Can some vitamins and supplements lower COVID-19 risk?

None of what I'll be saying next has been proven. However, there are protocols designed at reputable American medical schools suggesting, based on some still non-conclusive evidence, that there is a possibility that a number of vitamins and supplements and over-the-counter medications might lower the odds of developing severe COVID-19 before and after one catches the virus.

For example, doctors from the Eastern Virginia Medical School, Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care, seem to endorse the use of the following medications and supplements, based on the idea that they are harmless, cheap, and widely available enough to make of their use a reasonable idea, on the odds that they might actually help.

While the following protocol is intended for doctors and involves specialized language (and addresses all phases of the illness, from prophylaxis to very severe ICU cases), I believe that it is useful to look at what they recommend for the prophylaxis phase, that is, before one even catches the illness in the first place, on top of page 3 of the following publicly available document (this is not only public, but they ask it to be circulated as widely as possible so I'm doing my part and diffusing it):

https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_pub...cine/EVMS_Critical_Care_COVID-19_Protocol.pdf

BID is the Latin acronym for twice a day. Famotidine a.k.a. Pepcid, is an over-the-counter stomach acid reducing medication. Vitamins C and D are over-the-counter vitamins. Quercetin is a food supplement, and so is zinc. Melatonin is the natural pineal gland hormone that induces sleep, also sold in supplement stores.

The numbers that follow each recommendation are for the papers that have examined the action of these medications, which are listed at the end of the protocol.

All of the above can be found online without the need for a prescription.

What do you all think? Would you be willing to take these medications?

By the way, the next step in this protocol, "symptomatic patients (at home)", that is, people who already got the virus but have mild cases and can still stay at home, is good to know, too. Of course once a patient moves to the next step (needing hospitalization), self-medication with over-the-counter stuff is no longer appropriate, but if I ever need to be hospitalized for COVID-19 I'll print this PDF and give a copy to my attending physician, and ask him/her to consider the precious advice found in these pages.

This protocol, based on 140 scientific papers, is periodically updated, as more papers are published.

 

Relevant thread:

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...treat-coronavirus-according-to-a-study.570533

 

Melatonin promotes good sleep which enhances the immune system, but it does more than that. It inhibits the very dangerous and often fatal COVID-19-induced cytokine storm, by reversing aerobic glycolysis in immune cells.

Sending kids back to school = negligible risk. I calculated it at 0.00002%, incredibly. 14 deaths theoretically (although I know of only 4 confirmed ones) out of 61 million kids under the age of 14, while the risks of tuberculosis, meningitis, the seasonal flu are about 300 deaths per year for each (precise numbers are in a recent post in my posting history) and school bus accidents kill 20 kids per year. We don't close schools nationwide for an entire semester for any of these. And by the way, kids are not super spreaders. They are lousy transmitters of the SARS-CoV-2.

Here, read this:

https://adc.bmj.com/content/105/7/618

I'm taking all of the vitamins and supplements above.

 

Thanks. I replied there. Agree about vitamin D although I wouldn't push it above 75ng/ml due to some evidence that above that, it increases calcium deposit in arteries and overall mortality. Sorry, I don't have the reference on me right now.

 

@Adfundum read this paper on melatonin as a potential adjuvant treatment for COVID-19:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102583/

 

It is not short term. We should continue indefinitely until there is a vaccine.

Long term side effects - Not for Vitamin C, Quercetin, Zinc (in lowish dose - do see that they recommend lowering it after the first month) and Melatonin. Vitamin D on the other hand can accumulate and result in detrimental effects in high levels. You can get your primary care doctor to check your level through a simple lab test. Levels above 75ng/ml can cause increased calcium accumulation in arteries and levels above 150ng/ml can be toxic in other ways, too. The recommended way to deal with this is to simply lower the daily dose when you get close to, say, 65 ng/ml, such as taking 2,000 units or even as low as 1,000 units daily dose as a maintenance dose after you are at a good level.

 

@Adfundum
I assume you have school-aged children, or loved ones who do, from one of your posts mentioning this part. You might want to read this post of mine, on the issue, in another thread, by clicking on the link below. Cheers.

Let me see if I got this right

 

I have always leaned more toward the natural/homeopathic side of health care. The AMA is in the business of repeat customers, not making people well. Therefore, it's impossible for me to trust that system completely.

And, yes, I have and do take all of those and have for years. It's probably the reason I've come back from the brink of death a few times.

 

I thought I knew a lot about melatonin as a sleep aid, but I did NOT know that it acts against COVID-19 specifically. Thank you for this information!

 

Oh wow, that's scary. Make sure she stays very isolated while this lasts. The problem is people this age may need care and may be susceptible to depressing effects of isolation. So if you do need to come in and deliver care to her, try to have very good masks, disinfect surfaces you touch, stay 6ft from her, don't stay long (limit closer interactions to under ten minutes) and instead teach her how to do socializing by Zoom or similar...

As far as masks go: You don't want to interact with her if you have an N95 with an exhalation valve: it protects you but won't protect her.

The best bet in this case is an N95 without an exhalation valve (as long as you know how to fit them properly), or an ASTM level 3 surgical mask enhanced with 3 rubber bands for a better seal, like this:



This should keep your mom safe when you interact with her.

How to find N95s and ASTM level 3 surgical masks that are legitimate, respectively CDC and FDA certified, and not counterfeit?

It's not that easy but it is possible. I won't direct you to vendors because it would appear like spam and they go in and out of stock from specific vendors anyway so if I point you to one, maybe that vendor is sold out. In my experience these stocks are coming and going. I've bought from these vendors six times but not always from the same one. But I can teach you the method to find them.

Go to the CDC web site and this page:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/disp_part/N95list1sect3.html

You find there a database with a long list of approved manufacturers and suppliers, with hyperlinks to their websites. Many of these don't sell small quantities to individuals but rather sell in bulk to hospitals, clinics, and doctors and dentists... but some do.

I could not find a list of approved makers of ASTM level 3 facemasks, but it turns out that some of the vendors of approved N95s also make ASTM level 3 masks. I guarantee that if you are persistent enough, you'll find those who make these masks and sell them to the general public in smaller quantities (like a box with 50).

Since the goal is to protect her rather than you, I suppose that it is acceptable if you get less reliably certified masks like the KN95 (Chinese standard), and I suppose the FFPE European standard must be as good as our NIOSH N95 (just, the European ones are certified for 94% of filtration at 0.1 micron, while ours is... 1% higher). ASTM level 1 masks are acceptable too (but levels 2 or 3 are ideal as their particulate filtration is 98% while it is 95% for level 1).

But definitely I wouldn't approach her with just cloth masks or the flimsy facemasks you find in pharmacies and grocery stores that are NOT at least ASTM level 1 certified, because these do not stop the release of aerosol with the tiny SARS-CoV-2 virus (0.1 micron in diameter).

Do know that if you have facial hair, you'll defeat even the best seal and will make your mother unsafe if you talk closely to her with any kind of mask.

Of course what is valid for you as an emitter of droplets and aerosol as far as efficient barriers go, is valid for her too as a recipient, so if in addition to you wearing a mask when you tend to her, it would be good for her to also wear one. Again, I'd recommend a level 3 with 3 rubber bands. The size of these rubber bands are: size 31 for the center piece, and size 33 for the ear loops or a little bigger if 33 put too much pressure on the back of the ear.

I wouldn't recommend an N95 for her. Too uncomfortable for a person her age and she'd probably feel dizzy and headachy and wouldn't know how to seal it well (unless your mother is a retired doctor or nurse, haha).

Other helpful hint would be that if your mother is independent enough to require minimum care, social interactions with her and delivery of groceries and medications to her might happen outdoors, like a porch or backyard, where the odds of spreading the illness to her are much lower with sunlight and winds.

Packages delivered to her should be handled in a contactless manner. And if the content is not urgent she might want to wait 3 days before she manipulates and undoes the packages, given that while this is controversial and now seems like it is a rather improbable transmission vector, theoretically the virus might be viable on cardboard for up to 3 days.

I don't mean to scare you and make you all paranoid with all these recommendations... Do remember that she is a female, and females are less susceptible than males to bad COVID-19 outcomes. But in her mid-80s, prudence is recommended.

 

Something odd here

I don’t have time this morning but I will try to return to this. It does NOT read like any scientific paper I have ever read. I have never before seen a medical document put out that starts with

That is simply not how medical communication is normally framed and although it has links through to the EVMS I cannot find this paper on that website in my limited time at the moment

Odd too that it is recommending Methylprednisolone rather than Dexamethasone. although Methylpred is the same group of drug (corticosteroid) They have different actions and it is Dexamethasone which has been proven successful in clinical trials but as I have said I will research this further later today


The rest with the vitamins - if you walk outside without sunscreen you should absorb enough vitamin D unless you have end stage renal failure

Vitamin C takes me back to the seventies when it was extensively used for everything from cancer to smelly farts but again I will research this but I Doubt there is sound research based data to support it

 

This is NOT a scientific paper and I never pretended it was. Of course I know very well what a scientific paper is and how it's presented. This is a treatment protocol for the internal use of this group, and they were kind enough to make it public and to ask people to diffuse it, in the spirit of saving more lives. In my OP I mentioned "protocol" several times and never "paper."

And they explain why they prefer methylprednisolone to dexamethasone. Page 11:

"Notwithstanding the very important and impressive results of the Recovery-Dexamethasone study, methylprednisolone is the corticosteroid of choice for the pulmonary phase of COVID-19. This is based on pharmacokinetic data (better lung penetration),[135] genomic data specific for SARS-CoV-2,[136] and a long track record of successful use in inflammatory lung diseases." (You can consult the two references provided, for the basis of their reasoning). They mention dexamethasone six more times in their protocol, including with a detailed description of the findings of the Oxford RECOVERY trial (which I have read, too).

This is 100% legit. I'm puzzled that you seem to think it's some kind of fake. And it absolutely *is* included in the Medical School's official page, here:

https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/covid_care_for_clinicians/

Click on "Download the latest EVMS Critical Care COVID-19 Protocol" and you'll be taken to the exact same PDF I linked to, earlier. They also have a 2-page companion for people on call (you can print, two-sided, and laminate).

Here, for Vitamin C (among six other references included in their list):

Colunga Biancatelli RM, Berrill M, Catravas JD et al. Quercetin and Vitamin C: experimental therapy for the prevention and treatment of SARS-CoV-2 via synergistic action. Front Immunol 2020.

As for the rationale for all their choices, the references are provided, and they never claimed that it is proven. Neither did I (see my OP). They mention "extremely limited data."

As for Vitamin D, yes, of course, sunlight is great to form it, but you need to understand that a good chunk of the population *already* has severe deficiency and you *don't* correct it as fast as desirable in the middle of this raging pandemic by going outside. As you probably know, when there is severe deficiency, the dose of 10,000 units weekly for six weeks is recommended to bring it to speed faster, and often, when we measure again, it's still low and patients need another six weeks.

 

Good post. Would like to add that Quercetin should be taken with a meal as it is fat soluble.

 

Three solutions for the fogging:
Anti-fogging towelettes.
The better seal with the three rubber bands above will help with that too and you can even roll gauze and insert between the rubber bands and the parts of the masks that go over the sides of your nose for an even better seal that prevents steam from going up to the glasses.
Goggles that have a good seal and go over your glasses, and isolate your glasses from your nose/mouth (with the advantage that these will also eliminate aerosol-to-eyes transmission of the virus.

 

A good read on Vit. D. It’s interesting to note the role of Vit. D in upper respiratory tract infections and in the most common co-morbitities of Covid19.
https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1007/BF03391602

 

Oh yes. Vitamin D is a very important and essential vitamin.

And do observe how even with high doses of vitamin D daily or weekly, it took 3 months to restore the appropriate levels, like I said in post #15, countering the observation by another poster that it would be enough to just go outside for some sun rays.

By the way, in my post I said 10,000 units weekly; that was a typo, I meant 50,000. Often we do 4,000 units daily for six weeks, or 50,000 weekly, measure, go down to 2,000 or 1,000 daily for maintenance, if normal by then.

 

It was a big mistake to make the assumptions we did when we “solved” the rickets problem. We still have a long ways to go to understand all Vit. D does.

 

About 12 years ago a Native American veterinarian/equine chiropractor opened my skeptical mind to the realities of acupuncture. I had never thought logically about the practice, just wrote it off as eastern mysticism. LOL

Re-thinking is the best us mere mortals can do. The sheer volume of information available today makes it impossible to keep up with everything health wise anyway I think.

 

Another thought -- about kids.

It seems to be true that kids are not affected nearly so badly as adults and 'old' people are -- BUT -- when they go back to classrooms, they'll spread the virus among themselves. And even though it is unlikely to kill the kids, they'll surely spread it, in turn, to every adult they come in contact with, including the 'old' people. Honestly, for us to promote that kind of thing in the United States (which already has more COVID cases than anywhere else on Earlth) that strikes me as kinda STOOPID and reckless to do that!

. "Hey, Granddad -- didja' get your will made out yet...?"