiences with them. I do a huge amount of research and it isn’t on the MSM medical sites. My D level is consistently between 60 and 90. I’m 74. I spend time outdoors all year. I hike miles. I eat real food I prepare myself and no seed oils. Never even get colds although that’s my Covid experience. A runny nose. I didn’t trust all docs before Covid and certainly not now. The AMA is a corrupt joke as seen from the patient side. I see a functional medicine doctor who has helped a couple things the regular docs missed. My sisters initial cancer doc missed her cancer tumors on a pet scan and had to be reminded to look. She died after a year of painful useless chemo and her first Covid jab. . I doctor myself first. Then go from there Thanks for the D info. I find Vit D and it’s importance to good health fascinating. But the crime of not getting that info out at the beginning of Covid by doctors and health authorities has hammered the last nail in the coffin of conventional medicine for me.
We've known about the association between vitamin D deficiency and poor Covid outcomes for more than two years now. It absolutely boggles my mind that "public health authorities" the world over haven't been shouting it from the rooftops. The excuse I hear from the doubters is, "Well, than means the public health people most think it won't work." So what? Even if it doesn't work, what's the harm in recommending it? There's basically no risk and potentially a great deal of benefit if all adults supplemented with a few thousand IU per day, and the cost is literally pennies.
FWIW, my wife and I take 5000 IU per day, except when we know we're getting good sun exposure with the sun no lower than 45 degrees above the horizon (which is isn't very difficult when we're in Florida).
The relevance of Vitamin D to immunological health predates COVID by several years, and in some regards by decades. Yet what is for the most part a simple question of vitamin supplementation and having a good healthy diet has never been even mentioned by either the FDA or the CDC as a means to mitigate any aspect of COVID-19.
What makes that particularly damning is the evidences are accumulating that attending to one's vitamin D levels has a greater impact on one's ability to avoid COVID, or at least the severest forms of the disease, than the mRNA inoculations.
I'm on Twitter as @allfacts_matter. Also on Truth Social as @allfactsmatter (just joined), on GETTR as @allfactsmatter, and on Parler as @allfactsmatter2021.
And thanks!
(I read your article in the Epoch Times. Very nice! Have bookmarked it for future reference.)
I’ve been taking vitamins (D) and other supplements and so far I haven’t got sick,tested or 💉 I need to add that for years my vitamin D was between 21/23. Thanks 👍
DON'T get tested. There's graphene on those swabs, deliberately long swabs, to be rubbed around right up against the blood/brain barrier... There's also graphene in the shots, and in those idiotic blue and white masks we find all over parking lots and gas stations...
I know this sounds crazy... It IS crazy. Not me, of course, ;) but this whole Covid scam.
There is very little vitamin D3 in food or multivitamins. It can be made in the skin by UV-B light, but this is only naturally available, far from the equator, in the middle of cloudless summer days. UV-B always damages DNA and raises the risk of skin cancer. Also, it does not produce much vitamin D for those who have brown or black skin.
Without proper supplementation or recent extensive UV-B white skin exposure, most people have only 5 to 25 ng/mL 25(OH)D.
Most doctors follow totally inadequate recommendations based on the Institute of Medicine 2011 report, which ignored the immune system, had a 25(OH)D target of only 20 ng/mL and falsely stated that 0.015 mg vitamin D3 a day (600) IU would enable 97.5% of "adults" to attain this level. In fact, this leads to average levels around 20 ng/mL, which is only 40% of what people need.
The only proper way to calculate how much vitamin D3 to take per day (or in larger quantities every week or so, averaging to the best daily intake) is as a ratio of bodyweight, with higher ratios for those suffering from obesity. Please see this recommendation by Professor of Medicine Sunil Wimalawansa and the research articles on which it is based:
For an average weight adult (70 kg 154 lb) the best intake quantities are 0.125 to 0.175 milligram a day (5000 to 7000 IU/day). "5000 IU" sounds like a lot, but it is a gram every 22 years, and pharma grade vitamin D3 costs about USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory.
This takes about 3 months to raise circulating 25(OH)D, due to the need for hydroxylation in the liver. This will strengthen innate and adaptive immune responses to bacterial, viral and fungal pathogens while greatly reducing the risk of self-destructive, wildly dysregulated, hyper-inflammatory responses such as those which drive sepsis, severe COVID-19, Kawasaki disease and MIS-C.
Chauss et al. 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01080-3 who show how TH1 regulatory lymphocytes from the lungs of hospitalised COVID-19 patients remain stuck in their pro-inflammatory startup program, never responding to their circumstances by switching to the anti-inflammatory shutdown program, primarily or solely due to these cells not having enough 25-hydroxyvitamin D to run their intracrine (AKA, not quite accurately autocrine) internal signaling system. For a summary of this dense article: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/icu/#2021-Chauss
For the great majority of people who do not supplement vitamin D3 properly, or have not done so for the few months it takes to raise their circulating 25(OH)D levels above 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L, by far the most important early or late treatment is to boost their levels over this as soon as possible. For 70 kg bodyweight people, this is best done by a single oral dose of 1 milligram of calcifediol, which _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This goes straight into solution and raises the level over 50 ng/mL in about 4 hours. See: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#castillo for how 0.532 mg calcifediol was the primary cause for ICU admissions dropping from 50% to 2% and deaths from 8% to zero. 60 small 0.01 mg calcifediol tablets are non-prescription, for USD$20: https://dvelopimmunity.com/products/vitamin-d and https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-to-boost-25-hydroxyvitamin . This too is a recommendation from Prof. Wimalawansa - and both these recommendations have bean adopted by the FLCCC.
The second best approach, if calcifediol is not immediately available, is a single large (bolus) dose of vitamin D3 calcifediol. For 70 kg BW, 10 milligrams 400,000 IU is sufficient. This takes, very approximately, 4 days to raise the 25-hydroxyvitamin D level above 50 ng/mL, because it needs to be hydroxylated in the liver.
I support what you wrote, but am providing important details about target 25(OH)D levels, the quantities of vitamin D3 to take to attain this after several months, and the totally different approach which is needed for 4 hour repletion of 25(OH)D in clinical emergencies such as sepsis, COVID-19 etc.
Regarding higher vitamin D3 intakes to suppress auto-immune diseases such as MS, psoraisis, rheumatoid arthritis, cluster headache and migraine, please see the Coimbra, McCullough and Batcheller protocols cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/06-adv/ .
With respect, I will counter some of what you are saying...
With about 25 years of nutritional research and a lot of research over the past two and a half years into health and subjects like viruses and infection, I will disagree with a few things.
Cancer is not caused by sunshine, but one can get too much of almost anything
The BEST way to get Vitamin D is from sunshine
Supplement in the winter/when it's cold
10,000 IU/day
This is just around the issue of Vitamin D.
No offense, but there is a LOT of misinformation floating around.
Vitamin D is one thing, and it's very important, but there's other factors, too, such as good nutrition, clean water, clean air, happiness, exercise, other nutrients, such as zinc, Vitamin C, and getting enough good food while avoiding food laden with synthetic pesticides, gmo's, cheap, lousy seed oils, (and a lot of crap carb-laden, processed junk), and understanding things like "Covid" and EMF's, what is in these so-called "vaccines" (they are nothing of the kind, and they are full of toxins), and not least a life that is meaningful, joyful, and filled with inclusion and beauty and spiritual growth... Love is maybe the most important nutrient we know of...
These last few things may mean more than any vitamin ever did...
For reasons of focus and brevity I didn't delve into the "best" formulations of vitamin D to take.
Given that vitamin D3 is available over the counter, the formulary debate, while extremely important to people's good health, is incidental to the relative efficacy of vitamin D broadly against the mRNA shots.
The formulary information is important, however, so thank you for providing it (and the relevant sources).
Hi Peter, The bodyweight ratio based approach to the supplemental quantities for long term supplementation with vitamin D3, to generally attain 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D, is nutrition - not medicine, doses etc. The amounts required are above what many doctors think is necessary, or even safe. This is because they are operating according to faulty guidance.
These good healthy long-term supplemental intake quantities are far to slow in raising 25(OH)D levels for clinical emergencies, so the calcifediol (~4 hours) and bolus vitamin D3(~~4 days) recommendations are doses, since this is medicine: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#05-history .
The efficiency of using vitamin D3 to reduce COVID-19 severity, average shedding (and so overall transmission), lasting harm and death depends a lot on supplemental quantities. Most or all governments recommend 600 IU for all adults. This is a 10th or less of what many above-average weight adults need to attain 50 ng/mL or more 25(OH)D, so that would not be very effective, while the bodyweight ratio based approach would be highly effective.
I have written directly to Vinay Prasad and via multiple comments on his Substack. All comments to my Substack are sent to my email account, so I assume the same is true for him. I have never seen him respond to a comment - and other commenters stated that there is no evidence that he reads his comments.
I gave up trying and ended my subscription.
I think many doctors glance at anything to do with vitamin D or other nutrients and dismiss it as spam. They should read the research cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ .
The official recommended intake of many governments is 0.015 mg 600 IU vitamin D3 a day. For average weight adults is roughly enough to maintain 20 ng/mL on average. This is a tiny fraction of what is needed for most people to attain 50 ng/mL or more.
There is now a peer-reviewed journal article on using a single oral dose of calcifediol, at 0.014 mg per kg bodyweight, to boost 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels safely over 50 ng/mL in about 4 hours:
Rapidly Increasing Serum 25(OH)D Boosts the Immune System, against Infections - Sepsis and COVID-19, Sunil J. Wimalawansa, Nutrients 2022-07-21,
If all vitamin D RCTs were done like this - about 1mg for 70 kg bodyweight - the results would be much more positive. Castillo et al. 2020 used a single oral dose of 0.532 mg calcifediol with hospitalised COVID-19 patients. This was the main reason (the other was the randomisation not working out well) why ICU admissions dropped from 50% to 2% and deaths from 8% to zero. https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#castillo .
Most vitamin D intervention RCTs for COVID-19 do not raise 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels over 50 ng/mL fast enough. The only proper way to do this is (for 70 kg bodyweight) a single oral dose of calcifediol, which _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This goes straight into circulation and raises levels over 50 ng/mL in about 4 hours. Bolus vitamin D3 is next best, such as (70 kg BW) 10 mg (400,000 IU), which takes about 4 days due to the need for hydroxylation in the liver. The best approach is proper vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) supplementation (70 kg non-obese BW) 0.125 to 0.175 mg a day. Over 3 months or so, this will raise most people's 25-hydroxyvitamin D safely over 50 ng/mL. Most governments recommend only 0.015 mg a day (600 IU) for "adults", irrespective of bodyweight, based on faulty recommendations by the IOM and European Food Safety Authority: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#05-history and https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4547 .
I can't speak for Vinay Prasad. For myself, I read most of the comments here, and generally look for ways to engage with commenters. Sometimes it's substantive, sometimes is just shared snarkiness (have to keep the fun in things or what's the point? ;) ).
I agree with many and disagree with some, but I appreciate and value everyone who has something to say.
This thread is the perfect example of why: While my substack is focused on getting "all the facts", it would be absurd to claim or even think that I ever have "all the facts". I certainly don't have at my fingertips even a fraction of the facts you're presenting here on Vitamin D and its metabolytes. And that's where folk like you fill the gap.
Which is why I firmly believe that Substacks like this (and yours) are the future of journalism. Corporate media has long since abandoned any pretense of providing information and instead just pumps out pure propaganda.
While that may be very comforting to the "experts" and the notional elites, I am of the opinion that it just pisses regular people off. People in general want to make good choices, they want to know they're making good choices, and they want to the tools to know which choices are good and which ones are bad. That requires information and honest debate. It requires discussion. It requires feedback.
All of which is a long, drawn-out, and probably far too wordy expression of thanks for supplementing my article with details on Vitamin D dosing regimens. This thread is what it's all about, in my view.
Putting faith in the AMA is probably not wise, considering that the entire American/Western medical paradigm is based on money, and not science, or even a healthy outlook. Strictly money. That said, there are many doctors who are simply brainwashed into believing all kinds of malarkey because that's what they were taught in medical school, which is hardly a place for unbiased research or learning. When Americans can grasp that our medical system is utterly, and rather horribly, corrupt, perhaps then we can begin to actually HEAL. Notice how so many doctors have been censored, and how many, many doctors receive payoffs for following the "narrative" presented for "Covid." Just saying. Those who have open eyes and ears will see and hear, and pursue the truth.
For that matter, while I am neither shrill nor strident on the point, I would count myself an "RCT fundamentalist".
Which was the basis for my skepticism (at the time, now condemnation) of the presumed "Random Controlled Trials" for the Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen inoculations.
However, the mere existence of flaws within an RCT does not automatically invalidate its results. If we take that stance then arguably NO trial could ever be considered dispositive.
The pathway to resolving RCT "flaws" and methodological problems is replication. Does a different trial show the same or similar results? Even if one presumes all studies are flawed, it is highly improbable that multiple independent studies are going to be flawed in the same way and skew the results in the same fashion. Thus, even if there are flaws, the more studies there are the more difficult it is to dismiss the results.
There are 900 studies on the efficacy of Vitamin D, and at least 18 RCTs. The overwhelming majority of RCTs and studies show Vitamin D has merit in prophylaxis as well as early and late treatment. The degree of efficacy does vary, but the overall results are every bit as strong if not stronger than the prophylactic benefits ascribed by the "experts" to the inoculations as well as the therapeutics Paxlovid and molnupiravir.
Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen won EUA for their inoculations (and Pfizer for Paxlovid, Merck for molnupiravir), on the basis of ONE trial.
Even adopting a strict "fundamenalist" stance on RCTs, which treatment option has the larger and superior body of evidence?
We should always advocate for and even demand strict methodological rigor in all pharmaceutical research. Medical research directly impacts lives; sloppy and corrupt research can (and has) claimed lives (Vioxx, anyone?). However, in assessing the data, we have to assess the data that exists, not the data we wish existed.
Which pretty much means Vinay Prasad's stance on Vitamin D is a big steaming pile of....garbage.
Having spent the past quarter century as a Voice and Data Network Engineer, my focus always tends to be goal/solution oriented.
I start with "could it work?", cycle through "could it make matters worse/blow sh*t up?" (in the medical context, "could it kill people?"), and if I get past that if there's no "has anyone got a better idea?" answers, I'm likely to go with it.
Demanding perfect data and perfect science is being perfectly asinine--in every field of endeavor.
In engineering, it is pretty simple: If you have a subsystem, you ensure it gets all its proper operating requirements. Engineers like you, me (no qualifications - electronics and C++ programming) and Henry Lahore (retired Boeing electronics engineer, now spends 60 hours a week, "retired", building https://vitamindwiki.com) get it: "What are the immune system's nutritional requirements? Hmm - lots of evidence for 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D. How much do most people have?? 5 to 25 ng/mL. OK - we had better do something about this. Is it safe, inexpensive and easy to supplement? Yes, so lets go!"
Atmospheric physicist Bill Grant got it when he looked at two maps of the USA - one showing overall, annual, UV-B flux and the other showing the incidence of breast cancer. He switched to vitamin D research about 25 years ago and is now one of the world's leading researchers and peer reviewers in this field: http://www.sunarc.org/biography.html .
It is easy for us engineering types to do this. The Z-80 CPU needs 5 volts +/- 10%. It may work with lower or higher power supply voltages, but if it doesn't the manufacturer has nothing to answer for, since the chip's operational requirements are not being met. We make it our business to ensure it gets 5 volts +/- 2%.
The really difficult thing is to understand why many doctors and (with one exception, who is a vitamin D researcher) all immunologists I know of are not just so clueless about the immune system's need for good 25(OH)D levels, but as resistant to learning about it as ducks are to getting their feathers genuinely wet. This - and how to fix it - is a far larger and more perplexing problem than understanding human needs for vitamin D supplementation.
When you consider that doctors in the 19th century hounded Ignaz Semmelweis, the pioneer of hospital hygiene, into a mental institution for daring to suggest that doctors should wash their hands in between patients, the resistance of the medical profession to meaningful change regarding the relative merits of allopathy vs naturopathy can easily be understood to be merely the latest example of history rhyming.
The notion that doctors are scientists is largely a fiction. What most doctors call "science" rational thinking individuals call "hogwash and horsesh*t"
It's sad and frustrating that neither the CDC nor the FDA have even ONCE mentioned the importance of good health and good nutrition in fending off COVID-19 or any other infectious respiratory pathogen.
Those are "captured" agencies, working against us for the sake of profit for a long time now. It really SUCKS when we finally realize the scope of the Medical Industrial Complex, because it's always been about money, never about "health," and has become a mafia in past few decades... Eugenics has never died, just gone quieter...
There's so much behind all this "Covid" scam, it's really pretty boggling...
Amen. Shout it from the rooftops!
1) Use the app DMinder to monitor your sun exposure and check vit D is available naturally - generally the sun is too low in winter in the northern hemisphere to generate any D, so you have to supplement or go to Hawaii for winter… 😎
2) Have blood tests done to measure your D levels until they stabilise - probably needs 3-5 tests a year - especially if you need to supplement in winter which most will need. Get your blood to 60-100 iU range and keep it there.
3) Don’t use sunscreen - it blocks the D. Just stay out in the sun for 20 minutes- that’s all you need unless you have very dark skin. Your body can’t absorb more even if you stay out for hours..
4) Don’t shower with soap / lotion after sun. It stops the D from being absorbed through the skin. Just shower with no soap until the next morning.
Hi Wayne, It is extremely challenging to understand all that is and is not going through the minds of the majority of doctors regarding vitamin D, and nutrition in general. They have a very difficult job, with an inhuman number of things to remember and somehow use in the best possible ways for every individual health concern. They have enormous responsibilities but are often highly constrained in what they can do, by insurance, administration rules (in hospitals), official guidelines and by a general sense of what is normal for other doctors to do in similar circumstances.
Yet, doctors are the ones everyone needs to trust and rely upon regarding health decisions, including nutrition, as well as regarding treatment. Their work, their own health and the health of all their patients would be immensely better if everyone had enough 25-hydroxyvitamin D.
Your initial 18 ng/mL is typical for people who do not supplement vitamin D3 properly. See the Quraishi et al. 2014 graph at the start of: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ . The pile of dots at the lower left is my attempt at depicting the distribution of 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels of most people, at if they haven't had any significant UV-B skin exposure recently (or if they have, but have brown or black skin), when they don't take any vitamin D3 supplements. There's very little in food or multivitamins and UV-B increases the risk of skin cancer, so so proper supplements are the only proper approach. (Skin cancer kills a lot of people here in Australia, it is not taken seriously enough in many other countries.)
The graph shows much elevated risks of post-operative infection (the test subjects were all morbidly obese, but that probably does not raise the concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D their immune system needs) according to pre-operative 25-hydroxyvitamin D. All the levels above about 2.5% indicate that the immune system's performance is degraded, by 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels being below about 50 ng/mL
Your 40 ng/mL is a big improvement. 105 ng/mL is not a concern, but is probably more than is needed for immune system function, unless (and this is very common) you suffer from one or more inflammatory auto-immune conditions. Then, this may be a significant benefit, if done according to the Coimbra protocol (see also the McCullough and Batcheller protocols) cited and discussed at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/06-adv/ Pete Batcheller is a retired US Navy fighter pilot and Commander. His Coimbra-like protocol has helped thousands of people with cluster headache and migraine: http://www.clusterheadaches.com/ and https://vitamindwiki.com/Cluster+headaches+substantially+reduced+by+10,000+IU+of+Vitamin+D+in+80+percent+of+people . Dr McCullough takes about 50,000 IU vitamin D3 a day to suppress his psoriasis. These high intakes require some monitoring of calcium and parathyroid hormone, limited or no calcium supplementation, and a variety of other measures to guard against disturbances of calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism - see the Coimbra and Amon articles cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/06-adv/#01-higher .
.
I am a 1955 model, 70 kg 154 lb (let's just ignore the 72 kg my scales insist on - I have been staying up late and not exercising enough, writing about vitamin D) and I take 0.125 mg 50,000 IU vitamin D3 a week (7,143 IU/day) plus 200 IU from a multivitamin. I am sure my 25-hydroxyvitamin D level is above 50 and I guess that it is most likely below 100 ng/mL and unlikely to be anywhere near 150 ng/mL. That's good enough for me - I have not bothered to get it tested. This is me as an electronic technician mentioning my own approach, not pretending to give medical advice or suggesting that you should rely on anything I write. Please read the research articles and draw your own conclusions - or rely on the conclusions of suitably qualified people who have also read the research my web pages cite.
I’ve fired several of my last docs. One when I refused a medication and told her my plan for lifestyle and nutrition changes and she agreed still called it in and my Rx was waiting at Walgreens. Doc”You’re fired” The rest didn’t listen to me but just wanted to give me drugs. I don’t trust internal medicine doctors and conventional doctors at all. Maybe for broken bones. Good experiences with them. I do a huge amount of research and it isn’t on the MSM medical sites. My D level is consistently between 60 and 90. I’m 74. I spend time outdoors all year. I hike miles. I eat real food I prepare myself and no seed oils. Never even get colds although that’s my Covid experience. A runny nose. I didn’t trust all docs before Covid and certainly not now. The AMA is a corrupt joke as seen from the patient side. I see a functional medicine doctor who has helped a couple things the regular docs missed. My sisters initial cancer doc missed her cancer tumors on a pet scan and had to be reminded to look. She died after a year of painful useless chemo and her first Covid jab. . I doctor myself first. Then go from there Thanks for the D info. I find Vit D and it’s importance to good health fascinating. But the crime of not getting that info out at the beginning of Covid by doctors and health authorities has hammered the last nail in the coffin of conventional medicine for me.
You're telling folks to TRUST doctors? Hmmm.
We've known about the association between vitamin D deficiency and poor Covid outcomes for more than two years now. It absolutely boggles my mind that "public health authorities" the world over haven't been shouting it from the rooftops. The excuse I hear from the doubters is, "Well, than means the public health people most think it won't work." So what? Even if it doesn't work, what's the harm in recommending it? There's basically no risk and potentially a great deal of benefit if all adults supplemented with a few thousand IU per day, and the cost is literally pennies.
FWIW, my wife and I take 5000 IU per day, except when we know we're getting good sun exposure with the sun no lower than 45 degrees above the horizon (which is isn't very difficult when we're in Florida).
The relevance of Vitamin D to immunological health predates COVID by several years, and in some regards by decades. Yet what is for the most part a simple question of vitamin supplementation and having a good healthy diet has never been even mentioned by either the FDA or the CDC as a means to mitigate any aspect of COVID-19.
What makes that particularly damning is the evidences are accumulating that attending to one's vitamin D levels has a greater impact on one's ability to avoid COVID, or at least the severest forms of the disease, than the mRNA inoculations.
I want to tweet this brilliant post. What is your account ?
I'm on Twitter as @allfacts_matter. Also on Truth Social as @allfactsmatter (just joined), on GETTR as @allfactsmatter, and on Parler as @allfactsmatter2021.
And thanks!
(I read your article in the Epoch Times. Very nice! Have bookmarked it for future reference.)
I’ve been taking vitamins (D) and other supplements and so far I haven’t got sick,tested or 💉 I need to add that for years my vitamin D was between 21/23. Thanks 👍
DON'T get tested. There's graphene on those swabs, deliberately long swabs, to be rubbed around right up against the blood/brain barrier... There's also graphene in the shots, and in those idiotic blue and white masks we find all over parking lots and gas stations...
I know this sounds crazy... It IS crazy. Not me, of course, ;) but this whole Covid scam.
There is very little vitamin D3 in food or multivitamins. It can be made in the skin by UV-B light, but this is only naturally available, far from the equator, in the middle of cloudless summer days. UV-B always damages DNA and raises the risk of skin cancer. Also, it does not produce much vitamin D for those who have brown or black skin.
The best approach is for everyone to supplement sufficient vitamin D3 to raise their circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels at least to 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L, which is what the immune system needs to function properly: Quraishi et al. 2014 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/1782085 https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#00-quraishi .
Without proper supplementation or recent extensive UV-B white skin exposure, most people have only 5 to 25 ng/mL 25(OH)D.
Most doctors follow totally inadequate recommendations based on the Institute of Medicine 2011 report, which ignored the immune system, had a 25(OH)D target of only 20 ng/mL and falsely stated that 0.015 mg vitamin D3 a day (600) IU would enable 97.5% of "adults" to attain this level. In fact, this leads to average levels around 20 ng/mL, which is only 40% of what people need.
The only proper way to calculate how much vitamin D3 to take per day (or in larger quantities every week or so, averaging to the best daily intake) is as a ratio of bodyweight, with higher ratios for those suffering from obesity. Please see this recommendation by Professor of Medicine Sunil Wimalawansa and the research articles on which it is based:
https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#06-ratios
For an average weight adult (70 kg 154 lb) the best intake quantities are 0.125 to 0.175 milligram a day (5000 to 7000 IU/day). "5000 IU" sounds like a lot, but it is a gram every 22 years, and pharma grade vitamin D3 costs about USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory.
This takes about 3 months to raise circulating 25(OH)D, due to the need for hydroxylation in the liver. This will strengthen innate and adaptive immune responses to bacterial, viral and fungal pathogens while greatly reducing the risk of self-destructive, wildly dysregulated, hyper-inflammatory responses such as those which drive sepsis, severe COVID-19, Kawasaki disease and MIS-C.
Chauss et al. 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01080-3 who show how TH1 regulatory lymphocytes from the lungs of hospitalised COVID-19 patients remain stuck in their pro-inflammatory startup program, never responding to their circumstances by switching to the anti-inflammatory shutdown program, primarily or solely due to these cells not having enough 25-hydroxyvitamin D to run their intracrine (AKA, not quite accurately autocrine) internal signaling system. For a summary of this dense article: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/icu/#2021-Chauss
For the great majority of people who do not supplement vitamin D3 properly, or have not done so for the few months it takes to raise their circulating 25(OH)D levels above 50 ng/mL 125 nmol/L, by far the most important early or late treatment is to boost their levels over this as soon as possible. For 70 kg bodyweight people, this is best done by a single oral dose of 1 milligram of calcifediol, which _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This goes straight into solution and raises the level over 50 ng/mL in about 4 hours. See: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#castillo for how 0.532 mg calcifediol was the primary cause for ICU admissions dropping from 50% to 2% and deaths from 8% to zero. 60 small 0.01 mg calcifediol tablets are non-prescription, for USD$20: https://dvelopimmunity.com/products/vitamin-d and https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-to-boost-25-hydroxyvitamin . This too is a recommendation from Prof. Wimalawansa - and both these recommendations have bean adopted by the FLCCC.
The second best approach, if calcifediol is not immediately available, is a single large (bolus) dose of vitamin D3 calcifediol. For 70 kg BW, 10 milligrams 400,000 IU is sufficient. This takes, very approximately, 4 days to raise the 25-hydroxyvitamin D level above 50 ng/mL, because it needs to be hydroxylated in the liver.
I support what you wrote, but am providing important details about target 25(OH)D levels, the quantities of vitamin D3 to take to attain this after several months, and the totally different approach which is needed for 4 hour repletion of 25(OH)D in clinical emergencies such as sepsis, COVID-19 etc.
Regarding higher vitamin D3 intakes to suppress auto-immune diseases such as MS, psoraisis, rheumatoid arthritis, cluster headache and migraine, please see the Coimbra, McCullough and Batcheller protocols cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/06-adv/ .
With respect, I will counter some of what you are saying...
With about 25 years of nutritional research and a lot of research over the past two and a half years into health and subjects like viruses and infection, I will disagree with a few things.
Cancer is not caused by sunshine, but one can get too much of almost anything
The BEST way to get Vitamin D is from sunshine
Supplement in the winter/when it's cold
10,000 IU/day
This is just around the issue of Vitamin D.
No offense, but there is a LOT of misinformation floating around.
Vitamin D is one thing, and it's very important, but there's other factors, too, such as good nutrition, clean water, clean air, happiness, exercise, other nutrients, such as zinc, Vitamin C, and getting enough good food while avoiding food laden with synthetic pesticides, gmo's, cheap, lousy seed oils, (and a lot of crap carb-laden, processed junk), and understanding things like "Covid" and EMF's, what is in these so-called "vaccines" (they are nothing of the kind, and they are full of toxins), and not least a life that is meaningful, joyful, and filled with inclusion and beauty and spiritual growth... Love is maybe the most important nutrient we know of...
These last few things may mean more than any vitamin ever did...
For reasons of focus and brevity I didn't delve into the "best" formulations of vitamin D to take.
Given that vitamin D3 is available over the counter, the formulary debate, while extremely important to people's good health, is incidental to the relative efficacy of vitamin D broadly against the mRNA shots.
The formulary information is important, however, so thank you for providing it (and the relevant sources).
Hi Peter, The bodyweight ratio based approach to the supplemental quantities for long term supplementation with vitamin D3, to generally attain 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D, is nutrition - not medicine, doses etc. The amounts required are above what many doctors think is necessary, or even safe. This is because they are operating according to faulty guidance.
These good healthy long-term supplemental intake quantities are far to slow in raising 25(OH)D levels for clinical emergencies, so the calcifediol (~4 hours) and bolus vitamin D3(~~4 days) recommendations are doses, since this is medicine: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#05-history .
The efficiency of using vitamin D3 to reduce COVID-19 severity, average shedding (and so overall transmission), lasting harm and death depends a lot on supplemental quantities. Most or all governments recommend 600 IU for all adults. This is a 10th or less of what many above-average weight adults need to attain 50 ng/mL or more 25(OH)D, so that would not be very effective, while the bodyweight ratio based approach would be highly effective.
I have written directly to Vinay Prasad and via multiple comments on his Substack. All comments to my Substack are sent to my email account, so I assume the same is true for him. I have never seen him respond to a comment - and other commenters stated that there is no evidence that he reads his comments.
I gave up trying and ended my subscription.
I think many doctors glance at anything to do with vitamin D or other nutrients and dismiss it as spam. They should read the research cited at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ .
The official recommended intake of many governments is 0.015 mg 600 IU vitamin D3 a day. For average weight adults is roughly enough to maintain 20 ng/mL on average. This is a tiny fraction of what is needed for most people to attain 50 ng/mL or more.
There is now a peer-reviewed journal article on using a single oral dose of calcifediol, at 0.014 mg per kg bodyweight, to boost 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels safely over 50 ng/mL in about 4 hours:
Rapidly Increasing Serum 25(OH)D Boosts the Immune System, against Infections - Sepsis and COVID-19, Sunil J. Wimalawansa, Nutrients 2022-07-21,
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/14/2997/htm .
If all vitamin D RCTs were done like this - about 1mg for 70 kg bodyweight - the results would be much more positive. Castillo et al. 2020 used a single oral dose of 0.532 mg calcifediol with hospitalised COVID-19 patients. This was the main reason (the other was the randomisation not working out well) why ICU admissions dropped from 50% to 2% and deaths from 8% to zero. https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#castillo .
As I wrote in a comment to https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/niaid-study-reveals-covid-19-booster-dose-rapidly-wanes-in-effectiveness-against-omicron-ba.5-9378c4f3 :
Most vitamin D intervention RCTs for COVID-19 do not raise 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels over 50 ng/mL fast enough. The only proper way to do this is (for 70 kg bodyweight) a single oral dose of calcifediol, which _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D. This goes straight into circulation and raises levels over 50 ng/mL in about 4 hours. Bolus vitamin D3 is next best, such as (70 kg BW) 10 mg (400,000 IU), which takes about 4 days due to the need for hydroxylation in the liver. The best approach is proper vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) supplementation (70 kg non-obese BW) 0.125 to 0.175 mg a day. Over 3 months or so, this will raise most people's 25-hydroxyvitamin D safely over 50 ng/mL. Most governments recommend only 0.015 mg a day (600 IU) for "adults", irrespective of bodyweight, based on faulty recommendations by the IOM and European Food Safety Authority: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#05-history and https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/4547 .
I can't speak for Vinay Prasad. For myself, I read most of the comments here, and generally look for ways to engage with commenters. Sometimes it's substantive, sometimes is just shared snarkiness (have to keep the fun in things or what's the point? ;) ).
I agree with many and disagree with some, but I appreciate and value everyone who has something to say.
This thread is the perfect example of why: While my substack is focused on getting "all the facts", it would be absurd to claim or even think that I ever have "all the facts". I certainly don't have at my fingertips even a fraction of the facts you're presenting here on Vitamin D and its metabolytes. And that's where folk like you fill the gap.
Which is why I firmly believe that Substacks like this (and yours) are the future of journalism. Corporate media has long since abandoned any pretense of providing information and instead just pumps out pure propaganda.
While that may be very comforting to the "experts" and the notional elites, I am of the opinion that it just pisses regular people off. People in general want to make good choices, they want to know they're making good choices, and they want to the tools to know which choices are good and which ones are bad. That requires information and honest debate. It requires discussion. It requires feedback.
All of which is a long, drawn-out, and probably far too wordy expression of thanks for supplementing my article with details on Vitamin D dosing regimens. This thread is what it's all about, in my view.
Putting faith in the AMA is probably not wise, considering that the entire American/Western medical paradigm is based on money, and not science, or even a healthy outlook. Strictly money. That said, there are many doctors who are simply brainwashed into believing all kinds of malarkey because that's what they were taught in medical school, which is hardly a place for unbiased research or learning. When Americans can grasp that our medical system is utterly, and rather horribly, corrupt, perhaps then we can begin to actually HEAL. Notice how so many doctors have been censored, and how many, many doctors receive payoffs for following the "narrative" presented for "Covid." Just saying. Those who have open eyes and ears will see and hear, and pursue the truth.
For that matter, while I am neither shrill nor strident on the point, I would count myself an "RCT fundamentalist".
Which was the basis for my skepticism (at the time, now condemnation) of the presumed "Random Controlled Trials" for the Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen inoculations.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/the-covid-vaccine-trials-tell-us
However, the mere existence of flaws within an RCT does not automatically invalidate its results. If we take that stance then arguably NO trial could ever be considered dispositive.
The pathway to resolving RCT "flaws" and methodological problems is replication. Does a different trial show the same or similar results? Even if one presumes all studies are flawed, it is highly improbable that multiple independent studies are going to be flawed in the same way and skew the results in the same fashion. Thus, even if there are flaws, the more studies there are the more difficult it is to dismiss the results.
There are 900 studies on the efficacy of Vitamin D, and at least 18 RCTs. The overwhelming majority of RCTs and studies show Vitamin D has merit in prophylaxis as well as early and late treatment. The degree of efficacy does vary, but the overall results are every bit as strong if not stronger than the prophylactic benefits ascribed by the "experts" to the inoculations as well as the therapeutics Paxlovid and molnupiravir.
Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen won EUA for their inoculations (and Pfizer for Paxlovid, Merck for molnupiravir), on the basis of ONE trial.
Even adopting a strict "fundamenalist" stance on RCTs, which treatment option has the larger and superior body of evidence?
We should always advocate for and even demand strict methodological rigor in all pharmaceutical research. Medical research directly impacts lives; sloppy and corrupt research can (and has) claimed lives (Vioxx, anyone?). However, in assessing the data, we have to assess the data that exists, not the data we wish existed.
Which pretty much means Vinay Prasad's stance on Vitamin D is a big steaming pile of....garbage.
Having spent the past quarter century as a Voice and Data Network Engineer, my focus always tends to be goal/solution oriented.
I start with "could it work?", cycle through "could it make matters worse/blow sh*t up?" (in the medical context, "could it kill people?"), and if I get past that if there's no "has anyone got a better idea?" answers, I'm likely to go with it.
Demanding perfect data and perfect science is being perfectly asinine--in every field of endeavor.
In engineering, it is pretty simple: If you have a subsystem, you ensure it gets all its proper operating requirements. Engineers like you, me (no qualifications - electronics and C++ programming) and Henry Lahore (retired Boeing electronics engineer, now spends 60 hours a week, "retired", building https://vitamindwiki.com) get it: "What are the immune system's nutritional requirements? Hmm - lots of evidence for 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D. How much do most people have?? 5 to 25 ng/mL. OK - we had better do something about this. Is it safe, inexpensive and easy to supplement? Yes, so lets go!"
Atmospheric physicist Bill Grant got it when he looked at two maps of the USA - one showing overall, annual, UV-B flux and the other showing the incidence of breast cancer. He switched to vitamin D research about 25 years ago and is now one of the world's leading researchers and peer reviewers in this field: http://www.sunarc.org/biography.html .
It is easy for us engineering types to do this. The Z-80 CPU needs 5 volts +/- 10%. It may work with lower or higher power supply voltages, but if it doesn't the manufacturer has nothing to answer for, since the chip's operational requirements are not being met. We make it our business to ensure it gets 5 volts +/- 2%.
The really difficult thing is to understand why many doctors and (with one exception, who is a vitamin D researcher) all immunologists I know of are not just so clueless about the immune system's need for good 25(OH)D levels, but as resistant to learning about it as ducks are to getting their feathers genuinely wet. This - and how to fix it - is a far larger and more perplexing problem than understanding human needs for vitamin D supplementation.
When you consider that doctors in the 19th century hounded Ignaz Semmelweis, the pioneer of hospital hygiene, into a mental institution for daring to suggest that doctors should wash their hands in between patients, the resistance of the medical profession to meaningful change regarding the relative merits of allopathy vs naturopathy can easily be understood to be merely the latest example of history rhyming.
The notion that doctors are scientists is largely a fiction. What most doctors call "science" rational thinking individuals call "hogwash and horsesh*t"
It's sad and frustrating that neither the CDC nor the FDA have even ONCE mentioned the importance of good health and good nutrition in fending off COVID-19 or any other infectious respiratory pathogen.
Those are "captured" agencies, working against us for the sake of profit for a long time now. It really SUCKS when we finally realize the scope of the Medical Industrial Complex, because it's always been about money, never about "health," and has become a mafia in past few decades... Eugenics has never died, just gone quieter...
There's so much behind all this "Covid" scam, it's really pretty boggling...