Hello guys, this is Dr. Justin Rheem, MD.
I would like to share with you my experience of treating Covid-19 patients with Vitamin D.
My subscriber know how important Vitamin D is to our immune system.
After realizing the benefits of Vitamin D against Covid-19,
for all my nursing home patients, I checked their Vitamin D levels when they were admitted,
then prescribed them 5,000 units of Vitamin D3 daily.
Since early March 2020, there have been a large spread of Covid-19 here in Los Angeles, CA
and it started to spread in nursing homes that I attend.
Most of my nursing home patients are in their 80s-90s,
and they have compliacted medical problems such as dementia and end-stage kidney disease on dialysis.
So, I was very concerned about them getting Covid-19.
When the COVID-19 tests returned positive, all the staffs were very worried about their outcome.
But interestingly, my early patients developed some fever, breathing difficulty, and diarrhea for only few days.
then, their symptoms resolved!
At first, I noticed only a couple of them getting better, but
but after seeing 10-12 patients having only MILD symptoms, and avoided going to the hospital for intubation,
I was curious whether this was really the effect of Vitamin D3.
But some of those who were very fragile has passed away.
And it was too early to conclude that this was the effect of Vitamin D,
So, I looked into the literature about how other physicians around the world had seen any benefit with Vitamin D.
But the more I searched online,
the more evidence I found regarding Vitamin D all over the world.
I found articles pouring out not only from the US, UK, Italy, Spain, China
but also from the Phillippines, which I would like to share with you guys.
Here, take a look at this table. Out of 212 patients in this study,
their symptoms were organzied into MILD, ORDINARY, SEVERE, and CRITICAL. And their Vitamin D levels were checked.
Interestingly, if they had a NORMAL Vitamin D level, most patients developed only MILD symptoms and only a few had severe symptoms.
But if they had low or deficient levels of Vitamin D,
As you can see here, their symptoms were more severe or critical.
So, it wasn't only me who thought that Vitamin D had a beneficial effect on COVID-19.
But then, WHY did they have only mild symptoms and did NOT develop severe symptoms?
Let's review the medical background why this is happening.
As some of you may know already, this COVID-19 enters the human cell via a receptor called ACE2.
Then, what does this ACE2 receptor do when you're not sick?
This ACE2 receptor degrades Angiotensin II, which causes all these harmful effects when they are high.
When when you are contracted with the virus, these ACE2 receptors are saturated and CANNOT function properly.
so you have very high levels of these bad Angiotensin II.
As a result, you develop acute lung injury, adverse myocardial remodeling, vasoconstriction, and vascular permeability.
The reason why I'm telling you this is because...
Angiotensin II gets built up NOT ONLY during COVID-19 infection,
but also when you are deficient in Vitamin D!
Here is an article from the Nature journal in 2017.
I won't go into too much detail here.
it says, if you are deficient in vitamin D, then you get lung damage with fibers through this Angiotensin II system.
So the exact area where you get the most damage from (the Angiotensin II build-up)
can be struct down again if you have low or deficient vitamin D levels.
But before we confirm that Vitamin D is truly effective against COVID-19, we need further studies.
So, there are several randomized controlled trials going on regarding Vitamin D treatment.
But before we wait for the results, I do not think it's harmful to treat Vitamin D deficiency in general.
I'm NOT saying you won't get the virus or you will not die from the virus if you take Vitamin D.
what I'm saying is that if you have normal vitamin D levels, you may not develop severe symptoms.
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