Vitamin D might lessen the severity of Covid-19 (Among Other Benefits)
Today I came across a study showing how Vitamin D might lower the chance of getting hospitalized from Covid-19.
A study found that taking vitamin D lowered the rate of Covid-19 Intensive Care United admissions. This study “Effect of Calcifediol Treatment and best Available Therapy versus best Available Therapy on Intensive Care Unit Admission and Mortality Among Patients Hospitalized for COVID-19: A Pilot Randomized Clinical study” was published in The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Whoo! What a complicated sounding title for a study. Let’s break this down though, and see what it really means. Also, even though only 76 patients were part of this experiment, the results seem to be positive!
Of the 26 who were treated without Vitamin D, 13 (half of them) were sent to the ICU (intensive care unit), where 2 of them unfortunately passed away.
However, in the group of Calcifediol-treated (this pretty much just means they were treated with Vitamin D) patients, only one(2%) of the 50 patients was admitted to ICU, and survived.
Now, does this mean that vitamin D is the answer to the Coronavirus and we should all gorge ourselves full of it? Most likely not. However, it does seem like vitamin D has some positive benefits for you.
What is vitamin D?
After a little bit of researching here’s what I came up with. I know all of you are busy, so I just made some quick bullet points.
- Vitamin D can help fight disease
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- Low vitamin D levels might affect the risk of cancer
- Vitamin D deficiency might increase your risk of viral infections
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- Vitamin D might help fight
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- Depression
- Dementia
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- Vitamin D is also good for weight loss
- Vitamin D is produced via synthesis in the skin induced by sun exposure and can be acquired from various food or supplements (this is a fancy way of saying, your body makes vitamin D if you are able to receive sunlight or if you eat foods or supplements that have vitamin D in them).
- Vitamin D is fat-soluble, meaning that it will be absorbed better when you eat them with fat. (This means if you’re eating fatty foods while consuming vitamin D, your body will have an easier time absorbing the vitamin D).
Every person’s vitamin D level is different, and we can’t really easily know how much of it we have in our bodies unless we get our blood tested. For me, I’ve been staying inside for 6 months, and since I want to lower my chances of Covid-19 in the rare instances where I need to go outside, I guess I should be eating more vitamin D too! I guess it makes sense why my mom has been constantly nagging me to take a vitamin D supplement pill every day.
Well that’s all from me for today. See you all next time!