A few weeks ago, I caught a clip of Dr. Rhonda Patrick where she made the case that Vitamin D could be the missing ingredient that’s turning COVID-19 into a disaster scenario. (The clip is pretty long, but if you’re interested, you can watch it here.)

One of the biggest “wow’s” I had during the clip was when she quoted a study claiming that 96% of people who suffered a COVID-related death in Indonesia were deficient in Vitamin D. Dr. Patrick is currently conducting a small clinical trial to see how critical Vitamin D is in regards to the severity of the virus.

In another study done in the Philippines, for every standard deviation increase in Vitamin D levels, the people were 8x less likely to have a severe case of COVID-19 and 20x less likely to have a critical case of COVID-19.

Now, this is simply a hypothesis. There haven’t been nearly enough studies done to tell how effective Vitamin D is at preventing or minimizing the impact of COVID-19. Nonetheless, I thought it was incredibly interesting and worth sharing.

Vitamin D is something we all need — especially since it’s estimated that up to 85% of the American population is Vitamin D deficient! We know that the best place to get Vitamin D is directly from the sun. But there’s only one problem…We don’t spend enough time outside. Even in the summer months, we have cloudy days (especially in Connecticut and other northern states). But to make matters worse, we live an indoor lifestyle and often use sunscreen, which blocks your body from UVB rays.

You only need about 15 minutes of exposure to the sun without sunscreen, but cloudy days and spending 8 months without summer weather makes this difficult. And you have to factor in other causes of Vitamin D deficiency, such as body fat (the more body fat you have, the less Vitamin D you absorb), darker skin (the darker your skin, the less Vitamin D you absorb), and age (a 70-year old produces 20% less Vitamin D than a 20 year old).

Which is why many people turn to supplements for their Vitamin D. But another problem with supplementing Vitamin D is that if it doesn’t contain Vitamin K (think dark, leafy greens like brussel sprouts and broccoli), it’s also less likely to be absorbed.

So you’re probably thinking why exactly is Vitamin D so important? Well despite its name, Vitamin D is not your ordinary vitamin. Instead, it acts like a hormone in your body and of the 30,000 genes in your body, it affects at least 10% — which is nearly 3,000 genes!

Here are some of the non-COVID related problems that happen when you don’t get enough Vitamin D:

1. Increased aging

2. Increased inflammation

3. Increased depression (one of the big causes of seasonal depression is the lack of sunlight during the

winter months)

4. Immune dysfunction (many of the genes Vitamin D impacts are related to your immune system)

5. Brain dysfunction

6. Increased cancer risk

7. Early death

And there are several other ways a Vitamin D deficiency directly impacts your health.

Designs for Health offers a great Vitamin D supplement that comes with Vitamin K called Vitamin D Supreme. It’s great for you if you don’t get adequate sunlight or Vitamin D and K from your diet. If you want to order Vitamin D Supreme from Designs for Health, you can use my practitioner code KRISTINAHESS or order it on Wellevate or Fullscript to save 20% on your total order.

You can set up a Direct Patient Order account with Designs for Health here.

You can find the Vitamin D Supreme supplement here.

To your health and success,

Kristina