but what causes the disruption?
Part of the brain isn't formed fully and causes an insufficient supply of norepinephrine and dopamine, causing the reward circuits in your brain to not work properly. A normal person may get some baseline amount of dopamine (let X = that baseline) for getting some household chore done, but gets X+20 if they sit around and watch TV while cramming potato chips into their maw. Yeah, watching TV may be more pleasurable, at least in the short term, but getting those other necessary tasks done is rewarding enough that the brain is able to consider them.
For someone with ADHD, it's more of X-20 and X instead. Sitting around watching TV is rewarding enough that you can do it, but getting those necessary tasks done is just going to feel draining and shitty, it's not rewarding enough to your brain to consider it as even an option. It's what leads to the "out of sight, out of mind" problem being a big problem for people with ADHD. My bathroom is a fucking mess, and I know it is, but it's not the thing my brain will consider until I'm actually in the bathroom and looking at the problem - but, like, I'm only in there while using it, the second I leave it, my brain stops considering it again.
Stimulants return the ADHD brain's reward circuits to baseline, so it works like normal. For people without ADHD, it kicks their brain into overdrive, and now even menial tasks seem super exciting and engaging, leading to the stereotypical "took stims, cleaned the bathtub for 8 hours straight for some reason" behavior.
Yeah, that's the part we don't really know to be honest. Our findings thusfar have basically lead us to "it's probably genetic somehow, not much you can do but take meds and learn to cope".
Unlike a lot of health issues, we didn't start with "oh hey, if your brain forms in this specific way, you act weird". Stimulants also have a side effect of dropping your appetite to basically zero, so they were originally being tested as weight loss drugs, when someone realized "hey wait this makes some really hyper kids be normal, wtf?" and we've kinda worked backward from there. This was the original ad for adderall before it rebranded, even - and that was only in the 50s and 60s, so our understanding of all this is still relatively new.
Should note these mdpi journals have a reputation to be garbage, look for other publications in more reputable ones before buying everything this paper says.
Not saying vitamin d has no impact, but the methodology of this specific paper may not be up to snuff.
It's quite a jump to go from vitamin D deficiency being a frequently encountered factor in mortality to saying that it "accounts" for 9/10ths of fatal cases. I doubt a silver bullet as simple as vitamin D has been hiding for his long, so the title is too grabby.
That said, there have been plenty of studies that have brought up this link, it's not just some pop sci trend. (Several of them are referenced in this OP study.)
There has been a recent study from Brazil that more or less found vitamin D supplements to be insignificant in treating severe cases that are late in prognosis. It's unfortunate that loading up on vitamin D while suffering a severe case of COVID likely wouldn't help much (if that as-of-yet unreviewed study is to be trusted), but it doesn't write off supplements for general risk minimization.
How much vitamin D deficiency was found in people who survived?
vitamin D levels are important, but supplementing vitamin D doesn't necessarily raise levels
or being bedridden due to another illness preventing you from sunning yourself.
Don't forget the medical condition of "I'm awake before the sun rises, sitting inside at work while the sun is up, and go home when the sun has already set" syndrome
So when I got my friends to start meeting me for long walks/hikes 2x a week because I was having a hard time motivating myself to do it on my own, I was literally saving our lives by getting us more sun exposure? Damn, I'm a hero! Well actually they probably saved me because if they weren't going with me, I probably would have ended up saying "eh, I'll go tomorrow" forever. Solidarity: it's good.
This is the stupidest shit I've heard of in my whole god damn life. Basically everyone is vitamin D deficient. That doesn't mean that when they die, its because they were deficient. Can someone who read the article tell me if they even tried to provide a scientific explanation beyond simple correlation
Can someone who read the article ...
Universal suffrage for everyone except those who upvoted this comment.
At least read the abstract...
With a covariate-adjusted relative risk of death of 11.3, mortality was much higher among vitamin D insufficient patients than among other patients. When translated to the proportion of deaths in the population that is statistically attributable to vitamin D insufficiency (“population attributable risk proportion”), a key measure of public health relevance of risk factors [2], these results imply that 87% of COVID-19 deaths may be statistically attributed to vitamin D insufficiency and could potentially be avoided by eliminating vitamin D insufficiency.
Although results of an observational study, such as this one, need to be interpreted with caution, as done by the authors [1], due to the potential of residual confounding or reverse causality (i.e., vitamin D insufficiency resulting from poor health status at baseline rather than vice versa), it appears extremely unlikely that such a strong association in this prospective cohort study could be explained this way, in particular as the authors had adjusted for age, sex and comorbidity as potential confounders in their multivariate analysis.
Like if you're argument is, "well did they do high schooler level of analysis before publishing this journal article?" The answer is yeah fucking probably.
Im a med student, I read bullshit medical justifications for drugs and diseases all day, I’m not interested in doing it in my free time.
I did it anyway because you postured as if the answer here was “yes” when, if you know what enough of those words mean, it’s actually “no and we really have no good theories as to why”. I mean really...the least they could have done was speculate on the effect of Vitamin D on bone health as it relates to the marrow...but it doesn’t sound like they have any clue at all.
There are clearly problems with the article, and i didn't mean to imply it was more certain than the pieces I quoted. They had a total of 118 patients with 16 deaths. Clearly not a basis of any groundbreaking answers, an any conclusions should be taken with plenty of salt. But really I pushed back against your comment because it amounted to, someone should read it to see if they confused correlation and causation, and like come on...
Lol I didn’t say anyone confused shit, I just wanted to know if it was meaningfully backed by science or just clickbait.
I mean, I call my non-dairy milk malk because I think it's funny
I think the government really does not want to address this possibility because the American lifestyle is not generally conducive to great health.
People are stressed out all the time due to capitalism. Additionally, they get little (outdoor) exercise & sun exposure (especially in northern latitudes), and the food has low nutritional value. Even "healthy" foods (which are more expensive under capitalism), have declined in nutritional value, partially due to increased atmospheric CO2 (which the government denies) https://emagazine.com/declining-nutritional/
The US government does not want to admit systemic problems under capitalism cause or in any way contribute to poor health outcomes (disease).
I work outside in South Texas, so unless some other mechanism in my body is messed up that prevents me from producing or making use of vitamin D from sunlight I should be ok.
Guess I'm fucked because my body doesn't produce enough vitamin d on its own and also apparently struggles to absorb it from supplements.
Multi vitamins FUUUCK my tummy up. With that said, just keep wearing the mask and washing up often and i think you'll be fine
Have you tried the soluble ones you drink? I can't take them because they give me headaches but there are ones you put in water and it's like a fizzy orange drink.
I started taking Vit D during the lockdown because I wasn't outside as much and it's in droplet form. You can put it on a piece of toast something as well.
Kind of. The ones I took were orange flavored and in thr shape of an Alka Seltzer. It was a multivitamin, not just Vit C like emergency.
Vitamin K2 is supposed to increase absorption, enough that they sell pills with only k2/d3.
I take a multivitamin that claims to have 125% of my daily vitamin D, does anyone know if this is legit or if I need some other special form of vitamins?
I have no hard knowledge on this, but health subreddits ala /r/nootropics have been crazy for vitamin D forever. I've never heard of anyone doubting that the regular vitamins don't supply it right (whereas there's more scrutiny of the specific formulations of fish oil or magnesium).
Getting it from food is always better than from pills, but that's obviously more bothersome.
There're a bunch of nutrition scientists (Joe Rogan had one on a few times) who think we should be taking ~3x more vitamin D than what the current recommendation is - don't think they've proven their point, but that's one view out there.
There's another hypothesis that the human body is served best when it develops its own vitamin D by exposure to the sun - i.e., you don't just need vitamin D for health, you also need the exercise of making it on your own.
Vitamin d works as a hormone in the body. Which is why ideally supplementation would be monitored by an endocrinologist who has tested your levels. Treating vit d deficiency is a whole thing and the dosage the doctor gives you is very high, like "can fuck your body up" high.
Whoremoans in my body? Why, I never! ...No, you make great points. I was gonna add myself that supplements are unfortunately barely regulated, so it's basically you vs. whatever the profit-seeking market tells you.
But the public information on this topic is shit. On the one hand, most people who're not malnourished are fine in terms of vitamins. On the other hand, a healthy diet is hard to achieve in practice and most people get relatively little time outside, so vitamin supplementation is appealing. You can find seemingly well-researched sources supporting either point of view - where's the truth?
And monitored by an endocrinologist? Who has the time or the money for that?
Can't believe you're surprised. They call it vitamin d. Are you gay? Why would you want a d in your body. They put it in beverages and cereal to turn the frigging kids gay
And monitored by an endocrinologist? Who has the time or the money for that?
It's a thing we people who live in countries with free healthcare do after health scares. It's fucked that you can't
I ain't gay! I just swallow a little D on the side. Cheers for good healthcare!
That doesn't sound healthy. Are you sure it's no a more rational 25% instead? Safe vitamin d supplementation is 2000 IU a week. Be careful of hypervitaminosis.
There are different types of vitamin d you can buy and some of them still require you get sunlight to properly synthesize it. You can look up online which type you're taking.
Supposedly new research proves that healthy adults can take like 10,000 IU/day no problem...
Thing is that there's no need to and most supplements are a scam to get money from ignorant people
Trader joe's sells 5000 IU pills. If you take risks that may expose you to covid-19, vitamin d is a relatively safe way to try and get an edge over it.
They're Kroger-brand "Complete Multivitamins" with 25 mcg (1000 IU) of vitamin D
i mean this doesn't really sound that far fetched to me imo, especially considering how much people have been staying indoors away from the sun throughout quarantine
I watched this April 29 and not since then, but he goes into why vitamin d is important, and how darker skin make less vitamin d, which might explain why covid affects black people more, etc. Back in April... I hope it has held up, but it was informative at the time.
https://youtu.be/GCSXNGc7pfs
I am going to watch a more recent video of his soon.
and how darker skin make less vitamin d, which might explain why covid affects black people more
iirc black people also have more bioavailable vitamin D so that counteracts it somewhat. Also there are other genetic things that put Black people at higher risk, not due to their skin color
