Covid and vitamin D: What is vitamin D? How does a deficiency impact covid?

 

What is vitamin D?

Vitamin D helps to regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in your body.

This vitamin is needed to keep your bones, teeth and muscles healthy.

A lack of vitamin D can lead to bone deformities in children.

Bone pain caused by a lack of vitamin D is called osteomalacia in adults.

The body creates vitamin D from direct sunlight on the skin when outdoors.

However, during the winter months, people are unable to get sufficient levels of vitamin D from sunlight.

Instead, people can top up their vitamin D levels from a small number of food sources including:

• Oily fish such as salmon, sardines, herring and mackerel
• Red meat
• Liver
• Egg yolks
• Fortified foods

Express

The ‘effective’ natural supplement to protect against arthritis pain

 

Ginger may help to reduce some of your arthritis pain, according to the Arthritis Foundation.

It's a natural anti-inflammatory which has similar painkilling-properties as ibuprofen, it said.

Inflammation is a key cause of arthritis flare-ups, which is why ginger may be effective in relieving pain.

Both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis patients could benefit from taking ginger supplements, it added.

Express

BEST HERBS FOR INFLAMATION

Face masks that LIGHT UP under a scanner if you have coronavirus could be used to identify infected people in hospital waiting rooms and airports

Researchers from MIT and Harvard are working on adapting a technology first developed in 2016 to quickly and cheaply detect signs of the Zika virus.

• Sensors in masks are able to detect signs of the virus in saliva after three hours
• When they detect the virus the mask then emits a very faint fluorescent glow 
• This glow can then be picked up by cheap handheld scanners called fluorimeters
• Developers of the masks hope to have them ready for distribution at the end of the summer but say they have a small team so it may take longer than that . MIRROR
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How to live longer - the spice you should add to your shopping list to prevent early death

HOW to live longer: Prevent an early death by eating a healthy, balanced diet, and by doing regular exercise. But you could also increase your life expectancy, while also lowering your risk of cancer symptoms, by adding this spice to your daily routine. Adding more turmeric to your diet could protect against some types of cancer, experts revealed. EXPRESS

Coronavirus vaccine: UK scientists now hopeful of groundbreaking virus jab THIS summer

BRITISH experts have said they are on track to produce a coronavirus vaccine this summer, it was revealed yesterday. The team hopes to produce one million doses of the vaccine by September. The Cambridge-based drugs giant has said it could scale up to 100 million by the end of the year. Express

More evidence vitamin D can help against coronavirus: Study finds patients with a severe deficiency are TWICE as likely to die from COVID-19

• Patients with severe deficiency were twice as likely to experience complications
• This, the US researchers claim, includes a higher risk of dying from COVID-19
• Builds on research which linked low levels of vitamin D to a higher mortality rate.
• DailyMail