Protecting your families health has never been more important and takes more than just masks!
So you all know how much I love winter:( "NOT" My patient know pretty well. You know I and a sun & sand lover, and so when October rolls around I start to grieve a bit. So this year since my practice is all virtual know I have retreated down to the keys my home away from home. We will be doing vitamin Drips, glutathione, and vitamin D shots in Mineola & Belmore so you can still take advantage of those yummy immune boosting vitamin drips. I hope yo have taken advantage of the wellness warrior zoom workshop videos and my prior blog posts for the latest on COVID. Today I wanted to share an article on Vitamin D with you because I can say from the bottom of my heart it is the single most important thing you can do to protect you and your family this winter!
Vitamin D the “Sunshine Vitamin” is BACK!
I have been practicing integrative medicine for 15 years. I have been telling my Long Island patients for nearly the last decade that sunshine alone was not effectively raising their Vitamin D levels as much as it did historically. What do I mean by that? In the early 2000’s my typical patient would require taking 1000-2000 IU Vitamin D and getting some sun during the summer and an occasional winter vacation somewhere warm to maintain their Vitamin D serum level between 80-100ng/dl. But that changed. Over the past several years, I have been prescribing 10,000-25,000 IU in most of my patients to get serum levels to a therapeutic place. Interestingly, sun exposure, or lack thereof, did not make a difference in the lower Vitamin D levels in my Long Island patients. This was initially puzzling to me. I treated a male patient in his 50's who lived in Florida all winter, and he would come back to Long Island as tan as a leather suitcase - but his Vitamin D was very low, below 20ng/dl. I conducted my own research and read literature to try to identify why this was happening. To no avail, although I did happen upon one study out of Iran linking low level Vitamin D in children to the fact that they lived in polluted areas. So my theory was that the pollution in the United States was diminishing the ability for UVB rays to create Vitamin D. This was my working theory, but not supported by research to substantiate it. Still, year after year, I witnessed the need for higher and higher doses of Vitamin D in my patients regardless of the amount of sun exposure to accomplish the same goal of therapeutic serum levels Vitamin 25- OH of 80-100ng/dl.
Drum roll please . . .
Now the big news: with the COVID- 19 quarantine shutting down businesses and keeping cars off the streets and airplanes out of the sky, the pollution world-wide has eased significantly. Mother Nature got to rub her eyes and clear away some of the pollution our modern world has been inflicting. To my surprise: this clearing has also had an effect on Vitamin D levels increasing due to exposure to the sun. Patients who have been on stable doses of Vitamin D supplementation for years now have levels that are higher than necessary – way higher than necessary. I have found myself saying, for the first time in a long time: “your levels are too high.” Over the past three months, I have called dozens of patients after studying their bloodwork to tell them their Vitamin D levels were above 100ng/dl and advising them to decrease their daily dosage.
"This is HUGE NEWS:
We know that Vitamin D supports the immune system. "
We know low levels are linked to prostate, colon, and breast cancer, autoimmune diseases like MS, and more recently numerous studies have proven a correlation between low levels of Vitamin D and higher infection and death rates in COVID-19 patients. So, we have to ask: Is the fact that for the first time in many years that patients are actually making Vitamin D from the sun leading to lower infection and death rates? I would say Absolutely yes.
If higher Vitamin D rates support our immune system – possibly reducing the risks associated with COVID-19, then people should know. It may be that some people have elevated Vitamin D rates because of the sun, and they do not even know it!
So, who cares?
If people are naturally getting more Vitamin D, and that is a good thing, then why do anything to change?
Well, when the late fall arrives, and then winter, we stop going outside and the sun hides behind dark clouds and early nights. The decreased sun exposure will cause a decrease in Vitamin D levels unless people supplement the lack of sunlight with Vitamin D intake. So, in short, tell your friends and tell your family. Please see the charts attached with individual case studies of my patients on stable dosage of Vitamin D for extended periods of time now with super therapeutic levels of Vitamin D with post-COVID-19 sun exposure. As the charts show, there was no change in the oral supplementation, yet their levels rose notably for the first time in many years.
You have to ask yourself whether the decrease in deaths and serious illness from COVID-19 infections are down, at least in part, because of the summer months and the increased exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D. If the answer to that question is “yes,” then what will happen in the next few months? As the sunshine decreases as winter approaches, will the severe cases and death rates climb? My personal opinion is yes, I believe they will.
One thing is for certain, taking Vitamin D supplementation and getting a regular plan in place should be done now, and make sure you frequently check serum levels, also get some SUN:)
All of the patients where on steady dosage of vitamin D3 10,000 iu many of them for years and as you can see they are all high for the 1st time ever, the only change was the environment, post quarantine sunshine is more effective at raising vitamin D levels.
~Dr. Kristine Blanche
Citations: Vitamin D & COVID-19 outcomes
Meltzer DO, Best TJ, Zhang H, Vokes T, Arora V, Solway J. Association of Vitamin D Status and Other Clinical Characteristics With COVID-19 Test Results. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(9):e2019722. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.19722
Adrian R Martineau, Nita G Forouhi, Vitamin D for COVID-19; A case to answer? The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology Volume *, issue 9 P735-736 September 01, 2020 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30268-0/fulltext
Vitamin D supplementation to prevent acute respiratory infections: systematic review and meta-analysis of aggregate data from randomised controlled trials. medRxiv. 2020; (published online July 17.) https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.14.20152728
Mok CK, Ng YL, Ahidjo BA, et al.Calcitriol, the active form of vitamin D, is a promising candidate for COVID-19 prophylaxis.medRxiv. 2020; published online June https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.21.162396
Xu J, Yang J, Chen J, Luo Q, Zhang Q, Zhang H Vitamin D alleviates lipopolysaccharideinduced acute lung injury via regulation of the reninangiotensin system. Mol Med Rep. 2017; 16: 7432-7438 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30268-0/fulltext#back-bib3
Laird E, Rhodes J, Kenny RA Vitamin D and inflammation: potential implications for severity of COVID-19. Ir Med J. 2020; 113: 81
Ilie PC, Stefanescu S, Smith L The role of vitamin D in the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 infection and mortality.Aging Clin Exp Res. 2020; 32: 1195-1198
D'Avolio A, Avataneo V, Manca A, et al.25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations are lower in patients with positive PCR for SARS-CoV-2. Nutrients. 2020; 12e1359
Panagiotou G, Tee SA, Ihsan Y, et al.Low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) levels in patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are associated with greater disease severity. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf). 2020; Julyhttps://doi.org/10.1111/cen.14276
Merzon E, Tworowski D, Gorohovski A, et al. Low plasma 25(OH) vitamin D level is associated with increased risk of COVID-19 infection: an Israeli population-based study. medRxiv. 2020; (published online July 3.) (preprint)https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.01.20144329
Environmental studies:
Roya Kelishadi, Roksana Moeini, Parinaz Poursafa, Sanam Farajian, Hosseinali Yousefy & Ali-Asghar Okhovat-Souraki (2014) Independent association between air pollutants and vitamin D deficiency in young children in Isfahan, Iran, Paediatrics and International Child Health, 34:1, 50-55, DOI: 10.1179/2046905513Y.0000000080
Agarwal KS, Mughal MZ, Upadhyay P, et al The impact of atmospheric pollution on vitamin D status of infants and toddlers in Delhi, IndiaArchives of Disease in Childhood 2002;87:111-113.
Hosseinpanah, F., pour, S.H., Heibatollahi, M. et al. The effects of air pollution on vitamin D status in healthy women: A cross sectional study. BMC Public Health 10, 519 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-10-519
Nour Baïz, Patricia Dargent-Molina, John D. Wark, Jean-Claude Souberbielle, Rémy Slama, Isabella Annesi-Maesano, the EDEN Mother-Child Cohort Study Group, Gestational Exposure to Urban Air Pollution Related to a Decrease in Cord Blood Vitamin D Levels, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Volume 97, Issue 11, 1 November 2012, Pages 4087–4095, https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2012-1943