Should You Take Vitamin D for COVID and the FLU?

Today I’m going to share a teaching topic we are working on in the Freese Method Alumni Monthly Membership Program.

It was just too good and too important not to share with you, too.

And that is the important link between Vitamin D and COVID-19.

As you may know, I am a clinical Registered Dietitian and I have a 12-week online weight loss program where I teach you how to eat so that you can repair your metabolism so that you can lose weight, achieve glowing health and never gain back a pound.

After the 12-week program is complete you have a totally different, repaired and healthy metabolism and the ability to burn fat and maintain your weight as long as you stick to the principles I taught you in the program.

I also offer a way to go deeper into health and nutrition with your restored metabolism in my monthly membership program, The Freese Method Alumni Club.

In this group we revisit the principles of the program, learn new things and we provide a fun and kind community to continue to ask great questions and further our health and weight goals.

This month in Alumni, we are talking all about immunity.

Because it matters, right?

It seems like every winter we should be this alert, but no doubt, this winter with COVID rates rising, we should all be as diligent as we can.

With COVID cases beginning to climb and cold and flu season on in the background, it’s important to understand the power and limitations of food and nutrition on our immune systems.

Last week The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism published a study in which they found that > 80% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 are Vitamin D deficient.

Which the media and Twitter are all excited about as a possible way to predict who will get COVID or not. This is actually not new news, we’ve been swimming in studies relating Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency since the pandemic began.

So today I want to address the buzz around Vitamin D and COVID.

We’ll talk about what vitamin levels we should have, what do those levels have to do with COVID and how to get healthy levels of Vitamin D in our blood.

Now, the evidence is showing an association between your Vitamin D levels in your blood and your risk of contracting the virus and your severity of your sickness.

So let’s talk about Vitamin D blood levels.

There is not a hard and fast rule on what a good Vitamin D level is. Which is crazy right, but true. So we are going to go with the currently accepted reference ranges from the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).

A good Vitamin D level is more than 20 ng/mL or 50 nmol/L depending on how your lab measures it.

Between 12 and 20 ng/mL or 30-50 nmol/L and you are considered insufficient. This is like not great, but not superbad.

Under 12 ng/mL or 30 nmol/L and you are considered deficient. Meaning, it’s really bad. You don’t have enough Vitamin D in your blood to complete bodily functions like adequate bone growth.

There’s green light Vitamin D levels above 20, yellow light between 20 and 12 and a big red light if your Vitamin D is under 12 ng/mL.

There is quite a bit of controversy around how much Vitamin D is really necessary for optimal health and lots of money is being put in this area of study.

So when they found an association with Vitamin D and COVID, we saw a tsunami of studies come out in rapid succession.

So far, Vitamin D has NOT conclusively shown to prevent or treat infection by COVID.

However, and this is important, people who have adequate levels of Vitamin D who get COVID:

• have less severe disease
• they have a decreased need for intensive care and ventilation, (meaning they can’t breathe on their own and we use a tube and a machine to help them breath, this is called mechanic ventilation) 
• and a lower risk of death.

Basically, it doesn’t prevent you from getting COVID if your Vitamin D levels are already good, but if you don’t have enough, then Vitamin D could help.

Which is true for ALL vitamins and minerals.

They only help if you don’t have enough in your body. Usually giving yourself more, doesn’t help.

We’ve known about the helpful effects of Vitamin D on fighting respiratory infections like COVID since 2011 with the SARS epidemic.

The theory is that Vitamin D helps prevent the damaging “cytokine storm” which is the basis of inflammation in the lungs of COVID patients or a different but worse “bradykinin storm.” When bradykinin levels get too high in the lungs, they cause fluid to leak from the blood vessels in the lungs. This is why COVID is so dangerous and why people have to be put on a ventilator. Their lungs are full of fluid and they can’t get enough oxygen.

Vitamin D is important because it specifically helps control inflammation in the lungs and COVID affects the lungs most.

The science is showing that if your Vitamin D levels are below that 20 ng/mL mark you are 77% more likely to test positive for COVID.

Once you go below the 12 ng/mL level, into Vitamin D deficiency you are six times as likely to require ventilation and 15 times more likely to die even after adjusting for age, gender and underlying health conditions.

Wow, right?!

So yes, there is something definitely going on here with Vitamin D and COVID.

The lower your levels of Vitamin D, the more likely you are to get sick, be sicker while sick, and die from the sickness.

So what should you do?

Well, I would recommend you take a supplement to ensure that your vitamin D levels are in the optimal range.

Why not food?

Well, few foods contain good amounts of vitamin D.

You can get it from fatty fish like salmon and tuna, fortified dairy that they add vitamin D too like milk and cheese and there’s a bit in egg yolk.

All foods we eat often on the Freese Method plan.

Now, we were made to make Vitamin D from the sun, not really from food. But in the winter, we don’t make it as well from the sun due to the angle of the sun's rays. So in this case, with COVID in consideration, I would recommend supplementing with Vitamin D3.

A good brand is Nature Made. You want to choose a dose from 600 IU to 1000 IU of D3 not D2 and take it with lunch.

I also recommend taking a simple Centrum Adult each day in my program and that has 1000 IU of Vit D in it already.

So if you’re taking the Centrum, you don’t need to worry about a thing.

Vitamin D needs fat in your gut to be absorbed so eat your high healthy fat lunch and pop your Vitamin D or Centrum with that meal.

Let's recap this complicated and important issue about COVID and Vitamin D.

• Vitamin D can’t prevent or treat COVID on it’s own.

• But, we have lots of good evidence that if you don’t have enough, you are more likely to get it, you’re more likely to get really sick and need a ventilator, and if your levels are low enough, you’re more likely to die from it.

• It’s also harder to get Vitamin D for us in the Northern Hemisphere in the winter and since COVID is going up, it would be prudent and not hurt you if you took a Vitamin D supplement daily throughout the winter.

• You should take at least 600-1000 IU of D3, not D2 with a fatty meal (please stay away from big doses over 1,000 IU without medical supervision because those could be bad for you).

• If you have a Centrum, just keep taking that. You don’t need to get fancy with your multi-vitamin, you need potency, purity, and consistency and Centrum has been tested and passed more times than anything else.

• You will probably see more and more articles on Vitamin D as we learn more, but the basic truth still holds for all studies on vitamins and minerals and disease.

• If you don’t have enough in your body, taking more may help you.

• If you already have enough vitamins and minerals in your body, taking more will not help you and may hurt you.

Food is very powerful and is absolutely necessary for a healthy immune system, but it also has its limitations.  Be sure to get plenty of sleep, fresh air and stay aware from sugar and other toxic and inflammatory foods.

If you'd like to learn more about what the best diet, not just for health and immunity but for weight loss and weight control, we should talk.

The Freese Method is a complete long-term eating plan that teaches you what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat, why you eat and how to keep eating well so that you can be healthy and lean