Vitamin D – a look at why it is in the news…

I talk about Vitamin D quite a large amount in comparison to all the other vitamins. If you’ve read my third book, you’ll see that I list it as one of the three essential supplements that I believe we need to be taking as a nation.

Having optimal levels of D running around boosts the immune system and allows our nervous system to work correctly. It keeps our skin healthy, allows the body to use calcium and magnesium to better effect when rebuilding nerves and aids blood glucose control. It also lowers blood pressure, helps the bowel do its thing, reduces arthritic pain,, decreases fatigue and has been shown to aid recovery from most cancers.[1]

In the UK, we simply don’t get enough sun for most of the year, so we all tend to run a little short of this vital hormone.  It is thought that around 20% of the UK population is running Vitamin D deficient at all times.

Why the fuss about vitamin D right now?

Vitamin D is all over the news right now due to studies showing that patients with a vitamin D deficiency (below 20ng/ml of blood) or insufficiency (between 21-29ng/ml ) have far worse COVID-19 recovery outcomes.

SARS-Cov-2 is also having a far more serious impact for the BAME community. For instance, various reports show that between 60% and 72% of health and social care workers who have died after developing COVID-19 are from BAME backgrounds. This is despite BAME people making up only 21% of the workforce.

I personally believe that the disproportionate effect to the BAME community is linked by two factors:

• Inherent Vitamin D insufficiency and deficiency due to being in the northern hemisphere.
• The overall quality of their lives, stress levels and diet as a community.

What is the data showing?

Take the Indonesian experts that analysed the hospital records of 780 people who tested positive.

This preliminary data is showing that where COVID-19 patients were defined as vitamin D deficient or insufficient,  98.9% of these patients died.

Yet this fell to just 4.1% for patients who had an adequate blood level of vitamin D, which is currently thought to be is 30ng/ml and above.

And closer to home, a metadata study by Anglia Ruskin University found that reporting European countries in which vitamin D deficiency is prevalent have seen elevated death tolls since the start of the pandemic.

Also of note, COVID-19 has not been as much as a problem as expected for people with typical lung conditions as much as it’s in people who are suffering from metabolic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular and kidney disease.

What’s this got to do with the BAME community though?

It’s a fact that people that have darker skins and live above or below the tropics make less of their own Vitamin D. People with more melanin in their skin evolved where there was more fierce daily sun exposure. Skin pigmentation evolved as a defence mechanism against the fierce sun at the equator

And of course, the data we can analyse on our evolution shows that when homo sapiens migrated to more northern climes, the need to produce as much melanin was reduced, and so the lighter skin tones evolved away from the original dark skinned humans.

It’s also a fact that when you transplant that darker skin tone to somewhere where there is far less sun exposure and the sun is not as fierce, vitamin D deficiency is ar more likely to occur.

There’s not a lot you can do in an organic way to actually prevent that. The skin of darker people is acting as evolution designed it to protect against sun exposure, even where that exposure has a lesser effect than evolutionary tolerances gave.

What about vitamin D in food?

Unfortunately, the foods richest in vitamin D are either not the most popular, can be expensive or we’ve simply been told to cut back our consumption of them due to their fat content.

– Of course, these foods are a mainstay of a nutrient dense low carb diet.

• Fatty fish like tuna, mackerel and salmon.
• Red meat.
• Cheese.
• Egg yolks.
• Beef liver.

To cover this lack of eating the foods that are wonderful for our bodies, in our high-carb world manufacturers put vitamin D into “fortified foods” such as dairy-substitute low-fat spreads and breakfast cereals. Both of which are cheap and denuded in terms of nutrient content.

Fortifying food with vitamin D is also rather pointless as we need to eat saturated fats to process allow the gut to digest it.  The fortified foods are devoid of such assistance.

How do we make our own vitamin D?

We need three things:

1) We need to be outside in the sun when the sun is overhead.

Let’s face it, most of us have desk jobs or jobs that are in an office.

Yes, recently with the COVID season being upon us, we will been staying at home. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve actually gone out more.

This is also where I believe that some of the increased BAME mortality of COVID-19 stats have a root. Many BAME people have jobs in industries where access to a 45 minute to an hour walk at lunchtime is not really an option.

Being outside is fantastic for a whole host of reasons. The main one that for the purposes of this bit of writing is to note that we actually need to get direct sunlight to our skin.

And of course we then have the problem that has been given to us by society –  we’ve been told the sun is bad for us, especially in the middle of the day and we should hide indoors, under clothes or we have to put sunscreen on.

All things that stops us actually getting the right amount of sunlight for health.

2) We need UVB hitting our skin to create vitamin D

Having UVB rays hitting our skin triggers Vitamin D production.

Now, I know the messaging around sunshine is more nuanced than I’ve suggested. The main take-away for most people however is the blunt statement I made above. “Stay away from the sun, especially in the middle of the day.”

Which is rather disastrous for our health as Homo Sapiens. We need a small amount of daily UVB from midday sunshine exposure, as well as sunlight in general.

Yes, we must not get sunburned. So care is always advised.

It’s definitely a very healthy thing to have around 10-15 minutes of midday sun exposure during summer every day if light skinned. Double that for a darker skinned person.

Double this again in winter. Get out there in the middle of the day when the UVB is strongest.

3) Cholesterol availability is a prerequisite for vitamin D production.

The most crucial part of the equation is that to make vitamin D from the sunlight that we get on our skins we need cholesterol. No cholesterol, no vitamin D production.

Society as a whole is pretty down on cholesterol. It’s seen as a poisonous substance that must be controlled and suppressed at all cost.

However, what you are not told is that cholesterol is a vital to all life substance that we make ourselves; it makes up the cell walls, nerve sheaths and brain cells of all mammals. It’s also a major player in our immune health and inflammation controlling systems.

So if we are not eating a diet that has much cholesterol,  your body won’t have much if any to spare to convert to vitamin D, however much sun you get!

And when we lack vitamin D we are essentially eroding our cells from their insides.

What has all this got to do with living a Low Carb life and/or SARS-CoV-2?

Food quality has a massive impact on our metabolic health. And as I say above, it’s being shown that people with poor underlying metabolic health in terms of carbohydrate metabolism are far more susceptible to a SARS-Cov-2 infection turning into COVID-19.

The following are metabolic diseases that are diseases of carbohydrate metabolism:

• Type 2 diabetes
• Insulin resistance
• Prediabetes
• Cardiovascular disease
• Stroke
• Cancer–not all but most
• Obesity–not all obese are metabolically ill but about 80% are
• TOFI (Thin Outside Fat Inside)

Also of note, apart from their singular symptoms, all of these diseases cause inflammation. There is a inverse causal relationship between high levels of inflammation and low levels of vitamin D.

Also, in terms of cell attack from the outside, the cell membranes of the endothelium in our arteries are far more susceptible to damage due to constant erosion of the protective coating inside our arteries (called the glycocalyx) from a diet that is high in carbohydrate.

As quoted in the snappily tititled “Pulmonary Vascular Endothelialitis, Thrombosis, and Angiogenesis in Covid-19” from the New England Medical Journal:
“In patients who died from Covid-19–associated or influenza-associated respiratory failure, the histologic pattern in the peripheral lung was diffuse alveolar damage with perivascular T-cell infiltration. The lungs from patients with Covid-19 also showed distinctive vascular features, consisting of severe endothelial injury associated with the presence of intracellular virus and disrupted cell membranes”. (my bold).

How much D do I need to take?

Public Health England suggest that we all take 10mcg (400IU) of vitamin D a day for healthy bones, teeth and muscles and have done since 2016.

In normal times and when you are getting adequate sunlight, taking between 400IU and 800IU a day of vitamin D3 during the winter is, I believe, a must. If light skinned people are exposing our bare faces and arms to outdoor sunlight for a minimum of twenty minutes a day you can ramp it down to 400IU May-September

Darker skinned people will either need more time in the sun, and/or a constant level of supplementation all year around. Muslim women that wear hijab and modest clothing will need to supplement at all times.

Right now however,  some experts are suggesting that up to 5000IU a day for a month or two to give us all a “top up” will be a really good move right now.

Get to the point already! What’s your conclusion?

I’m concluding from all the evidence I’m reading that our BAME community have a double whammy going on. They are far more likely to be vitamin D insufficient or deficient as well as tending to eat a diet that is culturally very rice centric.

They are also generally economically poorer and so more likely to by buying cheaper foods at the supermarket. And so as a population, suffer an increased level of metabolic health issues.

Society as a wider whole see the same results around poverty and vitamin D insufficiency regardless of the amount of melanin in our skin however.

The takeaway is for all of us to follow a diet that promotes metabolic health, such as I lay out in my third book. Ensuring that we are eating whole nutrient dense food. Food that gives us healthy sources of proteins to rebuild our cells with and saturated fats to promote cholesterol availability.

Couple this with getting out in the sun and putting some vitamin D supplementation in place, and our resilience against a SARS-Cov-2 infection developing into a serious case of COVID-19 improves manyfold.

So, what thoughts has this article given you?

Are you going to go get some vitamin D?  Make the switch to a nutrient dense whole food, lower carb diet? Get out in the sunshine more?

Leave me a comment below about what you are going to do, and share this article with your friends.

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Safety Note: Taking more than 800IU regularly without medical supervision is not advised.

Vitamin D is one of the micronutrients where “too much of a good thing” can be detrimental to health. Always err on the side of caution unless you are under medical supervision for a recognised vitamin D deficiency. 

Too much vitamin D can lead to hypercalcemia (a build-up of calcium in the blood which can cause nausea and vomiting). It can also cause weakness, constipation, confusion, abnormal heart rhythm and frequent urination.

[1] Although we cannot say “Vitamin D is cancer protective”, in the lab it stops tumours growing.  There is also an inverse relationship between sunlight and breast cancer incidence.
– Lefkowitz, E et al., International Journal of Epidemiology, 1994; 23(6): 1133-36