28th April 2020
I have found, I suspect like almost everyone else, that it is almost impossible to keep track of what is going on with COVID. Stories swirl and multiply, and almost everyone seems to be trying to get something out of it. People are claiming miracle cures and success – but it is difficult to verify any such claims.
The normal rules of research (flawed though they often are) have completely flown out of the window. It is like the wild west, with snake oil salesmen announcing wonderful products that not only cure COVID, but every other disease… I mean every other disease, known to man.
‘You sir, you look like an intelligent man, a man who understands science. A man who can see that my wonderful potion can cure almost every ailment that befalls man. Baldness, wrinkled skin, impotence, COVID…
‘A vaccine you say sir, of course, I shall have one ready and done in four months, start to finish … safety sir, did you mention safety? No need for such things, vaccines are always safe, never caused anyone any harm. Never a single case of any problems.’
‘Narcolepsy sir… sounds like nonsense, never heard it. Guillain-Barré sir. My, we have been at the medical dictionary haven’t we? In my opinion, if you can’t spell it, you don’t need to worry about it. Sounds French to me anyway – and you can’t trust the French, can you?’
‘The WHO sir… what’s that you say? It may be that you can get infected twice. So how is any vaccine going to work. Well, I must say sir that vaccines are far more effective at creating immunity than getting the actual infection. Everyone knows that sir… what do you mean utter bollocks. I can tell you that a vaccine will always work, every time, guaranteed one hundred per cent effective, or your money back.’
‘Bill Gates is behind it all sir you say, pushing for mandatory vaccines for all diseases. You think it’s like something out of 1984. Well, Mr Gates is an expert in viruses sir, is he not…His operating system did allow a massive attack on IT systems in the NHS in 2017 sir. Now, if you will excuse me, I have more snake oil to sell… tatty bye sir, and good luck to you.’
‘Roll up, roll up.’
Which takes me to vitamin D. Which is my miracle cure for COVID.
I know that, in the West, the medical profession, hates vitamins with a passion. Those who promote vitamins are the very personification of woo, woo medicine. They have no proven beneficial effects they rant and on, and on. Insult and attack.
However, as I have been known to point out, the ‘vit’ in vitamin, stands for vital. As in, if you don’t take them, you die. So, they do kind of have important beneficial effects on the human body. Of course, I know the counter argument, which is not that vitamins are not necessary, of course they are, even doctors agree with that. The battle is about the optimal level for health.
We are told that almost everyone has sufficient vitamin intake from the food they eat, and that anything above that intake just creates expensive urine. In addition, some vitamins can be dangerous in excess. We have seen up to one death a year, in some cases.
Leaving the battles about vitamins to one side, what are the optimal levels of various vitamins? The answer is no-one really knows … for sure. The central problem here is that, when vitamins were first isolated, their deficiencies were creating major and obvious health problems. A lack of vitamin C caused scurvy – leading to death.
A lack of vitamin B1 a.k.a. thiamine led to Beriberi, with nerve and muscle damage and wasting and death. A severe lack of vitamin B12 lead to nerve damage, anaemia, weakness and death.
So, the focus was very much on finding the dose of vitamins required to prevent these serious health problems. However, no-one was particularly interested in looking beyond this bare minimum, to try and establish what level of a vitamin is associated with optimal health. For example, what are long term effects on cancer and heart disease – for example. Or prevention of infections.
Looking specifically at vitamin D, the major and immediate health problem caused by a lack of vitamin D is on bones. Without vitamin D, calcium is not absorbed properly and the bones become thin and brittle. Children with low vitamin D develop rickets, bent bones that do not grow properly.
Once the level of vitamin D required to protect the bones was established, that was pretty much seen as job done. However, is it better for health to have higher levels. Can we be optimally healthy with, what many believe, to be a low vitamin D level?
More importantly right now, does a higher level of vitamin D enable you to fight off infections such as influenza and COVID? Of course, as I stated at the beginning, in the middle of the COVID maelstrom, people are claiming everything about everything.
So, I am going to take you back to 2008 to look at Virology Journal – yes, this is about as mainstream as you can possibly get in the world of virus research. The article was called ‘On the epidemiology of influenza.’ If you want to get your mind blown, read it 1.
It set out to answer seven questions:
-
- Why is influenza both seasonal and ubiquitous and where is the virus between epidemics?
- Why are the epidemics so explosive?
- Why do epidemics end so abruptly?
- What explains the frequent coincidental timing of epidemics in countries of similar latitudes?
- Why is the serial interval obscure?
- Why is the secondary attack rate so low?
- Why did epidemics in previous ages spread so rapidly, despite the lack of modern transport?
Yes, I realise COVID is not Influenza, but past research on influenza is about as close as you can get. Cutting to the chase, of a very long article, the authors concluded the reason why flu was far more common in winter, is because people have much lower levels of Vitamin D.
Below is their graph of vitamin D levels in the UK, at different times of the year.
These researchers then looked at what happened to people who took vitamin D supplements all year round. One group took placebo, one group took 800 international units (IU) a day – and one group took 800 IU per day but 2000 IU a day in the final year of the trial. Below is a graph of what they found.
To put this another way, of those 104 subjects who took 2,000 IU of vitamin D every day, only one got a cold or influenza in the entire year.
Perhaps more importantly, if you do get infected with influenza, vitamin D (especially D3) has a potent effect on protecting endothelial cells. And damage to endothelial cells appears to be a key mechanism by which COVID creates the most severe, and potentially fatal, symptoms. Here is a section from the paper ‘Dietary Vitamin D and Its Metabolites Non-Genomically Stabilize the Endothelium.’
‘Vitamin D is a known modulator of inflammation. Native dietary vitamin D3 is thought to be bio-inactive, and beneficial vitamin D3 effects are thought to be largely mediated by the metabolite 1,25(OH)2D3…
Our data suggests the presence of an alternative signaling modality by which D3 acts directly on endothelial cells to prevent vascular leak. The finding that D3 and its metabolites modulate endothelial stability may help explain the clinical correlations between low serum vitamin D levels and the many human diseases with well-described vascular dysfunction phenotypes.’ 2
In short, it seems Vitamin D stops you getting infected with viruses and, even if you do get infected, it helps to mitigate the worst effects. This could explain results from a, not yet published study, looking at the severity of COVID infections vs. the level of Vitamin D in the blood 3.
On the face of it, remarkable benefits. However, they fit with what is already known about the benefits of vitamin D on influenza.
Further supporting the role of vitamin D in COVID, it has been recognised in many countries that those with dark skin are more likely to get infected, and die, from COVID. Here from the Guardian (UK newspaper).
I am not alone in being alarmed at the preponderance of deaths from COVID-19 among those with dark skin (UK government urged to investigate coronavirus deaths of BAME doctors, 10 April). While COVID-19 is likely to magnify the effect of social deprivation, I don’t think this is the whole story.
Vitamin D is needed for many reasons, including correct functioning of the immune system. It is converted to its active form by the action of sunlight on the skin. This is impeded by having dark skin and leads to low levels of vitamin D. Supplementing with vitamin D3 at 5000iu daily corrects this deficiency, and it is now an urgent need for all people with dark skin (and most with white). There is a reasonable chance that vitamin D replacement could help reduce the risk we are seeing playing out so tragically in the BAME community 4.
So, what do we know?
- Dark skinned people are more likely to die from COVID
- Dark skinned people are more likely to have low vitamin D levels 5
- Vitamin D supplements protect against colds and flu – and hopefully COVID
- Higher levels of Vitamin D should be able to mitigate the damage caused by COVID
The increased risks of low vitamin D levels on COVID seem dramatic, and the benefits of supplementation with vitamin D could be just as dramatic. I have been going out into the sun wherever possible in the last month. I take Vitamin D3 supplements 4,000 units a day. I strongly advise everyone else to do the same. It is snake oil, and it is free (if provided by the sun).
The only problem I see is that I cannot make any money out of this at all. Oh well. Perhaps I should claim to be making a vaccine, that could earn me billions.
1: https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
2: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140370
3: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/first-data-published-COVID-19-severity-vitamin-d-levels/
4: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/10/uk-coronavirus-deaths-bame-doctors-bma
Thankyou.
I always read Malcolm Kendrick with pleasure. I am replying to Jean Humphreys since I can’t see how to make a comment otherwise. Zoe Harcombe has analysed studies which indicate that overweight people are more likely to end up in critical care if they catch covid19. Is there any mechanism which would inhibit vitamin D’s protective effect on endothelial cells in overweight people? Or is it more likely to be that overweight people have low levels of vitamin D due to diet, lack of sunshine, and so on? In other words, would it be the low vitamin D levels rather than the high BMI that lead to the critical outcome?
There is a relationship between the amount of adipose tissue (fat) and the amount of effective D3 in the body. Hopefully Malcolm can elaborate. Vitamin D is fat soluble I think (and a potent signalling molecule), hence would be sequestered by fat cells. This maybe a mechanism for the body to store vitamin D in late summer and autumn for the long dark winters. Obviously latitude plays a part, as you can see by the evolved shade of skins as native populations move away from the equator. Hence darker skinned people living at higher latitudes have a mismatch of phenotype / environment. + to this the over weight angle and they are susceptible to even lower levels of 25-hydroxy vD.
Highly probable, this link takes you to a study published in 2015, showing causal link between obesity and low VIT D. I am involved in sport/ sport nutrition and VIT D has been the cause for a whole host of both health and performance related research. We do know that those with certain genetic factors and even a lifestyle with poor nutrition and lack of outside activity (the irony that we are now locked up) even clothing choice/cultural pressure can lead to significant VIT D deficiency. From sport perspective Vitamin D supplementation seems to show lower incidence of URTI in elite athletes. Remember many elite athletes have suppressed immune functions due to training and competition stress. So this and other findings related to immune function are relevant to other populations. You may have noticed that mushrooms in the supermarket are now often VIT D enhanced (through light not chemicals) worth the few extra pence perhaps, just don’t peel them!
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001383
.
Maybe helpful?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00184/full
FTL: Preliminary indications from the UK [3], China [4] and the USA [5] suggest that patients with obesity, at least in hospital, have a worse prognosis. This is consistent with long-established observations that patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) who have obesity do worse, for several reasons [6]. Obesity causes atelectasis, particularly in the posterior dependant lung zones [7] and this, along with collapse of alveolar capillary units because of raised pleural pressures [8] leads to diminished recruitability of lung tissue. Also, parenchymal heterogeneity leads to high lung shear forces, even when applied ventilatory pressures are low and without well-established lung injury [9]. This is consistent with population-based observations that obesity adversely affects lung function [10].
However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that there may be more specific mechanisms by which obesity worsens the outcome of COVID-19, arising from metabolic and inflammatory derangements rather than merely the mechanical effects of increased fat tissue.
janecnorman: Sounds like obesity is another case of the yellow fingers effect.
In the UK news report this morning, the 35 year-old who’d just gone home after 3 weeks on a ventilator saying “I’m young, why did I get covid?!” is still noticeably obese ….
And in today’s Guardian, a report on a new study states: “The study also revealed ….. The most significant health risk factor was obesity, increasing risk of death by 37% – a greater amount than heart disease (31%), lung disease (19%) or kidney disease (25%).”
Yes but vitamin D deficiency may well contribute to obesity as it seems to contribute to metabolic syndrome along with high sugar diets and it is harder for someone who is obese to maintain sufficient blood levels of vitamin D as it is stored in the fat and there is more fat which seems to hold onto it. Basically all the groups which are at high risk of vitamin D deficiency also have poorer outcomes with COVID. BAME people living in the UK are much more at risk than the same ethnic groups living near the equator, and BAME doctors are not socioeconomically deprived so two main reasons given for excess deaths of BAME do not hold up whereas it makes perfect sense from a vitamin D perspective. There are now 7 papers showing a strong association between vitamin D deficiency and increased morbidity and mortality in Covid 19. https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1548/rr-19. I agree with Malcolm. Don’t wait for absolute certainty when it’s a cheap easily available substance which we know many people in the UK and around the world are short of and we know it has other benefits. Get on with taking supplements and getting some sun without burning when you can.
Janecnorman wrote:
” I am replying to Jean Humphreys since I can’t see how to make a comment otherwise”
The answer is to scroll to the very bottom of this page and you will find an invitation to post your comments.
Maybe Janecnorman is having a similar problem to what I’ve had. When I try to ‘reply’ to a sub-comment, the reply is addressed to the original comment’s author and not to the person who wrote the sub-comment…
Vitamin D is stored in their fat cells first and it is only after all the fat cells are filled that the Vitamin D is then available to undertake via the bloodstream all its other processes in the body ie immune system moderating etc etc ( see the 33000 research papers on Vitamin D ). Being overweight is similar to having dark skin as it means you need a factor of 2-3 times(or more) the usual vitamin D supplements to get any benefit. It is funny ( not) how we suffer from so many immune system disfunction problem illnesses today and yet few endeavour to keep their Vitamin D levels correct ( or given guidance to) so their immune system works correctly and does not get out of control as it deals with daily problems. Unfortunately no profit to be made from healthy people whose Vitamin D levels are OK to regulate all the systems it impacts. I think low levels of Vitamin D is similar to running your car with its radiator and oil levels only a third full and the software controlling everything working as best it can but not to good which wrecks the car ( body) in the end. Every cell in the body has a Vitamin D receptor – thats not mentioned often? Links to the DNA in every cell and its function for repairing/replicating the cell. Adequate Vitamin D means B cells are given priority over T cells in immune system response which for Covid 19 means no/less cytokine storm and its problems ie ventilator and 50/50 chance or worse of survival. The steroid recently ID as a great help for patients is only doing the job Vitamin D would have done if the patients had enough of it in their systems. Just 20 minutes sunshine between 10 to 3 o’clock or a cheap supplement each day for so much health giving advantage …………..Maybe Covid 19 will allow more publicity for the ESSENTIAL HEALTH BENEFITS that OPTIMAL Vitamin D levels can give to the World populations health seeing as most countries populations are deficient in Vitamin D and suffering accordingly. ( everyone applies suntan lotion so gets few/no UVB rays to produce their Vitamin D) Sort the Vitamin D deficiency problem and cut health costs and improve everyones lives. Cheap win win for all. A Vitamin D health follower.
PS Stay safe and please wear a mask – protect your fellow life traveller as hopefully they will protect you likewise. See Vietnam and Thialand figures where they all wore masks from day one – very few cases and handful if that of deaths – same as other Far Eastern countries who have been through SARS and MERS before – all low cases and deaths.learnt from past experience.
Are you using vit D advocacy as a cover story for propagandising the face covering mandate – which is but a social guilting placeholder for the vaccine or ‘immunity passport’ (sic) to come?
If you want to believe in face covering as safe and effective you are welcome, but it is fear that you are locking in and a sense of instilled guilt that frames and drives such thought as you take to be your own.
That a ‘new world order’ (sic) can be built upon such premises is being rolled out as a biotech security state – using every and any ruse to profile, target and manipulate your otherwise hidden fears and hidden guilts.
WHAT exactly is the feared threat that you advocate the imposition of face covering to protect against? Nothing! But the opportunity for masking in virtue is a bandwagon effect by which to seem to pass off as ‘kind or considerate’ – but more practically – masked off from exposure as a granny killer, in selfish disregard for the weak and the vulnerable.
In these Orwellian times – “Everything is BACKWARDS” – Lockdown is a rabid reaction to fear.
The antidote to the ‘plague’ is honesty.
Thank you for your comments on mask wearing. This seems to me to be a first in that the healthy people are to wear masks. Back in the day it was the sick person who had to wear a mask and/or be quarantined. Not well people. I think the mask instills fear and prevents normal human contact
If it were 1918 again – in terms of deaths – then like them I can see that ANYTHING would be resorted to in hope of protection – often to worse outcomes. Masks were mandated then – in many places but had no effect on whether or not you sickened. I have written before on other potential causes and exacerbations of what is now called 1919 or Spanish flu. By the way Spain was neutral and not as subject to propaganda control and so the news of the disease leaked there first.
Today is very different. The reasoned or common sense basis for masking – and most else in the lockdown measures is lacking, and the insistence via shaming ‘guidances’ or insane and heartless and economically destructive regulations, makes them more about political control and any shifting narrative deceits to keep the programme on course no matter what.
I have come to accept that contagion has been used often as a cover story for toxicity, such as to become so embedded in our mind as to be a switch that Dr WHO can turn on and off at will.
A virus culture does not replicate in healthy cells. To get them to be receptive to ‘viral samples’ the cells are stressed or toxified first. Then the cells show abnormalities or die off and that is taken as proof the ‘virus’ is active and causes disease. I think there is a good parallel in susceptibility to fear as deceit. Not everyone has the required back-door or receptors and the installed programs for it to run on. But if we do – we have an educative process in locating our ‘back doors’. Fool me twice – shame on me.
Mary’s point about healthy people wearing masks appears to miss half the issue.
The only reason for people KNOWN not to have Covid-19 to wear masks would be to protect themselves. Which should be their choice.
But how many actually know beyond all doubt that they do not have Covid-19?
(There is a subsidiary issue that any form of finer grained management with a heterogenous population of people who have never had it, currently have it, and have had it – assuming some immunity – would be, to all intents and purposes, impossible.)
Doesn’t matter whether you have IT or not. All the scientific studies on masks suggest that they have next to no effect on transmission of viruses. Some types stop transmission of bacteria and most probably stop major air pollution; but not viruses
Yes!
An absolutely clear-eyed observation.
An absolutely critical observation to ponder clear-headedly in today’s contentious atmosphere.
Here is a study showing larger doses required by overweight individuals to reach the same blood serum levels. The quoted numbers are average values so individual variation will occur but they certainly give you pause to consider how wrong the information is that public health departments are still providing years after the errors in the earlier studies have been pointed out.
6000IU = 150ug healthy adult
7000IU = 175ug overweight adult
8000IU = 200ug obese adult
To reach natural blood serum levels of 25(OH)D of 100nmol/l (40ng/ml)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28458767/
I had been thinking about the ubiquity of statin treatment as a variable in this whole thing. If Vitamin D is protective against infection and protective of endothelial cells once infected, and “Cholesterol is also the precursor of vitamin D, which plays an essential role in the control of calcium and phosphorus metabolism. 7-Dehydrocholesterol (provitamin D3) is photolyzed by the ultraviolet light of sunlight to previtamin D3, which spontaneously isomerizes to vitamin D3 (Figure 26.29) NCBI”, well where does that put us? It seems like adding in sunscreen and general avoidance of outdoor light makes the perfect recipe for low Vitamin D levels. “Vitamin D is linked to cholesterol because we need cholesterol in our skins cells to make vitamin D from sunlight. The vitamin D is later transformed again in the liver and kidneys, but cholesterol is needed for the first step. (Heart UK).”
Is it best as a tablet or a soft gel. My four years nephew has leukaemia and I thinking he is lacking vd3 because he isn’t allowed out and because of the chemo. How much should he take.
You can buy kiddie d3 meds otc biddy99 it would prob be easier for him if you bought the better you sublingual spray ,it by passes the liver and won’t put so much strain on his body,buy in good health food stores.
Good luck.jeanie
Or get it from Amazon
Thanks. Just googled this. Seems the recommend 15ml one spray. Is that enough. If he lets us spray into his mouth
have a google at the DLux junior vitamin D oral spray that is suitable for children 3 years and over 400IU of vitamin D daily in one spray much easier than tablets.
Thanks will do
A 4 year old weighs about 8 kg.
If an adult is advised to take 5000 IU/d and weighs 64 kg, this 4 year old could take (8/64)*5000 = 625 IU/day.
Especially during the first week or 2 I would build up the vitamin D level in the body by giving 2 x 400 IU/d, then if you want to go back to the ‘right’ dose you could give 1 dose everyday plus 1 additional dose every other day, or Mo-We-Fr.
Don’t be afraid to overdose, one hour in the sun at the right latitude generates a multiple of 400 IU already and is ‘generally well tolerated’.
There’s been an article in which people took 50,000 IU/day[1].
With these levels of vit D intake there are some requirements however: take vit K2 supplements and NO calcium supplements.
There are charts that show how much vitamin D3 is generated from sunlight[2].
The most part of Europe has UV index = 2, while Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, Italy) has UV index = 3[3].
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322071346_Enhanced_Growth_of_the_Adult_Penis_With_Vitamin_D_3
[2] https://vitamindwiki.com/dl2105?display
[3] https://www.who.int/uv/publications/en/UVIclip.pdf?ua=1
Hi this is out of stock everywhere. Any recommendations for an alternative. Thanks
Softgels are better than tablets – they have far fewer ingredients in – the best kind contain just the capsule shell, olive oil and vitamin D3.
I suspect kiddie vitamins will contain very low doses. There is a big array of vitamin D3 supplements available online without prescription with doses from 200 iU up to 10,000 iU. Buying kiddie ones will restrict your choice enormously.
Dr. Clark vit D3, 1000IU in one drop. Amazon. Advised by my doctor.
Puritans Pride at http://www.puritan.com is an excellent source for all vitamin needs.
Not for vitamin B6. Puritan’s Pride own-brand contains pyrixodine hydrochloride. I quote:
“The inactive form pyridoxine competitively inhibits the active pyridoxal-5′-phosphate. Consequently, symptoms of vitamin B6 supplementation are similar to those of vitamin B6 deficiency.”
10.1016/j.tiv.2017.07.009
Puritan’s Pride
Vitamin B-6 (Pyridoxine Hydrochloride) 100 mg
Item #000650
Maybe also have a look at Feihe International, Inc who appear to be the brand’s current owners.
I buy mine from Metabolics, good quality products Vit d3 400iu, if easier to take you could buy Liposomal vit D 3/K2 from Epigenetics, which is just one drop a day perhaps put in a little water? I’d suggest calling these companies as they will be able to give good advice re dosage and if they feel appropriate for him, I am only giving info from my personal experience I am not a practitioner
I’m also having cancer treatment and get out in the sun every day, even just a walk round the block with my dog and go in garden
Best to test first as dosing for adults is based on levels. http://www.grassrootshealth.net maybe able to help if you drop them an e-mail. The lady who created the website is a breast cancer survivor – Carol. Lots of good research there too. Best read on a PC.
Well, cholesterol is needed to synthesise UVB rays, so lowering cholesterol with statins is counterproductive. Secondly, using sunscreen and/or staying out of the sun means no vitamin D. The accepted wisdom of the lethality of sun exposure and the necessity of statins are killing us.
I take a total of 5000 to 6000 IU of Vit. D3 every day, spread out over 3 meals. I also buy http://www.lifeextension.com Male Panel Blood Test once and now twice a year. You should know what, and how much is in your blood, not just how much you put in your mouth. Mine is ~ 55 ng/mL which is just about optimum. Less than 30 ng/mL is not good. This blood test is on sale now. It also has many, many other tests as well.
Stan Brown
My understanding is we have to take K2 with D3 (Vitamin D3 ensures that calcium is absorbed easily and K2 (MK-7) activates the protein, osteocalcin, which integrates calcium into bone. Without D3 and K2, calcium cannot do its job effectively. Vitamin K2 (MK-7) activates matrix GLA protein (MGP) to bind excess calcium and promote arterial flow and flexibility. betteryou.com). I take 2000 iu D3 and 90mcg K2 per day.
So this could offer one explanation for the higher levels of infection and mortality seen in cities, where daily exposure to sunlight is far lower than in less urban areas, and in care homes whose residents similarly have far less time outdoors as well as being more sedentary and often suffering one or more co-morbidities? As a qualified and practising herbalist I find myself frequently advising about dietary requirements and Vit D is part of my overall strategy. Thank you for this interesting and encouraging article.
This may also explain why certain ethnicities are at higher risk than others. Certainly people from the Indian sub continent have a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency as they have difficulty in metabolising vitamin D from sunlight.
Thank you
Malcolm
The data on seasonal D3 variation refers to 1958, it’s likely that if repeated today the levels will be much lower!
Neil
I think it was 1958 DOB?
Indeed
There have been other interesting birth-cohort studies. One study done in Finland from 1966 to 1997 that was published in 2001 was mentioned in the great paper on deficiency.
“Children in Finland who received 50ug (2000IU) of Vitamin-D/day during their first year of life and followed for 31 years were found to have a 78 percent reduced risk of developing type 1 diabetes.31”
From: The Vitamin-D Deficiency Pandemic: a Forgotten Hormone Important for Health – Michael F. Holick, 2001
KalleMP, is that a relative or an absolute risk figure? Relative figures are notoriously misleading, often the absolute risk indicates it is difficult to draw conclusions.
Is it best to take it in tablet or soft gel. My four year old nephew has leukaemia and I think he is lacking this because he cannot go in the sun and because of the chemo. How much should he take.
Eric Darwin
I have been telling friends about the benefits of Vitamin D for years – it is good to hear it making more impact now. Dr Coimbra has been using high doses of Vitamin D for 20 years to treat autoimmune diseases with a 95% success rate.
Thank you for all your good work, Dr Kendrick. Keep well.
As always food for thought. Thank you for sharing this with us. May I ask, you say 4000 units a day of D3 , how does that equate with μg please.
Using the following link :
https://www.grassrootshealth.net/project/mcg-iu-converter/
4000 iU is equivalent to 100mcg
Many thanks
I’ve been using NOW (US made?) vit D3/K2, which is, D3 1,000 IU and K2 45mcg.
100
100 ug
Georgina Wrelton: One IU (International Unit) of (both D2 and D3) equals 0.025 µg, so 4,000 IU equals 100 µg. The supplement we take lists both: 125 mcg (5,000 IU), and it calls this 625% 0f Daily Value (U.S.). So the U.S. daily value is considered to be 800. Ridiculous and confusing to have two different ways of describing quantity, and two different ways of abbreviating microgram, but then here in the U.S. we use both the English system and the metric system, and in Japan, woodworkers have three different measurement systems to use.
What’s the third? Do I want to know?
chris c: The third what?
“in Japan, woodworkers have three different measurement systems to use.”
don’t worry, just being silly, it takes my mind off the lockdown
Hi,
Rather than input the conversion here and possibly be wrong, here is the website that will convert for you : )
http://www.nafwa.org/vitamind.php
It works out at 100mcg
1 IU of Vitamin D3 equals 0.025 micrograms. 4,000 units will be 100 micrograms.
And maybe high death rates in care homes could also be partly due to low Vit D? As residents rarely go outside, unless they are taking supplements, their vit D levels are likely to be very low.
When my late mother-in-law was in a care home with dementia, we visited on a lovely sunny day and found almost all the residents indoors. We asked if we could take her outside, which we did, and the care assistant tried to smother her in sun block. We explained that she should be out there for 10 minutes without any sun screen and her arms, at least, exposed to try and allow for some vitamin D production (although it doesn’t work too well in the elderly anyway, for some reason…statins?) The care assistant was very reluctant to ‘allow’ this, saying that they were told to use this sun screen cream all the time.
That is so sad, to say nothing of completely wrongheaded – and the irony is that with the lockdown, in many places people have been instructed to stay indoors when what they probably need is more sunlight!
Where I live, the city has poured sand into a local skate park because warning signs and taping it off didn’t deter all the young people from using it. Now they can’t use it so they are prevented from being outside in the sun, getting fresh air, doing an exercise they enjoy. Even the tennis courts next to it are taped off.
They did that in Los Angeles as well – do you live in the UK? You do have to wonder at all these policies, exactly the same the world over. Like the clapping. Every country is coming out and clapping once a week. I wonder if all these diktats are coming down from the WHO? It’s actually criminal what they are doing in my opinion. They are weakening people’s immune systems, making them more depressed, and more prone to illness. The whole thing is a ticking time bomb.
‘Treatment’ of previous plagues – Spanish “flu” – showed benefits of being in a well-ventilated environment if indoors, or outdoors in FRESH air, and sunlight.
Northern Italy is the most air polluted area in Europe, Wuhan has had demonstrations about air pollution, and no prizes for guessing air quality in New York City…
Same for sun exposure. Add metabolic mayhem from eating lots of ‘manufactured’ carbohydrate-loaded foods… Why are we surprised ?
So then, as the good doctors in the video someone posted a few days ago said, this lockdown will delay the normal resistance to colds and flu that begins around April.
I am wondering if we are all UV light deficient. I get sensible light exposure without spectacles.
Un-expected (un-FORSEEN?) consequences of blndly accepting popular memes… If ages 87 or so, I’d be totally unworried about the faint possibility of sunlight causing a Malignant Melanoma..taking half a dozen or more years to do it’s damage. I’d be long gone by then !
I think the care home staff were more concerned with avoiding sunburn in their residents than skin cancer…
Is there not the potential for Vitamin D to increase ACE2, and in-turn one’s likelihood of getting COVI-19? Just a balancing act that’s been playing on my mind… Any thoughts?
Apparently not – see this from Dr Rhonda Patrick “The acute lung injury led to a decrease in ACE2, driving even worse lung injury. Vitamin D supplementation increased ACE2 receptor levels, but only in conditions of acute lung injury where ACE2 levels decreased. When vitamin D was given to control animals, it didn’t increase ACE2 levels. This means that vitamin D normalizes ACE2 levels in situations only where it is decreased.”
Love the YouTube ding-dong between Rhoda Patrick and Chris Masterjohn on the subject of Vit D supplementation and covid-19. Chris sees Vit D3 increasing the level of ACE2 and thus increase the likelihood of increased opportunities for Covid-19 to infect cells. However, a more nuanced biochemical analysis by MedCram “Coronavirus Pandemic Update 37” shows that ACE2 levels are crucial in keeping angiotensin II levels low . . . thus controlling epithelial inflammation and reduction of vasoconstriction and as such can be beneficial.
(Have to give a shout-out to MedCram)
I used to follow Chris Masterjohn but he then lost his way and well sold himself out. He kept reccomending supplements to buy etc……and to cap it all he insulted our own Malcolm in an article a few years back. Just saying.
Adam: That’s right. And still recommending that rancid cod liver oil. I don’t read him much any more. As for selling products, that’s how he makes his living, so I can’t fault him for that.
He did? Sacrilege!
I stopped reading him because, well I got bored. Other authorities don’t have that effect, like Malcolm and Mike Eades. The latter has been blogging again after a long hiatus.
Agreed, MedCram is fantastic!
re Vitamin D and COVID-19…does this Vitamin D science explain why children are so immune to COVID effects? Are other protective pathways at play in younger cohorts?
My FMD has me on 4,000 IU/day as well.
Another great article. I take Vitamin D3 daily, 5,000 iu a day – frowned upon by my GP. I also take 500 mcg Vitamin K2 (Mk 7) and 500 Mg of Magnesium Glycinate. What are your thoughts on this combination.
I am not a doctor nor medically qualified.
However I was impressed by reading Dr. Kate Rheaume Bleue’s book “Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life”.
She argues that Vitamin D alone may possibly cause harmful side effects in some people at least, unless accompanied by Vitamin K2. To quote from the Amazon blurb:
‘While millions of people take calcium and Vitamin D supplements thinking they re helping their bones, the truth is, without the addition of Vitamin K2, such a health regimen could prove dangerous. Without Vitamin K2, the body cannot direct calcium to the bones where it s needed; instead, the calcium resides in soft tissue (like the arteries) leading to a combination of osteoporosis and atherosclerosis, or the dreaded “calcium paradox.”‘
Having tried to inform myself about this complicated and little-understood subject, I now take Vitamin D3, Vitamin K2, and magnesium. As our diet includes plenty of calcium, I don’t supplement with it but do regularly eat liver and chocolate for Vitamin A, which works with Vitamin D in some ways.
I hope that’s helpful; but of course you should do your own research, take qualified advice, and make up your own mind.
Tom Walsh,
Absolutely, I agree, I take D3, K2 (MK4 + 7), Mag to protect arteries (calcification) and immune system and all the other lovely things that D3 is responsible for.
My understanding is that vitamin D has a cofactor and that is magnesium. K2 is fine to take with it but not essential, although K2 will direct calcium into the bones. Calcium will rise because of the additional D. I also believe anything under 20K units of D is ok, I take 10 myself, because if you stand in the midday sun with little clothes on during the summer for 20-30 minutes, you will get 20K units. There is a shut off mechanism in our body but not from supplements. Of course it’s best to test what your level is.
Ellifeld, Moi, near- starkers in the back-yard shrubbery.? – Have pity on my neighbors !
That’s what I wanted to know: How long in bright sunshine does it take to get an appropriate daily dose? 20 minutes gardening without a shirt on is not a problem – for me, at least. Thank you.
K2 IS essential if you do not want to get kidney stones. PS. And the amount of D3 your (indecently exposed) body will produce depends also on your skin color, the latitude and pollution level in your area.
Interesting: a GP at a different practice to my current one, was the first to recommend VitD/K2, this after urging me to get my vitamin levels checked, and my current GP also recommends that I keep a check on my B12 levels. As the Dr says, for some strange (or maybe not) reason, western medicos have a real thing about vitamins and I don’t understand the logic.
Okay, ideally I should get all the right vits and minerals via what I eat but given as modern [sic] industrial farming as depleted most vegetables of the necessary chemicals (I read somewhere that as much as 40% lower!), what choice do we have?
I’m also confused by the idea that somehow vitamins in pills are not effective. How does this work? Are the vits not what they’re advertised as? Why should vitamins as supplements not work the same way as those ’embedded’ in food?
A lot of the supplements produced by Cytoplan are ‘food state’, grown hydroponically on a kind of ‘brassica’ – which is said to make them more bioavailable
They don’t always work the same way in pills, as they do in food, if I understand correctly. But it’s true that foods are depleted and people are deficient and probably need to supplement
Your a very wise man Dr K and I so wish we could have our old school doctors back again ,they looked at us as a whole person not next in queue. We are on vit d3/k2 sublingual spray and I’ve now managed to get a loading dose of b12 injections,6, as I’m b12 deficient according to mma test but more importantly according to my symtoms.by day 3 of my previous injection I’m so ill again with neuro symtoms feet on fire and pins and needles dizziness and nausea amongst other things and yet they are now taking these life saving injections away from most of the u.k and using Covid19 as an excuse,we can easily be taught to self inject ,most of us patients have already bought the stuff to do this but what about the poor buggers who are deprived of a 90 pence injection that can kill us over an agonising period of time.They don’t have the finances to be able to save their own lives and the nhs can provide this for so little,we have after all paid into the system.we are now being told to buy supplements otc ourselves but our bodies can’t use them we don’t have the intrinsic factors necessary to process it that’s why we need injections without them the b12 can’t get into our cells it just floats around in the blood so tablets are useless for most of us.
It’s the same with vit d I was so deficient and had to do private blood tests to be able to put up a good argument to get the life changing vitamin dosage I needed ,I was then told after the loading dose to buy my own over the counter if I thought I needed it!
I totally agree with you get your vitamin levels optimised then you have more ammo to fight off most things.
Well said Dr K x
Hi, where do you get your D3/K2 sublingual spray from, I can’t seem to get it anywhere?
I was getting it from amazon but can’t see it online they must be out of stock.you could try Holland and Barrat they are always that but more expensive but needs must,This is now the right time of the year to get it naturally from the sun so if you can try and get out and expose as much skin as you can for 15-20 mins the body will take up what it needs.
That may not be a bad thing, isn’t the prescribed vitamin D actually D2?
Maybe locking old people up in a home with very little sunlight might not be the best thing to be doing then.
And of course ordering everyone else to stay indoors except for one hour a day…
I don’t listen to anything the government say. I despair over the blind obedience of the UK population as well. Since when did we all have to obey anyone telling us when we are ‘allowed’ to go out? I go out about 4 times a day and I am nowhere near anyone, so hardly any danger. I am sure my immune system is doing just great. I have a spaniel and he would not be a happy dog if we only went out once. If you read the coronavirus regulations, it does not say anything anywhere about going out once. The government has just made this up, and the police are now enforcing these made up statements as if they were law, when the actual coronavirus regulations are in fact public health guidelines.
https://tommorris.org/posts/2020/thats-not-what-the-law-says/
Jill, thanks so much for that link.
“If someone wished to be very pedantic, a person (let’s use the traditional nomenclature of cryptographers) called Alice could pay her friend Bob £1 to bring her an exciting textbook on elliptic curve cryptography sitting on Bob’s bookshelf, and lend it to her for the duration of the COVID-19 lockdown. This is a legally binding contract. Bob driving to Alice’s house to deliver it amounts to his performance of a legal duty.
The government have, by including subparagraph (2)(h) in Regulation 6 made it so Bob can leave the house since fulfilling a “legal obligation” amounts to a “reasonable excuse”, as the drafter of the legislation included it on the list of reasonable excuses.
Obviously, they probably don’t mean that. In which case, they should have not written it like that. Generally this is why legislation gets debated in Parliament–to stop really silly things becoming law. Oh well, nobody is perfect.”.
And then telling them they don’t need supplements, because all you need is in the food.
And then giving them junk food…
Since the start of industrial “farming” in the 1950s, it hs been shown the amounts of essential minerals in the soil have plummeted. That means that you can be eating what was a perfect complete, balanced diet in the 1930s and still be seriously deficient in minerals and vitamins.
In 1970 Adele Davis, in a chapter entitled “Which Orange – Grown Where?”, reported that some oranges that looked and tasted perfect had been found to have precsiely zero Vitamin C.
People used to be safe knowing they would get all the selenium they needed from grains. Today, a lot of soils have hardly any measurable selenium.
Scientists are familiar with the idea that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. That applies in full to the “Green Revolution”. If you take a field that used to yield one crop a year – with occasional years of lying fallow – and take two or three yields a year from it, after a few years its soil will be exhausted. The grains and plants will look OK, but analysis shows that they can be severely lacking in vital nutrients.
Similarly, almost all dairy products and meat used to contain plenty of fat-soluble vitamins (including D and K2). Today, you have to look for dairy and meat from animals allowed to graze on organic grass. It’s best in spring and autumn, and can be recognized by the distinctive deep yellow colour (without dye!) Dr Weston Price explained all this in the 1930s; you can still read his wonderful book today.
That’s why many of us have turned to supplements. We didn’t want to, but we felt we had no alternative.
Harry, they don’t ‘give them junk food’, people buy junk food. Then they eat it.
Very good point ShirleyKate. 🙂
I was talking about the elderly in the homes being given junk food. But you’re right, people buy junk food.
@ShirleyKate: Everyone buys junk narrative as identity support – and reinforces it by judging others.
Yes we junk our identity, and yet your view completely exonerates those who manipulate and feed such identities – as for example the MIC/US Gov determination to weaponise food and gain control of food supply. First in US and then globally.
‘Moral’ judgements blind us to the true contextual conditions.
The systemic pattern I see is ‘toxic debts’ dumped and divested to the population and environment – and in the individual – to their relationships and body.
We have to see the agency within its terrain – and not just focus on blocking, manipulating of suppressing the presumed independent agent, person or virus.
My posts do not get through here – but I try another route.
Yes to all.
I also suspect that “high yield” crops simply dilute the micronutrients into a larger volume of eg. wheat. Not that I eat that any more. I can remember when farmers could only dream of wheat yields of 10 tonnes/ha, now it is commonplace and a few years ago the world record was nearly twenty. Since the roots aren’t twice the size and the soil is depleted little wonder there are deficiencies.
And this may also be a cause of overeating. Lacking nutrients, the body sends out hunger signals.
‘Praise be’, as Margaret Atwood would say.
Thank you so much for bring the word vitamin to the table at last. So often dismissed and certainly not a big pharma favourite topic.
GP’s really do need to understand the role of vitamin D better. I myself had very low levels and was completely dismissed by my GP, furthermore I had pay to have the test done too!
Vitamin D as I understand it is prohormone and as we age the ability to absorb it from the sun decreases therefore making the older generation more likely to have low levels. Perhaps another part of the COVID story.
Vitamin D is really a hormone, not a vitamin.
Have you read of the work of Dr Coimbra, Dr Kendrick? I have mentioned vitamin D supplementation on the ThyroidUK website and several have responded that they cannot tolerate vitamin D supplementation; do you know why this would be?
Thank you.
Hi Dr Kenndrick, that “wheel of definitions and assessments, guidelines and recommendations” goes around all the time, and there is an enormous amount of unclarity, in definitions etc.. and if i may interject, for your consideration: Why “Vitamin D” is not a hormone, and not a synonym for 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D, its analogs or deltanoids: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15225841
and pdf: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2004.03.037
(in light of the sudden resurgence of interest in vitamin d/covid– look to its immune-modulatory effects in RAS and also innate- defensins/cathelicidins— that is a big part of it)
I just put this out: what i wrote here is attempting to address that issue of the wheel of definitions and assessments- therefore guidelines and recommendations, that people are confounded with in looking up immune function and vitamin d: : “Focus, should be looking at immune modulation, and then that takes you to Vitamin d, it is the prime immune modulator, literally does/causes/drives/ nothing- but rather enables proper immune responses,.
CLARIFICATION _ names are important with vitamin d: The importance of using names because “Vitamin D ” is an umbrella term used for many metabolites, one has to be specific for clarity.:
Vitamin D = Cholecalciferol – the supplement/sunmade
25OHd3 = calcidiol – the test
1,25OH2d3 = calcitriol – active hormone
Simply providing one’s body with the substrate cholecalciferol, in physiologic doses according to one’s weight- 200iu/kg- will allow then all the cells of the body to further use that inert but crucial substrate to use whichever metabolite they require as the ‘entry metabolite’ into that cell according to which metabolite that cell needs, to then further metabolize it within its own cell. (autocrine/paracrine) as opposed to endocrine- which is where and how vitamin d is currently defined- and is the basis for “amounts to be taken” is in reality obligated to a very guarded, highly regulated and restricted feedback-loop of renal function requiring the interaction PTH/calcium/25OHd3- of which, for that specific system, it’s circulating level does not have to be very high, and it’s metabolite does have to have a long halflife, but other systems in our body, are responsive to cholecalciferol uptake and then further use, and that requirement is not met.
So, the simplicity of the test calcidiol 25OHd3 used currently as the gold-standard for nutritional status misses the mark by a long shot. (which as far as it’s is circulating needs and tissue specificity, can never and will never be able to reflect a “nutritional status” for vitamin d, as the testing metabolite calcidiol-25OHd is obligated to that renal feedback system, and as such, that proper assessment and testing is ignored, and as well not taken into account that different tissues have different needs of the same nutrient- all of which confluence into a range of 50ng/ml ( 125nmol/L) the test will not reflect nutrient status well- **UNLESS>> this is the caveat- that level of calcidiol 25OH is created and maintained by basically daily input (UVB+skin/ or supplemental vitamin d3 cholecalciferol 200iu/kg) that will then create the circulating level reflected by the testing metabolite calcidiol 25OHd,.
Otherwise– the test calcidiol 25OHd is simply testing that metabolite- and it has a long-circulating, particularly sensitive to its kidney uptake for calcium regulation – This is the canonical definition.
One can have a robust level of calcidiol 25OHd3 but be in a state of cellular deficiency of the parent compound cholecalciferol which is more preferential to almost all cells, because simply its halflife is about 24 hrs. so, it needs to have a steady stream of intake. (a simple concept of “basal”).
Keep in mind that vitamin d doesn’t do anything, but rather it enables. It’s lack of does however drive compensatory responses deleterious in nature to our ability to immune modulate.
UVB/heat/7-dehydrocholesterol- (7-dehydrocholesterol is the precursor in the skin cells for both cholecalciferol and cholesterol) creates cholecalciferol (exactly the same as the supplement)- its entry into our system though is different: one skin into lymph- into systemic, the other is directly fast-tracked to portal circulation. By biologic design, we create with the suns rays and heat biological metabolites, physiologic activities and the effects are wide and varied, I try hard to not pit sunshine and Vitamin d one against the other , they are two diffrent things save for one shared compound- cholecalciferol.
cholecalciferol is a mechanical conversion. The further metabolites are enzyme-dependent magnesium is used.
This is a great article explaining metabolites and dosing interval reaches past the canonical system of vitamin d definition, into the more accurate one reflecting the metabolite cholecalciferol and paracrine/autocrine: The Role of the Parent Compound Vitamin D with Respect to Metabolism and Function: Why Clinical Dose Intervals Can Affect Clinical Outcomeshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3849670/
I have noticed that as I get older and my skin gets thicker, I can tolerate longer periods of sunbathing. In my youth I was prone to get sunburned after what always seemed like about 5 minutes – although it was probably an hour.
My grandfather, who was prone to respiratory illness, was told my a competent doctor to seek the sun as much as possible. He used to spend his holidays, and after retirement whole months, in the South of France, the Channel Islands, and the South coast of England. At 80 he was “chocolate brown all over”, and I believe this exposure to the sun may have delayed his death from cancer significantly.
Dr Malcolm Kendrick
Ever since this apparently cunning virus appeared, I’ve been beavering away asking questions.
The conclusion of which means my wife and I both take vitamin D3, 4000 IU per day.
It’s recommended by PHE, the NHS and various other publications. I’ve watched and listened to some interesting videos which explain why it might be helpful. Dr John Campbell, is well worth watching on YouTube (below)
I am left wondering why, vitamin D has never had a mention from the media, from the so-called government scientists, the government, the NHS, nor PHE?
Even if vitamin D turns out not to be implicated in this story, what harm is there in taking it?
PHE https://www.gov.uk/government/news/phe-publishes-new-advice-on-vitamin-d
NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32252338
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-d2-vs-d3#section6
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I just think human beings get stuck with appalling cases of cognitive dissonance, some of which is deadly!
To those interested, I’d suggest having a read of – Mistakes Were Made but Not by Me (Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson). It attempts to explain why people dodge responsibility when things fall apart, why public figures are unable to own up to their mistakes etc
Cheers and thanks for your post
Oops, sorry about all the bold, thought I’d turned bold off.
The video was very informative, like so many of Dr Kendrick’s posts.
Many thanks to both of you.
Don’t. worry. Makes it easier to high-light for when I link this or refer folk to these blog comments. “Scroll down to the bold text with video”
😉
Well, cholesterol is needed to synthesise UVB rays, so lowering cholesterol with statins is counterproductive. Secondly, using sunscreen and/or staying out of the sun means no vitamin D. The accepted wisdom of the lethality of sun exposure and the necessity of statins are killing us.
Very good DR K! I’m just back from my 1 1/2 daily (lockdown) run in Epping Forest after having watched Ivor Cummins latest Vid on VitD prior, and so the timing of your latest blog was just brill! I’ve shared it with all my friends. There is no sun today here in London. Its kinda wet, but I just love running in the rain!! Thank you once again!!! Toodle pip.
Shaun, I worked with a lady who got very sunburnt sailing on a rainy day.
Jillm: Yes! UVA easily penetrates clouds, but UVB, not at all. Best to cover up when outside on a cloudy day.
Great article. Unfortunately such science is pooh-poohed by big pharma because and thereby by governmental bodies because big pharma pay lobbyists to influence government and this in turn influences our medics in those lofty towers like NHS England etc. The Orthomolecular Medicine News is a great source of information on use of vitamins to tackle viruses and in particular COVID-19
http://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=f2217062e9a397a1dca429e7d70bc6ca.153&s=7854e037b3b880d2f1d71e666dd73504
Useful info. Thanks Andrew.
Dr Malcolm. Many thanks for this. It’s really great to get some informed advice on Covid 19.
Here’s another detailed analysis of vitamin D and COVID based upon the same study you refer to.
Dr Masterjohn does not recommend having a vitamin D level over 30 because it may increase the severity of COVID.
Please take a look Dr. Kendrick and respond to his recommendations.
https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/covid-19/update-on-vitamin-d-and-covid-19-using-the-first-observational-study-released
Look at the graphs, over 30ng is showing as extremely beneficial, and another post on here has a link to a great video about ACE and ACE2. Covid lowers our Vit D levels and needs boosting to counteract this lowering. If the body has no reserves to pull on then it losses the fight. Just like any war, if you run out of defenders you loose. I know who I trust.
Herb, the day I’m found dead (hopefully not for a long time if my kids have anything to say about it) it’ll be from a stroke right after having read two separate, and completely opposite recommendations from two different sources. This always happens. I’ll read how important something is, then dig in and study it to within an inch of its life, then along comes someone else who will say it’s all wrong and I should probably do just the opposite. Will there EVER be consensus on anything? Aaagh!
Amazing how much woo comes from the comments on an article satirizing woo. Only criticism is ofthe final statement: vaccines are historically not a big money maker for drug companies, which is why they don’t usually put a lot of effort into their research. Chances are that when a vaccine comes around for Covid, it will probably be widely distributed at cost.
James McCurdy: Quite the contrary. Vaccines are enormously profitable. No licensed corporation, and this includes the pharmaceutical industry, makes decisions based upon what is good for the public. They have the fiduciary duty, mandated by law, to make business decisions which potentially maximize profits. Shareholders can and do sue them for failing in this duty. Vaccines are not only enormously profitable they are de jure liability-free in the U.S., and de facto liability-free in many other places, such as the UK. Japan is an exception to this, and Merck is currently at trial in Japan over Gardasil injuries. A team led by Bobby Kennedy has filed suit against Merck alleging fraud in the trials FDA used in its licensing. Read “Doctoring Data,” then read the four Gardasil trial reports published on the CDC website. Gardasil should never have been licensed.
James, I’ve come to the point where I don’t care if they offer the vaccine for free. If there are in fact problems with the vaccines themselves (ie ingredients that may cause more harm than good) then Big Pharma knows it’ll make plenty off all the other drugs they sell for our autoimmune issues, and other side effects etc.
As for my tongue-in-cheek comment about dropping dead after reading completely opposing articles about the exact same Vitamin or drug having very different effects according to the biases of the authors, I still believe there’s a concerted effort to intentionally muddy the waters so that we don’t really know what is true or not. Just look at all the opposing studies done on foods: One shows sugar is bad, one shows it’s fine. One shows eggs are the worst thing we could consume, while one touts its powers as a superfood. Then its red wine (till we read the small print) then it’s chocolate being touted as good till we find out Mars Candy Inc. funds many of those glowing studies. That was the point I was trying to make is that there’s little consensus on anything of import, so we need to somehow figure it all out ourselves, in the end.
A stated aim of GCHQ cyber intelligence is to sow doubt, disinformation and distrust among the ‘enemy’. It’s not a new idea – but can take novel forms.
I watched a video of a conference (perhaps on the reproducibility of science – or similar) in which it was stated by the grave faced panel of speakers that about half the literature is wrong. But they don’t know which half. This is a parallel with the bankers and toxic debts that seem to be assets with complex financial instruments.
Moral integrity is self-honesty that extends as a working practical trust in listening within as well as studying without.
Something that muddies the waters is a binary mindset or either or.
The answer to ‘Is this or that good or bad for you?’, is generally – ‘it depends’.
The mind by itself cannot necessarily account for all the variables but can string together a working model. If we keep in mind it is a model then we don’t invest it with reality.
I have a sense that uncovering our own questions and following them, will unfold our own journey from which we can grow in consciousness and connection – that frames better questions and answers as expression of a more open honest and confident consciousness. Freedom from self-doubt is not fixated self-certainties – but transparency and accountability. How honest we are willing to be is interesting in the light of wanting the same from our institutions, leaders and corporates.
Opening your own relationship with our Sun, can also open knowledge that studies cannot give you. But once you have inner territory of your own experience you have a basis for recognising qualities in others. I feel that relational resonance is the core of communication.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
And meat like bread was much more generic for food in the past.
Sharing your meat made you … mates.
Curiously now we have trouble sharing food – a most ancient communion – because there is so much we don’t eat, cant eat or wont eat. My foreboding is that soon very many of us may be a lot less fussy.
I’m no doctor, but I think Masterjohn is just assuming that there might be an adverse effect at vit D levels over 75 nmol/l (I use English money). The vit D council and so on advise levels nearer 100. Even if ACE2 is increased (if it is) Isn’t it just as likely that those with vit D levels over 75 are completely asymptomatic or don’t get the virus and so don’t figure in the stats at all? We’ll never know.
Hi…you were banging on about D3 last year regarding heart vein functioning and the linings and from that point your two followers this end have taken the vit daily. Also at any opportunity we have exposed ourselves to the sun ( fan 200 C LOl ) and recall you saying that on the balance of probabilities it’s better to get a melanoma ( can often be treated) than risk a heart attack. I burnt myself ragged lying on a lounger in the garden last summer and became a Pimms alcoholic….lol….. Joking apart…your comments are thankfully received and appreciated. Cheers..hic.
lol
Just so. I picked up on vitamin D from the Garland brothers in the US a long time ago. As I recall, in their early years they had noted as they went from Texas to NY that diabetes rates went up. The clue was sunny Texas vs cloudy NY. Since then I have kept up D3 by food, sun & supplement. I have not had a serious bad cold in years, as well as feeling better in so many ways with blood tests to indicate that.
Its great to see you got your sense of humour (sarcasm) back and an excellent article as well. Laughter is excellent medicine as well.
I remember seeing a talk on Blood pressure at a Weston A Price conference years ago and didn’t stop laughing throughout – and funnily still remember most of the content of that brilliant talk to this day.
Keep up the excellent work. Thank you
To be fair to my GP, she tested and picked up on VitD deficiency and recommended 10000iu daily for 3 months and then retested, by which time my levels were normal, if not optimal. Have kept on with around 8000iu since. Plus Vit C and topical magnesium (some vague recollection of advice not to take magnesium with BP meds, plus it’s great on my dry skin). Could only get D3 and K2 together recently, what are benefits of K2?
I think someone has already answered this above, but K2 ‘directs’ calcium to the bones instead of soft tissues, where it can cause havoc!
From what I have gleaned, reading around this subject, K2 enables your body to direct the calcium that you absorb from your diet ( when your vitamin D levels are optimal ) to the bones and teeth rather than to your soft tissues ( i.e. heart and arteries ).
Everything I have read supports what Stephanie says. The main benefit of K2 is to prevent D and calcium from silting up your blood vessels and soft tissues, and directing meinerals to bones and teeth where they belong.
If you don’t mind the cost of a paperback, I recommend Dr. Kate Rheaume Bleue’s book “Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life”.
Very helpful and useful article, once again. I take vitamin. D3 daily, but only 1000iu. Better up my intake I think.
Thanks for an interesting post.
So, if the vitamin D can protect the endothelial cells is it also protective for CVD?
Given that the major source of vitamin D in the population is sunlight, the recent CEBM look at latitude suggesting that it is correlated in the northern hemisphere with deaths and infection rates could be regarded as supportive of this.
An obvious question then is: has coercive lockdown encouraged more time outdoors by making people take time off work or work from home, or has it discouraged it by the lockdown restrictions?
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/effect-of-latitude-on-covid-19/
Update from Queensland, population a bit over five million. Six deaths.
Jillm: That’s a fatality rate among the population of 0.0000012. How many get struck by lightning down there? Surely it’s more than that?
Yes, you’re doing great, mate! 🙂
One point that worries me is that many people seem to assume that being out in the sunshine is enough. But of course the benefit is proportional to the area of skin you expose to the sun. Walking around fully dressed with long sleeves and a hat won’t do much good – especially as the skin of the face is rather less good at making Vitamin D.
Half an hour is enough, provided the sun is hot and high in the sky between May and September. But sunbathing is ideal; wear as little as practical – something like a swimsuit. Better still, half an hour a side. Start with 15 minutes or as long as you can manage without getting pinl or sore, and gradually increase the time.
Yet again, like clockwork, the thought occurs: but the police are preventing people from sunbathing!
It really is as if they were trying to do as much harm as possible. To give them the benefit of the doubt we must invoke Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics:
“The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies”.
Are the police really doing that? I had heard that in London people and police both are just beginning to ignore the restrictions.
In the light of your comment I was interested in what the current official NHS guidance is on how much sunlight exposure is needed (I’d previously looked up their vitamin D guidance in the light of Kendrick’s piece – at the moment they make no mention of vitamin D having any role in reducing viral infections and in relation specifically to covid they currently say: “There have been some news reports about vitamin D reducing the risk of coronavirus. However, there is no evidence that this is the case.”
As for sunlight, the guidance is vague because of the complexities of skin colour and individual variation, and it’s clear they are mostly concerned not to encourage sunburn and risks of skin cancer, but basically they suggest: “Most people can make enough vitamin D from being out in the sun daily for short periods with their forearms, hands or lower legs uncovered and without sunscreen from late March or early April to the end of September, especially from 11am to 3pm. It’s not known exactly how much time is needed in the sun to make enough vitamin D to meet the body’s requirements.”
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/how-to-get-vitamin-d-from-sunlight/
They look at vitamin D directly
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/vitamin-d-a-rapid-review-of-the-evidence-for-treatment-or-prevention-in-covid-19/
seemingly without reference to latitude.
Another latitude link
https://hectordrummond.com/2020/04/28/guest-post-simon-anthony-migration-of-infection/
As an aside…in my humble opinion, the combination of low vitamin D levels and the widespread prescribing of beta blockers is the cause of more falls and broken bones in our old folk than anything else. I use a VitcD spray every day – gets into the system better than a tablet.
Thanks doc, for making sense once again.
In the 80’s infants and toddlers with none white skin were prescribed vit A and D all year round in the Netherlands. Those with white skin were prescribed A and D during part of the year.. Nowadays not so much. It seems that common sense is not that common anymore.
My own mother, like her mother before her, gave her children one tablespoon of codliver oil (vit D) during the months that have an R in the name so from SeptembeR up til ApRil.
And now, during the covid19 panic, we are told by the Dutch government that supplementing with vit D Is woo woo science and firmly belongs in the fake news category. Oh well..
The best way to fight off any disease is a properly working immune system! A good immune system starts at birth with babies born the natural way and then being breastfed. Later on allowed to play in the dirt, play with lots of other kids, get the odd mouthful of dirt, growing up with pets, in short getting a good dose of bacteria and virusses from their surroundings.
Now with covid19 we are forced into isolation,to stay indoors, not to touch others, disinfect hands, countertops etc. thus wrecking our immune system. Being immune is a lifelong process, something you do every day by just living the normal life of a social animal interacting with our environment.
Cheerio, Yolanda
“Now with covid19 we are forced into isolation,to stay indoors, not to touch others, disinfect hands, countertops etc. thus wrecking our immune system. Being immune is a lifelong process, something you do every day by just living the normal life of a social animal interacting with our environment.” EXACTLY
Something that is pointed out toward the end of this video by Dr. Daniel Erickson of Bakersfield, CA that goes thru the scientific numbers about Chines coronavirus globally and in the United States. The scientific data reveals COVID-19 is widespread and the death rates are similar to the normal flu virus. Bird flu and the 2017-2018 U.S. flu virus were more deadly. So why have we been locked up for two months in America?
Mind you that the original, full length video of about an hour has been removed by youtube. Am I glad I always download every youtube video I watch and find interesting with youtube-dl.
Fake news. Google “Covid 19, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi briefing on the medical FACTS”
55 minute video.
In that case I must have misunderstood this tweet:
Maybe more copies have been posted?
I see the video has been taken down now. I must have been lucky to find it just as someone reposted it. So it’s true, YouTube is censoring medical information.
Harry de Boer: Yes. According to my daughter, lots of them. The elites are indeed losing the information war. They are being exposed as the bumbling fools they are.
Insofar as there are bumbling fools I suggest they are expendable ‘fronts’.
IE: after the fact incompetence draws a line with only token culpability.
As for petty regulations being used as the basis for swat teams etc to bring down anything worthy but threatening to the control of the revenue stream – that is ‘strictly legal’ while actively denying legitimate challenge. It generally works, from the POV of defending their turf – and so they don’t care that anyone thinks it stupid. They have effectively captured the regulations that the authorities operate under.
As long as authorities are willing to support thuggery, we suffer it under the law, or by the corporate compliance with powerful lobbies. NOT following orders or complying to threats and inducements can carry penalty.
Worshipping the current form of money as power is giving power to the likes of Blood and Gore to open the Gates of hell. (Ref to new documentary ‘Planet of the Humans’ and our friend Bill).
And this was the address of the video I have been watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLVxx_lBLU it says: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines. And this is the filename of the video I recorded:
[user@videos dan_erickson]$ ls
‘Dr. Erickson COVID-19 Briefing-xfLVxx_lBLU.mp4’
which is the 51 minute video of the press conference.
So apparently Google did indeed remove the video.
“There is an information war going on, and we are losing that war.” — HR Clinton, in the senate
I wonder to whom Hillary was referring to
I don’t damage my hands with disinfectant, we don’t disinfect counter tops, sometimes I don’t bother washing my hands before having lunch if I have been gardening. I’m still alive.
AhNotepad: I do wash my hands after gardening simply because soil doesn’t actually taste all that great. As for disinfecting, not too much of that. Cleaning yes, disinfecting no. In the past fifteen years only two very minor illnesses, one, picked up from the cats (not bats!), in the sinuses, which resolved in 36 hours, and the other, a cold picked up from my daughter, which resolved in 48 hours. Neither of these curtailed any of my normal activities.
Gary, cats in the sinuses sounds traumatic.
The government recommends you swallow some dogs to eat them.
AhNotepad: Traumatic indeed!
Same here, but sometimes the food gets a bit gritty.
Yesterday a free “complimentary” bottle of hand sanitiser was posted through my (and presumably everyone else’s) letterbox.
It struck me that could be a perfect way to distribute covid – remember the American settlers handing out smallpox-infected blankets to the Indians?
Also buying PPE equipment from China.
Paranoid? That ship sailed long ago, It’s obvious now they ARE out to get me – well all of us.
There are a few studies on the ability of viruses to persist in the air, or on surfaces that indicate possible pathways of communication but are there any studies in actual transmission?
I would like to learn more about actual contagion rather than the fear of it given a blanket acceptance. (I don’t give it blanket acceptance).
The largest study on sexual transmission of HIV between sero-pos and neg couples found NOT ONE instance of acquiring HIV – and about a quarter said they did not use condoms. The thing is that the FEAR agenda and its leverage get ‘normalised’ into the social belief and reaction, while facts eventually stand at the door and knock to be allowed in.
Wherever there is unresolved fear, there are magical beliefs operating to mask and defend against it, which persist the fear in more complex rituals of displacement – given priority over a re-evaluation of what is actually happening. Once people have adapted to the social beliefs, they often prefer the ‘devil they know’ rather than risk exposure to change and responsibility.
As for antibacterial mindsets… Perhaps you could take your own with you. Vinegar should do it.
I resonate with the following quote:
“It may shock you to know that all the world’s bacteria have access to a single gene pool, which has provided an immense resource for adaptation, manifesting an array of breathtaking combinations and re-combinations for three billion years! Any bacterium—at any time—has the ability to use accessory genes, provided by other strains, which permits it to function in ways its own DNA may not cover. The global trading of genes through DNA re-combinations provides for almost endless adaptation possibilities. Therefore, what has been done to one has been done to all.
Widespread use of antibacterial agents is both futile and disastrous. Future life sciences and medicine will comprehend the more effective use of agents to stimulate positive adaptation of bacteria resulting in chains of supportive symbiosis. In the presence of love, these positive adaptations naturally occur. In the presence of hatred and fear, negative and resistant strains of bacteria are more likely.
Life forms are ever changing, and yet the basic chemistry of life remains the same. Do not cling to forms that are passing, but seek for an understanding of life that embraces and includes all possibilities. This is accomplished through integrating and expanding patterns and relationships. In this way, you will see God as the creative power of life. When I asked that you love one another, I was not just giving you a recipe for human fellowship. This is the doorway to life eternal.” (The Keys of Jeshua)
Oh oh Are we bringing religion in to the debate ?
The first thing to do to get healthy is to stop listening to government ‘advise’.
Examples: Vit C, D, K2, cannabis (for the Dutch).
Oh, and what about the advise to diabetics to keep eating carbohydrates…
The main difficulty with government advice is trying to work out how much it is influenced by the desire to maximize profits for their pals in business – and how much by the absolute refusal ever to consider admitting they might have been wrong.
Tom Welsh: My general rule of thumb is whatever the government says I do the opposite. Not dead yet.
Dear Dr Kendick,
Have you had a cold or flue since taking vitamin D3 ? Do you know how much vitamin D is produced by the body in 15 min of summer Sun wearing a swim suit. I am trying to work out the Sun exposure required for 4000 IU.
This is a useful calculator to use – although not everyone can produce the same amount as one another (eg age is a factor, as is being overweight etc.)
https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD-ez_quartMED.html
“However, no-one was particularly interested in looking beyond this bare minimum, to try and establish what level of a vitamin is associated with optimal health”.
One might argue that the pharmaceutical and medical industries (as opposed to excellent individual doctors) not only have no interest in “optimal health” but are fundamentally opposed to it. There’s no money in it, and it takes away their profits.
It’s harsh, but true: no man can serve God and mammon, and no man can simultaneously be dedicated to maximinzing health and maximizing profits.
Don’t even get me started on the industrial farming business and those corporations engaged in the manufacture and marketing of “food-like substances”…
Our societies have become utterly focused on money, to the exclusion of humanity.
Turth loud and clear – thanks.
Vitamin D increases the amount of ACE2 on our cells so wouldn’t this increase our risk
of getting infected with the new coronavirus?
Answered above, and no.
Dminder is an app- no affiliation- which tracks sun elevation. Above 50 degrees elevation in the sky there is enough uvb to allow natural vit d production- unless you don’t have the genes. (It’s debatable whether 35 degrees and above is sufficient but anything below is definitely a vit d winter). Social distancing and lockdown is essential to protect our front line health workers but so is getting a sensible amount of sunlight at the right elevation, particularly if you are darker skinned. Otherwise it’s cod liver oil/ mushrooms or a vit d preparation in oil as it is fat soluble and we store it in our fat. We are used to storing it up from the summer so overdosing is not so likely although caution is always warranted. K2 is a good companion if you take calcium as it seems to help absorption into the bones.
Apparently exposing mushrooms to sunlight increases their vitamin D content, in the form of D2 – however, D3 is considered to be more ‘long-lasting’ in the body
“Social distancing and lockdown is essential to protect our front line health workers”
Oh Caroline: this is just one of the many chants of the current religion;
last year, the WHO produced this 70pg document: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf
It said then; that there was little or scientific evidence ….. to support ……. what has been inflicted this year …… how can this be.
Oft-repeated assertions are frequently mistaken for facts.
“more than 50% of the NHS’s 1.4 million employees are themselves overweight and one in four nurses are obese.”
If folks went LCHF, and ditched the carbs, that would “protect” people.
Be careful of what you declaim. History might embarrass.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52436658
Do not cite this as fake just because it’s from the Beeb.
It’s not fake (whatever that means) because it comes from the BBC. I don’t know what you mean by “declaim”, but the report is full of wishy washy messages, either from the NZ authorities or from the reporter. Basically “We have eliminated the virus, we’ll open up the economy, so you can all now still stay home, except if you want to go shopping, but forget any social contact”. See anything illogical in that?
The problem with NZ’s elimination strategy is that it even if they actually have eliminated it in the NZ population, given the infectiousness of the virus it only takes one infected person to start the whole thing all over again. They may have stopped all passenger traffic into NZ, but aircraft and ships are still landing for airfreight and seafreight because the country needs it eg petroleum fuels are imported. It only takes one asymptomatic crewman to infect NZ again.
Infection rates, in practice, are little different from flu, according to Dan Erickson, but then he talks what sounds like parts of rowing boats, (according to some).
“Social distancing and lockdown is essential to protect our front line health workers”.
As others have pointed out, that may be one reason why hospital and surgery attendance is way down. People are maintaining a social distance of several miles from the vitally important “front line health workers”, just to be on the safe side.
Odd, isn’t it, that in the ultra-scientific 21st century, patients are shunning treatment and risking death to protect doctors and nurses.
Tom, that can’t be right. I heard this morning someone on a local radio station discussing what to do about getting a painful tooth dealt with. The advisor said it might be better to soldier on and try clove oil, as going to a hospital will put them under greater strain as they are terribly busy at present. According to my understanding of the situation, someone seems to have alternative facts.
Very good friend of mine had a tooth abscess, which wouldn’t shift after two courses of ABs. Would normally have had root canal but that isn’t possible because of the dental drills causing aerosolisation of saliva, so finally managed to get to one of the London hospital emergency dental centres, where they simply removed her tooth, packed the hole and gave her more ABs to take. Took 12 minutes from start to finish. The dentist and dental nurse wore full protective gear and apparently the treatment room has to be fully cleaned between each dental patient, so they have to allow 1 hour for each patient in a treatment room, so that everything can be deep cleaned in between.
Nigella: Extraction is nearly always a better option that root canal. An implant (ceramic, not metal) is the solution to the gaping hole, but is really expensive. My two cost $6,000 each, a substantial chunk of my life savings. But I have a first-rate dentist, and they are better than the originals (sorry God). Five years of use, no problems.
Gary, I tend to agree re: root canals. My husband was supposed to have one about a year ago and he decided to do some googling to see what the consensus was (he’d already had 2 root canals a couple of decades ago and he lost both teeth, anyway. You’d be right if you guessed the dentist offered no refund for all the money spent on them, too) Now, with so much info on line, he was stunned to see that there’s a good number of dentists and former dentists that say they’re a waste of money and actually unhealthy for us to have. Of course, the official ADA and CDA stance says they’re just great. He chose not to have it and told his new dentist why and he said, “I see you’ve been doing some research on this. No problem, then. We won’t do the root canal.”
As always, people need to do their own googling and make up their own minds, especially when there are strong opinions on both sides of the debate.
Thanks for raising that – I’ve used the app and it’s good. As you say, the sun has to be high in the sky (perhaps 40 degrees above the horizon?) to be able to get uvb.
“An eighth conundrum – one not addressed by Hope-Simpson – is the surprising percentage of seronegative volunteers who either escape infection or develop only minor illness after being experimentally inoculated with a novel influenza virus.”
I have been unimpressed by the evidence in the overall research literature for vit D as the primary reason for seasonality of flu, possibly due to lack of well designed experiments (little or no money to fund these) as opposed to observational lookback studies. And still, even less impressed by evidence for all other hypotheses. I.e. I do not find evidence extant that vit D is NOT the primary cause of seasonality.
The excerpt above from 1st reference is VERY interesting (to me, anyway). I have speculated that CoVID-19 in particular, being very different from flu wrt role of humoral immune response (important for flu and unimportant for CoVID), may not generate antibodies in many immunocompetent individuals who are infected and recover (especially if they recover easily with little or no symptoms). I think that there are likely two reasons, if this is ((yet) to be proven) so:
a. SARS-CoV-2 is apparently an exceptionally weak antigen, at least wrt to humoral response/detection/specificity.
b. Humoral response appears to be relatively unnecessary for, and fairly uninvolved in, success in elimination of endogenous pathogen.
Experienced virologists seem to find this possibility remote only because it has not been verified previously for another virus. But there really has not been much study, at even this basic level, of many viruses other than flu. If one does not look, one does not find.
Another excellent and stimulating post, Dr. Kendrick.
“virologists seem to find this possibility remote” Which possibility ?
If your innate immune system is able to kick out the virus before it can penetrate your cells there’s no reason for your adaptive immune system to create antibodies.
Though I must say that I tend to wonder, after finding the same “thing” (virus?) in lots of people, most of whom are not ill, but some of whom are very ill indeed, whether the “thing” is the causal agent – on its own, at least. Could we be testing for completely the wrong thing? That would also explain a lack of antibodies in people who might be assumed to have had this “thing”.
Wow!!!
Since COVID19 hit the big time I have been trying, with my total absence of medical qualifications, to work out why some people are hit harder by it than others, especially those with ‘underlying conditions’ and the BAME community. Everything to my mind pointed to weak immunity. For many years I have been a strong advocate of aloe vera – I have seen how it can accelerate healing of all wounds, including burns, when applied superficially and how, taken internally, can see off colds and flu and on one occasion almost miraculously cured my 19 year old horse of liver disease, confounding our vet. The horse went on, being ridden, for another 10 years which was notable for a large (17 hand) horse. Aloe vera is believed by some, including me, to support/boost the immune system. There’s a great book on the use of aloe vera written by David Urch, a vet, which is our bible for animal treatment.
My wife was diagnosed as having osteopaenia 18 years ago after breaking her wrist and subsequently, after breaking a toe and fracturing her femur, with osteoporosis. The consultant who performed a second operation on the latter confirmed there was no sign of porosis and her bone was healthy, strong and normal! The reason was we had discovered a new approach to restoring bone density and strength which was a specific non-medical regime which included special exercises, diet, drinking distilled water and taking natural (algae-based) calcium tablets fortified with vitamin D. Our inspiration was an American woman, also diagnosed with osteoporosis some years ago, who developed a regime that avoided the dreadful drugs being offered. Her website is ‘Save Our Bones’. I mention these things simply because there are apparent interconnections as well as being based on challenges to conventional medical saws. Incidentally, I found you when researching statins having been recommended them by my GP. The result is, after reading your book, I binned the pills he prescribed, totally changed my diet (thanks to Zoe Harcombe), started cycling regularly and, at my current age of 75 have a typical BP of 120/78, cycle 10-20 miles a week, have reduced my weight to 13-7 from 15-7 over several years, have no known underlying health issues and feel well enough to want to stare down COVID19! My 6th grandchild was born last Friday and I want to get to know him! All this leads to my question – how do I find a trusted make of vitamin D3 please? Kind regards Mike Ramsay (retired actuary)
Someone I know of (a nutritionist) always recommends a product called “Rositas” cod liver oil capsules, but they work out pretty expensive. I use Cytoplan’s D3 which are ‘grown’ on lichen and are therefore suitable for veggies and vegans, but I always take them with something ‘fatty’ as it’s a fat-soluble ‘vitamin’
My daughter was having terrible indigestion to the point where she went to the doctor (something she’s loathe to do) Of course he prescribed some sort of antacid or something. I can’t even remember now because she never filled the script. I asked her some questions about what she’d been eating and it was a good, low carb diet, with plenty of meat, etc, but she mentioned that she had started taking fish oil again (a well known one, moderately priced, but definitely not cheap) so I started doing some reading and some believe that the vast majority of fish oils are rancid by the time they get to market, often even the ones that are refrigerated and very expensive, and apparently, it’s very difficult to find non-rancid fish oils, cod liver oil, etc.
Anyway, she stopped taking it, just to see what would happen and her indigestion disappeared completely. Now she eats sardines or mackerel and other small fish high in DHA instead, and feels much better. Just thought I’d put that out there in case anyone else experiences digestive troubles from fish oils and capsules..
Rosita pride themselves on extracting their fish oil without using heat or anything that might accelerate rancidity – but it makes their product very expensive (at least for me!) at it works out at something like £34 a month.
https://www.rositarealfoods.co.uk/ratfish-oil-10-ml.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwy6T1BRDXARIsAIqCTXr08rcPdOw95iwJKYkOssVrFqk04lR58Dj7_GfscXkWRPqn0lhH7hkaAhcyEALw_wcB
Thank you, Anglovizzera, I’ll check them out. I’m curious to see how they manage to keep it fresh even with avoiding heat, etc. Fish oil is apparently vary fragile, regardless of extraction methods, but I’ll definitely keep an open mind while looking into it. I’m far from an expert on this (or anything else for that matter..haha.) Thanks, again! 🙂
I agree about fish oil capsules. I opened a few before swallowing them (in fact didn’t swallow them!) All were rancid. We learn these things one expensive lesson at a time.
teedee126: Thanks for that. I wouldn’t advise anyone to take fish oil, or cod liver oil (although the Rosita CLO is properly manufactured and likely OK if stored properly). PUFA go rancid easily if not manufactured or stored properly. Eat fish.
So far our fish van is still coming once a week. As well as the usual salmon I had a special treat – two giant bloaters, so big they almost don’t fit in the grillpan. Somehow after eating one of them I don’t mind the fishy burps.
I also have a selection of excellent local cheeses for the K2. Probably why there was so much longevity around these parts, though maybe not for much longer.
There is no reason to think that you have to worry about ‘trusting’ a company for vitamin D. It’s a basic vitamin that endless companies carry. My only criteria is the base that is used. I would look for one that has either olive oil or MCT (coconut oil) as it’s base.
I like Premier Research Labs vitamin D.
Think they’re only the US?
Great blog – again! “Perhaps I should claim to be making a vaccine, that could earn me billions” – why not ‘vaccinate’ your patients (monthly) with vitamin D3?
Thanks, Dr. Kendrick. A fascinating paper. I, too, have been both sunning and supplementing. Feel great!
I too take 4000iu of Vit D daily along with Magnesium Ascorbate (bio-available Vit C). Some of us absorb nutrients less well than others so intestinal flora might be something to analyse. It would be a mammoth task but good to know what all the victims of Covid-19 have in common. We can’t help but wonder about population control and the role of the WHO in relation to Big Pharma and the invisible powers behind these bodies and government.
I’ve just watched a France 24 half hour piece on YouTube about artemisia which may be a treatment for Covid-19. It treats malaria effectively and appears to be well tolerated but is inexplicably listed as a dangerous substance by the WHO. Maybe because it’s cheap to grow, actually works and could bring much needed income to poor nations such as Madagascar. It’s now banned in France altogether which seems drastic action to take against a herb that, like any medicine, is only dangerous when consumed in excessive quantities.
Wow, I take artemisinin every other week as part of my anticancer regimen, and 10,ooo units of D3. Also K2.
Anna M: Please explain the role of arteminisin in your cancer therapy.
Thank you very much Dr K, I think this is priceless advice.
I have been taking D3 + K2 supplements for a couple of years, and my immune system feels bullet-proof – I encourage people to look at this excellent site, which provides lots of useful information about Vitamin D, amongst many other supplements: https://examine.com/supplements/vitamin-d/
P.S. I note that several career virus-epidemic analysts have publicly stated an expectation that Western industrialized countries (e.g. North America, Western Europe) should be at ~50% exposure by now. I presume that they are using the flu as model, primarily, since measured data for SAR-2 is very little developed yet.
The recently emergent SARS-2-specific antibody testing data in these same countries does not confirm anything close to 50%. BUT if many who have been exposed have not developed antibodies despite easily recovering (and a large # will not have been even aware of infection — that is clear already), then the 50% estimate might be closer to correct than many will conclude. And herd immunity may appear sooner rather than later (as the same epidemiologist also expect). Although the weak role of humoral response for CoVID-19 is a double-edged sword in this respect, and possibly reinfection is more likely than for flu. But even if so, innate immunity subsititutes for adaptive immunity to some extent for those who easily recover. As might cell-mediated immunity (i.e. T cells rather than B cells, which kick into action once cells are invaded).
That is why I have also suggested that cognate-antigenic vaccines may be more important and effective for CoVID-19, from a herd-immunity point of view. I think that all of the various national health officials should be focusing on this more.
Great writing on vitamin D as “medicin”!
I have been on 5000 IU daily for about ten years now. It is a rather cheap supplement.
#metoo (20 years)
Vitamin D is a lot cheaper than cytokine inhibitors such as tocilizumab, but I doubt it will be of much use once Covid-19 CSS has developed. It may though play a role in preventing CSS from developing.
If you’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19 and haven’t been taking vit D supplements, I would take 50,000 IU/day for a week. Plus 10-20 g vitamin C in small frequent doses (down-adjust if ‘bowel-intolerance’ develops).
And zinc sulfate, magnesium, selenium.
I’m not a doctor but in some miraculous way I feel this will surely help.
I can’t even begin to thank you enough for this article, Malcolm. It gave me some good chuckles in the beginning (which my immune system thanks you for) and has utterly convinced me to start taking my d3 again. I had stopped taking any supplements whatsoever, but thankfully, I had enough sense to keep taking the things you say very seriously, because I know you have a very balanced and learned perspective on these things and have helped me a great deal in the past. xo
This is additional research indicating that the ratio of Vit A to Vit D in influenza (https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2013/246737/)
Abstract: Reduced exposure to solar radiation, leading to a deficiency of vitamin D and hence impaired innate immunity, has been suggested as a trigger for influenza viral replication and as an explanation of seasonal influenza. Although this hypothesis accounts for many unexplained facts about the epidemiology of influenza, gaps remain in understanding the pathogenesis and manifestations of the disease. Several observations suggest a role for vitamin A compounds (retinoids) in the disease. This paper presents a new model of the etiopathogenesis of influenza, suggesting that host resistance and susceptibility depend importantly on the ratio of vitamin D to vitamin A activity. Retinoid concentrations within normal physiological limits appear to inhibit influenza pathogenesis whereas higher background concentrations (i.e., very low vitamin D : A ratios) increase the risk of severe complications of the disease. There is also evidence that influenza-induced or preexisting liver disease, diabetes, and obesity worsen the severity of infection, possibly via liver dysfunction and alterations in retinoid metabolism. The model could be tested by determining the presence of retinoids in the secretions of patients with influenza and by studies of retinoid profiles in patients and controls. Potential strategies for prevention and treatment are discussed.
I have been trying to get my head around the concept of ‘herd immunity’, because on the face of it each person is an individual, and if you meet the virus there is some probability P that you will come down with the disease. Yes, if most of your fellows are immune to the disease, you will be protected, because the virus particles can’t propagate, but the first time you actually meet the virus, you have that same probability P of succumbing to it.
If that were true, herd immunity would not occur until a lot of people had become sick. Therefore I wonder if this is the explanation for herd immunity:
If you take in a large number of virus particles, then the immune system can’t ramp up in time to beat the virus as it replicates in the body.
However, if you only breath in one or two virus particles, then the immune system has that bit more time to ‘realise’ what is going on and to deal with the virus before it has replicated to a dangerous level.
Again, if that is true, then we are far better off visiting supermarkets, going out in the sun, chatting to those we meet, and generally behaving in a more normal civilised way.
Does anyone know if herd immunity works that way?
That’s the principle that Dr Sarah Myhill goes by – that by stimulating one’s immune system gently you can still get some kind of immune response going, which is why she suggests using an iodised-salt pipe to ‘attack from the outside in’ (and kill off most viral particles that have been inhaled) and using high-dose vitamin C spread throughout the day to ‘attack from the inside out’ via the cells that may have been infiltrated further inside the body.
A healthy immune system plays a key role here. I can think of no better way to depress an immune system than to take away people’s financial security, imprison them in fear for 23 hours per day, while engendering even more stress via the horror stories churned out by the media.
Don’t read newspapers, don’t watch TV news, don’t listen to “important announcement(s) from the government”. I am developing an auto response when I hear them, and my finget moves swiftly to th OFF switch.
Funny that, AhNotepad; I have exactly the same reaction!
Me too!
Occasionally, I like to argue with the government announcements and berate them for their lack of common sense, logic and economic know-how. Gives me someone to talk to apart from the cat (who is probably way more intelligent)
As long as you don’t worry the cat with virus talk. Give her a little chin-tickle from me.
KJE, I feel like that from time t time, but I now generally find it stressful and nauseating to listen to government announcers spouting shite most of the time.
As the good doctor has pointed out… ‘strain’ and emotional pain is a root cause of “CVD’ / Heart Disease… the presence of which does not bode well for us when yet *anothe8 r stressor, COV is visited upon our now-damaged body.
James DownUnder: Thanks. Very important reminder. I’m coping quite well by maintaining an even sunnier-than-usual disposition, and going out more than usual, but then we don’t have the authorities spying on or harassing people like they are in some places. Mostly people seem to be pretty ho-hum. More people out and about on foot or bicycle than usual, lots of families cycling here to get the kids the hell out of the house. We are in full-bore Spring now, and the days are much too lovely to avoid.
I think you are right on both counts…sort of. Getting a tiny dose is definitely a great thing but that isn’t herd immunity, it’s just a better type of exposure. The herd immunity means enough people are immune that it doesn’t easily spread, but it does not mean that you cannot get it if you come in contact with the wrong person.
Yes but Anna, my point was that if herd immunity means getting enough immune people that you simply stop virus spread by the statistics of how hard it is to find someone that has not been infected, that would mean a lot of infection – say at least half the population, which would in turn translate into a lot of hospitalisations. There must be more to it than that!
David, would it translate to a lot of hospitalisations? Need some justification for this.
A friend who is an authority on Vitamin D supplementation of animals in captivity (not humans on lockdown, though one might argue it’s not so very different!) sent me a copy of the Grassroots article with a recommendation to follow her example and take 4000 IU per day. Which I’m now doing. I can’t help but wonder whether higher Vit D levels from more sunshine also have something to do with the supposed efficacy of the Mediterranean diet and the existence of “Blue Zones”
Is it not true that this vitamin (hormone) is made from cholesterol in your skin when it’s exposed to the sun. That’s why getting enough sunlight is very important for maintaining optimal vitamin D levels.
Yet, if they were to recommend raising D levels they would have to admit to raising cholesterol and sun exposure.
Oh what a tangled web we weave………
…and ceasing the use of cholesterol-reducing drugs like statins?
Could this be why young and middle-aged people (some who don’t even know they have the virus) are dying from strokes?
There’s been observational data from dialysis (clots blocking the machines) and heart doctors that they are seeing a higher incidence of blood clotting with Covid-19, It seems likely that is what is causing the stroke deaths, and why people with heart problems are more at risk.
“are dying from strokes?”
…… there are so many myths out there Margo; endless garbage.
“Oft-repeated claims can frequently be mistaken for facts”: Thomas Sowell.
This is another oft-repeated myth: sorry about that.
Blood clotting which cannot be countered using hi-dose of heparin has been noted in younger poeple. Seems the ‘COVID virus’ can cause clots in micro-vessels as well as larger, where they “normally” occur.
This may be interesting:- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/faulty-blood-clotting-mechanism-may-explain-covid-19-severity#Why-hyperfibrinolysis-may-be-to-blame
And again, another “old” medication shows itself to be useful – Persantine a.k.a. dipyridamole.
Probably wont get through????
This symptom is very similar to that encountered by previous coronavirus vaccine animal experiments that had a great antibody response a similar terrible outcome on exposure to virus in the wild.
Thank you. Dr. Kendrick.
Since having a quad bypass at Xmas, I am very concerned over my health. I saw your comments and Dr john Campbell plus some eminent overseas doctors on the effects of low vitamin levels. The main one being the damage done to the gut wall by low D intake, And I have had IBS previously for 20 years, so I now take a daily dose of the following and I now feel really good and am happy to do 5 mile walks again without adverse effect. I Take. 5000 IU vitamin D3 morning and night, 75 Mg of Aspirin for blood thinning, I was taking Hawthorn berries but found I got a tight chest so went back onto the Aspirin. I take 4000mg of vitamin C I know I wee most of that out again but just for now. 500mg Echinacea, 1000mg Concentrated Fish oil and 530 mg Omega 3. I gave up all the Ramipril, Bisoprolol and the Tricagolor, as I hate chemical medications, and so far so good. I am on a one month holiday from Marine Phyto Plankton but will resume in June. So I thank you for your clarifications and updates. There is far too much scare mongering goin on.
The Covid 19 Truth will never see the light of day, especially as the waste of money on these emergency hospitals when they mostly stand Idle. I have also worked out that induced coma and respirators lead to 80% chance of death. ( My Calculation). So best to take chances of the natural High temperature fever and crossed fingers.
So keep well and all best regards.
Vincent Smalley No reply expected
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
If you take your vitamin C spread out during the day, you won’t be ‘weeing’ most of it out. One easy way is to either use time-release supplements or dissolve ascorbic acid powder in a litre of water and drink a little throughout the day. Of course, purists will say that ‘natural’ vitamin C is best but at the moment ascorbic acid will do the job (I take 5g a day, that’s 5000mg, or a rounded teaspoon of powder)
If you dissolve your vitamin C in water prior to intake, it won’t make much difference buying timed release tablets or powder, except for the price.
‘Natural’ vitamin C is just ascorbic acid. If an animal that isn’t lacking the gene we are missing gets stressed, it produces just that: ascorbic acid, nothing else.
Granted, fruit contains more useful substances than ascorbic acid, but that has little to do with vitamin C.
Exactly – which is why I said “either” use time-release tablets “or” use ascorbic acid powder dissolved in water. I wasn’t advocating dissolving the TR tablets in water…that would be pointless!!
Good for you Vincent!
Thank you very much, Doctor Kendrick. Very good post. I learn so much here!
It has been argued that the authorities would be criminally responsible if they “allow” people to go outside and get infected. Going for the double bind, it could be argued that it is also criminal to not allow people to go outside, because sun exposure prevents infections and cures infections (because raised vitamin d production on the skin, among other effects). Therefore, the authorities have no escape. Let’s rejoice because they are going to be punished!
Just for laughs.
Add to that the fact that many black and “brown” people in the US and Canada live in northern capitals (Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC, NYC, Baltimore). They at a higher risk, but because of the foolish racism going on, the authorities cannot inform clearly to the public, compunding the risk thusly. It has been known for many years that black males living far away from the Equator parallell are at a greater risk of death by CHD. Not one peep about it!
In the last few years, very quietly, doctors have started using vitamin d to prevent disease. It has been done quietly, because big pharma revenues must not be undermined. Doctors and nurses live like prisoners trying to build a tunnel to escape a prisoner camp.
A sad truth in this age of discovery, having lived long enough (81 years), so much darkness has come to the light of day, as my grandmother taught me; “What is done in the dark, will one day come to the light of day”. Ethnic virus targeting goes way back to the 50s and earlier. But as nature is beyond man’s arrogant ignorance, once release, nature reveals man’s folly – but the results, even the most innocent die, children, that is the pain in my heart to this day.
Sir, don’t worry too much, children are barely affected by this virus.
Anonym,
Let’s rejoice because they are going to be punished!
When?
No they are going to be promoted. Lord Ferguson The Saviour, Lord Whitty, I can see it now
Dr. Kendrick, as you are obviously well aware, CoVID-19 seems to be a microvascular condition in many patients with severe complications. I wonder if it is not ALL such patients.
Data is also very early and incomplete, as you also note. CVD seems to be the #1 comorbid risk factor, and T2DM #2, excluding age.
Exponential character of risk vs. age is extraordinary, with those 80+ (in Massachusetts, USA) dominating fatalities. 80+ category includes five times more deaths than 70-79 (in my region), and 70-79 four times more than 60-69, and so forth. Almost all deaths at any age include known case comorbidities.Cardiovascular and endothelial health degrades with age, independently of aging-accelerant factors, and seems to be the most fundamental determinant of mortality in man.
All of this relates to so-called “cytokine storm” IMO. This in turn is likely generated by inadequate immune response relative to vascular function, due to inadequate cellular health (both leukocytes and epithelial tissues), especially in lung microvasculature. Immunosuppressive/antiinflammatory medications will not solve the problem in general, although some patients might “get lucky”.
Wrt role of 25-hydroxy D status, a study of relatively young and nominally healthy CoVID-19 patients might be most sensitive/specific, minimizing the larger (IMO) confounding role of cellular health in lung.
Do you think that microclotting is the key feature of CoVID-19 ARDS?
“All of this relates to so-called “cytokine storm” IMO…”
As I point out in another comment below, Ken, the fine article pointed to by Dr Kendrick includes this startling passage:
“Thus, vitamin D appears to both enhance the local capacity of the epithelium to produce endogenous antibiotics and – at the same time – dampen certain arms of the adaptive immune response, especially those responsible for the signs and symptoms of acute inflammation, such as the cytokine storms operative when influenza kills quickly”.
As the article was about flu and was published in 2008, I was surprised (to say the least) that it refers to cytokine storms as being characteristic of flu when it “kills quickly”.
Every day the gap between Covid-19 and plain vanilla flu shrinks a little further…
This is another killer quotation from the fine article:
“Over the last 20 years, why has influenza mortality in the aged not declined with increasing vaccination rates?
“Given that influenza vaccines effectively improve adaptive immunity, the most likely explanation is that the innate immunity of the aged declined over the last 20 years due to medical and governmental warnings to avoid the sun. While the young usually ignore such advice, the elderly often follow it [87, 88]. We suggest that improvements in adaptive immunity from increased vaccination of the aged are inadequate to compensate for declines in innate immunity the aged suffered over that same time”.
That’s a very good point!
Hi Ken:
“cytokine storm”; there are these sort of buzz phrases zooming around; people seem to love them;
they sort of imply our little chum the corona has mystical powers: sort of like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Activation of these various cascades has been talked and written about since the 1980s: it is the host, not the bug that surely matters.
what is different is; as Nina Teicholz has pointed out; is that by and large folks have followed the mad dietary guidelines, first of the USDA; then of those in the UK etc, who just parrot what the americans do.
So folks carb-load; get fat; get diabetes; get fatty liver; get heart disease; and work by Phinney and Volek shows carb-loaders have much higher levels of inflammatory markers; so rather like walking around with primed grenades, they are ready to explode when triggered.
“Do you think that microclotting is the key feature of CoVID-19 ARDS?” Who will ever know Ken, and does it matter? You can’t do anything about such things; how can we discover; we need an animal model of fatness and diabetes, with fatty liver and heart disease thrown in, to start to see why the illest in US and Europe seemed to do not so well.
“Almost all deaths at any age include known case comorbidities.” …. and to be honest Ken; we are seeing so much discussion of your wonderful impartial authorities fiddling numbers; classifying everything as corona: “fell off a stepladder? ….. well it is obviously corona … sign him up boys ..”
We can’t really be sure of any of the numbers: died of .. died with .. if you have a test, you get a positive; if you don’t test .. rhinovirus .. RSV … retrovirus …… you don’t get a result .. you find what you want ……. shove a swab up their nose as they die of pancreatic cancer; well, whadayaknow …. it’s corona. Sign em up.
Thank you! The Vit D hypothesis has been messing with my head since I saw the first BMA article about darker skinned medics being more affected – and only social determinants of health given as the reason. Couldn’t understand why medical fraternity wasn’t making the link. I found many other possible threads – eg if one looks death rates geographically – much lower in Southern hemisphere; role of Vit D in blood clotting – there are papers linking deficiency to DVT, vit D mediating immune response. I just hope medical fraternity will soon start testing the more serious hospitalised patients’ Vit D levels and supplement as necessary. Can do no harm, but it might very well help.
Yes, me too. The explanation that those ethnicities tend to live in larger family groups and therefore were more ‘exposed’ didn’t make sense as it was usually only one family member that died or had the disease knowingly.
Dr David Grimes, consultant gastroenterologist in Blackburn, has written extensively over many years about the importance of vitamin D in health, and over the past month written several posts in his blog about the importance of vitamin D against Covid-19 and why some many BAME health professionals have died, and why there is a higher percentage of BAME patients are in ICU compared to the percentage of BAME people in the population, why Somali’s in Sweden are more critically ill with Covid-10 and why so many people died in Lombardy in Italy (pollution obscuring sun and so low vitamin D levels).
http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-and-immunity-important.html
http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2020/04/covid-19-vitamin-d-and-ethnicity.html
http://www.drdavidgrimes.com/2020/04/vitamin-d-and-doctors-in-uk-dying-from.html
Dr Grimes describes himself on Twitter thus: “physician / gastroenterologist not quite retired.maintaining an active interest in all things medical esp vitamin D and the absurdity of the cholesterol story.” !!!
Read an article, not recalling at the moment, that stated; ‘Who is dying’ of this label coronavirus. Now I’m learning it does tag the older generations, dark skin people, like myself, and Asians, this is a generation an ethnic device, not to be seen as ‘racial’ as that word carries to much baggage. Although there are obvious dark schemes as these epidemics seem to have a now traceable footprints.
Dear Doctor Kendrick, thank you, once again for being a sane voice in the wilderness and especially for speaking out against the deceit within the current narrative.
Please keep it coming! Your effort and time is hugely appreciated.
Always question ‘the narrative’. Especially where it comes from.
Yes it’s like two different planets. There’s The Narrative and then there are facts and data, obtainable currently from numerous sources
https://hectordrummond.com/
https://lockdownsceptics.org/
and even
https://www.cebm.net/oxford-covid-19-evidence-service/
Posting test!
… Great writing on vitamin D as “medicin” – preventive and clinical!
On Sulfated D3, from researcher Dr. Stephanie Seneff:
“The skin produces vitamin D3 sulfate upon exposure to sunlight, and the vitamin D3 found in breast milk is also sulfated. In light of these facts, it is quite surprising to me that so little research has been directed towards understanding what role sulfated vitamin D3 plays in the body. It is recently becoming apparent that vitamin D3 promotes a strong immune system and offers protection against cancer, yet how it achieves these benefits is not at all clear. I strongly suspect that it is vitamin D3 sulfate that carries out this aspect of vitamin D3’s positive influence. ”
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/sulfur_obesity_alzheimers_muscle_wasting.html
Dr. K,
At about 40 min in Stephanie start talking about sulfur and glyphosate’s role in heart disease, if you are time sensitive and want to skip to this spot to verify her knowledge.
The whole video is worth watching.
Soooo much info on Vit. D, sun exposure, glyphosate poisoning, just a wealth of knowledge.
I can’t recommend watching this video enough, or any video with her, she is amazing in her research.
Locked down in Greece getting lots of natural vitamin D
Most tanned I’ve been in many years so hopefully natural vitamin D levels are high, but still taking daily supplements of D, C, and zinc and advising everyone we know to do the same.
Funnily, it’s those with most exposure to mainstream medicine who seem to be most resistant to this suggestion, even though it would appear to have no downside. Loved the subtle sarcasm of one death/year. Possibly related to injecting Dettol along with the IV vitamin C.
It would be nice to see if anyone could check vitamin C and D levels of patients, to compare those who are ill and those who are mildly or non-symptomatic. Blood will be being taken all the time a patient is in hospital to check multiple parameters. Believe me, I’m a doctor and I know how much blood and how many tests are done. Surely it would be easy to add vitamins C and D and see if there is a correlation between levels and degree of illness. Not rocket science but the resistance to anything sensible is frightening.
I note that IV vitamin C is being given in various places with significant good effect but it rarely makes headlines.
Anyway, I will continue to add to my vitamin D levels and trust that’ll stand me in good stead when I eventually contract the virus, as I’m sure we all will. We’re only delaying it by locking down.
Incidentally, am I alone in noting that the WHO says that having antibodies doesn’t necessarily mean you’re immune to Covid. The logical corollary to that is that the thousands of pregnant women who I have reassured about their immunity to rubella may not be as safe as they believe .
Or is there something about a positive serology test that I don’t know? Surely positive antibodies means immunity? That’s the whole basis of vaccination as we are constantly told.
Not an argument I want to get into.
Keep well, Malcolm. We GPs need to have something to believe in, not just Bill Gates
I find the role of the WHO highly suspicious. If I said more about the background of this Ghebreyesus this post would probably be moderated away for libel.
Thanks for the pointer to the Virology Journal article “On the epidemiology of influenza”. It is very thought-provoking.
In particular, I noticed the following passage:
“Thus, vitamin D appears to both enhance the local capacity of the epithelium to produce endogenous antibiotics and – at the same time – dampen certain arms of the adaptive immune response, especially those responsible for the signs and symptoms of acute inflammation, such as the cytokine storms operative when influenza kills quickly”.
Everything I have read about Covid-19 and cytokine storms has suggested that they are unique to this particular virus, and contribute to making it far deadlier than ordinary flu.
Imagine my surprise to find that the authors of the article describe cytokine storms as characteristic of flu!
Here is a challenge; will someone please address what we of poor/low incomes, no or very limited discretionary funds suppose to do. We are a household of three adults, 37, 66, 81 in ages, dark skinned. I (husband) expose as much skin to sunshine 15 minutes while walking the dog, eat dark leafy vegetables, citric fruits, little fish, less chicken, and know of dietary and medicinal foods such papaya fruit and leaf extract, malungay leaves for veggie and tea, camote leaves (sweet potato leaves) for veggie and tea and such. I post this hoping it to be a kick start to begin an inclusive discussion with the poor to meet this and ever evolving novel virus type epidemics. Retired and learning to survive in the Philippines. Shared in good faith (;
As far as vitamin D is concerned, you have to be in the midday sun, little clothing on, and depending on where you live you might only be able to make D in one season, summer. Vitamin D supplements are very inexpensive also.
Thanks for your reply to vitamin D concern and being advised the supplement is very inexpensive, will check it availability in my local Philippine area. Everything here is determined by availability.
Vit D isn’t that expensive. Betteryou do a 3000iu spray which is 1 spray daily and there are 100 sprays in container costing £8.45.
NMartinez, vitamin D is fat soluble. You might be getting a good range of minerals from the veggies you mention but there’s no evidence of vitamin D in your foodlist – especially if the fish is white and the chicken is naked breast.
Thanks for reply.
Cheezilla and NMartinez: High-quality food is widely available in the Philippines, in my experience, and not costly, vegetables grown in volcanic soil. I would suggest adding pork and lard. Both contain about 1 IU/g, and the pigs in the Philippines are fed coconuts, a very good thing for them to eat. Also, a wide variety of seafood. But most of all, sun exposure is crucial. Vitamin D can be made year-round in the tropics. Not too much. There is a strong prejudice in the Philippines against any and all sun exposure, yet people are outside quite a bit (more than anywhere I’ve ever seen). Now, though, it must be weird there to see empty streets, if that is the case.
If you live in the Philippines you can get free vitamin D3 from the sun. 20 minutes with bare arms and legs is sufficient for most people., if very dark skinned maybe 30 minutes. The sun is our friend but do not go out in the sun during 12 to 2 noon as the sun would burn your skin.
As an addition to your diet I would suggest eggs but don’t know how expensive they are where you live? Why do you eat not much fish and chicken? Too expensive? You need good quality protein but if fish and chicken are out of your budget try eggs and lots of them.
Cheerio, Yolanda
Hi Yolanda; I enjoy your spirited contributions.
“but do not go out in the sun during 12 to 2 noon as the sun would burn your skin.”
that may be so if you are a little pale dutchie, living in smoggy Holland; but if you are dark-skinned as Martinez would seem to be: I would say get a good tan in the midday sun!
Melanoma and all the other cancers come from sugar/ glucose and not from sun; folks can grow melanoma inside their abdomens!! Explain to me how the sun causes that!! (Yet another secret hidden from you).
Terry Wright,
Is that a “little pale” or “a little, pale Dutchie”?
The Dutch ARE the tallest people in the world
Perhaps, but my Dutch grandmother was only 5 ft 4″. OK, taller than me or my mother but not exactly tall.
Hi Terry and all,
It is only mad dogs and english men that stay out in the midday sun. Other people not so much. 😅
And who are you calling a little pale Dutchie? * walks off in a huff* 😄
Yes, it is not the sun that is causing melanoma as many are found on places where the sun don’t shine. Erm, I could have phrased that better perhaps but a chuckle a day keeps the doctor away.
I have read that on the contrary the sun helps prevent melanoma. Makes sense, doesn’t it? We are creatures of this earth, forged by evolution during eons of time and made to thrive on this earth. And we do, there are 7 billion of us so our design is a good one. OK, we are overdoing it a bit by becoming a little too succesful but mother nature knows how to solve that little problem as well. But I digress.
We are living in a society where we are constantly made afraid of that which is necessary to sustain healthy human life.
1)Cholesterol, well the doc has waxed lyrically about this for yonks so we can skip it as we all know the drill by now,: cholesterol is our friend!
2)the sun will give you skin cancer routine – which is a lie,
3)Vit D3 doesn’t help your immune system – yes, it does,
4)fat is bad – no it isn’t, you need it to stay healthy. There are 3 macro nutrients but only 2 are essential for us: fat and protein.
5) carbohydrates are essential for human health, no they are not, they are optional. Carbs are only essential for making huge profits by BigFood.
And I could go on and on about how we are lied to on a daily basis about pretty much everything, covid19 anyone?, but I won’t.
Cheerio, from a sunkissed Dutchie,
Yolanda
I eat an egg for breakfast, will do a little more eggs, fish and chicken (they have their toxins too). These foods are expensive but they are high priority in spite of cost, and I’ll get cod liver oil as suggested in comments, may look at mushrooms too (maybe). Recording details from comments; naturally.
2013 typhoon ‘Yolanda’ killed thousands here. Doing my part to keep coronavirus storm from close family damage as is possible. Thought maybe you might smile with name (Yolanda) association.
Eggs are great, they really are a superfood. Also very good is beef liver but not many people like it. Liver is also not that expensive.
In my country tinned/canned fish is not expensive. Very good is cod liver, sardines and mackerel. All very nice in a salad.
Thanks for making me laugh about a namesake.
Cheerio, Yolanda, not a typhoon
Yolanda: In the Philippines it would be pork liver; not quite as nutrient dense, and milder in flavor, but a very good food to eat. Dinaguan is a Filipino dish made with organ meat and cooked in pork blood. Yum!
To get the correct solar wavelength it is actually important to go out in the sun between 12 and 2! At that time about 10 mins is all you need. Other wavelengths can give you sunburn if you stay out too long.
I don’t feel well qualified to answer you nmartinez but being happy is important too, and you both have lovely smiley faces. The Philippines has lots of sugar, eh? – definitely something to avoid if you can!
I do avoid sugar. Thanks for your reply and to all the others too. Keeping notes on all of this. I’ll have to look into the vitamin rich foods, if there are any, and maybe cod-liver oil too. I was born 1938 and given cod-liver oil too. In those days it was normal to get measles, chicken pox, mumps, polio shots or cubes (forget which one). Vaccines have crippled natural herd immunity but has made a billionaire class to lead us into hospitals that now kill us openly – the latest news from NYC my place of birth.
Avoid the sugar. Even if you’re not overweight. That means no 3-in-1, no Milo, no Philippine bread (which seems to be soaked in sugar) and no Cola/Sprite.
Reduce the Filipino chicken and pork as they are fed a suspicious brew of manufactured food, eat more beef instead which mostly is pasture fed.
If possible eat no rice. Eat more eggs and coconut oil. Tomatoes and pitchay seem affordable too. Make them into a salad with some onion and garlic, and oil, salt, pepper, stevia–if available.
You’re on the ketogenic diet now and that’s known for improving your bio-markers, especially insulin resistance and lipid profile, quite rapidly.
Insulin resistance I think makes you also very vulnerable for this Covid thing.
If you have time listen to Ivor Cummins (‘fat emperor’) on youtube.
Sugar, soda, pork crossed off my list. Onion, garlic I love with a passion. Eggs I will have to increase eating for the time being. Thanks for your sharing comment.
My wife and I have been taking vitamin (hormone!) D2 for more than a decade, she to help prevent familial osteoporosis, I because of a cracked rib from splitting firewood due to osteopenia. Neither bone issue has progressed since.
If my wife gets that rare cold, it’s gone in three or for days.
My colds aren’t so rare and last a month or more. People respond differently I guess.
I’ve also been wondering if that daily dose of 4,000 IU might be responsible, at least in part, for my 1,640 CAC score. Yeah, I’ve been taking mag and K2 and all the other “co-factors” yer s’pose ta – from the start.
Nice to think it’s a COVID shield also. No handy way to do a formal scientific trial, though
D3 is better
Yeah, Neil. Good catch. I meant D3. D2 is the synthetic stuff
I have been sing vitamin D3 drops (in extra virgin olive oil) in the winter for several years. This year i continued to take it and I will carry on until all this is over.
Thank you
I find it hard to believe that each year the flu, which usually comes in the fall and goes thru the winter, and part of spring, is never associated with sunlight, which of course is related to vitamin D. Quite amazing that the association is ignored and only flu shots are recommended. That should tell you quite a lot about what medicine is really about.
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting – and I have been taking vitamin D for some weeks now! (I have a horrible tendency to forget that there is some in the cupboard that I have every intention of taking. But this has given me an almighty kick.)
My real reply, though, is to ask what people should do if they are intolerant to vitamin D supplementation?
They have tried D2, D3, in oil, as a tablet, medium doses, tiny doses, too scared to try big doses, with K2 and without. Tried sprays. Smeared oil from D3 capsules onto skin.
Someone I know has tried it all. And every single attempt has failed by making her feel ill.
No known kidney disease. No known issues with calcium levels.
Vitamin D intolerance seems to be ignored by all the vitamin D gurus and proponents. No-one picks up the challenge and provides an answer. About the only thing that anyone has ever suggested is getting a UV lamp (or, when the sun is out, exposing skin). Which is fine as far as it goes.
It would help just having some understanding as to what underlies this intolerance.
Has she tried butter? It’s great whizzed into black coffee using a blender – tastes like a latte.
Cheezilla: Yes! I put it, along with salt, in my bone broth, stirring a bit, and sometimes eat a whacking big chunk with a meal; goes down so smoothly. I’m capable of eating a pound of butter a week.
A regular consumer of butter.
But at 17% of daily vitamin D requirement from 100 grams of butter, it would need a huge intake to achieve good levels!
Perhaps that is part of the reason she isn’t even worse off, vitamin D-wise, than she might otherwise have been?
One possibility might magnesium deficiency as magnesium and vitamin D work together.
Has magnesium in the cupboard right now.
Taking, or not taking, magnesium appears to make little difference. Unfortunately.
I guess the Orange Man looks the way he does from sitting under a UV lamp. As for supplements making people feel ill, a lot of the cheaper ones are synthetic versions which may be something that is less tolerable? Rositas cod liver oil is made from very pure fish oils and Cytoplan’s D3 is also natural. Maybe try one of those?
When I listed what she has tried, I shortened it considerably.
Not convinced that lichen is automatically and inherently more natural than sheep lanolin exposed to light!
Trouble is, she feels terrible, very quickly, regardless the product used. If it were her fault for using a poorer quality supplement, you might expect some differences one to another?
According to Cytoplan, their vegan vitamin D3 is “derived from cholicalciferol from lichen” which is already in the D3 form. So it’s not really the same as using sheep lanolin and artificially creating vitamin D3 in that. Also, some people have a lanolin allergy which may affect them if it’s taken internally, perhaps?
Happy to believe it is not the same. But in what way? I like to understand what the differences are.
Yes, allergy to lanolin, or something commonly found in lanolin, is quite possible.
Have you tried a UV lamp ?
Yes.
It might have helped vitamin D levels but there were other issues which makes it not satisfactory.
Sensible sun seems the only effective approach until she finds something else.
This has been going on for years and years.
Everyone is an individual with completely different lifestyles. Sometimes being dehydrated affects how people respond to certain things and being dehydrated can also affect histamine response- just some ideas to consider.
Thank you, I take 10,000 IU vit D most days, but not all, and a fair amount of vit C. Your article will make me look more closely at D.
Spot on. No worries. The truth will out.
Isn’t Vitamin D is created from cholesterol so how many of those that have died were on a statin or this just more nonsense
Mark: It is indeed, that is, the vitamin D made in the skin; the molecules are nearly identical. So it would seem taking a statin must make it more difficult to maintain good vitamin D status. Stephanie Seneff has an interesting paper on her website (which I heard as a lecture) explaining the importance of this-that it is the sulfated form of vitamin D made from the sulfated form of cholesterol. The sulfate makes it both lipophilic and hydrophilic-fat soluble and water soluble, and thus more easily transported in the body.
thanks Mark; you spurred me to look up Vit D in wikipedia; it is fascinating how these articles are “cleansed”: we on this forum would all say: Vit D is made from CHOLESTEROL in the skin.
Oh no, not in wikipedia; sort of “birds and bees” stuff; there is no detail; we don’t mention that terrible word CHOLSTEROL in public; just too embarrassing.
So it would seem cholesterol goes to 7-dehydro-cholesterol and thence to Vit D: a single chain in a benzene ring is broken open in 7-DHC: and hey presto: 7-dehydro-cholesterol becomes Vit D
look mum, no hands!! ……. no atoms added or taken away ……. just cleave a benzene ring and Vit D magically appears!!
……. but DO NOT tell anyone where it comes from!! …… just keep taking the statins ….
I have thought that too Mark! I always thought that sunlight effect on the skin turned cholesterol into vit D but maybe it is not that straight forward, I don’t know.
As long as you don’t worry the cat with virus talk. Give her a little chin-tickle from me.
Posted this in the wrong place. Sorry. Unless you have a cat Mark?
How many of those who died were on a statin? Well, they’re not gonna ask that question are they? Might get the wrong answer. There’s money in them thar statins!
Mark, good point!
Some incisive thoughts on our approach to COVID by the guy who pointed out that virtually half of medical treatments/ procedures in general practice before he wrote his book were
INEFFECTIVE or HARMFUL.
So, he’s not bound up by the Establishment he works in.
(He doesn’t mention D. He talks of the importance of paying attention to alternative ideas.)
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/27/hear-scientists-different-views-covid-19-dont-attack-them/
The book:
https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/ending-medical-reversal
I agree with you Dr. But you do not go far enough. Regular D3 supplements of 2000-4000 IU will take several weeks to build up the needed blood levels.
Traditionally, this problem has been solved by high dose intravenous injections, up to 600,000 IU at a time. Fortunately, it has been shown that the oral route is also highly effective. High dose vitamin D therapy, termed Stoss therapy has been used, especially for old people, for a long time in some countries. It is much easier in the care homes to give one injection a year, or provide one dose of liquid each year. Others have suggested spacing this a little, such as 50,000 weekly for 6+ weeks, then a maintenance dose.
See for instance a report that Vitamin D levels can be greatly improved in as little as 3 days.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/95/10/4771/2835274
“….In this study, we evaluated the effect of a single very large oral dose of cholecalciferol (600,000 IU) on serum levels of 25(OH)D and other calciotropic hormones in young subjects with vitamin D deficiency. Our results demonstrate that an oral dose of 600,000 IU of cholecalciferol is able to rapidly increase serum 25(OH)D levels in patients with severe vitamin D depletion. A peak of 25(OH)D concentration was already attained as soon as 3 d after vitamin D administration, probably due to the strikingly higher dose employed compared with previous reports (20). Remarkable increments of 25(OH)D serum levels were also attained at 3 days when 300,000 IU of cholecalciferol were given to elderly subjects.”
(Cipriani C et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab, Oct 2010 95(10):4771-4777. Effect of a single oral dose of 600,000 IU of cholecalciferol on serum calciotropic hormone in young subjects with a vitamin D deficiency: A prospective intervention study)
What a great name that is, ‘calciotropic hormone’! 🙂
And yes, if you kick a system hard enough it will give a greater response.
You have made my day. I tweeted about the essence of this article about 5 days ago, even mentioning the dark skin connection and took some sneering remarks/tweets from those who seemingly trust everything to big Pharma
Well, smartersig, you go on doing what you are doing; and let them go on doing what they are doing; and see who lives longer.
You needn’t actually dance on their graves. Just read the announcement and smile gently.
Thank you Dr Kendrick. I like the book Light and Health by John N Ott very much. https://www.bookdepository.com/Health-Light-John-N-Ott/9780898040982
Thanks Dr Kendrick for the info. luckily I have been telling my wife and grown up children for a few years about getting a good amount of vit D (and all the others vits) They have slowly been upping their levels and taking my advice – getting in the sun when possible too. I also have to give credit to Dr. Michael F. Holick his videos (YouTube) first switched me on to the importance Vit D. There are many more good videos out there. Here is a starting point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP81YMvs4yI
Another great article: thank you Dr Kendrick. I have two thoughts on this. One is the regulatory restrictive advice to only spend one hour outside exercising, when sunlight does seem to be the best access to vitamin D3, especially for those who have no gardens to increase their daily exposure…. social distancing is clearly important and perhaps that is the message that should have been asserted rather than simply restrictive movement. As in other issues, we are being treated like irresponsible adults or uncontrollable children who need simple and draconian messages… don’t question, just do as we say. Secondly, Kate Rheume Bleue in her fascinating book about Vitamin K2 asserts that this vitamin, with scarce availability in our unsupplemented diets, is crucial to maximise D3, Calcium and Vitamin A. I would be very pleased to hear your views on this if you would turn your attention there, Dr Kendrick…. Please continue to keep us so entertainingly informed!
Janice Meakin: Thanks for spelling Dr. Kate’s name! I’ve written it down. I don’t have her book because I attended a full morning lecture she gave in Indianapolis.
Actually, it’s Kate Rheaume Bleue.
Someone (was it you Soul) once recommended looking at John N Ott’s work (Health and Light). Ott carried out his own home experiments with light on plants and animals and concluded that we all need the full spectrum to flourish. So when we get natural UVB light we are getting benefit from other rays too.
I’m thinking that most of us following this blog probably eat plenty of animal products, so won’t we be getting sufficient vitamin K2?
Tish: Very good question. K2 is made from K1 by bacteria in the guts of both ruminants and humans alike. It does seem all the concentrated vegetables we eat would give us sufficient K2, but I have no idea whether this is true or not. Partly it would depend upon the composition of the gut micro-biome in the humans; the cattle are probably in good shape on that score if they’re eating grass. Would be interesting to find out. I’ll have a search, once I’ve read the hundreds of comments!
Tish: Good info on K2 here:
https://www.drstevenlin.com/what-are-the-richest-food-sources-of-vitamin-k2/
I think we’re in good shape, we concentrated vegetable eaters, but get your egg yolks from the Netherlands, if possible. Chris Masterjohn has written a great deal about the metabolic inter-relationships of vitamins A,D, and K2. Worth a read. Dr. Kate, too (I am always flummoxed trying to spell her surname, but the initials are R-B). Canadian, she is. Heard her lecture in 2014, and ate some provided disgusting natto, a very rich source.
Many thanks Gary
It is my understanding that chicken, beef, eggs only are a source of vit K2 if the animal has been able to eat grass. Nowadays it’s mostly corn so I doubt their products will contain much K2.
What about deer meat? They are not primarily grass eaters but browsers, like goats.
Anna M: Indeed. It seems like leaves are chocolate cake to a deer. Last year I watched a (mule deer) doe pick up a perfectly dry, brown dogwood leaf lying in the trail and chew it up.
Organic grass-fed is best by far. Modern industrial “farming” is not just disgusting, hideously cruel and heavily polluting; it turns out meat that looks and tastes OK, but is far less healthy.
If you want chapter and verse (and have a strong stomach) read the book “Farmageddon”.
Good title, eh? Enjoy it, because there’s very little in the book to smile about.
I would like to make an analogy..
Your screen door is open…
Who can get in?
A thief who just wants to steal your TV
Think herpes virus ( cold sore)
Or…
An axe murderer who wants to kill your whole family
Think Ebola virus…
The key is to shut and lock the door..
You do this by boosting YOUR immune system.
Ionized calcium in the tissues keeps the door shut and locked..
Think Calcium Lactate
Vitamin F
Vitamin C complex
The above alerts the phagocytes to kerp the door shut…old news from a doctor they (AMA and government ) locked up on more than one occasion.
Get smart
Unfortunately there is no proof that Vitamin D supplementation protects against influenza. The data are inconsistent. Here is for exapmle bigger study showing no benefit:
Loeb, M.; Dang, A.D.; Thiem, V.D.; Thanabalan, V.; Wang, B.; Nguyen, N.B.; Tran, H.T.M.; Luong, T.M.; Singh, P.; Smieja, M.; et al. Eect of Vitamin D supplementation to reduce respiratory infections in children and adolescents in Vietnam: A randomized controlled trial. Influenza Other Respir. Viruses 2019, 13, 176–183.
Vitamin D blood concentrations are just markers of sun exposure. So most probabliy only sun is benefitial.
Maybe
I came to that conclusion but recently have rowed back from it. If as in your chart it shows blood concentrations of above 30 being protective and as it is measuring blood levels then surely it does not matter how you got to that level or it would not be as obvious a marker? But if I remember correctly it is so much easier to get mega safe doses of Vit D of over 100,000 in half an hour with plenty of skin exposed. Go figure why would we generate so much in such a short space of time, if we really did not need too? The body would have to work harder to deal with this huge inflow and the body is super efficient and would not waste energy if there was not a bloody good reason.
Go figure #body amazing 😉
Janusz, from the final line of results from your study: “When considering all respiratory viruses, including influenza, the effect of vitamin D in reducing infection was significant, HR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.66-0.99.”
thanks Chad for spurring me to look this up: this forum is great; open access article: great, so one can read;
I was interested too in this article, looking at Vietnamese kids that
“The mean baseline serum 25- hydroxyvitamin D levels were 65.7 nmol/L and 65.2 nmol/L in the intervention and placebo groups, respectively, with an increase to 91.8 nmol/L in the vitamin D group and no increase, 64.5 nmol/L, in the placebo group.”
So if we are all talking the same units, the levels of 60) running around outdoors in the Vietnamese sunshine?
“non- influenza respiratory virus infection occurred in 146 (22.5%) in the vitamin D group and in 185 (28.5%) in the placebo group”
So some improvement there; our attention is being drawn to dark-skinned folks; in northern climes; and whether they (and the indigenous pop of those climes) are at risk.
I have no medical training – but from what I can deduce from the results of this study:
Effect of Vitamin D supplementation to reduce respiratory infections in children and adolescents in Vietnam: A randomized controlled trial.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Influenza+Other+Respir.+Viruses+2019%2C+13%2C+176%E2%80%93183.
The study says:
When considering all respiratory viruses, including influenza, the effect of vitamin D in reducing infection was significant, HR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.66-0.99
CONCLUSION:
Vitamin D supplementation did not reduce the incidence of influenza but moderately reduced non-influenza respiratory viral infection:
My take on this result would be – Vit D wont give you immunity to an influenza virus – but will allow the correct functioning of your immune system to get on top of defeating the virus better than someone deficient in Vit D.
The upper levels of Vit D achieved in the test group – 91.8 nmol /L (36.72ng/ml) is still just below the recommended level given by:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/vitamin-d-whats-right-level-2016121910893
“2011, the respected Endocrine Society issued a report urging a much, much higher minimum blood level of vitamin D. At that time, their experts concluded: “Based on all the evidence, at a minimum, we recommend vitamin D levels of 30 ng/mL, and because of the vagaries of some of the assays, to guarantee sufficiency, we recommend between 40 and 60 ng/mL for both children and adults.”
I used the conversion table:
https://unitslab.com/node/84
Often such critical conclusions are published, but the investigations are not always done properly.
For example, one would have to take about 4000 iu of Vitamin D3 for a year or two, along with K2, magnesium and adequate dietary Vitamin A. Then you should see benefits.
But scientists often give research subjects much smaller amounts, or the wrong type (e.g. Vitamin D2), and usually alone – without the other nutrients that are synergistic.
My favourite example was given by Linus Pauling, who told about a TV interview he had with a critic who was a famous scientist. They discussed Pauling’s recommendations for Vitamin C, and the other guy said that he had tried Pauling’s recommendations and he experienced no benefits at all.
On the way out of the studio, Pauling asked the guy exactly how much Vitamin C he had taken. (Pauling recommended 6 grams/day, and much more as soon as an infection appeared).
The guy shrugged and said, “Obviously I didn’t take as much as you suggest. That would be ridiculous”.
Looking at a couple of other studies, it seems that low vitamin D is bad, adequate vitamin D is good, extra vitamin D is a waste. (But don’t ask me what an “adequate” level is.)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28719693/
Effect of High-Dose vs Standard-Dose Wintertime Vitamin D Supplementation on Viral Upper Respiratory Tract Infections in Young Healthy Children
“Conclusions and relevance: Among healthy children aged 1 to 5 years, daily administration of 2000 IU compared with 400 IU of vitamin D supplementation did not reduce overall wintertime upper respiratory tract infections. These findings do not support the routine use of high-dose vitamin D supplementation in children for the prevention of viral upper respiratory tract infections.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28202713/
Vitamin D Supplementation to Prevent Acute Respiratory Tract Infections: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Individual Participant Data
“Conclusions: Vitamin D supplementation was safe and it protected against acute respiratory tract infection overall. Patients who were very vitamin D deficient and those not receiving bolus doses experienced the most benefit.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31660391/
Vitamin D and Acute Respiratory Infections-The PODA Trial
“Conclusions: Vitamin D supplementation sufficient to maintain serum 25(OH)D >30 ng/mL does not prevent ARIs in older African American women. “
Adequate is a serum level of 100-150 nmol/l, according to vitamindsociety.org.
Always take 2000 IU Always!!
A very good argument for getting out in the sun or taking vitamin D supplements. Unfortunately our highly intelligent species cannot accept simple solutions. We demand a complex interaction to save us.
I have been out in the sun gardening for the past four or five weeks so it is all sweet reading.
Thank you for that. Excellent post and great positivity in these rather sombre, dreary days. Oh dear, I’m SO missing my life and at my age I can’t afford the time.
Straight to the point as always. If there is not a higher diety? Why have we all just experianced one of the best starts to spring in our life times? Clear skies, low pollution and ample UVB. A gift indeed and free.
Today I looked at my neighbour who is a gardener and in twenty years I have never seen him this tanned. Me, either when I look in the mirror! I have heard that in Africa, they have been left scratching their heads as so far they have an extremely low rate of infection, or is it due to very mild symptoms?
Love ya!
>
Afifah – Don’t we all?
Excellent post thank you Dr Malcolm Kendrick
Reported in the news early today (here in Australia) “Kawasaki disease symptoms in kids in UK possibly linked to coronavirus”. I did a quick search and found numerous articles showing an association of severe Vitamin D deficiency and Kawasaki Disease. It’s troubling that kids (and everyone else) are being forced to remain indoors during this viral epidemic effectively ensuring that unless they are taking a supplement that they will likely become Vitamin D deficient.
even worse is even if the kids are allowed outside, parents are that scared of them getting skin cancer that they are plastering the kids with sun block or making them cover up!
Aha! That will never be in the mainstream media
Thank you
Hi Dr Kendrick. I am desperately trying to get to the bottom of what is going on with the law at the moment with regard to Covid-19 – I just can’t get my head around it, but perhaps you can? They appear to be removing all civil liberties if you are found to be contagious or are suspected of being so, and you don’t agree to be vaccinated when the vaccine is available? These changes were made to the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 just yesterday apparently and I have tried to read them and am still unsure how to read this? I believe in health freedom and informed consent – not mandatory vaccination. As per this article, I take 2000 IU of D3 every day – I rarely get sick with colds and flu – and that is despite having Hashi’s, Diabetes and BPPV and currently going through the menopause and having fibroids which are causing me to be borderline anaemic (I supplement with ionic iron)… a friend of mine developed *Guillain-Barré *after receiving what she believed was a tetanus booster – 10 days after being vaccinated, she was dying in hospital, and her family were told to prepare for the worst. Somehow she pulled through and is still with us, but she has not fully recovered, and as you can imagine, it has become a passion of hers to research vaccinations and their safety etc, and one of the things she discovered is that it wasn’t a tetanus booster at all that she received – it was a multi-vaccine that covered tetanus but wasn’t purely tetanus. All the things she has told me convince me that vaccinations do not necessarily provide immunity and can even cause outbreaks of the very diseases they are supposed to protect you from. I don’t think I can live in a world where these vaccinations are forced upon us against our will, denying us of our right to develop natural immunity. Please, please, please, will you investigate the law to see what the situation is? You definitely have the capacity to get to the bottom of this. Best regards, Chrissie
On Tue, 28 Apr 2020 at 14:06, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “28th April 2020 I have found, I suspect like > almost everyone else, that it is almost impossible to keep track of what is > going on with COVID. Stories swirl and multiply, and almost everyone seems > to be trying to get something out of it. People are claimi” >
Get your shirt off and mow your lawns at midday… with a hand-powered mower… twice a week. 🙂
This just in from Italy[1]: from 65,000 lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients who use hydroxychloroquine, merely 20 persons are tested positive for covid-19.
Of those 20, nobody died or even ended up in the ICU.
French fries anyone?
[1]: https://www.iltempo.it/salute/2020/04/28/news/coronavirus-farmaci-efficaci-news-danni-cura-annalisa-chiusolo-artrite-terapia-idrossiclorochina-sars-cov2-1321227/
The main take home from the Guardian article you linked to is that “previous inequalities” and current racism are driving the morbity amoung black NHS workers. Though they’re getting closer to the cause when they say inequality has led to higher diabetes and CVD etc, all associated with death from Covid. Of course these things are also caused by vitamin D deficiency, something that could be fixed right now but the Graun would rather wait a few decades and fix the imagined ills of society. As the good Dr says nobody wants to peddle vitamins that’s just quackery.
“As the good Dr says nobody wants to peddle vitamins that’s just quackery”.
And, as Mark Twain might have added, it’s not profitable.
Tom, Gilead who make Remdisivir are supplying 5 Australian hospitals with their “Medicinal Compound”.
Praise Be ! We are almost Saved …. though the Chinese Trial is not as fulsome as the American one.
This extract from the link below (in case it won’t work for you) lets the cat out of the bag……
“…But experts have warned that the study findings are unpublished and preliminary. The US clinical trial registry also shows that Gilead altered the primary outcome measures of the trial halfway through. It broadened its definition of “recovery” and included patients who were still in hospital and who were at home but requiring oxygen in its group of recovered patients as recovered. Changing the primary outcomes of a study is often viewed by scientists with scepticism in any clinical trial, as it is often done to improve the significance of results after the initial outcomes proved disappointing. This is known as “fishing for significance”. Nine members of the US panel that establishes treatment guidelines have a financial interest in Gilead.”
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/remdesivir-five-australian-hospitals-to-receive-experimental-coronavirus-drug/ar-BB13rEjQ?li=AAgfYrC&ocid=mailsignout
Incredible
James DownUnder, there was talk that a Democratic U.S. governor was calling for an investigation by the SEC because there may have been some insider trading involving Remdesivir. The incomplete or premature “results” you referred to that were published, may have caused the stocks to rise quite conveniently for a few. One person (or small group of investors) earned a quick 285 million before things settled back down. I hope the SEC does investigate, but we’ll see. It likely depends on who was involved, with all the self-serving corruption going on right now. Even the justice system can be partisan and play favorites..
This video was mentioned on another blog; it describes the work of Ferguson in the FMD era of 2001; many in the UK remember this with much horror.
This was Ferguson then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdI2YCh0FhA&feature=youtu.be
Pray, what has changed now?
This is a very sobering video.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/tucker-carlson-youtube-coronavirus-censorship-science
I threw that link in as soon as I saw it – without explaining it too much! You Tube have pulled the video by two senior doctors – which someone posted over here – for no reason that makes any sense. The video made a strong case that the lockdown is a bad mistake – exactly what Dr Kendrick is saying.
This seems to demonstrate that the lockdown is partly being driven for political reasons. Here is another video – also from Fox News – that discusses the fact that a lot of ‘deaths from COVID-19’ are in fact deaths from other things.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-scott-jensen-cdc-coronavirus-death-guidelines
The evidence of a spike in all-cause mortality in England+Wales in the last month disproves the allegation that the CV-19 deaths are inflated, instead it seems that they’re being undercounted
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52361519
If you look at the graph labelled “Deaths well above the normal range” you can see that total deaths in 2020 were tracking at the 5-year average up to the end of March then zoomed upwards. Yes some might be due to patients not getting treated for other ailments but that hardly can account for an 80% rise in deaths.
This disease and the deaths from it are real, not a media beatup. Until they have adequate testing capability, ICU capacity & PPE supplies in place, to lift the lockdown would be catastrophic. Do you really want to be rushed to hospital with a stroke or heart attack only for there to be no free beds in the ICU?
You need to go no further than this other BBC story
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52476128
to know why Dr Erickson et al are so anxious to go back to business as usual.
“”We have seen our revenues decline by 60%, just about overnight,” says Claudio Fort, CEO of a hospital in Vermont that is losing around $8m (£6.4m) a month.”
The US private hospitals are losing income from the lockdown, but would be making making out like bandits if they were full of CV-19 patients. Follow the money.
But if there has been a spike in deaths because of the virus (and can we be sure that it’s from not with?) surely that shows that the lockdown is not working and so we should let children get an education and people earn a living before we totally destroy the economy for no gain?
The deaths lag the initial infection by several weeks so most of the people dieing in the weeks of April 10 & 17 were infected before the lockdown. That was nearly 3 weeks ago so there will have been a lot more since. The flaw in the argument that people are dieing “with CV_19” not of it is that the death toll has doubled over normal so what’s causing the excess deaths if not CV-19
From what I can gather from reading the news (I’m in Australia) the UK deaths are concentrated among healthcare staff and in care homes eg BBC report that half Scotland’s death toll is in aged care homes. This can be attributed to a lack of PPE in both the hospital system and especially in aged care homes. Add in the irresponsible policy of sending infectious CV-19 patients back to the aged care homes and it’s no wonder they’ve become hotbeds of infection. Which part of the word “quarantine” doesn’t your PM Bozo the Clown understand? The lockdown may have protected the general public but those groups are still remaining exposed.
Hi Stuart; gosh, you are getting worried;
“This disease and the deaths from it are real,” but if attempt to get things in balance Stuart;
Read some of the details here; http://inproportion2.talkigy.com it is that the BBC has never shared stuff like this before with you: back in 2018 when the flu was really bad, here is what they had on their front page then http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/inform_scare.html
“Until they have adequate testing capability, ICU capacity & PPE supplies in place, to lift the lockdown would be catastrophic.”
A little secret kept from everyone Stuart is that winter flu epidemics and corona; (just like that) produce short peaks, and then fade rapidly. Look at the Euromon data; the peaks are rapidly fading; the weather is getting better; get out in the sunshine Stuart.
“The US private hospitals are losing income from the lockdown, but would be making making out like bandits if they were full of CV-19 patients. Follow the money.”
Phew, that is all a little catty Stuart?
All businesses need to make money, are we agreed on that? Private hospitals do elective operations on people; eg cataracts, hip and knee replacements etc. They cannot do these now: folks are under house arrest; that is why the hospitals are losing money; if you feel these ops are a waste of time, please tell us.
“but would be making making out like bandits if they were full of CV-19 patients”
that is the point Stuart; hospitals in the US are largely empty it seems; Chicago hospitals are very quiet; so you seem to agree that the hospitals are empty; by saying the above; yet you hurl at us this stuff “Do you really want to be rushed to hospital .. for there to be no free beds in the ICU?”
The ICUs are not full.
“Follow the money”
You can’t use that line here Stuart; we have already been using it; we have it patented; pointing to how Gates funds Ferguson; Ferguson comes up with a model of house arrest for all for 18 months: ransom to be paid? Everyone gets vaccinated; pharma lives happily ever after. We look forward to more spirited contributions from you.
The video in question has been hosted by the not-guardian site that is trying to thwart censorship. If you haven’t listened to this video, I would greatly recommend it
Fake news. The videos are still available if you search for them. For the 55 minute version google “Covid 19, Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi briefing on the medical FACTS”
Yes, that is right – I just tried it. My guess is that YouTube reversed their decision because of the bad publicity – but who knows.
You can view their video here, on Off Guardian’s website:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/watch-dr-erickson-covid19-briefing-censored-by-youtube/
Hi, I posted that video on facebook……….it was blocked within a few hours, they will not allow anything that is ‘against their policy’. All media seem to be so one sided, and the voice of reason has been silenced…..except on this forum!
My vitamin d deficiency resulted I assume from avoiding the sun, which I did because sunburn hurts a lot. I have relaxed my solar defences a fair bit, but I’ll always be a burner. Boots sell 1000 units tabs 180 for 9 quid which will not break your bank.
Mark, did you try starting with really short exposure like 10 minutes? It would help to strip down as much as decent and practical, so you expose the maximum surface of skin.
If you start with 10 minutes or even less, you should gradually get a little brown and then you could start stepping up the time: just to 15 minutes, maybe 20. If you can tolerate 30 minutes on your back and then 30 on your front, you’re set!
For those with sensitive skin, the general recommendation for exposure to the sun for vitamin D production is to stop if there’s any reddening of the skin, even if it’s just after a few minutes.
Also, exposing the skin only at the times that the sun’s just high enough to produce vitamin D, which obviously varies according to the time of year and location. So, generally, as soon as the sun is about 45 degrees above the horizon (“or just when your shadow becomes shorter than your height”) is fine, rather than risking the noonday sun in the height of summer!
According to this website, I only need about 6 minutes exposure here in the UK at the moment although I’ve been out in the sun for longer as I don’t burn easily.
https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD-ez_quartMED.html
But in any case, the body can’t make more vitamin D after 30 minutes’ exposure. Obviously the more bare skin you can expose, the better, if you have to limit your time in the sun.
Thanks for sharing this!
I have reached a compromise of almost always wearing a hat – bald heads don’t seem to learn to tan – and letting the arms and legs get it as they tan relatively painlessly since childhood. The world has to suffer my torso when I swim but otherwise it’s covered. That and supplements has put my levels in the high 70s, last time I checked. A few years ago when I was religiously slapping on factor 50 or even P20 my level was 29, in the deficiency zone. I corrected it with 6 weeks of 50,000 units a week and now maintain with my 1000 tablet once a day. I do feel better after being in the sun, it’s true.
I think I’d better cut and paste my D3 comment from yesterday on Dr Kendrick’s previous blog “the anti lock-down strategy” in case it was missed:
“Vitamin D Status and Viral Interactions…The Science”
That’s the title of episode 73 (dated 27 April) of engineer Ivor Cummins’ latest podcast – a person who needs no introduction to many of us here. Here’s the link:
https://thefatemperor.com/ep73-vitamin-d-status-and-viral-interactionsthe-science/
He looks at 2 current associational studies between vit D levels and covid 19.
Those with levels above 30 ng/mL appear to have 10x less risk of death for the infection. Possible reasons?
1 – nutrient dense food particularly animal products with vit D in them
2 – no diabetic dysfunction
3 – avoid inflammation
4 – healthy sun exposure
5 – supplements (but there’s a caveat here)
Ivor then briefly revisits his 2014 “D for debacle” vitamin D presentation.
I know we’re snowed under with comments, links to reports and viewing material but with a running time of only 17 min 25 seconds and may I suggest it is worth viewing.
Thanks for sharing. It is a very interesting discussion and an excellent presentation of the data.
It did amuse me the way that Ivor went beyond the evidence to suggest that supplementing with D3 would not necessarily lower one’s risk; and, that one should concentrate on the first four items on your list. That is probably good advice, but he is not entitled to draw that conclusion from the data he presented.
The study to which he refers corrected for age, sex and comorbidities and found that persons who are deficient in D3 are 10 times more likely to die than those with good levels of D3. The study did not concern itself with how those D3 levels were generated.
My thoughts too. It seemed like a reluctant afterthought for the sake of completeness, rather than a legitimate way for people to increase their levels. Some people for various reasons can’t always get enough sun exposure. He also mentioned a healthy diet without qualifying it.
Great stuff , Malcolm , keep em coming
Thank you as ever, for your wise and helpful counsel.
D3 supplementation: vegan/vegetarian vs sheep lanolin
I’ve noted some of the brands used by commenters and done some googling and they tend to be vegan/vegetarian based/friendly.
Two questions:
1. is there any difference in efficacy between vegetarian/vegan D3 and D3 made from sheep lanolin?
2. Any sheep lanolin D3 recommendations?
Thanks.
As a virtual recluse and actively disliking hot sunny weather, also being bad at maths, can someone please just recommend which vitamin D to buy and how many of those tablets to take? (average white female in the UK).
The Virology article you refer to has very wide implications for all infections, not just influenza, suggesting a mechanism to explain how all viral infections might become weaker over time, as happened to many childhood diseases before vaccines were available but which are now routinely vaccinated against. Any virus evolving to become more virulent would reduce the number of asymptomatic/carrier super-spreaders to be ‘re-awakened’, while less virulent strains would increase the numbers.
Dr K
All I have ever read on this blog convinced me that vitamine D is very important. I used to take Crestor, and I learnt here how the pathway for natural vitamine D is disturbed by statins. We take 4000 IUs in the winter and 2000 in the summer and this has cut down the incidence certainly of colds, and, I think of other infections. I am 80 and I see my doctor at most twice a year.
One death per year from vitamins; what a wonderful statistic!
Thank you x
Distribution of vitamin D in four population groups (group means given below):
15.0 ng/mL Non-Hispanic Blacks
19.7 ng/mL Mexican-Americans
25.9 ng/mL Non-Hispanic Whites in US population 13 and older, 2003-2006
46.1 ng/mL Traditionally-living dark-skinned individuals in equatorial Africa (estimated from 60 ppl)
https://vitamindwiki.com/Chart+of+Vitamin+D+levels+vs+race+-+April+2013
Very interesting – thanks! Those figures tend to support the standard theory that people evolved in Africa, and so had 2 million years or so to become very well adapted to those environments. Thus I would start by assuming that 46.1 ng/mL is close to the ideal for humans.
Then people migrated from Africa and soon inhabited far colder, less sunny places – Siberia, Scandinavia, Canada, even Northern China. Their skin became pale and this helped them to maintain Vitamin D levels (again based on the above figures) a little over half those of Africans.
But when dark-skinned people moved from Africa to colder countries within a few generations (or even a single lifetime), they had no time to adapt.
Hmmmm…. well I’ve been taking Vitamin D3/K2 every day for at least 15 years, maybe longer. I don’t get colds and the last time I had flu was in 1975, the year I moved to NYC and caught a really vicious local flavour that laid me out for nearly a month (much the same way coronavirus seems to do). Coincidence?
Three winters ago, here in Northern Ontario, we had a long stretch of poor weather starting in the Fall and running into mid January. It either rained or snowed so every day was overcast for over 3 months straight. We get “Lake Effect” snow off of Lake Superior and a lot of it too. Finally there was one blue sky day with temperatures at about -5 C. At this time, I was just getting into the low carb diet and was starting to practice Wim Hof breathing techniques and cold immersion to harden up for downhill skiing. So this sunny day comes at last and I went outside in a t-shirt in a nice spot outside of our office building that gets the sun and is sheltered from the wind. I stayed out for about a half hour and when I came in, I felt totally energized. I told a two of my co-workers about what I had done and they said I was glowing. Every day for the rest of the winter, I went outside at lunch time on a sunny day to charge up. My two LCHF buddies at work started doing this with me and in the summertime, we started working on getting a deep tan. Not one of us got a sunburn. One fellow is a ginger and worked outside building his house all summer with no sunburn. I go outside and get in the sun at every available opportunity. You will hear nonsense that the sun is too weak at northern latitudes to get a tan but the sun has enough strength to melt snow at -10C and for grass to grow in sheltered spots and you can tan in the winter. All you have to do is cold condition and you can expose enough skin as needed.
I start cold conditioning in the fall by taking a normal shower and follow up with a cold rinse with the cold water on full blast for 5 to 10 minutes. I go outside every lunch time for half an hour in a t-shirt unless it is raining or cold and overcast. I haven’t had a cold or flu in 3 years. A few sniffles but not enough to lose work. I also supplement 5,000 units of D3 and take Cod Liver Oil as well.
Your skin makes heat and a cold shock proteins that ramps your mitochondria up. The cold shock protein makes brown fat which is your furnace. When your muscles shiver, a hormone Irisin is produced that makes the white fat behave as brown fat. When you get cold and sun together, your body produces NO to open up the capilliaries at the skins surface to make Vit-D. I think the Hormetic shock is very therapeutic.
I believe that sunshine does far more good for us than simply build up vitamin D. There is also NO synthesis, and I am certain there are many other benefits, yet to be discovered. The sun has been up there, shining down on earth for four billion years. If you believe in evolution, you must believe that we have evolved in such a way that sunshine does us good.
“If you believe in evolution, you must believe that we have evolved in such a way that sunshine does us good.”
Not necessarily. If you believe in evolution and computer modelling and multivariate statistical analysis and the reliability of data collection and have an ego more radiant than the Sun itself, then you can preach to the whole World that the Sun is there to exterminate us and we must lockdown and kill ourselves before it gets us.
Hayek’s “Fatal conceit” concept is not just about intellectuals supporting socialism, but intellectuals in general, even those who think they can second guess Nature. The whealth, health and life of millions is at risk because a few smart guys do not know how to say “I’m sorry, I was wrong.”
Data Science is largely Mad Hatter Science. Instead of mercury poisoning data scientists have silicon poisoning. Only one possible cure: turn off the computer and go have a bare feet walk, while basking in the morning sunlight. Bring a stick and a water flask. You are welcome!
Michael Holick, the Boston University dermatologist and Vitamin D expert who advocates sensible sun exposure, says that Vitamin D is just one of a number of photoproducts produced in the skin. We don’t know what they do but it’s likely they are beneficial otherwise why would we have evolved this ability. He also points out that outdoor workers such as farmers, construction workers and seamen have historically had LOWER rates of melanoma and internal cancers than the rest of the population, indicating that D is protective against cancer. The exceptions are non-melanoma skin cancers which are easily detectable, easily treated and consequently rarely fatal. So in order to avoid fairly benign skin cancers the dermatologists by their sun-avoidance hysteria are exposing us to far more deadly cancers. Needless to say, Holick was drummed out of BU for heresy.
… Or ‘Designed’ to thrive outdoors… can’t see Adam & Eve slopping on the sunscreen as they went about their placed in the Garden to ”…dress and keep it..”
thanks Kevin; this is all very helpful. I have been intrigued also in the concept of cold water swimming; folks seem energised by that too. After going LCHF, and reading about the refined seed oils, which we gave up; I really stopped putting on sunscreen; I don’t get burnt; I just tan, if I am sensible as the tan develops.
Cold water swimming gets the body fired up working on all cylinders, fat burning, etc. I’ve been swimming regularly all year round for 3 years now and I believe my immune system is stronger for it. Love the feeling of invigoration.
Hi Terry,
I’m active outdoors all year around and I’ve found that cold conditioning gets me outside and extends both the time I can be outside and the season as well and with less bulky clothing too. I got interested in Wim Hof, the iceman, who can do amazing things but all he does is condition himself to the cold over time. He runs a winter camp clinic and in a week can condition a person to the point they can climb a mountain in winter in a T-Shirt. This is extreme but it shows how fast the human body can adapt to a wide range of temperatures. What I have found is that it takes about 5 days to adapt to weather changes but the cold showers can speed this up or keep you in winter/fall mode all year around.
I have Asthma and always caught every cold going around. After every illness it would take me 2-3 weeks after recovery to regain my conditioning to the weather. My healthiest times have always been my most active times outdoors. I prefer dry hot and dry cold but can’t tolerate damp weather. Whenever I would spend a day outside in the cold like skiing, I would need to take a hot bath or really long hot shower to thaw out.
Now that I’ve cold conditioned, I the 20-30 *C weather swings don’t bother me. I ski all day and don’t need a shower or bath to thaw out. I’ve been riding my bike all winter and started cycle commuting this week. I have a 1/2 hour ride and this morning it was -1 C.
There is a trick to get started. Run the cold water in your bathroom sink until it’s ice cold and fill it right up. Take a normal shower and at the end drop the temp down until you feel uncomfortable. This should be on the cool side of lukewarm. Now get out and dunk your face and forehead in the sink for as long as you can. Then get back in the shower and you’ll find the cool water is quite a bit warmer than when you left it. Drop the temp again and then face dunk. If you do this a few showers in a row, then you can just turn the cold water on full, blast your forehead and then enjoy the refreshing cold shower.
The only way you will know how much Vit D to take is get a Vit D blood test. I am not relying on the sun after having a sun tan in late summer and taking 2000ui Vit D3 a day for a couple of years, my blood test came back close to insufficiency for D3. I would only take a liquid D3 and with a K2 and magnesium supplement as D3 is hard to uptake.
There’s several issues about taking vitamins in general. They have been poorly studied with misleading results published in the studies and excessively lowered RDA values. There are synthetic forms, plant sourced and animal forms. Most forms have to be converted by the body to be useful. The D made by your body is the best. Usually the vitamins and minerals added to food are a marketing ploy but have little value. D2 is added to milk where D3 is the best form.
The other thing to know is what the therapeutic dose is which is many times the RDA and maintenance doses.
Dr Berg recommends a maintenance dose of D3 at 1000 IU per 25lbs with a therapeutic dose of 20,000 IU. The RDA is 300.
Here’s a recent video about D and CV19. I’ll try to find one with his dosage recommendations.
“https://youtu.be/bJqZPt_SCyA”
Kevin
You rightly highlight the problem with vitamins and supplements. The mantra that you you get all you need in a normal diet, is never based on research usually echoes stuff going back 50 years or so and certainly does not take account of alleged diminution in soils, different uptake at different ages. A lot of websites which discuss these questions are clearly wacky, so Jo public is forced back on relying on hearsay and blind trust.
He’s talking about vaccines and basically, mistakes in vaccines is ok, no ifs buts or limits to “making a mistake” even where fatalities are concerned presumably – so says World Health Organization health emergencies programme executive director Dr. Mike Ryan.
“Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. If you need to be right before you move, you will never win,’
Speed trumps perfection, and the problem in society we have at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake – everyone is afraid of the consequence of error. But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/speed-trumps-perfection-boss-of-world-health-organisation-issues-blunt-coronavirus-warning-c-747300.amp
So he will be happy to make mistakes with his own family & friends I presume.
Safe vitamin treatment not dangerous enough?
Marika Sboros of Foodmed.Net is recommending your article, Doc: http://foodmed.net/2020/04/covid19-vitamin-d-cure-free-snake-oil/
Big Pharma has even longer tentacles than I’d previously thought and are intolerant of anyone researching vaccines or even a single element in them that could make people start to question them: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/is-pharma-censoring-the-science-at-one-major-university-by-choking-the-money-channel/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=64967e72-35b2-4852-80d9-71de0baceb01
Just had a thought, if this gathers momentum, might we possibly see Vitamin Passports, with the appointment of a national director of VIP (Vitamins in People) headed by a certain Dr K with multi million euro funding from a billionaire Vitamin messiah with a mission to have the entire world population vitaminated ?
No ? Yeah I suppose not !
The BBC has become Propaganda Central so I was surprised when they actually mentioned vitamin D.
That may have been a mistake though.
Looking at the data it is blatantly obvious that Peak Covid was reached around 8 April. I suspect the ONS or someone downstream of them held back a load of death certificates and released them all at once to generate the appearance of a spike. They held back all care home deaths and released them all at once too to make the spike look worse.
Why? Well tomorrow is review day. This gives them the excuse to keep the lockdown for another three weeks.
Maybe after the next review they may make a few concessions, like permitting shoe shops to open or something. I have no doubt that they are following Fergoid’s plan to keep us locked down until the compulsory vaccine arrives, and bugger the economy or the increasing disease and deaths from other causes. He really should have been strangled at birth. His predictions were as way out as they were for Foot and Mouth and all the other diseases he modelled, yet The Anointed don’t seem to take any notice of the fact that reality has turned out to be quite different.
People must start protesting the lockdown and police meddling for going outside. We in the US are supposed to have demonstrations / protests in every capital on May 1.
I personally hope I am paranoid, but I worry that the cabal at the top have plans for mass starvation.
I tend to agree – only I would warn that there are several things that correlate with vit-D – other photochemicals are obviously formed with sun exposure – so is it D – or some other photo product? Or some level down stream from D?
Lots of narratives about sun exposure are out there – a few talk about the production of nitric oxide – I don’t doubt that there are other photochemicals produced – just the research isn’t there to do much more than speculate.
I’ve taken 5,000 D3 for many years – have had very few colds – no influenza, but I also go out of my way to get sun exposure in the winter.
Dr David Brownstein is a family physician in the US who practices holistic medicine. For Covid 19 and also for any flu, colds (and more) he has his patients nebulize food grade hydrogen peroxide (very diluted!) and a drop or two of Lugol’s iodine (5%) in some saline solution. He has done this for over 20 years with amazing results. He also recommends high doses of D3, vitamin A palmitate (easier absorbed) and of course ascorbic acid during the illness.
The RDA for women is 600IU of D (until recently was 400). That’s the same 600IU even if pregnant or breastfeeding, so where does the extra D for the baby supposed to come from? Ivor Cummins quotes a study where they measured the D in breast milk. It took 6400IU of supplementation for the mother to get to the point where the baby no longer required supplements also. And this when the RDA for a lactating woman was 400! In any case, it appears the Institute of Medicine got their calculations wrong and the RDA should be 7 to 9,000.
http://blogs.creighton.edu/heaney/2015/02/13/the-iom-miscalculated-its-rda-for-vitamin-d/
It’s clear that all the RDAs are inadequate because as Malcolm pointed out they are based on the most severe symptoms. However vitamin deficiency diseases like scurvy, beri-beri and pellagra are only the end stages of vitamin deficiency. In a nutrient deficiency the body downregulates processes necessary for long-term survival in favour of those necessary for short-term survival. So scurvy etc are when the body has exhausted it’s reserves of the nutrient. That’s the basis of the Triage Theory of Bruce Ames, and Bruce has gone on to demonstrate that it’s correct with regard to Vitamin K and selenium, which means it’s almost certainly correct for the other nutrients also.
So do we have studies that plot CV infections or death vs. seasonal vitamin D level? Are Southern hemisphere or tropical countries doing consistently better than those on the Northern hemisphere with comparable economics?
One could be tempted to say that NZ and Oz are doing so well because they were hit on the tail end of summer. On the other hand, I remember reading somewhere that 87% of Australian dermatologists are Vitamin D deficient because they appear to heed their own advice.
Just for comparison, Brazil does not seem to be doing so well, and while they may be more brown skinned on average, they tend not to be afraid of the sun.
Does anyone have the whole picture?
Hi Eric: the whole picture with vitamin D has to include understanding of T cells. Vit D regulates inflammation by modulating T cell response. My T cells are 80 years old and might need a lot of help from vitamins and minerals including D3. Covid-19 risk factors are, blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes, in other words insulin resistance. Hyperglycaemia and visceral adiposity are good indicator of IR. A bit of googling re T cells/hyperglycaemia revealed that immune system is controlled by T cell mitochondrial respiration. For best results in addition to D also need a low carb/high fat diet.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724917301927
“Ten years ago, it was unimaginable that the immune function of T lymphocytes depended on their metabolic configuration. However, recent studies have shown a direct link between increased glycolysis and greater quantities of inflammatory effector T cells, such as the Th1 and Th17 subsets. We have shown the importance of mitochondria in all stages of the T cell response and the more important consequences of mitochondrial alterations in these processes. Currently, mitochondria may be considered as the master metabolic regulator of T cells, implicating that by controlling mitochondrial metabolism we could control lymphocyte fate and function. Thus, if we manage to reduce glycolytic metabolism and force OXPHOS in T cells, we may reduce inflammation. This could be beneficial for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, chronic inflammation or any pathology that courses with inflammation (Rhoads et al., 2017). In addition, reinvigorating exhausted T cells by improving metabolic fitness is a promising therapeutic strategy for cancer or chronic viral infections. We believe that delving deeper into the implications of mitochondria during immune responses will allow us to find novel ways to reestablish immune homeostasis and function, opening an immense avenue for the development of new immunotherapies.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327186#How-diet-may-affect-the-bodys-defenses
According to the findings of a new study, appearing in the journal Science Immunology, when mice fed a keto diet were injected with the flu virus, their survival rates were much higher than those of mice fed a diet high in carbohydrates.
That certainly explains what happened to me – and a few thousand others. Be kind to your mitochondria! Today I fed them rump steak and buttered asparagus.
BTW is anyone else not receiving email alerts about new posts and comments? Despite religiously ticking the boxes I’m not receiving any.
Yes. Very frustrating. If I want to get up to date items I now must go to FIND in page (top RHS) and search l 30 (within April 30) for today or – tomorrow for example, it will be y 1 (May 1 )
For some reason it doesnt recognize am or pm so I am unable to narrow it down further.
Emails are back.
Jerome Savage: Funny that on the morning of that comment, I received a world-record 141 comments in my inbox, and shortly a whole bunch more arrived. We all owe Dr. Kendrick an enormous debt of gratitude for enabling this fruitful and healthful conversation.
Gary The discussion is iinvaluable and I am confounded by Dr K’s energy, sense (of the common variety), insight, workrate & ability to get through to this ordinary 5/8th. Dr K. may your batteries get suitably recharged with good home life, comfortable armchair and decent walks in the glade.
Not for me they’re not. Is Malcolm discriminating against his international readers? Or perhaps he just hasn’t got around to the SS yet.
@#$&* autocorrect ivention of the devil!!!! “S”s not SS.
I have done nothing.
What do we say about the sun and wrinkles? I have loads which arrived rather suddenly but I’m not attaching much blame to the sun and wind because my mother-in-law had more than her fair share and she always avoided the sun (and wind). Conversely, I once met an Englishman who was 80 years old and was, and had been for many years, living on the coast in the south of France. He said he spent a lot of time in the sun, yet I remember him well because he didn’t have a single wrinkle. He wasn’t fat in the face either, so that doesn’t explain it. And when I met him it was hot and sunny and I’m sure he didn’t even have a hat on to shield his face. Life never will be fair though!
Maybe diet? Not enough healthy saturated animal fats… 😎
Tish: I might add that weight training would probably help by increasing the size of the underlying muscles. Increased protein intake would go along with that.
Glycation of the collagen proteins in the skin is a major cause of wrinkles, so I’d think a LCHF diet to bring blood sugars down would help. Also practice Intermittent Fasting eg 16:8 daily combined with a few multi-day water-only fasts to put your body into apoptosis, during which it recycles junk proteins.
https://proteinpower.com/ketosis-cleans-our-cells/
Dr William Davis cites anecdotal reports that consumption of yogurt made with the ATCC PTA 6475 strain of Lactobacillus reuteri has reduced wrinkles, apparently by boosting oxytocin levels in the body.
https://blog.undoctored.com/l-reuteri-yogurt/
I can’t vouch for any of this from personal experience, but they won’t hurt and might help.
My point for mentioning wrinkles is that they are another reason (along with skin cancer) for people avoiding the sun, but I am not sure that the sun should be blamed.
Hi Tish: glycation might explain wrinkles and other problems of getting older
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5643203/
“The glycation process leads to a loss of protein function and impaired elasticity of tissues such as blood vessels, skin, and tendons5-7. The glycation reaction is highly accelerated in the presence of hyperglycemia and tissue oxidative stress8. This implicates it in the pathogenesis of diabetic complications and aging9. Because there are no enzymes to remove glycated products from the human body, the glycation process matches well with the theory that the accumulation of metabolic waste promotes aging.”
But as Stuart already mentioned, the body can get rid of metabolic waste/old cells, etc. through autophagy, which fasting promotes. I’m not a huge fan of prolonged fasting though, so I do a 23:1 every day, hoping that it can at least help get rid of some of the old cells, etc. (I had a few skin tags before I became a carnivore and they’re gone now.) Because of old skin issues for years, I stopped using sunscreens, moisturizers, or any of that stuff on my face and body because it just seemed to always cause a reaction. I see it as a silver lining now, because I want my skin exposed to sunlight and I was falling for all the hype about ‘skin cancer’ before my skin told me to knock if off with the sunscreen.
Hi teedee: 100% correct about autophagy benefits. Time restricted fasting ie 6 to 8 hour eating window is what I do. The body needs a balance between anabolic and catabolic cellular functions. Defective cell are constantly being replaced, some say most cells are replaced every 7 years, some faster and some slower. Unfortunately wrinkles are forever, something to do with cross-linked collagen and hyperglycaemia.
Teedee, try internal sunscreen. Being descended from a long line of pasty-faced Northern Europeans I always burnt like crazy in the Australian sun. Since taking Astaxanthin I can play tennis or work shirtless in the garden for hours in full sun without burning. OTOH I don’t develop as much of a tan either. It’s not an instant fix you can’t just pop a pill and go straight out into the sun. You need to build up the levels of astaxanthin in your skin by taking it for several days first. After that you only need a maintenance dose of 4mg/day, a larger dose isn’t necessary. So take 4mg morning and night for the first few days before you go out in the sun, then 4mg/day thereafter. I take my daily dose in the evening on the principle that it will be biologically available by next morning. PABA is also supposed to offer protection from sunburn – read the user reviews at iHerb.
I’ll definitely do some reading on that, Stuart, mainly because it sounds fascinating and I’m curious about the mechanism of how that works, thanks! I do find, however, that since going very low/zero carb, I don’t burn easily any more. I can stay out in the sun now for up to 3 hrs before I have to run for cover. I guess the lack of sugar in my body means I’ve suppressed the Maillard Reaction? I caramelize more slowly now 😉
Teedee, what I was disputing was Erickson’s claim that isolating us somehow weakens our immune system, not advocating that you should hide away in a windowless basement. Clearly you want to optimise your immune system so that if you do get exposed to the virus you can fight it off. So take Vitamin C, selenium and iodine and get your Vitamin D checked. Production of D in the skin is highly individual (likewise absorption of supplements) and often declines with age so some people make little or no D from sun exposure.
Although Malcolm’s graphs suggest that 30ng/ml gives pretty good protection against colds and flu other data suggests that most people need 50ng/ml to protect against osteoporosis. That’s in US units, in most other countries they use nmol/L so 125 nmol/L.
http://blogs.creighton.edu/heaney/2013/04/08/defining-normal-part-two/
The conventional advice that you only need to expose your arms and face to the sun for a few minutes is based on the ludicrously low RDAs. Obviously the more skin you expose, the less time you need to remain in the sun so minimising risk of sunburn , so wear as little as modesty allows. Plus if you are exposing your torso and full arms and legs you can wear a hat or sunscreen to protect your face.
I got lots of sun this weekend, by sunbathing in my bathing suit Saturday, and then when we took a drive to Niagara Falls Sunday for a lovely nature walk on Dufferin Island, then along the falls. The place was packed (unlike a couple of weeks ago) and almost no one wore a mask or gloves, which was great to see. When I went into a grocery store briefly, the only ones wearing gloves and sometimes a mask were those working there. They didn’t seem to mind in the least that I or most of the shoppers had bared hands and no masks on. I think the majority of people are getting fed up with the lockdown, but even still, they maintained a respectful distance, if only to make the store staff and park staff happy.
Humidity plays an important role in the transmission of respiratory diseases . Home and workplace heating in the cold months can dry out the mucous in the nose and repository system. Mucous is similar to our old friend the glycocalx . The cilia formed act as filters against dust,bacteria an Viruses. Senior facilities are kept very warm often with no humidification.
But aren’t hospitals even more dangerous? Sealed, air-conned, disinfected, too warm, in other words the perfect incubator for bugs of all kinds! A couple of years ago, I was in a hospital not too far from Parliament after a stent or 2 (or 3) and got kicked out the day after the ‘procedure’, feeling rather wobbly (the ‘procedure’ took 1 1/2 hours!) as, and I quote, ‘the hospital is just too dangerous to my health’.
Isn’t the entire medico-health industry completely corrupted by the pursuit of profit. So for example, a fundamental block to responding to the coronavirus in a timely manner was the NHS’s so-called ‘internal market’. In fact, the entire capitalist enterprise is fundamentally irrational, counter-productive and the antithesis to good health. Unless we get rid of it, like reall soon, in the words of a well-known TV character, ‘We’re doomed I tell you, doomed!’
Barovsky I forget where I read about it but in some hospitals the corridors are somehow pressurised (cannot explain the mechanics) that flushes the air out of ward windows when doors are opened.
Well I’ve never been in a hospital where the windows can be opened, so central air-con, filtered I assume?
I have. Like is said the mechanics of it but will search for the link.
barovsky: In my recent hospital stay, the rooms had one itty bitty window, facing north, although it was a real joy to look out of it! Only way to open it would have been with a hammer.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28330710/
Prof Peter Chang Taipei Medical University and Kaohsiung Medical University, senior medical advisor to the National Taipei Hospital & adjunct professor in Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston partly credits negative pressure wards with Taiwans success in dealing with CV19.(about one third way through following)
https://www-irishtimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/how-taiwan-has-confounded-predictions-in-fending-off-the-worst-of-covid-19-1.4229660?amp_js_v=a3&_gsa=1&mode=amp&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D#aoh=15882863520889&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fhealth-family%2Fhow-taiwan-has-confounded-predictions-in-fending-off-the-worst-of-covid-19-1.4229660.
For years, high cholesterol has been touted as a major cause of cardio vascular disease and early death.
Medical advice; avoid red meat and eggs.
As both of these food types are a good source of Vitamin D we could say that the unintended consequence of following a low cholesterol diet is Vitamin D deficiency and an earlier death than would otherwise be the case if we had ignored the high cholesterol / heart disease hypothesis and consumed eggs and steak on a regular basis. Interesting is that the MSWord thesaurus promotes the word guess as a viable alternative to hypothesis
Roger A
When I think of it now some unforgivable stuff was preached by ill informed maybe even well meaning careerists.
I don’t know if this will be of any interest but since posting on wrinkles I’ve had another thought – this time about a friend we’ve known for many years. She is English, in her early 70s, very slim with a thin and pale face. She was a natural blonde and looks rather Scandinavian. She loves the sun and heat more than anyone I know. She doesn’t wear hats because she says she doesn’t suit them. She walks every day and sails and spends a lot of time outdoors. Oddly, her face is pretty well wrinkle-free but are arms are not. She is upset by them being very wrinkled, top to bottom. If the sun is to blame it seems somewhat discriminatory.
Excellent, Now how do I share this via Twitter or WhatsApp ?
Joao, what I tend to do is to right click and copy the address of the article (in the grey address bar at the top of the page) and then I can take it to any site I want to paste it too. Alternatively, sometimes you’ll see the icons for various social media platforms at the side or bottom of the article and you can click on the one you want and share it that way..
I do though wonder whether this is as cut and dried about vitamin D being the factor or whether it is also to do with the spectrum of light and the wavelengths having a specific influence, I’m referencing John Otts and his work. In his book Health and Light in which with just one piece of research, he refers to tomatoes with a virus that he moved from a glass greenhouse into a plastic one that altered their health. His work is very interesting and I think there is an important aspect of our light spectrum with our current health issue that goes beyond it being about vitamin D.
A difficult COVID-19 read.
Difficult, not because of size (huge – counting all the links!) but because it’s so against the grain for us humans to accept the erratic laborious journey from uncertainty towards . . . less uncertainty.
This has an amazingly clear perspective – to this point in time.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/
JDPatten: I was interested in reading this, but he lost me near the end of the second paragraph with, “Scientists know the shape of proteins on the new coronavirus’s surface down to the position (sic) of individual atoms.” I don’t think so. Perhaps I missed it along the way (absent, maybe, or taking a nap), but have electron microscopes become powerful enough to view individual atoms? I recall Kary Mullis remarking that even molecules were hypothetical.
Gary,
Perhaps you can’t see the atoms themselves, but to determine their locations, yeah, pretty much.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3122623/
It’s easy to find answers to things like this on pubmed.
Don’t miss the forest for only seeing trees.
JD, I read it and it offers a clear and balanced perspective, true. There was one section in the last quarter of the article that had me re-reading it, though. It was basically saying that flu numbers are done by modelling, but CV-19 deaths are determined by ‘testing and clinical judgement’ and goes on to say that the Covid numbers are probably being ‘underestimated’. I copied the section in case I’m misreading what they’re saying, as well as the section that comes after re: Testing.
“Deaths are hard to tally in general, and the process differs among diseases. The CDC estimates that flu kills 24,000 to 62,000 Americans every year, a number that seems superficially similar to the 58,000 COVID-19 deaths thus far. That comparison is misleading. COVID-19 deaths are counted based either on a positive diagnostic test for the coronavirus or on clinical judgment. Flu deaths are estimated through a model that looks at hospitalizations and death certificates, and accounts for the possibility that many deaths are due to flu but aren’t coded as such. If flu deaths were counted like COVID-19 deaths, the number would be substantially lower. This doesn’t mean we’re overestimating the flu. It does mean we are probably underestimating COVID-19.
The means of gathering data always complicate the interpretation of those data. Consider the reports that the coronavirus can “reactivate” in recovered patients, or that people can become “reinfected.” This really means that patients are testing positive for the virus after having tested negative. But that might have nothing to do with the virus, and everything to do with the test. Diagnostic tests for COVID-19 produce a lot of false negatives, incorrectly telling 15 to 30 percent of infected people that they’re in the clear. And even if these tests were better, the viral levels of a recovering patient would eventually fall below their threshold of accuracy. When such patients are sequentially tested, some will toggle between negative and positive results, creating the appearance of reinfection.
False positives are a problem, too. Many companies and countries have pinned their hopes on antibody tests, which purportedly show whether someone has been infected by the coronavirus. One such test claims to correctly identify people with those antibodies 93.8 percent of the time. By contrast, it identifies phantom antibodies in 4.4 percent of people who don’t have them. That false-positive rate sounds acceptably low. It’s not. Let’s assume 5 percent of the U.S. has been infected so far. Among 1,000 people, the test would correctly identify antibodies in 47 of the 50 people who had them. But it would also wrongly spot antibodies in 42 of the 950 people without them. The number of true positives and false positives would be almost equal. In this scenario, if you were told you had coronavirus antibodies, your odds of actually having them would be little better than a coin toss.”
Ah yes, teedee,
Where’s the other Donald when you really need some clarifying perspective??
lol..yes, I remember the “unknown unknowns” remark by that other Donald. It’s something akin to Rudy Giuliani’s “Truth isn’t Truth” statement/excuse.
I think Vitamin A is important too. A potent supporter of Ceruloplasmin & therefore copper – which is extremely empowering to the immune system & all the Cu-based enzymes, for proper iron & calcium distribution, too. A much maligned & overlooked element, all the emphasis is placed on zinc, & whilst copper does not diminish zinc, zinc does diminish copper. Copper is a highly effective anti-microbial & anti-viral & whilst we don’t need much, many people either do not get enough, or they lack enough of Ceruloplasmin or other carrier proteins that leave them with a plethora of unbound copper.
According to the Jaminets’ book “Perfect Health Diet”, quarter of a pound (110 grams) of beef, calf or lamb liver once a week provides the ideal amount of both Vitamin A and copper. As both can be dangerous in excess, the Jaminets warn against eating more than that amount regularly. They also recommend taking zinc once a week only, as some nutrients like copper and zinc are apparently very popular with pathogens – which, however, can’t store enough to wait a week, whereas we humans can.
I find lamb’s liver the mildest, and although quite strong tasting it is delicious lightly fried in olive or coconut oil or butter, with plenty of fried onions and some bacon. Like fish, the trick is to cook it for as short a time as possible on a fairly high heat. Add greens to taste and an optional baked potato, and you have a nutritional feast. (And an excellent excuse to crack open a bottle of superior red!)
I’m with you on the lamb;s liver but I fry it lightly in EVOO with a giant mushroom, grill some bacon and boil some greens. Unfortunately the butcher had run out so I am looking forward to next week.
Hello
I buy paté de campagne from our farm shop butcher. She tells me it is mostly liver. I will try frying it with spring onions
Of course you can cook your food as you wish, Chris, but pate doesn’t need to be cooked. I just snarf it with a fork – delicious. I find an apple or some other fruit or veg stes it off, and it also goes well with cheese.
“Look, Ma – no carbs!” 😎
Sorry Tom, apples is carbs.
Dear AHN
yes there are carbs in apples, but in 50 years I have put on 2kg of weight, so it is not something I spend much time worrying about. In the apple season I sometime eat 5 apples in a day.
At the moment my fruit is delicious new rhubarb, cooked with a little sugar. I saliva as I type this
Tom, thanks for the tip about taking my zinc/copper supplement just once a week because I can store it, but pathogens can’t. It makes sense and I’m going to start doing it that way. (I learn more on this forum in one week, than I could ever learn in a lifetime from ‘mainstream’ sources with all their conflicts of interest and constant, intentional muddying of the waters.)
If you really want a whole warehouse full of such tips, get a copy of “The Perfect Health Diet” by the Jaminets (husband and wife). I believe they have an axe to grind as they run a business advising people on health, but I haven’t found them saying anything I even suspect to be wrong.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that they aren’t outright LCHF – they recommend eating a steady amount of “complex” carbs such as root vegetables. Makes for some delicious stews!
I base my healthy living style on “PHD”, with a few modifications here and there. (For instance, I think Dr Fung makes more sense about fasting).
Yes, I’ve read all of Fung’s books and he knows his stuff. The only area I highly disagreed with him on was his take on protein causing insulin spikes. and insisting that people keep their protein intake quite low. Maybe he has altered his statements now, but at first, he insisted that protein can cause insulin to spike as much as some carbs. What he didn’t take into account (As Dr. Ben Bikman of BYU does) is that it only spikes insulin in the presence of carbs. With a low carb, ketogenic or carnivore diet, the insulin to glucagon ratio is what’s important and protein doesn’t cause any significant spikes with those diets.
Ali,
A certain small amount of copper is a necessary micro-nutrient, balancing zinc intake, yeah. But be careful! Too much is too much.
Here in rural New England, homeowners with an historic sensibility roof their homes with traditional cedar shingles. The wood is fairly resistant to breakdown from the action of microbes and fungi of various types, but you always see moss and lichens and even small flowering plants thriving on these roofs.
Except where the chimneys are flashed with copper.
The leaching of minute amounts of copper from that flashing in rain water that then washes down the roof leaves a path barren of life. The shingles are preserved even from that microbe degradation.
If you plug mouse holes in these old houses with steel wool (nasty stuff, right?) they’ll simply chew it up for nesting material. Copper mesh is mouse proof.
Got a garden? Slugs will not cross copper.
A post sunk deep into “filthy” earth will not rot if treated with copper.
Beware of ingesting wood preservative, just in case a certain head of state might suggest looking into it. 🙂
It is ‘unbound’ copper that can potentially become toxic – pretty much like many other elements that are unbound or ‘free-radical’. When an element is correctly bound it can carry out numerous important functions as part of its design. Whilst copper deficiency in itself may be rare, deficiency due to a lack of transport proteins may well not be.
There are many functions & processes, not least enzymatic, in the body that depend on copper & transport proteins such as Ceruloplasmin. But Ceruloplasmin production is dependent on other factors like enough Vitamin A, enough good, restful sleep, a well-functioning liver & adrenal system, plenty of magnesium, etc, all of which can be very lacking in our modern, highly stressed society.
When the transport proteins are in abundance, copper cannot become ‘toxic’ because the proteins would enable the body to safely eliminate any excess. But it cannot eliminate unbound copper. That is when it becomes problematic.
JDPatten: Thank you for that. I’ve successfully used copper against marauding snails and slugs. On the left coast most everyone has replaced their roofs (cedar shakes split with a froe) because they are both flammable and inflammable. We do have lots of cedar here.
“the leaching of minute amounts of copper from that flashing in rain water that then washes down the roof leaves a path barren of life. The shingles are preserved even from that microbe degradation.”
But isn’t that the point? Copper is very purifying. Gone are the days when copper was used abundantly in hospitals due to its purifying nature. We don’t need so much that it purifies us out of existence, but we do need enough – and enough of its transport proteins to enable it to do its job – protecting us from unwanted microbes, parasites…..and viruses…..
Some practitioners have had great results in the past with copper salicylate, but it’s nigh on impossible to find now.
Funny that…..
Can’t find copper salicylate? Lots of links, here’s one:
https://www.citychemical.com/cupric-salicylate.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz9nP1J2T6QIVmeFRCh2osQmYEAAYASAAEgK-L_D_BwE
Flip! It apparently used to be as cheap as chips…..!
Right, Ali. It’s a poison. As with all substances introduced into the body, it’s the dose that determines the difference between thriving and dying. My point is that you should just be sure you’re killing your pathogens and not yourself.
JDP, I think there is no dose of for example lead, mercury, aluminium, arsenic, plutonium, fluoride which would guarantee somebody “thrived”, they are all unnecessary substances which provide nothing useful to the human body. Consequently any level will mean damage to the system. Other substances such as copper, selenium, chromium, magnesium and others, in the right form and amounts, are required as facilitators to allow correct function. These may be detrimental if the dose is too large.
I’ve been emphasising the importance of vitamin d to family and friends since this started.
My only concern was its apparent effect of increasing expression of ACE2, which covid19 uses to attach to the cells.
Will this increase susceptibility? Yet somehow confer benefits if infected? Is there a danger of a U shaped curved whereby higher levels of vitamin d means more risk?
The quoted study doesn’t seem to factor in high levels only normal – does that mean nobody with high levels has been hospitalised?
Given the sunshine we’ve been blessed with, I’ve now switched myself and my family to 2000iu every other day. Eight weeks ago, we were on 10,000iu daily to boost levels to at least normal range.
I watched the great video by doctor Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, two Californian clinicians who just presented the statistics about the number of “corona victims”. It was like putting en needle to a blown up balloon!
YouTube has now removed this video to my utter amazement but it tells me a lot of hidden agendas here. Censorship! Conspiring theories confirmed!
Google reveals a great many accusations against the two doctors; but none of them are accompanied by any proofs that the doctors are wrong.
Especially in such a serious matter, it is vital that all reasonable opinions should be aired so that everyone can know what the various theories are. Not to mention facts and figures, which cannot be dismissed airily as “fake”.
Tom, you may want to watch this episode of Del Bigtree’s HighWire, broadcast yesterday. He interviews Dr Dan Erickson – who appears to me to be a genuinely concerned doctor and not ‘in it for the money’ as many have said:
Goran,
Just n case you want to pass that video to others, you can still find it here:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/watch-dr-erickson-covid19-briefing-censored-by-youtube/
David
I concur, it was one of the best corona videos that I have watched!
There is a partial transcript. A couple of extracts:
https://www.aier.org/article/open-up-society-now-say-dr-dan-erickson-and-dr-artin-massihi/
“Sheltering in place decreases your immune system. And then as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune system and start trading viruses, bacteria—what do you think is going to happen? Disease is going to spike. And then you’ve got diseases spike—amongst a hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is not the combination we want to set up for a healthy society. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. Do we need to have it, do we need to test them, and get them back to work? Yes, we do. The the secondary effects that we went over—the child abuse, alcoholism, loss of revenue—all these are, in our opinion, a significantly more detrimental thing to society than a virus that has proven similar in nature to the seasonal flu we have every year. “
I’ve already expressed my opinion of Erickson in a previous post. Jo Nova agrees with me. See her response to a comment touting that same video
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/death-tolls-could-be-60-higher-than-official-numbers-all-cause-mortality-is-at-record-highs/#comment-2320723
“Of all the scores of frontline docs who say the opposite, I was very interested to find a couple that disagree. I watched enough to see these docs made a couple of early sweeping epidemiology mistakes, and were not considering things that disagreed with what they wanted to find. Let me know if you find another copy. The Erikson doc (s?) also relied heavily on the Santa Clara antibody study, ignore all the flaws in it — which I covered here, self selecting, non-random assay in the high risk county in CA which was adjusted up from only 1.5% to 4% based on a postcode weighting, but totally ignored the demographics, when age has such a bearing on results. The result was so weak it could not be ruled out that it was entirely a false positive score. Indeed, it was a leaked copy of a preliminary result, the wife of one of the researchers even emailed invites out with calls for people to get a free result that could show them whether they could work again. The study effectively harvested for people who thought they had Covid. It disagreed with all the large and random official PCR tests. EG Austria and Iceland. Didn’t fit with results from the Diamond Princess either.
Part of the problem is there are scores of docs saying the exact opposite of what they said, but some people are only watching youtube videos and reading arguments that support the belief they want to hold.”
*************************************
One of those sweeping epidemiology mistakes has got to be “Sheltering in place decreases your immune system”. What a load of crap. Your immune system doesn’t get lazy or forget what to do after a few weeks staying at home. These docs must have been at the bottom of the class in med school. Or maybe as I suggested before they care more about their bank balances than your life – a case of “f@#$ you Jack, I’ll be all right”. Disease will certainly rise when the lockdown lifts, because the lockdown is currently limiting the transmission of ALL diseases not just Cv-19. When that happens the furloughed doctors and nurses will be called back to work. Erickson’s arguments are bogus.
I urge you to read Jo’s entire post
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/death-tolls-could-be-60-higher-than-official-numbers-all-cause-mortality-is-at-record-highs
This is not just “no worse than the flu”. The hospitals and care homes in the US and UK are not coping now because of inadequate PPE and testing. A flood of new cases through premature lifting of the lockdown will swamp the system.
There is no doubt the Covid is more deadly than normal flu – for the elderly population. Whether or not this simply reflects rapid spread, so that we are getting all the deaths in one big lump, we don’t yet know. In the UK, the flu can kill 30 – 40K in a year (sometimes more). Covid has (probably) killed ~30K so far, in about six weeks. The normal flu season last three to four months(ish). So, we may see 100K deaths, or it may simply fade away. (My current belief is that Covid will disappear almost as fast as it came – as per most flu epidemics. But I may be wrong on this). New Zealand has had 19 deaths, in total. They are claiming great skill in dealing with the outbreak. I suspect that, because it arrived in their late summer, this was not the time of year for an infectious epidemic. Who knows what is going to happen there when winter comes.
well spotted Dr K; astute as always. Friends in NZ report numerous anecdotes of folks developing all sorts of symptoms of corona back in Jan or earlier; tales of folks returning to NZ in Jan through Beijing airport; spending some hours there, and having chest infections after returning; in the nz summer, astute Chinese tourists flew south to the sun; so there were maybe 20 planes a day arriving Nov-Feb; 6000 visitors a day; 180,000 a month; 500,000 visitors in 3 months: 10% of nz population. Few chinese tourists would visit Glasgow in the UK winter.
The authorities do not wish to concede any of this: they have a simple answer: corona only arrived a week before they instituted house arrest, and the tiny incidence of problems over that time of course showed the brilliance of their interventions: no other explanations can or will be tolerated: mother has spoken.
Friends of ours there narrate tales of lunching with aircrew directly off flights from China in the innocent days of early summer, when such human contact was run of the mill. Nice smooth flight back from Beijing? Great. Cool. 12 hr flight? Phew. Seemingly something like 3000 hospital beds were emptied in preparation for the corona arriving: (although it was likely all around the country by Dec or Jan); and in those 3000 empty beds, were sat up to 12 persons at any one time, who were deemed corona positive.
Friends report it was the best summer in years in NZ: endless sunny and cloudless days: the entire population out in the sun as much as possible. Surely now we see a good way to stay healthy.
The Atlantic article that I just read (the link is in JDPatten’s post) mentioned the flaws in the Santa Clara “study”, so you’re correct that it was flawed and people jumped on it too quickly. That’s the whole point of the Atlantic piece that the uncertainties have been fueled by studies and pre-studies being published long before they should be, etc. As for the connection between staying indoors and the effect on our immune system, I’m hedging my bets by taking D3 and getting out in the sun as much as possible. Even if you’re proven correct that it’s a load of B.S. that our immune systems can suffer that quickly, I love the feeling of being outdoors in the sun as this lockdown makes it feel even more precious and special than before.
Given that the majority of the UK population is overweight or obese, isn’t the Government missing a great opportunity of reminding them of the dangers of obesity and bad eating habits? It hardly gets a mention, yet when we see pictures of the NHS staff and of carers who have died from the virus, it can’t escape everybody that there are a disproportionate number who look very overweight. Some research in this area would be good, but is perhaps rather unexpected in these foolish times.
Oh, here is a start with research and it includes Imperial College too!
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/197216/being-male-overweight-lead-more-serious/
The embarrassing fact is that most of those who are seriously overweight or obese got that way by following government “healthy eating guidelines”. Admittedly, they are also “cheap eating” guidelines, perhaps reflecting a realization by Sir Humphrey – perhaps many years ago – that the population has grown too numerous to be fed with traditional healthy foodstuffs.
Very true about the ‘healthy eating guidelines’ and also the preponderance of antidepressants and especially anti-anxiety meds like quetiapine, which causes massive weight gain in many on the highest doses. It takes a herculean effort for some of us to be slim and healthy, but it can be done if we have the right information to guide us and a willingness to keep working at it.
Yes, it is a weird world we are living in just now. Food is certainly one of the most important ones to promote our health.
LCHF eating for health has been subjected to a prolonged witch hunt around the world from the medical establishment. Prof. Tim Noakes in South Africa is perhaps the most notable “victim” although he finally won his case.
You may ask why when LCHF actually cures people from obesity and T2D.
Well, 500 miljon T2D is for sure a big market for Big Pharma and may be the obvious answer.
The figure is closer to £50Bn
Yes!
A friend was slated for “fat shaming” a photo of a bunch of dieticians. I pointed out that it wasn’t fat shaming, it was diet shaming. Whenever their patients get fat and worse following their advice, they are always told that they are “failing to comply” with the diet. When the dieticians themselves become fat they don’t have that excuse, but it doesn’t sink in.
I remember one of the girls in the supermarket pointing out the fat people getting ever fatter while eating their “low fat!” food, while all the slim fit healthy people were in the butchers, veg shops and farm shops. She got it in a way that “medical professionals” usually don’t.
One of the most striking stories in Gary Taubes’ classic “The Diet Dilemma” (published in the USA as “Good Calories, Bad Calories” – a far better title) related an experience that Taubes himself had. In Latin America researching why some people get grossly fat, he was in a doctor’s waiting room and saw a very fat mother with a child who was severely undernourished. His first reaction was indigant – “what kind of mother stuffs herself while her child goes hungry?” Then it clicked that the mother’s obesity had the same cause as the child’s emaciation – a terrible diet, almost exclusively of cheap carbs. Bread, sugar, pasta…
Taubes tells of several Native American tribes who were noted for their physical perfection before the white man came. They hunted, fished, and grew their own vegetables and corn. Then the white man came, denied them fishing rights and hunting rights, and replaced their healthy diet with “government rations”: mostly white flour, sugar, and tea. Within a single generation they were all desperately obese.
Some years ago the UK stopped with the public service announcements and adverts. This is due to political correctness and the fact nobody in power wants to be seen as having a “nanny state” outlook.
When I was growing up we had green cross code man, anti litter campaigns galore, safe sex to fight aids, just say no to drugs. None of that sort of thing now. We have to allow people to live their own lives, make their own mistakes.
Sadly, when people make their own mistakes it’s the tax payer that picks up the bill.
They government could have done more in the way of announcements and advisories at the start of this. Not just “wash your hands” but **when** to wash or sanitise your hands. When you’ve touched cash or filled up at the petrol station. When you’ve been in a shared space like a shop. Even, put your toilet lid down before flushing as this thing could perhaps transmit through aerosol particles. But no.
We can’t be seen to tell people how to suck eggs.
Simon C, I read your statements about hand sanitising as supposedly being a way to reduce infection rates of this particular virus. In the early days when the Fergoid could get away with his statements of this infectious killer disease, because there were little available data. Now there is much more, and it appears the original statements have not been realised. If you watch https://youtu.be/T-saAuXaPok, you can see a different perspective, so the current draconian solutions including excessive satitising.
Right, Notepad, there is such a thing as ‘excessive sanitising’ and I’ve often reminded family members to ignore the panic-buying of hand sanitizers, because soap and water (imho) is the better choice, anyway. That said, when I’ve had to go out in public and touch a lot of surfaces, I do take extra care to make sure I wash my hands with soap and water so I don’t unnecessarily tax my immune system just yet. It’s like I’m allowing it to ‘save it’s strength’ for when I get hit with this virus. Call me crazy and completely wrong if you must, but after having so many autoimmune issues in the recent past, I admit I’m playing it a bit safe. That doesn’t mean I won’t grab an item that may have the virus on it and I don’t walk around wearing gloves, but something just tells me to at least wash my hands after being in a public place until my immune system is fully healed or at least stronger after years of health problems ( I don’t know how long it takes to heal from all the conditions I dealt with before adopting a healthier diet, though my labs are very encouraging.)
I was always of the school of thought that believed my kids–and I –should play in the dirt, etc and I was never worried about them being exposed to germs, but until we know more about this virus and how quickly it can inundate a person over 60 (me), I’m just being a ‘little’ cautious about picking it up too quickly..
Well there is such a thing as excessive sanitising. Animals brought up in entirely sterile environments do very badly and die very young. Our systems require exposure to various invective agents. This is simply, a fact. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5146645/
Agree completely. Do you think I have anything to worry about because my immune system was out of whack for so long? Does it need healing? Can it heal? Should I just go about my business normally and forget about the hand washing after being out in public now that my health has improved from dietary/lifestyle changes?
Thanks for the link, btw 🙂
Does your self-healing system need healing?
The key to heath is in identifying and removing the blocks – on all levels that get in the way of what comes naturally – or would, given the chance.
I feel it worth inviting this way of seeing to be considered instead of adding ever more layers of manual management or interventions by which to get in our own way.
What is the covid over-reaction based upon but faith in the belief our immune function is inadequate?
Build resilience by investing faith in the active belief that life can support its own expression and allow that research, doctors and your own inner intuition is part of life and not separate.
The thing about a siege (lockdown in self isolated protection) is that it denies a greater communication and exchange. Its a valid strategy under specific conditions – but no way to live – even if you manage to survive and get a position of relative privilege in its system.
We have become normalised to live in a bubble – and made it consensual reality.
I accept our individual freedom to choose our risk-level within the realms of workability. I don’t accept being denied life and the sharing of the qualities of life for the sake of protecting the right of others to consolidate their personal sense of security – regarding potential interactions in which their comfort zones are not supported, by which they may believe they are threatened or offended because I do not share their beliefs.
So I see it as a self and social responsibility in life to negotiate risks that are part of what life is – but NOT the State’s business – unless crime is involved.
Now we have a state that makes laws for thought crimes, and a medical system that sets laws for criminalising social ‘infection’ applied not to clinical disease but to the living and the healthy who don’t comply with state directives that serve the control structure, set apart from and over the living.
If we make health a god, we pursue it for its own sake. Likewise power or control or wealth.
Unless we let life IN, we lock it out under the attempt to force it into some ideal – that is never shall be – even if the stick and carrot of its promise or threat moves us on in futile pursuit.
A lot of what is going on is ‘Skinner’s rats’ or ‘Pavlov’s dogs’. Conditioning that requires our consent at some level.
Yes, Binra, I too, want the freedom to choose which risks to take with my own body and will never acquiesce to mandatory vaccinations or live in a Mad Max world, because it’s my choice to stay or go, at that point. As for having faith that “life can support its own expression”, that’s easier now that I’ve done the hard work of finding and implementing the right diet and lifestyle plan for my health and well being. When I listened to the powers that be and followed their food guides or allowed myself to be tempted by the carbage offerings on tap around every corner, my immune system overreacted and fell ill, so it’s not surprising I would be somewhat tentative as to how much I can “trust” my immune system to support me. That said, I don’t feel stressed or worried; I’m just wanting to be sure I’m doing all I can to support my physical and emotional needs, as I’m still getting to know its nuances and signals.
All is well…take care.
Absolutely! My stepdad used to tell me that we all needed to eat some ‘dirt’ in our lives and apparently a handful of dirt contains millions of viruses and bacteria, so I never wash my mushrooms, a vague attempt at brushing off the ‘dirt’ is all. What the hell is going on? We’ve lived with all these organisms for millions of years and along comes capitalism and messes the whole thing up! I go to see my GP and in the waiting room, a video tells me that cholesterol is a disease. What a depressing state of affairs and it just keeps getting worse. Eventually and probably quite soon, the entire, sorry enterprise is going to self-destruct and perhaps whatever is left on the ‘other side’, will return to a more modest and sustainable way of living, or am I just dreaming?
Hi barovsky: re eating “dirt” is needed, did your stepdad have an antidote for parasitic worms?
Diatomaceous earth
teedee,
As in: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”.
JD, finally someone who uses those words to describe something factual, like the immune system. Thank you. I grew to hate those words a few decades ago when certain people would use them as a platitude when I was having severe bouts of depression and panic disorder w/agoraphobia. It was the old, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps–fake it till you make it—grow a thicker skin–it’s not your circumstances that are flawed, it’s your thoughts” routine topped by the never helpful, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” stuff that made life even more unbearable at that time.
teedee,
Along these lines, being challenged with other very nasty diseases might – – might!! – – reduce the worst symptoms of COVID, should you eventually get it.
Does Bezos actually pay you to spread his muck for him?
I would put the article in The Onion (Parody site) and then it would make sense.
While injecting vaccines for other conditions is ostensibly arguable – or at least as proposing for an argument – the fact of such propaganda adds insult to injury.
Or are they pissing on you and laughing all the way to the bank?
Do you ever take a step back and look at what the actual risk of ‘CV-19’ amounts to?
Even if the stats were exclusively caused BY this novel virus?
If CV-19 didn’t exist would the vaccination industry have to invent it?
If the vaccination industry didn’t exist would you be left helpless?
This may be so – because and I haven’t the exact quote handy – but it was an insider confessing that “we have created whole generations of vaccine dependency”.
Not unlike psycho-pharma’s negative addiction – in that NOT taking the drugs initiates extremely negative physical experience.
So a stepping down culture of transition is needed – NOT a mandatory vaccination for all.
It is the vaccinated who are likely to be immuno-compromised as a result of false premises and profits. Though there is much else operating anti-biosis in our world.
Binra, I think the person you were looking for who mentioned vaccine dependant immunity (an oxymoron given all the contaminants found in vaccines in an Italian study mentioned recently) was Heidi Larsen speaking to the World Holocaust Organisers, sorry, World Health Organisation. Meanwhile a little more from Fox news https://youtu.be/sPrbGU0Wyh4
Ah – yes. Elizabeth Hart (Hi) is my source. (Though I have seen Andrew Wakefield on the complications of the measles for the vaccinated).
I would like to read the quote in context before trusting to use it.
Heidi Larson, Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project, during the recent WHO Global Vaccine Safety Summit, i.e. “…We’ve shifted the human population…to dependency on vaccine-induced immunity…We’re in a very fragile state now. We have developed a world that is dependent on vaccinations”.
the ‘…’ presumably refers to runs of text not included.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/fears-of-loss-of-public-confidence-expressed-at-who-vaccine-conference_3265248.html
This has the quote:
The collapse of public confidence in vaccines comes even as vaccines become more critical to public health, she says. That’s because the natural immunity that people had developed to many diseases hasn’t kept up with the diseases themselves, and in some cases has even waned.
Larson says we now rely on vaccines more than ever, because our collective immunity isn’t what it used to be.
“We have shifted the human population to dependency on vaccine-induced immunity, and that’s on the great assumption that populations would cooperate,” Larson said. “We’re in a very fragile state now. We have developed a world that is dependent on vaccinations. We don’t have a choice but to make that effort.”
I suggest there are a few points which put people in this fragile state:
1) The almost OCD approach to washing
2) Enormous inputs of pharma drugs
3) Relatively poor nutrition from big ag.
What do I do?
Don’t wash a lot
Don’t have any pharma drugs
Don’t eat junk food. No wheat products, not much of other carbs. Plenty of unpasteurised cheese, cream. Plenty of eggs (you know, the high cholesterol thingys) some meat though not a lot, butter, dark chocolate and a myriad of vits, B, C, D, E, magnesium, and a few others. Veggies and fruit.
Pervasive and invasive toxins play a role – but what IS – or what ARE the immune systems?
herein lies the key. As i suggested recently what we do to block, obstruct or undermine support for our health and life and self is often where we are not looking because it is part of our believed ‘security’ or protection.
What are the premises of the covid19 event?
Is not one of them the assertion that being ‘novel’ we have NO IMMUNITY to it and are therefore weak, defenceless and must needs run and hide behind what are essentially propaganda props.
Resilience, fortitude, resourcefulness, confidence grown of willingness to go for something worthy are all aspects of growing character. If I sound like an old man now it is because a moral education has been thrown out by a social correctness compliance – that is top down or engineered – even in terms of generating astroturfed or fake movements.
Controlling human behaviours is very cynical and of course dehumanising to both the controller and the supporting role who gives over responsibility to ‘Them’ or to conditions – as if we have no participation in how we choose to see or respond – and so we run as a product of others or of a past put beyond change. Except of course, Orwell was almost right. Who commands the present, commands the past. Not controlling others or externals, but deciding how to see the world and others. We carry the past that justifies our present. Depression or dispiritedness easily finds the past that supports and sets the outcome in joylessness, lack of energy and motivation.
And the spell of any narrative fixation can be bolstered by fear, pain, lack and grievance no matter how cruelly it turns upon itself. If there is an ‘answer’ then it is fitted to the desire to find or be found in it – as our own call to life – given expression in our day, our relationships and endeavours. None of which are really added on, so much as regained as a result of releasing heavy burdens.
Having been brought up in a managed society, I am now living in a managed crushing of the global economy. I might wish the ‘globalists’ had something that felt workable and liveable – but its a captured and cloned collectivism being relentlessly fed expectation and passive compliance – is it not?
Hi Binra, re your reference to Heidi Larson. She’s an anthropologist and the director of The Vaccine Confidence Project, what I would describe as a ‘big brother’ organisation monitoring any dissent about vaccination, and promoting vaccine products, i.e. a marketing arm. But you can check out their own spiel at this link: https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/ The VCP seems to be based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
In December last year, the World Health Organisation hosted the Global Vaccine Safety Summit, video presentations are still currently accessible via this link: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2019/12/02/default-calendar/global-vaccine-safety-summit
Heidi Larson presented the plenary lecture, titled: Vaccine safety in the next decade: Why we need new models of trust building?
Unfortunately, full transcripts don’t appear to be available. However, I transcribed Heidi Larson’s lecture myself, and you can contact me if you want a copy of it, elizhart8@gmail.com
Here are the comments from Larson you refer to, without my editing:
I think that one of our biggest challenges is, as Bob said this morning, or yesterday, we’re in a unique position in human history, where we’ve shifted the human population to vaccine-induced, to dependency on vaccine-induced immunity. And that’s on the great assumption that populations would cooperate. And for many years people lined up, the six vaccines, people were there, they saw the reason. We’re in a very fragile state now. We have developed a world that is dependent on vaccinations. We don’t have a choice but to make that effort, to make that extra…
Again, anyone who is interested, feel free to contact me if you’d like the whole transcript of Heidi Larson’s lecture.
I’d love to read the whole transcript. I’ll email you, thanks, Elizabeth.
Re Heidi Larson and The Vaccine Confidence Project, they are accustomed to a soapbox via the mainstream media, including the BBC, and Larson referred to my faithful BBC in her plenary lecture Vaccine safety in the next decade. Why we need new modes of trust building?, at the WHO Global Vaccine Safety Summit last December.
There’s a serious lack of transparency for The Vaccine Confidence Project. For example, in September last year, Dr Pauline Paterson of The VCP was given a platform on the BBC Newsnight program Why the anti-vaccination movement is wrong, without disclosing the vaccine industry provides funding for The VCP, plus other organisations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, have provided funding.
Similarly, Heidi Larson’s article published in Nature in October 2018, i.e. The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation, fails to disclose conflicts of interest.
I raised this issue in a BMJ rapid response, see ‘Pharma-led chorus’ dominates the public narrative on vaccination, including reference to my complaint to the BBC, saying that its editorial policy and standards had been breached in not disclosing conflicts of interest, and that the Vaccine Confidence Project was not clearly transparent about its funding sources on its website. I received a response from Adam Cumiskey, Newsnight’s Chief Programme Producer. He did not accept the BBC had breached its policy or standards but acknowledged that, since the Vaccine Confidence Project began, its research team has received funding from a range of organisations including vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, 3ie, Innovative Medicines Initiative and others.[8] In my view, this conflict of interest information should have been clearly disclosed during the BBC Newsnight program. https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l312/rr-6
There’s a major problem in that the mainstream media, including the BBC and journals such as The BMJ, fail utterly to provide critical analysis of vaccination policy and investigation of conflicts of interest.
It’s horrifying to see how easily politicians and entire news organizations can be blatantly bought off. This worries me more than any news story about a ‘scary virus’. It’s the systemic buying off of every health organization, and their myriad conflicts of interest that will be our undoing, long before any virus can thin the herd. We’re allowing Big Brother to move right into our homes now, with barely a whisper of complaint.
The cause was a long way back, but the recognition of consequence is seen as if it suddenly happened. However you are right, tyranny is invited or given a back door or even mainline connection into our homes, our kids our minds. It doesn’t seem to be what it actually does.
To what degree is this a popping of a reality bubble for many who have been insulated to a large extent from having to confront the ‘backend’ or underbelly of society?
Someone said ‘how dare they..?’ in a recent comment. Well audacity is their strong suit – and the bigger the lie the better it works.
Those mortally afraid of an extraordinarily oversold respiratory infection have been induced to a patriotic fervour for our boys on the front line. Saving lives and saving an already captured privately owned ‘NHS’ – apart from token show.
This formula worked in the past and it works now because fear is the underlying basis for protection and survival in all but a few – and the fear response shuts down all else to fight or flight – but in trauma of overwhelm we have another option; freezing, immobilisation and dissociation.
We can also have the situation where the abused emulates or repeats the abusive pattern.
If the infected can be recast as vermin – they can be treated as vermin as a moral necessity or virtue. This can be seen in not very distant human history.
Calling up fear is extremely dangerous for it can and does mutate into a monster when it is fed rather than starved of fuel. It only offer illusion of control – but for the Fauci’s of the world any illusion is a way to evade and delay a terrible upset.
After reading Elizabeth’s post – to which you reply – I had the image of someone who would rather medicate his family to death by stealth than upset them with such terrible experience. I have read of such cases.
All too true, Binra. I used to fervently believe that the majority of us would never allow things to get to the point where we’re living in an ‘Idiocracy’ (as the movie title suggests), but I don’t think enough of us will fight back and stop it. I never thought I’d say that, but I now believe that most people will simply fall in line and let the alpha dogs have their way with the world.. I want to remain optimistic as is/was my usual nature, but more than that I’m a realist, and I can see that far too many have lost the will to fight back.
Like other readers, I always enjoy your blogs and appreciate the sometimes maverick views! This week’s blog on vitamin D was no exception and I wholeheartedly endorse the suggestion that Vit D3 supplements should be taken during the winter months especially to help boost immunity. However, I have a little niggle, regarding very high doses for a prolonged period of time, which is the possibility that high dose vit D may trigger sub-clinical magnesium deficiency. You wrote about this a while ago and referred the readers to the following reference:
http://openheart.bmj.com/content/openhrt/5/1/e000668.full.pdf – paper written by Jarnes,J. et al.
On a personal note, I had been taking 1000 i.u. of vitamin D for several months and had occasional AF. After reading this paper, I stopped the vit D, got myself some magnesium supps and the episodes of AF have pretty much disappeared! Everyday, I thank you sincerely for that information!!
Jill Leslie: Thank you for reposting that important paper. All the food highest in Mg are nuts plus chocolate. I also drink Gerolsteiner mineral water, which has 100 mg/L Mg. I think the recommended daily value is somewhere around 500 mg.
We take 2 or 3 magnesium citrate tablets per day to balance the likely excess of calcium in our diet (meat, dairy, green veg, etc.)
The magnesium pills are among the larger, but go down easily with water if you relax your throat. It’s essential, by the way, to take all pills with plenty of liquid. I once read about a doctor who got a pill stuck in his throat and didn’t notice until it had burned a hole right through. Whoops!
Check how much elemental (actual) magnesium each pill contains. Typically it’s a third or less of the whole size/weight.
Jill Leslie
Very interesting article, thanks, especially since I occasionally suffer from AF and arythmies.
My questions: why did you give up Vitamin D supplementation after increasing your Mg supplementation?
How do you supplement Mg? I take it in the form of Magnesium Glyphosphate which gives me 200 mg of elemental Magnesium a day? Is this the best for bio availability, how much do I need? Not easy questions to answer. Doctors have told me that they assume blood levels to be equivalent to cell levels. This article calls that into doubt.
Mr Chris,
A lower carb diet can sometimes (often?) help with AF. That and mg supplements, but you’re doing that already. See e.g. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2007/12/atrial-tachycardia-and-fibrillation.html
Note that changing suddenly to a keto diet has been reported as giving heart rhythm problems to some people, so you might want to ease into it, say 100g carbs/day for a couple of days, then 70, 50 … and see how it goes. Of course if you already have AF you might be less worried about that and just try full keto for a couple / few days.
A good quote from one of Peter’s Covid blogs: http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2020/04/coronavirus-is-possibly-everywhere.html
“Damn, bacon and eggs for breakfast every day and steak with broccoli and ‘shrooms for supper. Cheese and olives for lunch if you’re hungry. Sounds awful I know but sacrifices will have to be made.” 🙂
mal
Sasha: She was clearly referring to the rabble, that the rabble (or deplorables, if you wish, although at that time she had yet to deploy that colorful phrase) is winning, since she and wild Bill succeeded in clawing their way into the ranks of the elites.
Ali: Beef liver is rich in Cu: 14.57 mg/100g; cooked oysters: 4.29mg/100g; baking chocolate: 3.23 mg/100g; cashew: 2.21 mg/100g; Brazil nuts: 1.74 mg/100g. All, except cashew, among my favorite foods
More “D”: news:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/05/indonesian-study-low-vitamin-d-patients-ten-times-more-likely-to-die-of-coronavirus/
I feel I would be remiss if I don’t make a variation to my post above (Apr 30) where I stated that Dr David Brownstein recommends high doses of Vit A and D3 “during the illness”. Actually this is the way Dr Brownstein stated it: “Both Vitamin A and D are fat-soluble vitamins. They can build up in the body. These doses are NOT meant to be taken for longer than four days at time. If you need to repeat the doses, seek advice from your physician.” He also states his dose for adults for Vit A (palmitate) as being 100,000 IU/day for four days (not pregnant or breast-feeding women) and for adults Vit D3 50,000 IU/day for four days along with at least 5 to 10 grams of ascorbic acid/day (to bowel tolerance) longer term and then the nebulizing as described in my post above. Nebulizing can be continued well past the four days and can be done at least a few times/day.
Malcolm, re your snake oil salesman’s reference to Bill Gates, i.e. Bill Gates is behind it all sir you say, pushing for mandatory vaccines for all diseases…
It seems that Bill Gates is indeed running the show…
Here’s direct evidence that Bill Gates deliberately sabotaged the vaccine safety commission mooted by RFK Jr and Donald Trump, see this video excerpt, transcript below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6YwP7Er-rQ&feature=youtu.be
Gates is talking about meeting with Donald Trump after he became president…
…then the second time I saw him was the March after that, so March 2017, in the White House. In both of those two meetings he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing, because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines, and somebody, I think his name was Robert Kennedy Jr, was advising them that vaccines were causing bad things, and I said no, that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that…
Honestly, how bad is this?!?!? Who the hell is Bill Gates to deliberately scupper a vaccine safety commission? How are Bill and Melinda Gates wielding so much power, these unelected people who are dabbling and interfering in the lives of billions? How do we bring them to account?
And on 30 April 2020, here’s Gates telling us What you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/What-you-need-to-know-about-the-COVID-19-vaccine
Here are some quotes:
One of the questions I get asked the most these days is when the world will be able to go back to the way things were in December before the coronavirus pandemic. My answer is always the same: when we have an almost perfect drug to treat COVID-19, or when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.
Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus. Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible.
My hope is that the vaccine we have 18 months from now is as close to “perfect” as possible. Even if it isn’t, we will continue working to improve it. After that happens, I suspect the COVID-19 vaccine will become part of the routine newborn immunization schedule.
In order to stop the pandemic, we need to make the vaccine available to almost every person on the planet.
Again, read the entire Gates article. It’s absolutely chilling that this person is being allowed to run amok with international vaccination policy, we the people have to rein this in and demand accountability. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/What-you-need-to-know-about-the-COVID-19-vaccine
This is my preferred format of Kennedy’s argument:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/flu-misinformation-and-coronavirus-fears-my-letter-to-dr-sanjay-gupta/
I hope nobody will mind my posting it here, as I have found great difficulty in locating Kennedy’s writing through search engines. What you see first is a mountain of pages saying how insane he is, how he “spouts anti-vaxxer nonsense”, etc.
I have found Kennedy very persuasive and reasonable, and I am inclined to believe him.
As for Gates, I have been trying to open people’s eyes to his unscrupulousness since the 1980s. My company, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) – maker of PDP11 and VAX computers – suffered quite badly when corporate and government customers began buying PCs instead of what we thought of as our “serious” systems. One DEC engineer, trying to explain what people saw in MS-DOS, explained “It’s cheap and fast because it doesn’t have the overhead of an operating system”.
The main reason why Microsoft grew so rapidly and became one of the world’s largest corporations is that, almost uniquely, it has always been unwaveringly focused on increasing long-term profits and absolutely nothing else. Quality, safety, reliability, ease of use, etc. are all seen as “nice to have” features, which Microsoft will spend money on if (and only if) it is sure that will maximize its profits.
Today it seems that Gates has not changed. Some people think he is a brilliant programmer, but he is not. (Name a single program that he has written or even contributed to). Others think he is a great leader, but he is not. He is actually an extremely efficient businessman, utterly dedicated to making money with little or no concern for anything else.
elizabethhart, thank you for the post, and particularly for the excerpts of the links. I would find it too traumatising to go through the links, but I may get round to it one day. Gates thinks there might be a safe vaccine in 18 months. I wonder, safe by whose standards, for many of the current vaccines are far from safe.
Stay safe, (have my vaccine). This seems like an oxymoron, but there are many people believing it will be safe. Perhaps they should dig a little.
This is an example of why they don’t want a commission to look into vaccine safety.
“Just to be brief about the issue, I think one of the major problems with vaccines is that they’re grown in animal tissues and we don’t know what viruses and pathogens are coming back in the needle. A recent inquiry in December 2018 by the Italian lab, Corvela, on the GlaxoSmithKline vaccine Priorix Terta highlights troubling problems that our technology can now uncover but that few seem to have the courage to investigate. Translated from the Italian, the report finds:”
“We have continued the investigation, both chemical and biological, on the Priox Tetra, quadrivalent against measles, rubella, mumps, and varicella. We have found . . . proteobacteria and nematoda worms, 10 other viruses through ssRNA, Microviridae (bacterial or phage viruses) and numerous retroviruses including endogenous human and avian retroviruses, avian viruses, human immunodeficiency and immunodeficiency virus of monkeys (fragments that if inserted into the database detect fragments of HIV and SIV), murine virus, horse infectious anemia virus, lymphoproliferative disease”
— Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science by Kent Heckenlively, Judy Mikovits
https://amzn.eu/3wL8Ynj
SteveR, thanks for the Italian link. Your internet access will be terminated soon, as will mine as I am going to pass it on. This to me, is the killer blow for those who claim vaccines are safe and effective.
Indeed.
The Guardian appears to be pre-moderating all my posts now and censoring those it doesn’t like without the usual warning about not following the rules – which I am as far as I can tell.
I believe it, Steve. The National (owned by Post Media) ‘moderated’ me out of existence in their comments section for trying to talk about vitamins C and D for some protection against Covid-19…They tried to use the excuse that my screen name (TeeDee) didn’t fit with their “Community Guidelines”, yet someone using the screen name ‘Default User’ was just fine
Is there no end to this?! What are we doing to ourselves and to the planet in the name of making a profit? Worse still, as a result of the massive propaganda campaign waged by the (UK) government to cover their utter failure to prepare for the inevitable, worse, their deliberate destruction of our public health infrastructure, built over the past 70 years, with OUR MONEY, expertise and time, everybody, whether they like it or not, have become medical ‘experts’, epidemiologists and statisticians as we try to make sense of the insensible, the endless flood of meaningless numbers, the fear-mongering (going outside kills people), and what is now being called the ‘new normal’, code word for endless austerity even worse than the last decade’s!
When will we learn to get up off our knees and kick these gangsters out, once and for all?
Steve, thanks for the book recommendation, ‘Plague of Corruption’. I started to read an excerpt from it and didn’t even finish it before making the decision to purchase the book immediately. It’s sickening what happened to Judy Mikovits life and career because of her integrity and refusal to lie about her findings just to please greedy, corrupt Big Pharma bastards and their stockholders who care NOTHING about human suffering or healthy lives. Their dearest wish is for every man, woman, child and domestic animal to be medicated and vaccinated to the hilt, and they couldn’t care less about unintended consequences or quality of life issues.
Steve,
Just a bit of background history concerning the authors:
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/03/11/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-researcher-mikovits-who-championed-link-to-xmrv-to-publish-book/
It’s all out there. Just sayin’.
“It’s all out there” . And it’s misleading, or just plain WRONG!!
1) It was NOT Andrew Wakefield’s study. He was a member of a team. The retraction was political.
2) It was denied autism and vaccines were linked.
3) William Thompson, a senior researcher at the CDC blew the whistle when the research team there was told to destroy the data which showed there was a link to autism.
4) The story discrediting Andrew Wakefield was written by Brian Deer, who was paid by The Times (may have been Sunday Times), the paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose son James was a non-executive director of Smith Kline Beecham (or similar name, as they keep changing it.) Manufacturers of the MMR vaccine.
The vaccine introduced into the UK was banned in Canada in (I think early 1988) named Trivirex, because of the problems it was causing. This was licensed in the UK in July 1988 as Pluserix.
It’s all out there, but then of course, vaccines are safe and effective, if you happen to be a manufaccturer with no product liability.
This:
https://www.parliament.scot/researchbriefingsandfactsheets/petitions briefings S5/PB17-1658.pdf
But, also, this:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bad-medicine/
JDPatten: Snopes is lying. Dr. William S. Thompson of the CDC, who was the statistician on the study later published in Pediatrics (the scientific journals they pitched it to all rejected it) as DeStefano, et al., 2004, knew that his superiors had ordered them to remove the data from 40% of the cohort, which diluted the strong signal to one not statistically significant, then to destroy the original data (they met in a conference room with a big garbage can). That signal indeed showed an odds ratio of 3.40 of an autism diagnosis for African-American boys (in Atlanta, GA) given MMR prior to age five compared to those not vaccinated until age five. He sat on this knowledge for ten years. Then, in a private phone call with a fellow scientist (and autism parent) with whom he had interacted in an official capacity regarding FOIA requests, he spilled the beans. That scientist, Dr. Brian Hooker, recorded the conversation. Dr. Thompson hired a whistleblower attorney. They contacted Rep. Bill Posey (R, FL.), who read Dr. Thompson’s statement, and all the original documents into the Congressional Record on the floor of the House, with a plea to his colleagues to investigate the matter (you can watch the video of it; it is archived). You can read all of this, and many, many more details of this in “Vaccine Whistleblower: Exposing Autism Research Fraud at the CDC,” by Kevin Barry, Esq. Why Congress did nothing about this is perfectly obvious; they are wholly owned by Pharma, as they are by the defense industry. Retraction Watch is often good, but why you choose to believe Wikipedia or Snopes, or even RW uncritically escapes me. I suggest you reread “Doctoring Data.” I’m currently on my fourth read. It never goes stale; in fact it is more relevant as each day passes. I have all the original documents (from the CDC) Dr. Thompson submitted to his attorney and Rep. Posey on my hard drive. I will email them to you if you wish. By the way, after this became public, Dr. Thompson phoned Carmel Wakefield to apologize for sitting on this knowledge for thirteen years (since 2001). Had he come forth earlier, it may have made a difference in the persecution of her husband, and he regretted not doing so. This is a true and shocking story that Snopes is simply lying about.
Gary, thank you for your continual diligence in these matters, there would be plenty of others to thank you, if only they questioned “safe and effective”. Without these posts people would be doing things like staying at home, wearing masks and keeping a silly distance from everyone else. \(^-^)/. Ooooooh, they are………………
Gary,
It’s interesting that you apparently believe that I believe.
I’m functionally comfortable with the idea that the scientific methods we humans have evolved for ourselves to this point – and according to the rigor with which they’re used – are generally heading us towards a fair facsimile of reality on most levels.
That is by way of stating that I do not “believe” anything, per se. I’ve been taught that hard lesson by Life. I do see myself as optimistic as well, though.
Science, as we human inventors/developers of it practice it, is, of course, rife with errors… and, yes, dissembling. It’s part of the deal. The best you can do is view every aspect of all research papers’ methods and concluding statements as-if-it-were-your-own.
Giving full benefit of the doubt to each of opposing contentions is a challenge, but can be enlightening.
You must, naturally, be most rigorous with this approach when examining reportage or position statements in books or articles.
Simply affirming one’s own bias is comforting, but false.
Have you tried wrestling around with pubmed?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=((((thimerosal%5BTitle%2FAbstract%5D)+AND+infant%5BTitle%2FAbstract%5D)+OR+neonatal%5BTitle%2FAbstract%5D)AND+autism%5BTitle%5D)+NOT+rats%5BTitle%2FAbstract%5D
Once again, a GP cautioning about believing almost any research https://youtu.be/T3ldcRYadR4
I don’t generally click links given without more context but I appreciate your comments and so I did – in case to discover a new voice. But while I was there I made a comment in terms of the cultural context of science.
Do we stand on the shoulders of giant… mistakes?
JDPatten: It is not only possible, but, in my view, highly likely that there are rare mutations in the causal chain resulting in autism. The key here is rare. The autism rate in New Jersey is now 1 in 32. This is not rare. Additionally, what is causal in those mutations? This we don’t know. In fact, the NIH has spent hundreds of millions over the past thirty years on rubbish like all that stuff on PubMed. Remember Dr. Ioaniddis. Not all rubbish, but mainly so. It would be very simple to establish as strong an association as with cigarettes and lung cancer, with vaccines and autism by doing a very large comparison between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. NIH refuses to do this. The Vaccine Safety Datalink contains a vast amount of data about the medical consequences of vaccination (mainly from Harvard Pilgrim in the East and Kaiser in the West). This information is tightly held by CDC; they refuse to allow any independent scientist to have a peek at it. They know damn well what they are doing. They are not evil people. As Dr. Thompson told Brian Hooker, “They are paralyzed.” The modern day Tuskegee, but affecting far more. During this entire period, for the past 36 years NIH has been run by a man who lacks scruples, Anthony Fauci.
AhN Seth Mnookin, author of Panic Virus, media reporter for Undark Magazine (whatever that is), media professor & a definite vaccine fan offered this on Wakefield years ago
“From the day it was published, one of the major problems with Wakefield’s original work that researchers pointed to was that it relied on parents’ post-facto recollections to determine what had or had not actually happened. Those memories weren’t a suitable substitution for actual data then…and they’re not now, either”
Fiona Godlee insisted that wakefield’s work was fabricated not just incorrect.
I would have some regard for Godlee for standing up to Professor Rory Collins while he stood up for Pfizer who funded his ”research”, but in no way influenced his pro statin angle – at all at all!
The other allegation was that wakefield was working on a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. (I suppose that’s not a crime – if it were true)
What? Vaccines cause autism? Really? Perish the thought. What a scurrilous suggestion. Here is the salvation for vaccines, but it might not be available for long, a rare exposure….https://youtu.be/Kji5d3MOrQM
AhN
I am being Devils advocate of a sort. We shouldn’t ignore the counter argument. What we should do, if we have the time & expertise is to forensically examine the other narrative & reveal the flaws within. I simply dont know enough about the issue to argue for or against but those who do know should do so. After all the references I made are from the mainstream and that is what we are constantly exposed to. If Prof Seth is wrong – how ? If Fiona Godlee is wrong – how ? If the argument, very much played up about money being Wakefields motive let’s hear why that is not the case or why its irrelevant. Just saying !
Just read “Callous Disregard”.
Jerome Savage: The recollections of the parents are data. When one goes to the doctor with an illness, the doctor listens (or should) carefully to what you say in order to make an informed decision about treatment options. This is the data the doctor uses. Seth Mnookian is one of prominent promoters of the idea that autism is a gift, fully ignoring the 40% or so of those severely afflicted. It is certainly known in the industry and among regulators that there are “hot lots” of vaccines, individual production runs which cause higher levels of injuries. This is why manufacturers are allowed to break up lots and ship them to different parts of the U.S. With no other pharmaceutical product is this allowed, for obvious reasons of tracing. Which raises the question, were the Lancet twelve injuries related to a hot lot?
Gary You certainly present a robust challenge to the vaccine orthodoxy, U got your homework done, to be commended and encourages me to dig deeper. Can someone really argue that autism is a gift? What ?
We have and are the right and the freedom to uncover a gift in anything – but no one has the right to usurp or pre-empt that by their own imposition.
There is both a beloved, and a heartbreak compounded by injustice – under which one either deepens a faith in life for the living, or loses it to a cover story seeking lockstep agreements to set against the pain of not only the above – but also shame of self betrayal.
This pattern is also seen in covid-mind-masking as mind capture under an escape-narrative from self-conflicted fear. It is a very hard place to be in when your sense of self and world fall apart. That’s the last place we would go – and so we often try to leave it to the very last minute and never actually share the gift of a life we are effectively running away from.
Full post on
https://doctoringthedata.blogspot.com/2020/05/we-have-and-are-right-and-freedom-to.html
Sorry Binra
Read that twice & still cant quite grasp your message
Jerome, Can we move on? Whomever this is he /she is a fruitcake. Sorry
This is not the blog for name calling. If you disagree with someone, fine, but name calling is used by big pharma, global warmists, and such like, when they have no case.