CoronaVirus Mitigation Thread

Medical Q&A [Moderated]
1

Any advice on how to mitigate getting the 'rona?

What are your thoughts on …

Vitamin D.
Probably would help right?
Like, being inside all day under “house arrest” probably isn’t the best idea right?
Supplement? or is that BS too?
Any thoughts and why most strains of flu vary seasonally, almost like clock work?
Some are saying temperature, humidiy, etc.
Could it be immune suppression due to solar intensity variations?
We (USA) aren’t very good at getting outside in the middle of day to begin with …
…now this.

Exercise
Studies have shown exercise has immediate positive impacts on one’s innate immune systems.
I guess it would NOT be a good idea to slack on exercise just because your gym is shut down, right?

Saunas
Any validity to the use of saunas, hot/cold therapy’s, contrast baths/showers to boost the innate immune
system to fight off colds, flus, viruses?

Sleep
?

People can’t drop a co-morbidity right away. You can’t un-diabetic yourself or de-obese very quickly.
Any recommendations? or the appearance of publishing “hacks” (although not expense, harmless, easy to do at home, etc)
is frowned upon and would make the org look bad.

2

The evidence on vitamin D is generally mixed for most outcomes, although we do have this regarding respiratory infections, which suggested benefit - particularly for those who were most deficient. So, to the extent that a benefit may exist, supplementation in deficient populations makes the most sense. If you are not aware of your status, we generally don’t recommend supplementation, but if you wanted to do it anyway based on this evidence, it’s generally pretty safe to take outside of megadosing scenarios (like taking >> 10000 IU/d).

[As an aside, we also suspect that a significant portion of apparent vitamin D deficiency is related to it being a “negative acute phase reactant”. This basically means that it’s something that seems to decrease in the face of acute or chronic inflammation (as opposed to “acute phase reactants” that increase in the face of inflammation, like ferritin and many others). In other words, those with chronic inflammatory states (e.g. obesity/metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic organ diseases, HIV, etc.) may demonstrate vitamin D deficiency due to the inflammatory state, and this deficiency may resolve with appropriate management of the underlying disorder, to the extent that is possible]

Here are a few papers on the topic of influenza seasonality, which is a topic of active discussion/debate/research:

https://jvi.asm.org/content/81/11/5429

Re: exercise, see our most recent podcast on exercise & immunity

Re: saunas, I’m not aware of good evidence on this, although I suppose the risk is quite low (unless you’re doing it with a bunch of other people in there)

Yes, we recommend getting sufficient sleep for this and many other reasons, see our other recent podcast on sleep.

And you are correct that you unfortunately can’t eliminate comorbidities quickly - but if someone is willing to start making the necessary lifestyle changes to attack them now (e.g., all the interventions described here), I would have no reservations about it in the face of the pandemic.

3

for a second I was thinking that I have cancer, because my vitamin D is most of the time 19-21 ng/mL, than I remembered that I have asthma and gastritis. Now I can go back just to worry about coronavirus, or am I wrong?

4

I would not interpret a low vitamin D level as a “screening” test for the presence of other conditions, like cancer.

1 Like
5

¯_(ツ)_/¯

…I would rather see people get “it” from sun exposure, but OK

6

Look like Vitamin D is pulling ahead here …

Video cover the support mechanisms that Vit D has on the Endothelium (blood vessels, etc).
And Covid19 seems to be a disease that does its most damage there.
Refences to the studies are in the YT video comments section.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdc7T2UTHBI

https://youtu.be/45rlZGRz6Qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdc7T2UTHBI)