Vitamins to Prevent COVID???

hi and welcome to another edition of your health with dr christie my name is dr christy reisinger and today we will be discussing the data behind specific vitamins minerals and supplements to prevent covid19 let me first start by saying that i am the biggest skeptic out there regarding vitamins to prevent disease but as this pandemic has raged on there's been some emerging data that i have reviewed again that's changed my mind on a few vitamins i want to stress that there is not a cure for covid19 and much of the data we have about vitamins is regarding other common colds or influenza and not specifically for sars cov2 or the virus that causes covet 19. some of this data is based on the work by dr paul merrick in the eastern virginia medical school i will provide links to any studies that i refer to as well as the protocols that are discussed here and as always please consult with your physician before starting any new medication or vitamin the first vitamin that's recommended to possibly prevent covid19 is vitamin c the evms protocol recommends vitamin c 500 milligrams twice a day vitamin c is an antioxidant and can reduce inflammation and may help improve your immune function there have actually been quite a few studies on vitamin c in the past and it's used to shorten length of stays in the icu with other respiratory illnesses as well as receiving it intravenously to help recover from septic shock with possible benefits the nih website discusses vitamin c and highlights a 2007 systematic review which is an excellent way to evaluate data that examined placebo-controlled trials involving the use of at least 200 milligrams a day of vitamin c taken either continuously as a preventative treatment or after the onset of cold symptoms the findings were that the preventative use of vitamin c did not significantly reduce the risk of developing a cold in the general population however in trials involving marathon runners skiers and soldiers exposed to extreme physical exercise or cold environments prophylactic or preventative use of vitamin c and doses ranging from 250 milligrams a day to 1000 milligrams a day reduced cold incidence by 50 percent in the general population use of preventative vitamin c modestly reduce cold duration by eight percent in adults and fourteen percent in children but when taken after the onset of cold symptoms vitamin c did not affect cold duration or symptom severity so my takeaway from this is that a modest not mega dose of vitamin c can possibly reduce the duration of a cold and possibly prevent a cold especially those in higher risk groups but it must be taken before symptoms start so i'm personally taking vitamin c milligrams twice a day let me tell you that the upper limit for supplemental vitamin c the amount most people can consume daily without negative effects is 2 000 milligrams and taking more than this can cause diarrhea vitamin c may also interfere with chemotherapy radiation treatments or cholesterol lowering drugs so be sure to talk to with your physician before starting it okay next up is kercetin the evms protocol recommends 250 milligrams of kerosene a day i think there is some interesting data about this and in my excitement i even bought a bottle of it as you can see here but after intensive research i just don't think there's enough data to warrant spending money on this the proposed mechanism is that kercetin is a zinc ionophore but my issue is that it has not been studied well in humans it's all subjective data and data from the lab this feels like the next hydroxychloroquine where it looks so good on paper but once it was actually used on patients it wasn't helpful i hope i'm wrong about kerastatin but i recommend waiting on this for now i'm hoping data on humans will come at some point and will know more about how it works against covet 19. also be warned that kerastatin should be used with caution in patients with hypothyroidism and thyroid levels should be monitored if you decide to use it okay next up what about vitamin d the e v m s protocol recommends 1 000 to 3 000 international units a day i've discussed the importance of vitamin d in a previous video so i'll be brief here but vitamin d has been a superstar in the past for bone and muscle health but knowledge has grown about its ability to help signal the increased production of anti-inflammatory molecules and decrease the protection of pro-inflammatory molecules a large meta-analysis which is data analysis of a large collection of previous studies published in the british medical journal in 2017 with 10 933 people from 25 trials conducted in 15 countries investigated whether taking a vitamin d supplement helped to prevent colds flu and chest infections vitamin d had a significant protective effect when it was given daily or weekly to people with the lowest vitamin d levels the risk of having at least one respiratory infection was reduced from 60 percent to 32 percent in these people the study authors concluded that taking a vitamin d supplement was safe and can help protect against respiratory infections particularly if the baseline levels are low in 2019 a newer analysis using 21 000 participants from across eight studies showed that those with a low blood vitamin d level had a 64 increased risk of community acquired pneumonia therefore maintaining a sufficient vitamin d level in adults is beneficial for the prevention of respiratory infections and may therefore be of benefit in the covid19 pandemic my takeaway is that since vitamin d deficiency is really common it's best to prevent low levels of vitamin d with consistent daily doses of vitamin d to determine the best dose for you a blood test may be needed so check with your doctor before starting a vitamin d supplement but for me i've decided to take vitamin d 1000 international units daily next up what about zinc the evms protocol recommends 30 to 50 milligrams a day zinc is a mineral that's considered an essential nutrient studies have shown that a mild zinc deficiency can elicit changes in a patient's immune status increasing their risk for infection and furthermore increased intracellular zinc concentrations effectively impair replication in a number of rna viruses of which sars cov2 the virus that causes covet 19 is one of them and sars cov2 is a member of the coronaviruses which is usually a class of viruses that cause the common cold so i'm extrapolating evidence from studies for the common cold and not specifically for sars-cov2 since those studies are still ongoing furthermore there are only a few studies that assess the effects of zinc supplementation on cold prevention one study did find that the frequency of common colds reported through a weekly survey was 11 percent less frequent in patients that took 15 milligrams of zinc daily than in those who didn't but this is a pretty weak study that depended on patients simply reporting their symptoms however other studies have evaluated zinc on duration of cold symptoms and zinc was found to reduce the number of days of symptoms by about two days in some studies or about 30 percent in others and the result was found to be significant they also noted that taking more than 100 milligrams a day during a cold was not better than lower doses and caused more side effects like bad taste and nausea but many of these studies had bias and were conducted very differently which reduced the quality of the results the recommended daily allowance of elemental zinc is 11 milligrams a day for men and 8 milligrams a day for non-pregnant women furthermore taking zinc for longer than 10 months has been associated with some side effects and the difficulty with zinc is that it's very difficult to get an accurate measurement of zinc levels because it's distributed in many different places in the body long-term zinc supplementation can cause copper deficiency with problems with your blood levels such as anemia or a low blood count it's also been associated with irreversible neurological problems such as numbness and spasticity oral zinc supplements especially at doses greater than 40 milligrams per day can cause stomach upset an intranasal zinc has been associated with a loss of smell in 2009 the fda issued a warning to stop using zinc containing intranasal products since then many of these products have been reformulated but i would recommend avoiding using any intranasal zinc products based on all of this i've decided to take only 30 milligrams of zinc daily until i can get a vaccine and then i plan to discontinue taking zinc i don't think taking zinc long term is a good idea but taking it during a short time especially during this pandemic may be worthwhile as long as it's less than 10 months but overall i think this is less important than taking vitamin d and vitamin c all right next up what about taking a b complex vitamin the evms protocol recommends taking one b complex vitamin daily the theory is that b vitamins build and regulate a healthy immune system and can also regulate the immune response by down regulating pro-inflammatory cytokines and inflammation there's a theory that this would be helpful with covid19 because we know that many of the complications from the infection is from excessive inflammation or something called a cytokine storm b vitamins include vitamin b1 also known as thymine b2 also known as riboflavin b3 also known as niacin b5 also known as pantothenic acid b6 also known as pyridoxine b9 also known as folic acid and vitamin b12 but many studies or papers that i reviewed only studied vitamin b12 and at times in combination with other things or they were just surmising that b vitamins could be helpful with covid but didn't have any specific data about it for example one small study with 43 patients gave about half of those patients a combination of vitamin d magnesium and vitamin b12 or dmb upon admission to the hospital the therapy comprised of a single daily oral dose of vitamin d3 1000 international units magnesium 150 milligrams and vitamin b12 500 micrograms for up to 14 days they then looked at who progressed to needing oxygen or admission to the icu they found that about 62 percent of patients that did not receive dmb went on to need oxygen versus 18 of patients that received the dmv therapy and the results were significant but the numbers were very small and once again this is not being used for prevention of an illness it's being used after hospitalization the data is intriguing nonetheless but i just don't think there's enough data to warrant taking a b vitamin for the possible prevention of a covid19 infection and finally what about melatonin the evms protocol recommends taking 0.5 milligrams and increasing has tolerated to 2 milligrams 30 minutes before bedtime i've produced several videos on the importance of sleep and melatonin has been shown to be helpful for elderly adults that have trouble with sleep but the theory behind melatonin here is that there are some anti-inflammatory properties and there have been some studies that have shown some possible benefit in patients with sepsis or severe systemic infection one small interesting study of 203 patients in the icu that were given melatonin 10 milligrams nightly they were shown to have improved sleep quality which overall is beneficial for anyone fighting an infection so at the end of the day if you're struggling with insomnia i think melatonin would be a good supplement to try since the risks are low please see my other video on the treatment of insomnia and more information on the benefits of sleep and the use of melatonin but using melatonin for the possible prevention of covid19 isn't warranted i would only use it to help with insomnia not to prevent infection that ends our tour of vitamins and supplements for the possible prevention of covid19 i want to continue to stress there's no cure for covid19 nor is there a great data on using any medications like vitamins for the prevention of covid19 but if i had to choose something that possibly may provide some benefit without harms and that's relatively inexpensive i'd recommend only using vitamin d and vitamin c and i would not recommend megadoses only the recommended doses on the bottle or possibly higher levels of vitamin d after discussion with your doctor thanks again for joining me

Channel: Christy Risinger, MD

Views: 2,924,457

Keywords: Your health with dr christy, dr christy risinger, reisinger, dr risinger, vitamins to prevent COVID, zinc to prevent covid, b vitamins to prevent covid, quercetin to prevent covid, vitamin c to prevent covid, vitamin d to prevent covid, melatonin to prevent covid, what can I take to prevent covid, what can I take to prevent a cold?, quercetin

Id: H2V4U218osU

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020