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Vitamin D and Viral infections

Summary:  Having good levels of Vitamin D is essential to health.  If your levels reflect insufficiency, you should consult a qualified Naturopath who can assess your needs.  Just taking a Vitamin D capsule/pill may not raise your levels or provide much needed health and immune support.  Low Vitamin D levels can have a number of causes and these need to be identified by a professional.

Also, self-prescribing and taking a supplement when your levels are adequate or perhaps even elevated, may be contra-indicated.  A simple blood test will identify your needs.

Can’t say it often enough:  always consult a qualified Naturopath for all nutrition and supplement needs.


Vitamin D has been a popular option for COVID treatment due to epidemiological evidence showing that people with low levels are more likely to get and suffer from a severe form of COVID-19. This has triggered a number of clinical trials with a major one, the CARED-TRAIL beginning in August last year: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13063-021-05073-3.

While the final collection of participants has only been completed this August, they have released some initial data on the effect of supplementing 60,000 IU Vitamin D for 8 to 10 days on blood inflammatory markers of COVID-19 patients: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-90189-4.

This is one of the first large clinical trials to use vitamin D supplementation and given there were such strong results on inflammatory markers this is a really good sign that vitamin D may dampen the damage that COVID -19 infection does to a patient. However, it is important to point out that based on other studies these drops in inflammatory markers may not result in the reduction of hospitalisations, ICU stays or death outcomes, although the effects on these inflammatory markers will influence recovery and fighting off long COVID. I will be very interested to see the final data from this study given such strong initial results.

Source: Dr Michael Osiecki, PhD, BE, BBiotech (hons)