Increase Your Immunity!
Call us impatient, but it’s about time that public health experts told us what we could do for ourselves other than to stay home and avoid most everyone in your life! As chiropractors, Dr. Lacey and I have been disappointed that the focus has only been solely on the virus and the damage that it may cause. Conversely, there’s been wholesale negligence when it comes to advising us, the public, about what each of us can do to have an adequate immune response against exposure to the CV19. So far, public health discourse has been largely limited to these familiar messages:
– We don’t (yet) have a cure
– We don’t (yet) have a vaccine
– We (still) don’t have enough tests, and some tests don’t work too well
– Therefore, our advice is that you live your life in your pajamas, in isolation approaching solitary confinement
This view discounts the fact that a significant percentage of people have been exposed and haven’t gotten very sick. We’ve studied the sick. Why not study those who have easily beaten the virus?
Wouldn’t you like to know what could make you more resilient?
The chiropractic approach is to strengthen the individual. In contrast, public health officials (and frankly, medicine too) seem to overemphasize the disease-causing organism rather than the host. Public health policy focuses on helping all of us, but not each of us.
So, it was appreciated when Dr. Faucci recommended Vitamin D as a way to improve our immune response to viruses – and this includes the seasonal flu:
“If you are deficient in Vitamin-D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection,” Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview posted on Instagram. “So I would not mind recommending—and I do it myself—taking vitamin-D supplements.”
However, you can’t just take vitamin D willy-nilly. You need to get a blood test to determine if you need it. Enough Vitamin D is essential. Too much can be toxic. Some studies suggest that circulating 25(OH) D levels between 40-60 ng/mL is the sweet spot and may confer the best preventive outcome. We recommend that you check with your doctor. They may have a different opinion. Here’s a video from Medcram that discusses Vitamin D & CV-19 prevention starting at around 8 minutes and 33 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzGKqujdTQ8&t=561s.
Remember, your body makes vitamin D when you’re skin is exposed to the sun. We’re entering the darker months, and you may need to take a supplement to maintain normal Vitamin D levels. Talk to your Doc – get checked!
Also, there are observational studies show that Vitamin D supplementation may help chronic back pain too! Here’s an example from the National Institutes of Health: