Covid recovery and vitamins?

May 26, 2022 11:32 PM

Am in day 3 of a Covid infection. Feeling pretty awful but not dangerously sick. Second time I've had Covid. Fully vaccinated and boosted this time. No co morbidities. My brother has long Covid and is encouraging me to take vitamins. I guess it can't do much harm, but can it actually help? Helping me recover faster, lower risk of long Covid?

Last time I had Covid the fatigue, dizziness and emotional after effects lasted for weeks and were pretty debilitating.

posted by Zumbador to Health & Fitness (20 answers total)

A vitamin D deficiency will impair your immunity, but like all vitamins the right way to use it is to maintain adequate levels consistently whether you're sick or you're not. If your immune system could use more vitamin D than it has available to work with, the best time to address that would have been at least a month ago. Second best time is today, but don't expect to see spectacular improvements for this particular bout and in particular don't treat any vitamin as a more-is-better thing. You want enough vitamin D, not too much. Same goes for zinc.

Vitamin D and COVID-19: An Overview of Recent Evidence
posted by flabdablet at 12:28 AM on May 27, 2022 [8 favorites]

No, probably not.

All the same, if you are keen to do some reading, here are a few links that discuss supplements and covid prevention/treatment. The first link provides a detailed overview of a long list of supplements and vitamins including possible mechanisms of action, efficacy and safety. The opening sentence, however, is not promising:

"Data are insufficient to support recommendations for or against the use of any vitamin, mineral, herb or other botanical, fatty acid, or other dietary supplement ingredient to prevent or treat COVID-19."

NIH: Dietary supplements in the time of Covid-19

NIH Covid Treatment Guidelines: Supplements

Mayo Clinic: Debunking Covid-19 myths

The Conversation. Can taking vitamins and supplements help you recover from Covid?
posted by lulu68 at 1:05 AM on May 27, 2022 [7 favorites]

The use of supplements is to correct and prevent deficiencies; more is not better and especially for fat-soluble vitamins like A and D that our kidneys have a tougher time converting excesses of to expensive urine, a belief that it is can even be harmful. But the thing about vitamin D deficiency is that it's surprisingly common even in people with healthy diets, especially in urban populations that don't spend much time outdoors and habitually minimize UV exposure when we do.
posted by flabdablet at 1:13 AM on May 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

There is evidence that rinsing out the inside of the nose with saline or a tiny bit of baby shampoo can reduce viral load.

Anecdotally, in a friend’s family, the one person who refused to do this is the only family member who lost his sense of smell.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:52 AM on May 27, 2022 [5 favorites]

I would say, for context, that if you spend any time in long covid spaces online, you will see every conceivable supplement, vitamin, food type, practice and belief system advocated as a way to relieve symptoms.

When you have a condition where medical science has nothing much to offer, a vacuum is created where *everything else* is sucked in as a possible treatment.
posted by penguin pie at 3:13 AM on May 27, 2022 [17 favorites]

Quercetin
N A C
B complex

I work at. WFM in whole body and these are the best sellers for supporting immunity.
I take Quercetin for allergies and find it to be helpful.

So...yeah. Good luck!
posted by markbrendanawitzmissesus at 3:19 AM on May 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Will taking vitamins have a negligible and potentially positive impact on your physical health? Probably (especially in the case of vitamin D, as already pointed out above).

Will taking vitamins actually help you fight off COVID right now? Maybe, but probably not. On the other hand, it's good in general to support your body in working healthily. I would say making sure you're drinking enough fluids and eating to sustain yourself is as much if not more important than taking vitamins on their own. Chicken soup is a universal remedy for a reason and has lots of what you need as well. Better to have a glass of orange juice than some OTC lozenges.
posted by fight or flight at 4:25 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

A relative who has been a nurse in COVID wards recommended Zinc while my wife and I were sick, which had never been part of our sickness recovery plans before, but it seemed to help. YMMV, but this internet stranger can vouch for it.
posted by emelenjr at 6:24 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

You know, all this knowing criticism about overdosing on vitamin D is a little overboard. You'd have to take 50,000 IU's daily for months to get even close to the horrors indicated above. That said, I have no idea of how helpful it could be with Covid. I do Zinc and Quercetin (supposedly synergestic in combo) and knock on wood.
posted by Chitownfats at 6:29 AM on May 27, 2022 [4 favorites]

I have no idea of how helpful it could be with Covid.

Anecdote: I'd been on 7000IU weekly, per doctor's advice following a blood test showing a clear deficiency, for a few months before the plague got around to visiting our house.

Of the three of us (all triple vaxxed, though little ms flabdablet's third came too late to be effective), I was the only one who had no symptoms and continued to test negative throughout the household's isolation period.

I'm also fasting regularly, and probably a bit more careful with masking, and older, and a different sex, so the causal waters are obviously muddied to an impenetrable sludge. But even as somebody quite disinclined to include wood-knocking in my disease resistance portfolio, I'm giving my vitamin D supplements enough of the credit to justify the five bucks a month they're costing me.

I eat enough nuts, red apples and cole slaw to believe that I'm probably not short of zinc or quercetin.
posted by flabdablet at 7:03 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

I did actually find zinc to be astonishingly helpful with my symptoms during COVID--I took it right at the very first sign of Snot Machine and it really did seem to keep the congestion at bay. I went from snuffling and feeling clogged in the nose and head-pressure-y to feeling almost normal in about an hour after the first dose, and in general found my congestion levels through the whole thing stayed low.

Now, is it possible they were always going to, and the zinc did nothing? Sure. But it didn't hurt me none and the timing was hard to ignore. But it seems you have to catch it RIGHT at the start.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:15 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

In re vitamin D: dose is weight-dependent. As a fat person, I was looking at papers on this during covid, and there's a couple of pretty good studies showing that it takes about double (7000 - 8000 IU) to get significantly fat people out of deficiency and maintain them there. A further note: there are vitamin D deficiency treatment plans that provide a bolus dose of something like 50,000 IU at intervals. These plans have proven to be less-good, but my point is that while you don't want to take a bottle of vitamin D every day, you need to take very high doses sustainedly to do harm.
posted by Frowner at 7:16 AM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

I took vitamin D supplements during quarantine since I wasn't going outside much and wanted to keep my immune system doing well. It backfired. I got kidney stones. My urologist said yep, vitamin D supplements are linked with stone formation. I've seen recent studies that dispute the relationship, but my urologist said no more vitamin D supplements for you, too risky. Be careful taking supplements.

Edit: I didn't take huge doses... something like 2000IU three times a week.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:33 AM on May 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I take medium amounts Vit. D on my doctor's recommendation, partly based on living in Maine. Yes, I would take a normal dose of vit. D, vit. C, or maybe a multi-vitamin. It's a reasonable way to support you body and its immune system. And definitely make sure your nutrition is reasonable. I'm sorry you got Covid; my son has it; visiting later with homemade foods.
posted by theora55 at 9:40 AM on May 27, 2022

From another perspective, since placebo effect can work even when you know something is a placebo: are small amounts of extra vitamins part of your family's healing/comfort practices? Like, when you were a kid and had a cold, did somebody who cared about you make an effort to give you extra vitamin C?

A few weeks ago my partner had a Covid infection, and a loving family member sent a box of vegetarian "chicken" noodle soup cans and a bottle of zinc pills. We looked at the bottle of zinc pills and were like "ok, the task is to believe really hard that taking a couple of these is going to help, because they are imbued with love". I also picked up a few bottles of my partner's preferred Gatorade flavor, associated from childhood with the process of getting better. We didn't expect any of that to help in an evidence-based-medicine kind of way, but it was a little bit of comfort.
posted by dreamyshade at 9:43 AM on May 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

My urologist said yep, vitamin D supplements are linked with kidney stone formation

That was a popular theory some years ago, but the research does not support it.
posted by Lanark at 10:10 AM on May 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

Since no-one else has mentioned it yet, a course of antivirals may be helpful in reducing the severity of your infection.
posted by acridrabbit at 5:23 PM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: acridrabbit, Paxlovid is not available here, and I think the other drugs are not available here for people who aren't hospitalised.
Googling it is a bit confusing.
posted by Zumbador at 10:01 PM on May 27, 2022

My GP recommended vitamin d, vitamin C and zinc. Based on the info above, I don't think that there's much evidence of these actually helping. But it was worth a shot to try them.

For me drinking an electrolyte drink made me feel heaps better. I also wish I'd used a saline nose spray/Neti pot.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 1:59 AM on May 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Weirdly, my googling has led me to articles on how the SSRI I am on (Lexapro) apparently seems to protect against severe Covid so... Yay?
posted by Zumbador at 5:23 AM on May 28, 2022