
Citicoline: Better Than Dietary Choline?
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Citicoline: Better Than Dietary Choline?
Citicoline, also known as cytidine diphosphate-choline (or CDP-Choline, to its friends, or cytidine 5′-diphosphocholine if it wants to get fancy) is a dietary supplement that the stomach can metabolize easily for all the brain’s choline needs. What are those needs?
Choline is an essential nutrient. We technically can synthesize it, but only in minute amounts, far less than we need. Choline is a key part of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, as well as having other functions in other parts of the body.
As for citicoline specifically… it appears to do the job better than dietary sources of choline:
❝Intriguing data, showing that on a molar mass basis citicoline is significantly less toxic than choline, are also analyzed.
It is hypothesized that, compared to choline moiety in other dietary sources such as phosphatidylcholine, choline in citicoline is less prone to conversion to trimethylamine (TMA) and its putative atherogenic N-oxide (TMAO).
Epidemiological studies have suggested that choline supplementation may improve cognitive performance, and for this application citicoline may be safer and more efficacious.❞
Source: Citicoline: A Superior Form of Choline?
Great! What does it do?
What doesn’t it do? When it comes to cognitive function, anyway, citicoline covers a lot of bases.
Short version: it improves just about every way a brain’s healthy functions can be clinically measured. From cognitive improvements in all manner of tests (far beyond just “improves memory” etc; also focus, alertness, verbal fluency, logic, computation, and more), to purely neurological things like curing tinnitus (!), alleviating mobility disorders, and undoing alcohol-related damage.
One of the reasons it’s so wide in its applications, is that it has a knock-on effect to other systems in the brain, including the dopaminergic system.
Long version: Citicoline: pharmacological and clinical review, 2022 update
(if you don’t want to sit down for a long read, we recommend skimming to the charts and figures, which are very elucidating even alone)
Spotlight study in memory
For a quick-reading example of how it helps memory specifically:
Keeping dementia at bay
For many older people looking to improve memory, it’s less a matter of wanting to perform impressive feats of memory, and more a matter of wanting to keep a sharp memory throughout our later years.
Dr. Maria Bonvicini et al. looked into this:
❝We selected seven studies including patients with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease or post-stroke dementia
All the studies showed a positive effect of citicoline on cognitive functions. Six studies could be included in the meta-analysis.
Overall, citicoline improved cognitive status, with pooled standardized mean differences ranging from 0.56 (95% CI: 0.37-0.75) to 1.57 (95% CI: 0.77-2.37) in different sensitivity analyses❞
The researchers concluded “yes”, and yet, called for more studies, and of higher quality. In many such studies, the heterogeneity of the subjects (often, residents of nursing homes) can be as much a problem (unclear whether the results will be applicable to other people in different situations) as it is a strength (fewer confounding variables).
Another team looked at 47 pre-existing reviews, and concluded:
❝The review found that citicoline has been proven to be a useful compound in preventing dementia progression.
Citicoline has a wide range of effects and could be an essential substance in the treatment of many neurological diseases.
Its positive impact on learning and cognitive functions among the healthy population is also worth noting.❞
Source: Application of Citicoline in Neurological Disorders: A Systematic Review
The dopamine bonus
Remember how we said that citicoline has a knock-on effect on other systems, including the dopaminergic system? This means that it’s been studied (and found meritorious) for alleviating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease:
❝Patients with Parkinson’s disease who were taking citicoline had significant improvement in rigidity, akinesia, tremor, handwriting, and speech.
Citicoline allowed effective reduction of levodopa by up to 50%.
Significant improvement in cognitive status evaluation was also noted with citicoline adjunctive therapy.❞
Source: Citicoline as Adjuvant Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review
Where to get it?
We don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience
Enjoy!
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How Beneficial Is MCT Oil, Really?
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Often derived from coconuts (though it doesn’t have to be), medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are trendy… But does the science back the hype?
First, the principle
MCTs are commonly enjoyed because unlike short- or long-chain fatty acids, they can be quickly broken down and either immediately converted quickly and easily into energy, or turned into ketones in the case of a surplus (in the case of true excess, however, it’ll simply be stored as fat).
Most of that involves the liver, so for anyone who wants a refresher on liver health:
How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver ← notwithstanding the title, this is also important knowledge even if your liver is healthy now—if you’d like it to stay healthy, anyway!
You can also read about the ins and outs of glycogen metabolism and the body’s energy-based metabolic processes in general (including the body’s energy processes that go on in the liver), here:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
If the liver turns the MCTs into ketones, those ketones will then be used for energy if there is insufficient glucose available (as the body will always use glucose from the blood first, if available, before moving to alternative energy sources such as ketones and/or fat reserves.)
Thus, many people look to ketones as a solution for having enough energy to function while on a very low-carb diet such as the ketogenic diet:
Ketogenic Diet: Burning Fat Or Burning Out?
…which as you’ll recall, does work for short-term weight loss, but brings long-term health risks, so should not be undertaken for long periods of time.
So, does MCT Oil help?
With regard to weight loss, the research is weak and mixed:
- Weak, because often the methodology was shoddy, often there are many factors not controlled-for, and often the sample sizes were small (and also, RCTs by their very nature tend to be quite short-term (often 6, 8, or 12 weeks), whereas heavy reliance on ketones from MCTs may fall into the same long-term problems as the ketogenic diet in general).
- Mixed, because the results varied widely (probably because of the aforementioned problems).
Rather than pick at individual studies, let’s look at this review and meta-analysis of 13 studies, with a combined sample size of 749 people (so you can imagine how small the individual RCTs were):
❝Compared with LCTs, MCTs decreased body weight (-0.51 kg [95% CI-0.80 to -0.23 kg]; P<0.001; I(2)=35%); waist circumference (-1.46 cm [95% CI -2.04 to -0.87 cm]; P<0.001; I(2)=0%), hip circumference (-0.79 cm [95% CI -1.27 to -0.30 cm]; P=0.002; I(2)=0%), total body fat (standard mean difference -0.39 [95% CI -0.57 to -0.22]; P<0.001; I(2)=0%), total subcutaneous fat (standard mean difference -0.46 [95% CI -0.64 to -0.27]; P<0.001; I(2)=20%), and visceral fat (standard mean difference -0.55 [95% CI -0.75 to -0.34]; P<0.001; I(2)=0%).
No differences were seen in blood lipid levels.
Many trials lacked sufficient information for a complete quality assessment, and commercial bias was detected.❞
So, if we’re going to take those numbers at face value, that means a net weight loss, over the course of the trial period, was…
*drumroll*
0.51kg (that’s about 1 lb).
To put that into perspective, if you did nothing else but pee 1 cup of urine before getting weighed, you’d register as having lost 0.25kg (or about ½ lb) by virtue of the bathroom trip alone.
Here’s the paper:
What about cholesterol and heart health?
With regard to cholesterol, MCT oil is touted as improving blood lipids, which means lowering LDL and increasing HDL (within a safe range, anyway).
You’ll remember that the above review concluded “No differences were seen in blood lipid levels”.
It may again be a case of individual studies cancelling each other out. For example…
This study found that it improved lipids in 40 young women as part of a calorie-controlled interventional diet:
This study found that it worsened lipids in 17 young men, worse even than taking an equivalent amount of sunflower oil:
In short, it’s a gamble.
It may be good for insulin sensitivity, though
This one seems to be specific to people with type 2 diabetes. The paper heading says it all, but we include the link in case you want to know the details (the short version is, it improved insulin sensitivity in diabetic subjects only (not others), and didn’t affect anything else that was measured:
The sample size was small (20 people total, of whom 10 had diabetes), and the next study was with 40 people, this time moderately overweight and all with type 2 diabetes:
Want to try some?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
Enjoy!
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Yes, we still need chickenpox vaccines
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For people who grew up before a vaccine was available, chickenpox is largely remembered as an unpleasant experience that almost every child suffered through. The highly contagious disease tore through communities, leaving behind more than a few lasting scars.
For many children, chickenpox was much more than a week or two of itchy discomfort. It was a serious and sometimes life-threatening infection.
Prior to the chickenpox vaccine’s introduction in 1995, 90 percent of children got chickenpox. Those children grew into adults with an increased risk of developing shingles, a disease caused by the same virus—varicella-zoster—as chickenpox, which lies dormant in the body for decades.
The vaccine changed all that, nearly wiping out chickenpox in the U.S. in under three decades. The vaccine has been so successful that some people falsely believe the disease no longer exists and that vaccination is unnecessary. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Vaccination spares children and adults from the misery of chickenpox and the serious short- and long-term risks associated with the disease. The CDC estimates that 93 percent of children in the U.S. are fully vaccinated against chickenpox. However, outbreaks can still occur among unvaccinated and under-vaccinated populations.
Here are some of the many reasons why we still need chickenpox vaccines.
Chickenpox is more serious than you may remember
For most children, chickenpox lasts around a week. Symptoms vary in severity but typically include a rash of small, itchy blisters that scab over, fever, fatigue, and headache.
However, in one out of every 4,000 chickenpox cases, the virus infects the brain, causing swelling. If the varicella-zoster virus makes it to the part of the brain that controls balance and muscle movements, it can cause a temporary loss of muscle control in the limbs that can last for months. Chickenpox can also cause other serious complications, including skin, lung, and blood infections.
Prior to the U.S.’ approval of the vaccine in 1995, children accounted for most of the country’s chickenpox cases, with over 10,000 U.S. children hospitalized with chickenpox each year.
The chickenpox vaccine is very effective and safe
Chickenpox is an extremely contagious disease. People without immunity have a 90 percent chance of contracting the virus if exposed.
Fortunately, the chickenpox vaccine provides lifetime protection and is around 90 percent effective against infection and nearly 100 percent effective against severe illness. It also reduces the risk of developing shingles later in life.
In addition to being incredibly effective, the chickenpox vaccine is very safe, and serious side effects are extremely rare. Some people may experience mild side effects after vaccination, such as pain at the injection site and a low fever.
Although infection provides immunity against future chickenpox infections, letting children catch chickenpox to build up immunity is never worth the risk, especially when a safe vaccine is available. The purpose of vaccination is to gain immunity without serious risk.
The chickenpox vaccine is one of the greatest vaccine success stories in history
It’s difficult to overstate the impact of the chickenpox vaccine. Within five years of the U.S. beginning universal vaccination against chickenpox, the disease had declined by over 80 percent in some regions.
Nearly 30 years after the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine, the disease is almost completely wiped out. Cases and hospitalizations have plummeted by 97 percent, and chickenpox deaths among people under 20 are essentially nonexistent.
Thanks to the vaccine, in less than a generation, a disease that once swept through schools and affected nearly every child has been nearly eliminated. And, unlike vaccines introduced in the early 20th century, no one can argue that improved hygiene, sanitation, and health helped reduce chickenpox cases beginning in the 1990s.
Having chickenpox as a child puts you at risk of shingles later
Although most people recover from chickenpox within a week or two, the virus that causes the disease, varicella-zoster, remains dormant in the body. This latent virus can reactivate years after the original infection as shingles, a tingling or burning rash that can cause severe pain and nerve damage.
One in 10 people who have chickenpox will develop shingles later in life. The risk increases as people get older as well as for those with weakened immune systems.
Getting chickenpox as an adult can be deadly
Although chickenpox is generally considered a childhood disease, it can affect unvaccinated people of any age. In fact, adult chickenpox is far deadlier than pediatric cases.
Serious complications like pneumonia and brain swelling are more common in adults than in children with chickenpox. One in 400 adults who get chickenpox develops pneumonia, and one to two out of 1,000 develop brain swelling.
Vaccines have virtually eliminated chickenpox, but outbreaks still happen
Although the chickenpox vaccine has dramatically reduced the impact of a once widespread disease, declining immunity could lead to future outbreaks. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis found that chickenpox vaccination rates dropped in half of U.S. states in the 2022-2023 school year compared to the previous year. And more than a dozen states have immunization rates below 90 percent.
In 2024, New York City and Florida had chickenpox outbreaks that primarily affected unvaccinated and under-vaccinated children. With declining public confidence in routine vaccines and rising school vaccine exemption rates, these types of outbreaks will likely become more common.
The CDC recommends that children receive two chickenpox vaccine doses before age 6. Older children and adults who are unvaccinated and have never had chickenpox should also receive two doses of the vaccine.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Some patients wait 6 years to see a public hospital specialist. Here’s how to fix this
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ABC analysis shows some patients wait six years or more for outpatient medical appointments in Australia’s public hospital system.
According to the ABC, the delays are longest in parts of South Australia, where some patients waited more than six years to see a neurologist and 5.5 years to see ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialists and gastroenterologists.
In parts of Tasmania, waits for ENT specialists, neurologists and urologists were almost five years. Some families needing their child assessed for allergies waited more than five years.
Some patients find their condition deteriorates as they wait. Others live with chronic pain. All live with uncertainty. In our past interviews patients described “becoming more anxious”, and feeling “forgotten” and “alone […] like no one cares”.
Health Minister Mark Butler says the government is working to bolster the medical workforce. But while training more specialist doctors is an important part of a long-term plan, it’s not the only thing needed to reduce outpatient wait times.
Our research spanning more than a decade shows there are ways to reduce waiting lists that can be implemented now.
SDI Productions/Getty Images What’s going wrong?
When a patient needs to see a specialist but doesn’t require hospitalisation, a GP or emergency department can refer them to a public outpatient clinic. In a public outpatient clinic, they can see a specialist or allied health provider – or receive a test or treatment – for free.
Some patients may go on to have elective surgery, but they must first wait for an outpatient appointment.
There are around 41 million public hospital outpatient visits each year. But data isn’t routinely collected on how long patients wait for outpatient appointments, so it’s often referred to as the “hidden waiting list”.
Outpatient services typically manage their demand using a triaged waiting list. Referrals are received, given a triage category based on urgency and placed on a waiting list, to be contacted when a place eventually becomes available.
There are several problems with this approach.
First, it’s difficult to come up with systems to make fair decisions about who should be seen first, which can turn access into a lottery.
Second, triage systems weigh up the needs of patients as they arrive but don’t reassess the priority of those already in the system.
Third, managing long waiting lists diverts resources from patient care, but poorly maintained lists create inefficiencies and are demoralising for health providers, contributing to burnout.
Finally, the unlucky patients at the lowest triage level are constantly overtaken by those entering at higher priority.
First, clean up the list
Our research shows investing in short-term, targeted strategies can reduce outpatient backlogs.
We tackled a waiting list of 600 patients in a neurology outpatient clinic. We found the list was full of errors, patients who no longer wanted or needed the service, and patients who had previously been offered appointments but never attended.
In the end, only 11% of patients still required an appointment.
Then consider supply and demand
These strategies work in the short term but waiting lists will soon grow back if underlying imbalances between supply and demand are not addressed.
We created a new approach to address this issue. It starts with an analysis of supply and demand, followed by protecting sufficient capacity in clinic schedules to see all new patients at the rate they arrive.
These changes are coupled with short-term, targeted strategies to reduce existing waiting lists, enabling services to “catch up” while underlying service changes allow them to “keep up”.
On referral, all patients get rapid access to a first appointment but are then triaged for ongoing care according to need – anything from a brief assessment and advice to intensive ongoing treatment.
Using more of each health workers’ skills
Thinking creatively about models of care can then help to maximise the value of specialised clinicians. Empowering allied health professionals or nurses to see less straightforward cases or conduct preparatory assessments can free up specialists’ time to provide complex assessment and treatment.
Some care can be delivered by different types of health-care providers without compromising quality.
Physiotherapists, for example, have been shown to be very effective at assessing some patients waiting for hip and knee joint replacements and identifying those who might benefit from exercise-based treatment, allowing orthopaedic surgeons to focus on those who require surgery.
Investing in clerical staff can ensure patients have the information they need to get to their appointments at the right time, with the right test results in hand.
Testing this approach
In a trial involving more than 3,000 patients, we tested the model across eight allied health and community services in Victoria. These services provide care from professionals such as physiotherapists and occupational therapists, as well as team-based services such as memory clinics, in the community.
Each participating service received a small grant to support targeted strategies to address the existing backlog, such as waiting lists audits, but no ongoing additional funding. Changes were made by reorganising existing resources, not adding new ones.
This multi-pronged approach reduced waiting time by 34% with minimal extra resources. Median waiting times reduced from 42 to 24 days, with bigger reductions for the longest waiters. This model is now being widely used in Victorian Community Health Services.
We are now testing this way of managing demand in a group of outpatient medical specialist clinics with waiting lists of 13,000 patients to see if it can work at the scale required in specialist clinics at public hospitals.
It’s still early days but initial signs are promising, suggesting that waiting lists can be reduced by better understanding supply and demand, cleaning up long waiting lists, and using more of each health-care workers’ skills.
Nicholas Taylor (Professor of Allied Health at La Trobe University and Eastern Health) and Annie Lewis (Post-Doctoral Researcher at La Trobe University and Eastern Health) co-authored the research on which this article is based.
Katherine Harding, Professor of Allied Health and Implementation Science, La Trobe University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Figs vs Strawberries – Which is Healthier?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Our Verdict
When comparing figs to strawberries, we picked the figs.
Why?
Both are great! But…
In terms of macros, figs have more fiber, carbs, and protein, winning this round.
In the category of vitamins, figs have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, and K, while strawberries have more of vitamins B9, C, E, and choline. A 7:4 win for figs.
Looking at minerals, figs have more calcium, copper, magnesium, potassium, and zinc, while strawberries have more iron, manganese, phosphorus, and selenium, making a marginal 5:4 win for figs this time.
In other considerations, strawberries have a much higher polyphenol content, so that’s a point in their favor.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for figs, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
Enjoy!
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Dioscorea Villosa: Hormones, Arthritis, & Skin
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
On A Wild Yam Chase?
We recently came across a supplement blend that had wild yam extract as a minor ingredient. Our plucky (and usually very knowledgable) researcher had never heard of its use before, so she set about doing her thing. This is what she found…
What health claims are made?
Wild yam extract (Dioscorea villosa) is traditionally sold and used for:
- Balancing hormones
- Combating arthritis
- Anti-aging effects for the skin
Does it balance hormones?
First, as a quick catch-up, we’ll drop a previous article of ours for your convenience:
What Does “Balance Your Hormones” Even Mean?
We couldn’t find almost any studies into wild yam extract’s hormone-balancing effects, but we did find one study, and:
❝Symptom scores showed a minor effect of both placebo and active treatment on diurnal flushing number and severity and total non-flushing symptom scores, and on nocturnal sweating after placebo, but no statistical difference between placebo and active creams.
This study suggests that short-term treatment with topical wild yam extract in women suffering from menopausal symptoms is free of side-effects, but appears to have little effect on menopausal symptoms❞
…which is a very thorough, polite, sciencey way of saying “wow, this does so many different kinds of nothing”
On the one hand, this was a small study (n=23). On the other hand, it was also literally the only study we could find.
Does it combat arthritis?
Maybe! We again didn’t find much research into this but we did find two in vitro studies that suggests that diosgenin (which can be derived from wild yam extract) helps:
- Diosgenin inhibits IL-1β-induced expression of inflammatory mediators in human osteoarthritis chondrocytes
- Diosgenin, a plant steroid, induces apoptosis in human rheumatoid arthritis synoviocytes with cyclooxygenase-2 overexpression
And we also found a rodent study that found that wild yam extract specifically helped against “acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced pain“, and put that down to anti-inflammatory properties:
So, none of these studies tell us much about whether it would be helpful for humans—with or without arthritis, and hopefully without “acetic acid-induced writhing and formalin-induced pain”.
However, they do suggest that it would be reasonable to test in humans next.
You might prefer:
- Tips For Avoiding/Managing Osteoarthritis
- Tips For Avoiding/Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis
- How to Prevent (or Reduce) Inflammation
Does it keep skin young?
Again, research is thin on the ground, but we did find some! A study with wild-yam-derived diosgenin found that it didn’t make anything worse, and otherwise performed a similar role to vitamin A:
Read: Novel effects of diosgenin on skin aging
That was on rats with breast cancer though, so its applicability to healthy humans may be tenuous (while in contrast, simply getting vitamin A instead is a known deal).
Summary
- Does it balance hormones? It probably does little to nothing in this regard
- Does it combat arthritis? It probably has anti-inflammatory effects, but we know of no studies in humans. There are much more well-established anti-inflammatories out there.
- Does it keep the skin young? We know that it performs a role similar to vitamin A for rats with breast cancer, and didn’t make anything worse for them. That’s the extent of what we know.
Where can I get some?
In the unlikely event that the above research review has inspired you with an urge to buy wild yam extract, here is an example product for your convenience.
Some final words…
If you are surprised that we’re really not making any effort to persuade you of its merits, please know that (outside of the clearly-marked sponsor section, which helps us keep the lights on, so please do visit those) we have no interest in selling you anything. We’re genuinely just here to inform 🙂
If you are wondering why we ran this article at all if the supplement has negligible merits, it’s because science is science, knowledge is knowledge, and knowing that something has negligible merit can be good knowledge to have!
Also, running articles like this from time to time helps you to know that when we do sing the praises of something, it’s with good reason
Take care!
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Does Vitamin D Help Against COVID?
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Vitamin D does benefit the immune system in quite a number of ways.
For example, it…
- regulates immune responses and inflammation
- influences T-cell activity and related immune balance
- modulates cytokines and inflammatory signalling
- acts more broadly on immune cells in general
All that said and done, sometimes taking vitamin D can actually create problems:
But, it can be done right, so let’s assume you do it right, and…
So how about vs COVID?
Researchers (Dr. JoAnn Manson et al.) looked into this, and specifically tested whether high-dose vitamin D3 could reduce COVID severity or prevent infections in a large randomized trial, charmingly called the VIVID study.
What they did: participants (1,747 adults with COVID, plus 277 household contacts) took vitamin D3 at 9,600 IU per day for 2 days followed by 3,200 IU per day for 4 weeks, while the control group received a placebo.
As for the results:
- Did it reduce infection? No, it didn’t lower the risk of being infected for the household members.
- Did it reduce the severity? No, it didn’t reduce the severity, nor the number of healthcare visits, hospitalizations, or deaths.
- Did it have any benefit vs COVID? Yes, somewhat, maybe, when it came to the further-down-the-line symptoms, such as fatigue, shortness of breath, brain fog, and other long COVID symptoms.
- Specifically, 21% of vitamin D users reported persistent symptoms at 8 weeks versus 25% in the placebo group.
- You might be wondering how significant that difference is. Given the same size, the difference was borderline statistically significant, meaning it could represent a real effect but the evidence isn’t strong enough yet to confirm it.
- Specifically, 21% of vitamin D users reported persistent symptoms at 8 weeks versus 25% in the placebo group.
Dr. Manson herself concluded that the trial found no benefit for acute COVID, but the long COVID symptom reduction is “promising” and should be tested in larger studies.
You can find the paper itself, here: A Randomized Trial of Vitamin D Supplementation and COVID-19 Clinical Outcomes and Long COVID: The Vitamin D for COVID-19 Trial
Want to try supplemental vitamin D3?
We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎
But watch out with the doses, if supplementing vitamin D in either form, because…
Vit D + Calcium: Too Much Of A Good Thing? ← this also talks about safe and effective doses, and what goes wrong if you take too much
Want to learn more?
Check out:
What Can Be Done About Long COVID? ← scientists have found a possible cure, a procedure known as epipharyngeal abrasive therapy, which as enjoyable as it sounds, and is not yet proven to cure it completely (although to give it its due, the science so far really is promising)
Take care!
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