Vitamin D and Acute Respiratory Infections

With national COVID-19 surges and the onset of flu season, it’s more important than ever to learn how to protect yourself. As your only host defense, your immune system is incredibly important. Its cells, antibodies and protein signals (cytokines) are our best shot at preventing viral infections and limiting complications if we are infected. It turns out that vitamin D is one of the chemicals our immune system needs to strengthen itself. This is an especially important topic for Black Americans because brown skin has a harder time converting the sun into vitamin D.

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Black Americans and Vitamin D

Black Americans and other people in North America who have brown skin are at higher risk of Vitamin D deficiency than their paler counterparts. There are 2 reasons:

1) The protective melanin in our skin blocks the UV-B rays that the skin uses to make Vitamin D

2) and UV rays are weaker at the North American latitudes compared to areas closer to the equator

What is Vitamin D?

Let’s back up, what is Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is an important part of the immune system. It helps the body kill invading particles by acting as a genetic signal that tells your body to build and release much-needed antibacterial and antiviral chemicals.
It also strengthens the gut barrier, preventing enemy viruses that you’ve swallowed from entering your body through your intestines.

Where Do We Get Our Vitamin D?

Most of the vitamin D in our body is created when sunlight reaches our skin. It’s hard to get enough vitamin D from food alone.
Low sun exposure in the northern hemisphere from the Fall through Winter seasons means that more than 90% of American adults have low levels of vitamin D. People with brown (highly melanated) skin are at higher risk.

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What Does Vitamin D Do?

A few large studies show a connection between having low/low-normal vitamin D levels having low vitamin D increases your risk of getting a viral upper respiratory infection (like a common cold).
In these studies, there was a dose-dependent relationship, meaning that the lower a person’s vitamin D level was, the more likely they were to report having a common cold.
Another group of studies shows that people report fewer common cold symptoms if they take daily or weekly vitamin D pills.

Vitamin D is especially important for people with asthma and COPD

Vitamin D is often recommended as a supplemental vitamin for asthma treatment
In one large study of 18 thousand people, those with low vitamin D were more likely to report having common cold (acute respiratory infection) symptoms if they had long-term lung diseases like asthma and COPD compared to people who didn’t have lung diseases.

What Is The Best Vitamin D Dose?

That depends how low the vitamin D levels in your body are. You can ask you doctor to draw your blood to measure that for you.

Vitamin D Prescription Dosage for Vitamin D Deficiency and Insufficiency

Vitamin D deficiency is the medical term for vitamin D levels that are too low.

Vitamin D Deficiency = Less than 20 nanograms (ng) per mililiter (ml) = 50 nanomoles nmol per liter (L)

People with vitamin D deficiency have low-to-very low levels of vitamin D. They might need more than 2,000 IU of daily vitamin D. In these cases, doctors may prescribe 5,000 IU daily doses or 50,000 IU weekly doses for a limited period of time. Your healthcare provider can help you figure out the right dose based on the vitamin D levels in your blood.

Over-the-Counter Vitamin D Dosage for Vitamin D Insufficiency

Vitamin D Insufficiency is a low-normal vitamin D level (not quite as low as in vitamin D deficiency). Vitamin D insufficiency might even be read as normal by some laboratories.

Vitamin D Insufficiency = 20 -30 ng/mL = 50-75 nmol/L

For people with normal to mildly-low levels of vitamin D, 800- 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) daily dose is a common dose. It’s available over-the-counter and is widely considered low-risk of side effects.

Other Places to Research Vitamin D:

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