‘I’ve Got Sunshine… in a Bag’
It’s a strange notion that here in the West, medical professionals often see vitamin supplements as a heresy and ‘woo woo’ of the absolute worst kind. We are told that all of our dietary requirements can be met by a balanced diet and that extra vitamins are at best a waste of money and sometimes even dangerous. I say it’s strange because science has proven without a doubt that many diseases are caused by vitamin deficiencies. A lack of vitamin C causes rickets, a lack of vitamin B1 causes beriberi (a kind of nerve inflammation), a lack of B3 can cause pellagra and a lack of vitamin D can cause rickets.
It is with rickets in mind, a condition that causes weak and soft bones in children, that the NHS recommends that our daily vitamin D intake should be 10 micrograms or 400 IU. Unlike vitamin C which we have to get entirely from our diet, humans have the ability to produce our own vitamin D. This is made through our skin when it is in the presence of direct sunlight. For a white person in the UK in the summer, about half an hour of sunlight on the face and arms is enough to keep rickets at bay. However this is not enough for people with darker skin, as the melanin pigment absorbs the ultraviolet radiation that is required to initiate vitamin D synthesis. It is also difficult for anyone, regardless of skin colour, to make enough during the long dark winter months here in the high Northern hemisphere.
Luckily we can also get vitamin D from a variety of food sources including oily fish, red meat and egg yolks. Also of particular interest to vegans, is the fact that mushrooms left out on the window sill in the sun for an hour, will increase their vitamin D content significantly. However just because this 400 IU recommended daily intake is enough to prevent rickets does this mean we are getting enough for optimum health?
Recent discoveries by researchers have found that Vitamin D also plays a large role in supporting our immunity. A 2008 study in the Virology Journal entitled ‘On the epidemiology of influenza’ discovered that the predictable seasonal rise and fall of flu rates are a direct result of vitamin D fluctuations and deficiencies. Now clearly covid-19 is not the same as the flu but it is the closest thing that we can compare it to and there are a number of possibly correlating factors.
- It is evident that covid deaths were far worse during the winter months.
- Black and Asian people in the UK are twice as likely to catch covid.
- Old people in care homes are notoriously deficient in vitamin D and were the group at highest risk of dying from covid.
Obviously I am no medical research expert or statistician but a group of over 220 doctors and scientists from across the world have submitted a call to all governments, public health officials, doctors and healthcare workers to implement an immediate and widespread increase in vitamin D supplements. Their research shows that vitamin D modulates thousands of genes and many aspects of immune function both innate and adaptive.Their recommendation is 4000 IU daily which is ten times the amount recommended by the NHS and is still widely considered to be safe. (See viamindforall.org for more information).
As covid is such a new disease and proper scientific research takes many years to conduct, vitamin D has yet to be officially recognised by the large part of the scientific community. However initial enquiries are so overwhelmingly supportive that as we enter into the long dark nights of autumn and winter, it would seem prudent to support our immune system in any way we can. Luckily vitamin D supplements are much easier to find than sunshine at this time of year and they are certainly cheaper than a flight to the Caribbean.