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Brigham and Women's researchers to study Vitamin D in fight against coronavirus

WBZ reports Brigham and Women's researchers will have started a trial to determine whether Vitamin D can reduce the odds of hospitalization and death among people newly diagnosed with Covid-19 - and whether it can help their family members ward off the virus.


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I'm almost out (need it for New England winters, you know) and at the drug store it looked like prices had doubled at least.

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...along with Vitamin C and zinc, all on the usual specious claims of miracle-working. Take it with an enormous grain of salt.

(concur on the winter thing though, I notice a real difference. placebo effect? maybe...)

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is that people who are deficient in vitamin D tend to do worse than people with sufficient levels of vitamin D when infected with coronavirus. I take vitamin D to insure that I am not deficient. I don't know what the study is doing, but I don't know that there is much in the way of research suggesting over dosing or whatever it might be called is helpful.

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During a recent doc appt when I mentioned my sleep was messed up, the first thing she said was "are you getting enough vitamin D?" If it helps you get better sleep, that's good for your immune system, so I can see there being something to this.

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Most people, even those with light colored eyes, are vitamin D deficient. Many have Severe vitamin D deficiency. Vitamins D is vital for good health. In the past, people took cod liver oil and forced it on their children. There should be a public health campaign explaining the importance of vitamin D. And the body needs it on demand. It doesn't store it. Do overdosing vitamin D won't help.

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Does the enormous grain of salt have to be an independent piece, or can it be attached to a pretzel?

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Dr. Fauci has said that taking Vitamin D and C is a not a bad idea. I have to take Vitamin D as it is b/c my levels are lower than your average New Englander's but I added in Vitamin C over the summer.

I'll put my trust in Fauci...

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I'll put my trust in Fauci...

I'll put my trust in my own physician, whom I carefully chose, in whose judgement I have confidence, and, most importantly, who has actually looked at my own medical record and my bloodwork.

In this particular case his recommendation aligns with Fauci's.

(Yes, I take a Vitamin D supplement)

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Even Doc Fauci said folks should make sure they get enough Vitamin D and C.

Not megadoses, but just for general winter health. This was in the context of saying that most of the vitamin and megadose and magic herb blather is bunk.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/supplements-white-house-advisor-fauci-ta...

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Sorry, but you're wrong that vitamin D deficiency is something to sneer at. Are you a medical doctor? If not, stfu. We've all had enough of quacks like you spreading misinformation during a pandemic.

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As usual, Costco is cheap for this sort of thing and they seem to have scored enough supply for a discount this week.

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There's a potential chicken-and-egg problem here. The first thing is to examine the statistics (by someone who understands that better than me) to see if there's really a valid correlation, for example if the sample size was large enough, random enough, etc.

You have to look for hidden causalities -- for example, when my father was dying of pancreatic cancer many years ago, he thought it was because he'd been such a heavy coffee drinker -- according to a Harvard study at the time.

It turned out later that the study had failed to realize hidden correlations: (1) Coffee drinkers (like my pop) often put lots of sugar in their coffee, and the sugar led to diabetes, which damages the pancreas which may eventually become cancerous (although most diabetes sufferers don't get pancreatic cancer). (2) People who drink a lot of coffee (like my pop) are also more likely to smoke tobacco. It never occurred to the Harvard researchers to consider this because back then it was thought that tobacco was only involved in respiratory cancers (we now know that's untrue, it's also systemic). Coffee itself is now thought to be somewhat good for you; it was the tons-of-sugar and tobacco that may have killed my father.

So what might be the hidden correlation(s) in this case? Well, just hypothesizing...

(1) Your body creates Vitamin D from exposure to sunlight. Healthier, more fit people tend to go outside more than sickly, sedentary/obese people -- and we know that the latter category has higher Covid-19 illness rates. So maybe fit people have more Vitamin D (because they're outside) and less illness (because they're fit).

(2) We know that some racial groups have higher Covid-19 rates. Their are various explanations for this... but in general, dark-skinned people produce less Vitamin D in exposure to the same amount of sunlight, because the melanin (skin pigment) screens out the sunlight, which is its primary function (for example, in areas of the world that get more sun). So maybe they get more Covid-19 for reasons unrelated to Vitamin D, but also have less Vitamin D in their blood, thus skewing the statistics.

I'm not saying Vitamin D supplements don't help -- perhaps they do. (I've been taking a D3 supplement for years, long before the pandemic). I'm only saying that it's not clear: "correlation is not causation" -- and another old saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

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Duh...

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