re: Covid: outside the box thinking - hemoglobin/ Vit D/ “host-centric” (and why that matters)

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the current medical system is that it views things in isolation (very reductionist)

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‘What Disease Are We Treating?’: Why Coronavirus Is Stumping Many Doctors
By Robin Stein and Ainara Tiefenthäler •April 14, 2020

Doctors say the coronavirus is challenging core tenets of medicine, leading some to abandon long-established ventilator protocols for certain patients. But other doctors warn this could be dangerous.

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I was talking with a friend of mine that is a supervisor over certain medical staff that are working in nursing homes. They have people in 8 or 10 homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. Out of the blue she tell me that they have noticed that the COVID positive residents in their homes that are taking dialysis are not getting severely sick. They were really worried about them as they are traditionally their sickest residents but they have not lost a single COVID positive resident on dialysis. Since dialysis filters the blood I wonder if it to removes CO2?

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Do you think the dialysis machine is removing CO2? Could it sort of be acting like the hemolung?

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Men never renew their blood,

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Vitamin D levels determined how human skin color evolved
By John Arnst

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It may seem the sun wages a constant war against our skin. Harmful UV radiation burns us, damages our DNA, and can sow the seeds for melanoma. But the sun is essential to our healthy development and our immune systems, because sun-exposed skin produces Vitamin D. During the long-ranging human exodus from Africa, says anthropologist Nina Jablonski, Vitamin D levels in the body played a key role: driving the evolution of our species' skin color.

“The sunshine vitamin,” as Jablonski calls Vitamin D, is central to understanding the relationship between skin color and geography, she said during a February 16 symposium at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston. She described her thesis in full in her latest book, Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Human Skin Color.

Living Color
In her latest book, anthropologist Nina Jablonski describes the connections between skin color and Vitamin D. Credit: University of California Press (Get a 29% discount on this book from the NASW Bookstore on Amazon.com).

With receptors located in the cells of many major organs and in the immune system, Vitamin D helps in calcium absorption and prevents aberrant cell division. UVB radiation catalyzes its creation in our skin.

According to Jablonski, “there is a conspicuous geographical pattern” between skin color and distance from the equator. At more northern or southern latitudes, the level of UVB rays hitting Earth’s surface decreases due to the planet’s tilt. The equator is bathed year-round in UVB rays, but seasonal variations mean that people in Northern Europe receive virtually no UVB exposure in winters.

As a result, Jablonski said, humans living near the equator developed darker skin tones, while those in northern climates developed lighter hues. High humidity also decreases UVB levels, as marked by the contrast between skin tones of early humans living in dry equatorial Africa and moist equatorial South America.

The dearth of UVB rays in northern climates put positive evolutionary pressure on early migratory humans to ramp up Vitamin D production, Jablonski noted. And indeed, fair-skinned people of European descent are nearly six times more efficient at making Vitamin D from UVB rays than those living near the equator.

Different types of melanin pigments in skin trigger these variations. In dark-skinned people, eumelanin is dominant and acts as a natural sunscreen; fairer-skinned individuals have much more pheomelanin. However, while pheomelanin produces vitamin D efficiently, its reaction with high levels of UVB also makes dangerous free radicals — which damage skin cells over time.

Failing to produce adequate levels of Vitamin D can cause physical deformities, including painful distension of the pelvic bones in women — and severe complications during childbirth. But even with persistent UV exposure, malignant melanoma doesn’t set in until later in life. Its effect on reproductive success would have been almost nonexistent, Jablonski stated.

The process of long-term skin lightening, known as “depigmentation,” occurred due to a series of mutations in a gene called SCL24A5, Jablonski said. That gene controls the size of melanin packets in skin and the types of melanin produced.

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Coronavirus and the Sun: a Lesson from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
Richard Hobday Richard Hobday Follow Mar 10 · 6 min read

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But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing with influenza — little-known today — was effective. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead. Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks. (National Archives) Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff.[1] There is scientific support for this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence it can kill the flu virus.

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Sunlight and Influenza Infection Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the influenza virus.[7] It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in hospitals.[8] During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected wounds.[9] They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn’t know is that one advantage of placing patients outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza.[10] Also, our body’s biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections.[11] New research suggests they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus.[12] As with vitamin D, at the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms was not known.

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The Open-Air Treatment of PANDEMIC INFLUENZA
Richard A. Hobday, PhD and John W. Cason, PhD

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I believe zinc works best as a preventative, I don’t think it helps too much once you’re a few days into an illness.

But taking it for a week probably won’t hurt you so if someone wanted it I wouldn’t recommend against it

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Dietary supplements an important weapon for fighting off COVID-19
Released: 23-Apr-2020 4:50 PM EDT Source Newsroom: Oregon State University

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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Supplements containing vitamins C and D and other micronutrients, sometimes in amounts exceeding the federally recommended levels, are a safe, effective and low-cost means of helping your immune system fight off COVID-19 and other acute respiratory tract diseases, an Oregon State University researcher says. Findings were published today in the journal Nutrients. Adrian Gombart of OSU's Linus Pauling Institute and collaborators at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), the University of Otago (New Zealand) and University Medical Center (The Netherlands) say public health officials should issue a clear set of nutritional recommendations to complement messages about the role of hand washing and vaccinations in preventing the spread of infections.

"Around the world, acute respiratory tract infections kill more than 2.5 million people every year," said Gombart, professor of biochemistry and biophysics in the OSU College of Science and a principal investigator at the Linus Pauling Institute. "Meanwhile, there's a wealth of data that shows the role that good nutrition plays in supporting the immune system. As a society we need to be doing a better job of getting that message across along with the other important, more common messages."

Specific vitamins, minerals and fatty acids have key jobs to play in helping your immune system, he says. In particular vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, and an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish, docosahexaenoic acid, also known as DHA, are critical for immune function. "The roles that vitamins C and D play in immunity are particularly well known," he said. "Vitamin C has roles in several aspects of immunity, including the growth and function of immune cells and antibody production. Vitamin D receptors on immune cells also affect their function. This means that vitamin D profoundly influences your response to infections. "The problem is that people simply aren't eating enough of these nutrients. This could destroy your resistance to infections. Consequently, we will see an increase in disease and all of the extra burdens that go along with that increase." That's why the researchers are urging not only a daily multivitamin, but doses of 200 milligrams or more of vitamin C (higher than the suggested federal guidelines of 75 milligrams for men and 50 for women) and 2,000 international units of vitamin D, rather than the 400 to 800 recommended depending on age.

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"A number of standard public health practices have been developed to help limit the spread and impact of respiratory viruses: regular hand washing, avoiding those showing symptoms of infection, and covering coughs," Gombart said. "And for certain viruses like influenza, there are annual vaccination campaigns." There is no doubt that vaccines, when available, can be effective, but they're not foolproof, he says.

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Gombart emphasizes that current public health practices - stressing social distancing, hygiene and vaccinations - are important and effective but in need of complementary strategies. A nutritional focus on the immune system could help minimize the impact of many kinds of infections.

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