Why Vitamin D Is Important For Your Immune System And What Levels To Aim For (Vitamin D Part 1)
A small randomised controlled trial of 76 patients suggests vitamin D may be critical for one’s protection from COVID-19 (1).
50 patients received vitamin D, 26 did not.
50% of those not receiving vitamin D were admitted to the ITU (intensive therapy unit) and 15% of these died. 2% of vitamin D takers were admitted to ITU and none of them died. That means 25 times less people in the vitamin D taking group were admitted to ITU.
Obviously 76 patients are a relatively small sample size so this cannot be interpreted as evidence of prevention or treatment of COVID-19 via vitamin D. We still believe the 25 times risk reduction in ITU admission observed in the trial is nothing to be scoffed at.
Even if further studies show that the effect is 10 times less powerful with a 2.5x risk reduction, this still seems like a very significant contribution to improving people’s chances of surviving a pandemic.
In fact, there are many other studies on vitamin D and COVID-19. Here’s a few other stats from studies on vitamin D and COVID-19:
1) Taking vitamin D is associated with a 34% reduced risk of catching COVID-19. (2)
2) Taking vitamin D is thought to reduce the chances of passing on COVID-19 by 50% (3)
3) Risk of dying from COVID-19 is 4-7 times lower (75%-87% reduction) in those being given vitamin D (4) (5). Another study found the reduction was a bit lower at 3.68x (6).
4) 93.1% of severe-critical COVID-19 patients have insufficient vitamin D levels (7).
5) The average COVID patient has 2-2.5x lower vitamin D levels compared to those without COVID depending on the study (8).
6) Vitamin D deficient patients were 3 times more likely to be admitted to ITU (9).
7) In one study, COVID-19 positive patients were given enough vitamin D to get rid of their deficiency over a 7-day period. At day 14, 3x more people had recovered from COVID-19 in the vitamin D group (10).
As you can see the statistics will vary. This will mainly depend on the dose. Some of these studies used high loading doses to quickly get blood levels in range. It is fine to use a loading dose of vitamin D, if one knows they are low, but it won’t solve the issue long term. Over time the vitamin D levels will go back down, which is why we need a good maintenance dose. We need to take vitamin D consistently to keep good levels that give us year-round protection against poor immune system function.
How do we know what dose is right for us? It all depends on what your vitamin D level is when you take that dose (which can vary). What vitamin D levels should we be aiming for?
According to most research, a level lower than 30ng/ml is considered deficient, although some authors think the cut off should be 20ng/ml (11). Is this the best level though?
One meta-analysis (meta-analysis = study of lots of other studies) of 32 studies found that people with a level of 40 - 59ng/ml (equivalent to 100-150nmol/L) are almost half as likely to die than those with the lowest level of vitamin D (1.9 times reduction in all-cause mortality) (12). See the graph below from the scientific paper:
One study found that centenarians have an average level of 32.1ng/ml (80.2nmol/L). This level was higher than average (23ng/ml) and higher than people who had heart attacks (14.4ng/ml) (13).
This doesn’t necessarily mean that 32ng/ml is the optimal level but it does suggest that aiming for a higher-than-average vitamin D level is better for long-term health.
It could be that if you continued the study, the centenarians who lived the longest and healthiest were the ones with vitamin D levels between 40 and 60 ng/ml.
All this data makes us think that we probably want to aim for a broad range of vitamin D levels that is between 32-60ng/ml (80-150nmol/L).
How can we achieve these levels?
We go into this in our second article on vitamin D.
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