Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare experts have been discussing the importance of Vitamin D. Hear about new and updated studies on this powerful nutrient in this episode of the InVite Health Podcast.
Take advantage of an exclusive podcast offer today by visiting http://www.invitehealth.com/podcast.
For more information on the products or studies mentioned in this episode, as well as a complete transcript of the audio, click here.
welcome to the invite health podcast where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health you can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that invet health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com podcast first time customers can use promo code podcast at checkout for an additional 15 percent off your first purchase let’s get started there is an indisputable relationship between vitamin d and our immune system lacking vitamin d such as on a blood test increases the risk of severe infection but also increases your risk of having an autoimmune disease where your own immune system is attacking your body which is a very dangerous situation now vitamin d strengthens a number of immune cells that’s involved with controlling these cells also for instance converting monocytes to macrophages very important these are part of the uneducated part of the immune system that will attack any foreign invader monocytes travel to a site and develop into these very big cells they’re called phagocytic cells called macrophages phagocytic means they literally consume and digest bacteria and viruses but you get these type of cells for instance in your liver to clean out your blood because your blood goes gets filtered through your liver so vitamin d is needed for macrophage functions neutrophils they’re dominant white blood cells uh they’re not educated they attack whatever they’re pointed at dendritic cells they kind of connect the entire immune system t lymphocytes that’s really important t lymphocytes are involved with the formation of antibodies t cells have a memory for particular infections for instance if you had covert 19 three years ago uh if somebody sneezed on your cough done you were covered 19 today you’d have some memory uh t cells which would very quickly alert the immune system and have it create new antibodies antibodies fit covet 19 or any infection like a glove fitting perfectly on a hand uh t cells go in and shred infections and cancer cells but t cells also control the immune system so vitamin d is involved with all of these cells and b cells b cells are where uh a lot of your antibodies are created on b cells now vitamin d also raises uh anti-inflammatory cytokines and reduces the level of inflammatory cytokines that really came to light with covert 19. the sars covered two virus causes covet 19 that’s the name of the infection not the name of the virus and up front back in uh 2020 many people were developing acute respiratory distress syndrome the virus would invade their lungs and trigger inflammation there would be backlash from our immune system and our immune system would fill the lungs with inflammatory cytokines like interleukin-6 and interleukin-4 and this was destroying people’s lungs this was the major cause of death up front early on and people would covet 19. so vitamin d raises anti-inflammatory cytokines to protect tissues like the brain and the lungs and the heart and the kidneys etc such as interleukin-10 and lowers the level of inflammatory dangerous cytokines so they don’t destroy us because our immune system is such a powerful army it could literally destroy us very quickly so you need this control vitamin d this is very important it can actually be activated by our own immune cells there’s receptor sites for vitamin d on almost all of our immune cells that just shows how important vitamin d is for the immune system that all of the immune cells practically require vitamin d activity but vitamin d can also be activated by immune cells which is very interesting at one time we thought only the kidneys could activate vitamin d now we know there’s other tissues in the human body that can activate vitamin d so this really uh hits the ball out of ball park in the last inning of the world series [Laughter] a super home run in fact a grand slam showing how important vitamin d is for the immune system also it’s involved with preventing acute respiratory distress syndrome acute respiratory distress syndrome is um when the lung gets so inflamed that it’s filling with fluid and you can’t breathe these are the people that early on were put on oxygen they were put in the intensive care units they were put on oxygen and ventilators and the ventilators were blowing at their lungs because the sores covered too inflamed it damaged the lungs so much that when they put the pressure at a ventilator in the lungs it just finished off destroying the lungs so this is there’s a lot of new data on vitamin d and covert 19. so welcome to my episode an update on vitamin d in covet hi my name is jerry hickey i’m a nutritional pharmacist i’m also the senior scientific officer over here at invite health you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcast episodes or you can just visit invitehealth.com forward slash podcast you can also follow us on twitter instagram and facebook at invite health and all of the information on today’s episode is linked at the episode description so i want to get into these studies they’re very interesting this was recently published information from iu international university of applied sciences it’s published in the journal nutrients there in germany the iu international university of applied sciences is in germany and they used uh computers artificial intelligence to find data on covet 19 and vitamin d related to mortality and here’s what they found that there was a strong correlation between the severity of a covet-19 infection and the level of vitamin d in your blood the level of vitamin d in your blood this was based on one huge population study and seven clinical studies increased levels of vitamin d3 seemed to strongly powerfully reduce the risk of mortality from covert 19. and when they did the algorithm that’s a mathematical model hypothetically if you got your blood level of vitamin d above 50 there should be no mortality so the higher the level of vitamin d in your blood up to 50 over 50 there was no additional benefit the lower your risk of severe infection such as winding up in the intensive care unit of a hospital on oxygen etc and the lower your risk of dying so um they said that they’re recommending these researchers getting your blood level of vitamin d above 50 to prevent and also to treat um um outbreaks of sars covert ii you know covert 19 but also to prevent the emergence of new variants now this is the epidemiology center durham va health care center so they’re quantifying they’re collating all this research and intelligence they were working with the university of iowa college of pharmacy harvard medical school duke university duke cancer institute and signify health in dallas they publish their findings in the inter international journal of environmental research and public health cool journal they’re looking at over twenty six thousand american veterans twenty six thousand five hundred and eight american veterans who were diagnosed positive for sars covert two sokovic 19. giving them high doses of vitamin d cut their risk of dying from covert 19. the higher the dosage to a point the lower their risk of dying in the hospital now that they’re giving people with covet 19 that’s infecting their lungs etc corticosteroids such as hydrocortisone which could be called uh hydrocortis or prednisone or medulla dose pack and they found that compared to patients on corticosteroids giving patients vitamin d high doses cut their risk of dying by 70 percent that’s compared to corticosteroids that’s not saying corticosteroids weren’t saving people it’s just vitamin d was more effective and they found out in hospitalized patients adding vitamin d to a corticosteroid such as prednisone or medrol or hydrocortisone further cut the risk of dying by 49 that’s actually quite amazing get on your vitamin d my blood level of vitamin d currently is about 49 so that’s perfect i mean 49.50 not really any difference so this is the journal of general internal medicine it’s the san francisco veterans affairs healthcare system the department of medicine and psychiatry university california san francisco the colorado school of public health in aurora colorado and various va health care centers it’s published right now january 2020. so it’s a very very recent all of this data is very very current very very recent data these are patients in the veterans administration healthcare system they’re in their facilities they have severe acute respiratory distress syndrome covet 19. these people are in trouble it’s hurting their lungs they then tested their blood for their vitamin d level and they followed them for up to two months because not all them made it to the two-month point giving the patients vitamin d there was a dose response a strong correlation so what does that mean that means giving a little was helpful giving more was even more helpful and giving a lot was even better the higher the dose of vitamin d the lower the risk of being hospitalized with covert 19 and the lower the risk of dying from covert 19 in fact it cut the risk of dying from covert 19 basically by 50 so vitamin d is safe it’s not expensive i don’t know why the government and all these healthcare agencies are not telling the general public to take some vitamin d right now they’re probably worried that people will overdo it because people have a tendency to do that um i would i would get a hold of about 3 000 units of vitamin d3 now the research shows that vitamin d3 is superior to vitamin d2 for humans it lasts in our body longer it works better it’s more effective i would get about 3 000 units of vitamin d3 and for the first three days or so i take about 9000 units i take about three tablets or capsules whatever it might be in a day with food for about three days and then i cut it down to three thousand units every day with food because the research shows that taking vitamin d every day is much more effective than getting one huge dosage once a week or once a month so take the vitamin d3 3000 units daily get your blood tested a blood level between like 45 and 75 is beautiful you don’t need higher than 75 so i want to thank you for listening to the invite health podcast today you can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com forward slash podcast uh please leave us a review and please subscribe i guess if you like this you’ll subscribe in any event [Music] you can also follow us on twitter instagram and other social media platforms at invite health uh hope to see you next time on another episode of the infant health podcast thank you so much for listening jerry hickey signing off [Music] you
