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Waldorf, MD 20602
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Vitamin D and Viral Immunity
Vitamin D deficiency is very common in the United States. There have been some studies that revealed people who had vitamin D deficiency were more likely to test positive for COVID-19; people with COVID-19 suffering acute respiratory failure had high rates of vitamin D deficiency; and people given high doses of vitamin D had less incidence of treatment in intensive care. These are just a few examples of findings from just a few studies however, it has long been known that vitamin D plays a key role in viral immunity.
Besides better viral immunity, there are many reasons to increase your vitamin D level. There is a sweet zone of the vitamin D level in your blood. If you can get your vitamin D level within this sweet zone there is a statistical decrease in cancer, diabetes, fractures, neurological disorders, and heart attack. Vitamin D also plays a large role in fighting viral infections including cold, flu and coronaviruses.
The first and most important thing is to find out what your baseline vitamin D level is. This is a simple blood test. Don’t assume your doctor is checking your D level. The doctor has to specifically order a vitamin D test when doing blood work – it isn’t automatically measured with the basic tests.
Once the blood work results show your D level, you can determine if you are low, borderline low or within the sweet zone. Anything below 26 ng/ml is considered low. Surprisingly, the majority of people are found to be low. This is because we go from our house to our cars to our office to our cars and back to our house, getting little exposure to the sun.
Further, our soils and foods are depleted of nutrients so even if we eat healthy and get out in the sun, we are likely not getting enough proper minerals to absorb and utilize vitamin D properly.
The sweet zone would be around 50-70 ng/ml. If your level is below 50 ng/ml, it would be advisable to build your vitamin D stores. A person needs 2,000 IUs of vitamin D a day to maintain their stores and at least 4,000 IUs a day to build them. Once you start building your store of vitamin D, have your doctor periodically repeat the blood work to recheck your vitamin D level. When you get into the 50s you can drop down to a maintenance dose of 2,000 IUs a day. D3 is preferred because it is the most biologically active form of D. D has to be converted in the liver, then in the kidneys to a form known as D3, before the body can utilize it properly.
