Spring has finally sprung with Covid, Orwell’s 1984, and King’s Fairytale

One of our front borders. Spring has sprung while I've been busy coughing.

Hello! Yes, I know it’s been a while. Despite rumours to the contrary we haven’t emigrated, we have had Covid. And no, it wasn’t me who brought it home. Omicron is supposedly endemic now, so I guess we’ve done well getting this far before embracing our first bout.

Was it bad? Not particularly. I’ve had worse influenza in the long distant past. I could have done without the “pressure head”, a very odd feeling -  certainly not a “headache” - which lasted about four days, and the mucus from Hell which lasted for the rest of the month. I didn’t fight when the need to sleep descended, just doubled my vitamins D & C, Magnesium and Zinc. And watched YouTube videos, and read when the fancy struck. 

The dusting could go hang, again.

It was great to read without the prick of guilt that I should be creating, which was well beyond me, though my choice of material might seem odd. George Orwell’s 1984 headed my list, gained from the library the week before I was laid up. As I started to recover, I opened it up.

I’d not read any of Orwell’s work, but particularly wanted to read 1984 because for months social media has been alive with the likes of Ministry of Truth, Doublethink, and Big Brother.

What can I say? Two Minutes Of Hate [social media pile-ons], cancel culture, screens which gush propaganda 24 hours a day and listen in to conversations [hello Alexa]… Orwell must have had a crystal ball. That, or his view of the world under a Stalin-like totalitarian regime, which was still in power when the book was published in 1949, has edged close while we’ve been otherwise distracted, doubtless by insubstantial 'shiny things'. Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning; it seems some are using it as a handbook for life.

Stephen King’s Fairytale, a 600 pager he wrote during the Covid pandemic “to make him happy”, I started reading via Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature sometime around Christmas. On its strength I clicked through to buy, and immediately stopped myself. Why any publisher would think I would shell out £13 for a Kindle copy I couldn’t own, while the hardback is £11… 

Words don’t exactly fail me, but are unrepeatable in polite company. The publisher’s profits could go hang; I logged on to my area’s library catalogue and reserved it: I was 24th in the queue. I wonder why?

Of course, notification it was ready for collection arrived in my Inbox while I was incommunicado. I managed to pick it up on its last day on the waiting shelf and am currently a third of the way through. Like Orwell’s novel, it is a very readable book. But cripes, I’d forgotten how unwieldy 600 page hardbacks are.

So, is any writing of my own on the horizon? Short articles for the Medium platform, certainly, and there’ll be a long overdue update in my health series on this blog, but nothing long of note in the fiction stakes. At least not yet. There are, of course, projects on a back burner. There are always projects on the back burner.

As the saying goes, watch this space. Even better, subscribe to my blogposts. It’s less hassle.

Enjoy May.
 

When Your Health Turns On You: #Hypothyroidism --- 9: Covid-19 and Vitamin D – Jan 2021 Update

Vitamin D3 capsule

When I started this series in February 2020 I never expected still to be adding to it in January 2021. There again, one year on from the first Covid-19 hospitalisations in the UK, no one here expected to be living under Lockdown-3. It could be worse, and it is in some parts of the world; at least we don’t have a curfew.

However, the UK figures, horrendous as they are, speak for themselves:  3.8m people have tested positive for Covid-19; deaths within 28 days of a positive test have topped 100,000.
(https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases)

There is good news: 9.97m people have had the first dose of available vaccine; 491,000 the follow-up dose. In my area those aged 70+ are being called, which means that the vast majority of the most vulnerable (80+) have been vaccinated.

The even better news is that people are beginning to take seriously the role of Vitamin D within the human immune system, except, it seems, the Government and its health advisers.

One of the leaders of the publicity push – apart from Dr John Campbell, much mentioned during this series – is David Davis, MP, who has been writing articles in every newspaper that will print them. Mr Davis is an old-school politician: not only did he work for a living before entering politics, he has a Joint Honours degree in Molecular Science/Computer Science, so he knows what he’s talking about. More important, he’s not afraid to stand up in Parliament and make the case for Vitamin D, as he did on 14th January, now available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Gog5mgBv0hM

The video is 24 minutes in total, and an eye-opener. Who knew, despite growing evidence from around the world, funding for trials to ascertain the efficacy of Vitamin D had been refused – twice? The response, towards the end of the video, from NICE/Public Health England is, shall I say… beyond belief.

Today I watched a discussion between David Davis and Dr John Campbell which brought to light some fascinating, and quite horrific, points: 

• As long ago as 1983 (read it and weep) the medical profession was beginning to understand the impact of Vitamin D on the body at cell level, and particularly in the immune system.
• In 2017 there was an article in the British Medical Journal suggesting that Vitamin D could inhibit respiratory infections by up to 70%. (Note: around 17,000 people die annually in the UK due to seasonal influenza – Public Health England figures.)
• In March 2020 Mr Davis ramped up his own study, believing there is a correlation between more people dying of Covid-19 with low Vitamin D levels (ie the elderly; darker skin tone; co-morbidities), and if correct low Vitamin D “could” account for around 50% of Covid-19 deaths.
  

The discussion is well worth watching. It is 1hr 20mins, but the most pertinent information is within the first 30 mins: https://youtu.be/bQyhjQUjHjU

How about me with an autoimmune disorder I strongly suspect – a suspicion boosted by the above discussion – was caused by a long-standing lack of Vitamin D? I shall reiterate the results from my last two Vitamin D blood tests which, let me remind UK readers, I have had to pay for:

mid August 2020: 124 nmol/L             early November 2020: 109 nmol/L
(Optimal is 125-150 nmol/L)

Considering I have stayed on my relatively high level Vitamin D3 supplement and its co-factor protocol throughout, what prompted such a fall in only two and a half months? Lack of sunshine. It was autumn.

I am intending to pay for a further test at the end of March, the end of winter. That should prove interesting. I’ll keep you posted.

Stay safe. 

 

Update 30 March 2021:
My paid for panel of blood tests are completed. All results look reasonable;
Vitamin D stands at 128 nmol/L (tick!).

Image from PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay

When Your Health Turns On You #Hypothyroidism series:

1: Symptoms
2: Vitamins & Minerals
3: Blood Tests
4: Vitamin Co-Factors & the Microbiome
5: Functional Medicine & YouTube
6: Covid-19 Coronavirus
7: Covid-19 & Vitamin D
8: Vitamin D - The Results!
9: Covid-19 & Vitamin D - Jan 2021 Update

When Your Health Turns On You: #Hypothyroidism --- 8: Vitamin D – The Results!

Vitamin D3 capsule

It’s been a while, 20 April to be precise, since my last post in this series. But it has been worth the wait – on a personal front, and a Covid-19 front. The results are in!

The backstory for those just joining me:

During 2017 I was suffering lots of weird health symptoms, the most concerning being that my brain refused to function properly – hardly a useful trait in a novelist. April 2018 a lump developed on my neck: a swelling on my thyroid. A GP’s blood tests indicated I might develop Hypothyroidism, whereas symptoms and antibodies emphasised that I was suffering Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism, an autoimmune disorder. There are lots of autoimmune disorders – a common denominator tends to be a low Vitamin D level.

Note: I’m British and live in the UK. We have a National Health Service, free at the point of access, paid for via our taxes. Your mileage may differ, even if you live in the UK.

For the reasoning as to why, in January 2020, I joined a Facebook Vitamin D Support Group, you’ll need to read the back posts listed at the bottom of this page. In February I started on its suggested Protocol: a careful ratio of fairly high level Vitamin D3 and three ancillary balancing co-factors. I added in an Omega-3 capsule, a multi-vitamin & mineral tablet for my age group, which I’d been taking for over a year, this on top of my blood pressure medication. Yes, I rattled.

In March I had to take time off this cocktail when I had a hip replacement operation, but continued as soon as I was free of its medications and their side effects. The intention had been to take the Protocol for four months and then pay for a private finger-prick blood test (currently £39), but Covid-19 made an appearance – thankfully not in my family – and my mind focused on other things.

So it was the very end of July before I realised I was late with my intended test. I believe in stopping for at least a week beforehand any supplements. If I kept up supplementation to the hour of the blood test the result would be distorted.

14th August I had my result: 124nmol/L. I was ecstatic! I knew the supplementation was having an effect as I had been feeling so much better, more me. Back in May 2019 my level had been 48nmol/L. The given “within range” in the UK is 50-175nmol/L whereas the body needs it at 75+ to work at cell level. My level was now optimal. No wonder I was feeling better; no wonder the main swelling on my thyroid (I have one on each lobe) had diminished so much as to be almost unnoticeable. Hurrah!

The decision became: should I stay on the full supplementation level or drop the dosage, and if so, by how much so as to produce a maintenance level? Within days the decision was taken for me. An odd, slightly sore throat became a prominent sore throat, I had an increase in phlegm and the return of a nasal drip (all flags for hypothyroidism), and the swelling on my thyroid started to increase in size. Damnit.

I took advice from the Vitamin D Support Group and immediately the answer came back: Vitamin D has a half-life of approximately three weeks. If it is not constantly topped up, via sunshine on skin and/or supplementation, its potency fades. It was August, the height of the British summer. Damnit.

So I went back on the supplementation, though not quite at the high level I’d been on. I have, however, stayed with the same amount of co-factors, plus the multi-vitamin & mineral tablet and the Omega-3 capsule. Within the week the sore throat had abated, and the phlegm is gradually lessening.  It is my intention to pay for a full Thyroid & main vitamin panel blood test in early November, and depending on that result I’ll increase or maintain the supplementation level over winter.

November is when I usually have my annual “full” [pause for laughter] blood tests done by the GP to monitor my blood pressure medications, so we will be having a discussion about my Vitamin D level. Not that the results from privately bought blood tests will be added to my NHS record – y’know, in case I’m rushed into hospital and the medics want a “full” history of my health – but that’s a whole different argument I’m not going into here.

More important, at the top of this post I mentioned Covid-19 + Vitamin D results. While contemplating this post I watched a YouTube video by Dr John Campbell, who I’ve mentioned in previous posts, a lot in updates to Post 7. His video Covid-19: Vitamin D, First Clinical Trial uploaded on 6th September should be required watching for everyone, whether or not you have underlying health issues.

In the video he talks about a pilot trial run in one hospital in Cordoba, Spain, where a small number of patients admitted with Covid-19 and who had a low level of Vitamin D registered in the previous year were split into two groups. Both were given the hospital’s best available therapy for Covid-19, but one group had an added ‘active’ Vitamin-D. Out of both groups fourteen patients had to be transferred to ICU, but only one of those had been given Vitamin-D; the other 13 hadn't. The video is 27 minutes long, the eye-opener at 15 minutes, so watch until at least that point. It might save your life, or the life of someone you love.

As Dr Campbell asks, why isn't the UK initiating trials? Why isn't the World Health Organisation? I'd like to know why my region's Clinical Commissioning Group refuses to allow GPs to request testing for Vitamin D.

 

UPDATE 15 September:  The East Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group held its AGM online due to Covid-19, so I put that very question. As expected the response was a pat dismissal and buck-passing to Public Health England and NICE.

UPDATE 01 October: Dr John Campbell has a very interesting video "Vitamin D News & Science". Go watch https://youtu.be/B01ZlRfMnmU 

UPDATE 06 November: The result from my privately purchased Vitamin-D test shows 109nmol/L, down from 124nmol/L in early August, despite my being on a high-dose supplementation throughout.
Q: so what has changed? A: lack of sunshine due autumn.
What would have been the drop if I hadn't been taking a high-dose supplementation? It doesn't bear thinking about.

 

Image from PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay

 When Your Health Turns On You #Hypothyroidism series:

1: Symptoms
2: Vitamins & Minerals
3: Blood Tests
4: Vitamin Co-Factors & the Microbiome
5: Functional Medicine & YouTube
6: Covid-19 Coronavirus 

7: Covid-19 & Vitamin D

8: Vitamin D - The Results!

9: Covid-19 & Vitamin D - Jan 2021 Update

When Your Health Turns On You: #Hypothyroidism –– 7: Covid-19 and Vitamin D

Image courtesy of Gert Altmann via Pixabay

Yesterday morning I caught an interesting interview on Sky News. Dr Gero Baiarda from GPDQ, a private GP service in the UK, was discussing the high proportion of Covid-19 infections and deaths among people of the Black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds.

The numbers had become noticeable, he said, among those working in the National Heath Service, front-line or not, which was why he’d focused on it. The immediate assumption had been a socio-economic cause – such as crowded housing and multi-generational occupancy – but this didn’t explain why so many doctors were succumbing. What these people shared was the high amount of melanin in their skin, the body’s in-built safeguard for living in much sunnier climes than the UK. The more melanin the less Vitamin D is able to be produced in the skin by sunlight. It is understood, he said, that Vitamin D plays a pivotal role in the immune system, and that those of darker-skinned ethnic minorities were known to have low Vitamin D levels.

By this point I was shouting at the television. Low levels of Vitamin D in the UK population is hardly news – and it pertains to every ethnic background, including European Caucasians. It is particularly prevalent in the elderly. I believe it to be the smoking gun behind my Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism, and I suspect a lot of other auto-immune disorders. But try getting a Vitamin D test on the NHS: it’s a postcode lottery dependant on whether the area’s Clinical Commissioning Group thinks such a test is important. Many don’t. For years the overriding belief of the medical profession has been that man-made medicines are the answer to every ill. Now the world has a novel Coronavirus – Covid-19 – a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome far more transmittable, and deadly, than the outbreaks of SARS-1 in 2002-2004, and there are no man-made medicines capable of touching it, which is why the UK population, along with many others, is in semi-lockdown.

As I mentioned in my Hypothyroidism-6 post, I am currently following Dr John Campbell’s YouTube videos. He highlighted the importance of Vitamin D to the immune system weeks ago, and even in a recent video was questioning why no one seemed to be picking up on it. He is quite open about his self-supplementing with a supermarket own-brand as a norm during the winter months. I am taking a much higher amount, with co-factors, due to my Hypothyroidism, but I've put other members of my family on 25mcg per day.

It is part of NICE’s recommendation that “...10 micrograms of vitamin D per day, throughout the year, for everyone in the general population aged 4 years and older...” 

Within the same recommendation, under ‘Specific Population Groups’ it is stated: 

“Although the entire population of the UK are at risk of having a low vitamin D status, evidence was only considered in regard to increasing the supplement use for these specific population groups:
    • All pregnant and breastfeeding women, particularly teenagers and young women.
    • Infants and children under 4 years (breast fed, non-breast fed and mixed fed).
    • People over 65.
   • People who have low or no exposure to the sun. For example, those who cover their skin for cultural reasons, who are housebound or confined indoors for long periods.
   • People who have darker skin, for example, people of African, African–Caribbean and South Asian origin...."
[Emboldened emphasis is mine.]

So why is this such a surprise? In his short Sky News interview, Dr Gero Baiarda mentioned that articles in the British Medical Journal (2017) and on Pubmed.gov add credence to his observations that Vitamin D reduces the risk of respiratory inflammation turning into pneumonia. (VitaminDwiki also has an impressive list.)

Looking at the Pubmed page, there’s an article written by a number of doctors in Italy (April 2020) stating that they were giving non-critical Covid-19 patients intravenous “multivitamin & multimineral trace element solutions” plus Vitamin D on admission in an attempt to avert them from becoming critical. They freely admit that this “straight approach may be debatable” but they were dealing with an emergency situation – which, considering the number of infections and deaths recorded in Italy (currently 162,000/21,000), I find something of an understatement.

In the UK a Vitamin D level of 50 nmol/L is regarded as “within range”, when it is known that a level of 75 nmol/L and above is needed for it to be active within the cells. Insufficiency is regarded as 25-50 nmol/L and deficiency less than 25 nmol/L. If many of the ethnic-background population are low in Vitamin D, as Dr Gero Baiarda maintains, due to their higher melanin level, no wonder there is a disproportionate number succumbing to Covid-19. It may also be an indicator as to why the elderly are being hit so hard, and so few among the very young.

I would like to think that when this pandemic is over the medical profession will rethink its emphasis, or lack of it, concerning vitamins and minerals across the entire population. Alas, I’m not holding my breath.


UPDATE 16 April 2020:
It seems I'm not the only one to pick up on this (thank goodness). There was a question asked at the government's No 10 Daily Briefing today, and catching up on my reading I find that Dr John Campbell has uploaded another YouTube video on it: Vitamin D and Immunity: Lots of Evidence.

UPDATE 09 May 2020:
Back to Dr John Campbell talking about dosages, complete with links to papers. Never mind Covid-19, anyone who doesn't have an optimal level of Vitamin D has a 50% higher risk of getting colorectal cancer and an increased risk of heart disease. Vitamin D Dose.

UPDATE 21 May 2020:
And yet again Dr John Campbell nails it, this time in conversation with Dr Shelton of New Zealand. They discuss how Covid-19 gets into cells and how having inflammation in the blood vessels (high blood pressure and others) is a metabolic syndrome in which a low Vitamin D level is always present. And who knew washing after sunbathing may not be a good idea? Dr Sheldon, Part 2, Vitamin D.

UPDATE 10 June 2020 (there are a lot of these, aren't there? I wonder why!)
Again, it is Dr John Campbell who is bringing this information into the open in layman's terms - this time from the French National Academy of Medicine: the correlation between lack of Vitamin D and high Covid-19 morbidity has a confidence rating of 95.4%. So why have northern latitude Scandinavian countries not been badly hit?  They have mandatory fortification with Vitamin D in up to 40 foods as well general population supplementation. Vitamin D Update.


When Your Health Turns On You #Hypothyroidism series:
1: Symptoms
2: Vitamins & Minerals
3: Blood Tests
4: Vitamin Co-Factors & the Microbiome
5: Functional Medicine & YouTube
6: Covid-19 Coronavirus

7: Covid-19 & Vitamin D

8: Vitamin D - The Results!

9: Covid-19 & Vitamin D - Jan 2021 Update

When Your Health Turns On You: #Hypothyroidism –– 6: Covid-19 Coronavirus

A touch of Kew Gardens courtesy of Hornsea Writers

For the backstory to this series, see the links at the bottom of the post. 

Note: I’m British and live in the UK. We have a National Health Service, free at the point of access, paid for via our taxes. Your mileage may differ, even if you live in the UK.


When I wrote in Post-5 (28 February) that I’d give an update in a “few months”, I never thought I’d be back within four weeks to the backdrop of a whole new sobering world. But this Covid-19 pandemic is now the evolving “norm” and we need to get on with it.

The good news: I was lucky to get my replacement hip operation before non-essential surgery is/was cancelled. I am currently sixteen days the other side and doing fine.

The warning for anyone with a thyroid disorder: I had a bad reaction to post-operative morphine (Oxycontin) = projectile vomiting and the necessity for a catheter. These reactions stopped when I was dropped to 30mg of Codeine, but I still felt foul. Codeine metabolises into morphine in the liver, either well or badly dependent on how well the thyroid delivers a necessary enzyme. Mmm. Bear in mind that I am considered sub-clinical; my level of hypothyroidism is considered too slight for medication (Levothyroxine). I thought this reaction was just me, but a friend ten years my senior and taking Levothyroxine, and having a hip replacement in another hospital, also suffered: finding it hard to breathe. I know which I’d rather have, but we can’t choose. So be warned. If you find yourself needing surgery in the future ensure you emphasise your disorder. There is a rather bald note on the NHS medicines website, including a list of other health issues where taking morphine is not advisable. While in hospital I had expected the U2 nodules on both lobes of my thyroid to swell due to the trauma of the operation and subsequent medication, but thankfully that didn't happen. I'm grateful for small mercies.

Vitamin-D and Covid-19: readers of this series will know that I suspect Vitamin D deficiency to be the smoking gun behind the onset of my Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism. It is well known that people with a thyroid disorder need their Vitamin D, Vitamin B12, Folic and Ferritin levels to be more than halfway along each individual range. My Vitamin D level is nowhere near, but I am working on it.

In the last few days I have been pointed to the YouTube channel of Dr John Campbell, a retired A&E nurse with a phd who taught student nurses in the NHS. He’s a straight-talking no-nonsense individual who is excellent at turning medical jargon into easy to understand layman’s language, complete with diagrams as necessary, and he’s been watching the upsurge of this Coronavirus since January. His video Vitamin D and Immunity is well worth a watch by anyone, as are his Reducing Fever, Good or Bad and Reducing Fever Part 2.

Social-Isolating or Self-Isolating: I am in an at-risk group and there’s no point whining about it: Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism is an autoimmune disorder, I have high blood pressure, and my body is busy trying to make up for the inevitable blood loss incurred during my hip replacement. Being thirteen months below the arbitrary 70 years of age at risk group deemed by the UK Government will not help me at all. Therefore we have been self-isolating since I returned from hospital, and this will continue. We are also lucky enough to have Son able to shop for us. Not everyone will be in this position but we are, and we intend to do our utmost not to add to the rising strain on our National Health Service. It’s the least we can do, not just for ourselves but for everyone.

Finally, a smile: the image of the flowers which heads this post. The lilies were delivered to my house as tight buds by Hornsea Writers while I was in hospital. Over the intervening days they have slowly unfurled into these amazing multi-coloured blooms which now grace the dining table where my laptop currently sits. I only wish this were a scratch-n-sniff post as the scents are spectacular. It is like sitting among the exotic flowers of Kew Gardens. Many thanks Hornsea Writers; you are stars!

If you want to look at what Kew has to offer, visit remotely The Gardens.

Stay safe. And keep washing your hands!

When Your Health Turns On You #Hypothyroidism series:

1: Symptoms
2: Vitamins & Minerals
3: Blood Tests
4: Vitamin Co-Factors & the Microbiome
5: Functional Medicine & YouTube

6: Covid-19 Coronavirus

7: Covid-19 and Vitamin D

8: Vitamin D - The Results!  

9: Covid-19 & Vitamin D - Jan 2021 Update