A research review from the National Institute of Health (NIH) shows the promise of dietary supplements in fighting COVID-19 yet concludes there isn’t enough evidence to recommend them. Huh? Action Alert!
According to the NIH review, there is science showing vitamin D helps with respiratory infections and may reduce COVID severity, while deficiency is associated with more infections and more severe cases of COVID-19. The review looks at eleven supplements and includes over 200 references, a vast number of which point to the beneficial effects supplements can have on human health and disease prevention, including COVID-19. NIH’s takeaway? “Data are insufficient to support recommendations for or against the use of [supplements] to prevent or treat COVID-19.” This is likely aimed to support the FTC’s recent attacks against doctors who taught the benefits of natural medicines for COVID. If anything, this review underscores why we need to support efforts that expand consumer access to supplements, including a bill in Congress that allows Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to cover natural products.
The review looks at a handful of supplements, including vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, melatonin, and Andrographis, assessing the literature on the safety and efficacy of these different compounds. In vitamin D’s case, the authors include many of the same studies we reported on, demonstrating the benefits of vitamin D for COVID-19. Consider some of these excerpts from the review:
- “Some evidence suggests that vitamin D supplementation helps prevent respiratory tract infections.”
- “…people with vitamin D deficiency were more likely to have COVID-19 than those who were vitamin D sufficient.”
- “A systematic review and meta-analysis of 39 studies… found that participants with vitamin D deficiency…had a higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and more severe COVID-19 disease than those with adequate vitamin D levels.”
- “Some evidence suggests that vitamin D supplementation might reduce COVID-19 severity.”
NIH’s conclusion? “Currently, data are insufficient to support a recommendation for or against the use of vitamin D supplementation to prevent or treat COVID-19.”
This theme is repeated throughout the document. On one hand, the NIH writes that “studies have not thoroughly assessed use of [Andrographis for COVID-19],” and then goes on to list a number of studies, including clinical trials, that demonstrate the effectiveness of the herb in alleviating COVID-19 symptoms. NIH states that there isn’t enough data to recommend vitamin C, but notes “many researchers recommend studying vitamin C as an adjuvant therapy for COVID-19, including its possible ability to reduce inflammation and vascular injury in these patients.” Clinicaltrials.gov lists 64 clinical trials on vitamin C and COVID, and 6 trials on intravenous vitamin C. This great interest in vitamin C is surely an indication of its promise in helping with COVID.
If anything, this document ironically demonstrates how silly the government’s position is. Only FDA-approved drugs can claim to treat, prevent, or mitigate a disease. The FDA and the FTC, as we’ve seen, are ready and willing to make sure that no one dares to claim that affordable, safe, and natural substances can help with disease. Yet in many cases, overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates the plausibility of using supplements to protect our health and to combat disease.
Part of the problem is that, to gain FDA approval and make disease claims, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) would need to be conducted on supplements, as they are on new-to-nature drugs. But these studies are incredibly expensive, costing millions of dollars. Drug companies can afford them because drugs are patentable; most supplements, being natural, cannot be strongly patented, so the cost of conducting these trials cannot be recouped by supplement companies. Then the establishment claims that the absence of clinical trials on vitamins means we don’t really know whether they work.
When trials are conducted on supplements, we often see that the dosage being studied is far too low to have therapeutic effects—typically because they are using government references to determine the amount to use. For example, we were told by experts that a clinical trial assessing intravenous vitamin C’s ability to treat COVID-19 used a dose unlikely to achieve an effect. This is a shame, since skeptics then use the negative results from improperly-designed trials as ammunition to argue that natural medicines don’t work.
As we have long noted, RTCs don’t even fit food and supplement research very well. A drug molecule can be better isolated in its effects. Foods and supplements are just part of our diet and often depend on co-factors. For example, supplemental calcium should not be taken without supplemental K2, but isolating it for an RCT would miss that. In addition, the effect of a food or supplement will depend in the first place on whether the subject is deficient in that nutrient. No one is nutritionally deficient in a drug. Random choice of participants for a food or supplement study is therefore illogical.
There is lots of scientific support for dietary supplements to support human health. A bill in Congress would expand access to these products by allowing Americans to be reimbursed for supplements through Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), and Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs). ANH has supported similar efforts for many years; we must keep pushing to get this over the finish line.
Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell your elected officials to support S. 1654. Please send your message immediately.
5G is ok but not supplements. We know who the government is supporting.
Support S 1654, more research on natural supplements than the biased Pharma research. If my anunt had a nut she would be my uncle. If Hilabeast would have gotten in to the president, the Pharma would be charging high prices on the natural and we would also pay a big price on both natural and synthetics with them altering the natural for there evil practices.
In my teens and early twenties I was sick half the time, first with tonsillitis, and after they were removed I had upper respiratory infections 2 weeks of every month. At the age of 28 I saw an Internist, who did 3 tests on me, including a blood test, which showed that I was anemic.
Apparently my body doesn’t absorb minerals from food very well. So I asked him what would happen if I started taking iron supplements, and his answer?…”You can if you want to, but don’t tell anyone that I told you to do that.”
I began taking FemIron, which was an OTC supplement, 23mg of Ferrous Fumerate. 30 days later…no URI, 6 months later…no URI, 1 year later…no URI…and I haven’t had a cold or the flu ever since. Now, if that isn’t a testimonial for supplements, I don’t know what is.
I’ve been a supplement junky ever since. I’m certain that, even though I’m 82, because of my great immune function, I wouldn’t succumb to Covid-19 even if I caught it, which I won’t, because I’ve been innoculated.
You lost me at “innoculated” ?
grassrootshealth has been closely covering vitamin D studies for Covid19. The studies of the calcifediol form of D in Spain have been particularly impressive. It is a crime that they don’t test every hospitalized patient and then treat with D.
Since the onset of covid I have done two things. I had a pneumonia vaccine shot, I increased by vitamin D level to 10 000 I.u per day plus supplemented with vitamin C and E and A.
They are criminals. They supported the use of that anti-viral drug, Remdesivir, which cost over $1,000 a patient, and was worthless while people died, and paid no attention to the small studies which indicated that vitamin D either in combination with other supplements, or even alone, saves people’s lives. The reason there is “not enough data” is that medical researchers at universities are only searching for drugs in partnership with the drug companies. The ivory tower of pure research has been replaced by the search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Doctors at the NIH are paid by the drug industry as “consultants”. This ensures that they work for the drug companies not for our well-being as they are supposed to. “Lack of data”? Well how do you fix that? The NIH should be doing its job and providing the studies to provide the data.
I personally had a very bad case of COVID-19 and I got through it with a 100% natural product called Zeolite AV that has natural Humic Acid in it that coats both the virus cells and the host cells to inhibit them from reproducing! Every time I took a dose of the Zeolite AV I could feel the viral load reducing within 30 minutes which I feel kept me out of the hospital and may have saved my life! I still felt horrible but it could have been much worse! I kept an ongoing online diary during my illness that lasted for almost 3 weeks and its at https://mycovid-19experience-com
The FDA, Big Pharma, And The USA Government Are Totally Corrupt And In Collusion Together As They Destroy Natural Nutraceuticals That Are Proven Safe And To Help People While Replacing Them With Pharmaceutical Drugs That Will Give Us Cancers, Destroy The Organs In Our Bodies Or Kill Us With Their Side Effects Alone! Yes, Folks LIfe In America Is Now That Bad And It Is Killing Us By The Thousands While Absolutely Nothing Is Being Done To Save Us From This INSANE Corruption! I would Say God Save Us All But That Is Just Not Going To Happen! I have Lost All Hope For A Healthier America With The Help Of The Nutraceutical Industry!
My letter would not send due to address of recipients. I am in WA state. Thank you
They villainized cannabis and it’s still effecting cancer outcomes to this day, among a slew of other things it treats. They’ve more recently blocked access to peptides and have been going after bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. These are some of the best SAFE regenerative therapies available! The things that are so effective threaten pharmaceutical bottom lines and hence the captured government agencies who are supposed to be working for tax payers, bur clearly ARE NOT. Anything that can be used safely and make us feel good, they try to block the public from havimg. It is shameful! And, with so much knowledge freely accessible to read at one’s own pace, they are looking like total IDIOTS to lay people, such as myself. I’m grateful to have been able to empower myself to spot those indoctrinated into the Rockefeller medicine establishment in order to save my own life and help those I love..
When money becomes (and it has) more important than integrity there is corruption of intention. Unfortunately our world has been overtaken by life forms calling themselves human, but truly they are diseased minds. There is NOTHING that exists in the natural world that doesn’t have a counterpart that provides balance. Our lives – our bodies, minds, emotions have been disrupted by the insertion of these sick minds’ manipulations and pollution of all natural functions the Earth provides to keep us healthy and balanced. I would not be shocked to hear sun bathing has become illegal because it provides Vitamin D. A more covert, untruthful approach was taken with the introduction of poisonous sun screen chemicals everyone was encouraged to use in order to protect themselves from the healing rays of our sun. Huge lies were generated to lead people to fear the sun’s magic energies and create industries that greatly profited. The results did not prevent skin cancer – the products created cancers! How long are we, the inheritors of this beautiful, bountiful planet going to allow the progression of our dominance and downfall?