Vitamin D deficiency and Covid deaths

What is vitamin D and why is it important to your immune health?

Vitamin D is an essential fat-soluble vitamin that is involved in many important vital functions of the body and not only helps in calcium absorption.

How your body reacts when you have a viral or bacterial infection?

When any virus or bacteria enters the body, an immune response occurs to fight the pathogen, and this response varies from one person to another, depending on many factors.

Vitamin D levels in the body are one of the factors that could affect the immune response to the virus.

How normal vitamin D levels could affect your immune response to sars cov 2?

Sars cov 2 is a virus that infects the respiratory tract, and when the virus reaches a certain level of replication using your cells as a host, an immune response occurs called a cytokine storm, which is a chemical signal that causes inflammation to stimulate immune cells to immigrate towards the location of the infection, which in this case is the lungs.

When this cytokine storm occurs, The lungs will be filled with fluids and blood.

Vitamin D cell receptors are found in many immune cells like B cells T cells macrophages and dendritic cells, so it is important to the innate and adaptive immune system as well. 

Vitamin D can modulate the immune system protein production like cathelicidins and defensins that have antimicrobial properties.

Cathelicidins can help in the protection of many epithelial cells of the body including the lungs.

The defensins can help in the chemoattraction of many immune cells towards bacteria, and reduce viral replication and reduce the production of cytokines to prevent the cytokine storm without interrupting the activity of immune cells.

When vitamin D is at a normal level in the blood, it works on T helper cells, which are regulatory cells that regulate the immune response by keeping the inflammation at its normal level and also helps in stimulating other immune cells that regulate the immune response the virus without suppressing the immunity.

The cytokine storm may cause blood clots in the arteries.

Vitamin D supplement is highly recommended during the period of illness because vitamin D helps in increasing the absorption of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium, which automatically reduces the level of iron, which is an important element of some viruses and bacteria.

What are the most important sources of vitamin D?

Direct exposure to sunlight is one of the most important sources of vitamin D.

Foods rich in vitamin D, like fatty fish such as salmon, sardines, cod, beef li, ver, and eggs, but may not be sufficient to cover the daily recommended dose.

The daily recommended dose to maintain the level of vitamin D in a normal range from the age of 1 to 70 years is from 400 to 600 IU and above 70 years is 800 IU.

If there is a deficiency, then the recommended dose should be a bit higher, ranging between 1000 to 2000 IU daily.

You must drink enough water when taking a vitamin D supplement.

Always consult a doctor before taking any supplements because vitamin D is one of the vitamins soluble in fat and can be deposited in the body, and if it was much higher than the daily recommended dose it may cause toxicity in the body.

I hope that this information was clear enough and to be always in good health to fight all viruses and microbes...