SEARCH
Magnesium and Vitamin D Deficiency as a Potential Cause of Immune Dysfunction, Cytokine Storm and Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation in COVID-19 patients
Related: electrolytes, health, magnesium, magnesium deficiency, nutrition, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, Vitamin D
re: Vitamin D
re: magnesium and magnesium deficiency
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.
Magnesium is a critical nutrient that is difficult if not impossible for most people to get enough of through their modern dietary practices. So most people walk around with chronic magnesium deficiency. This leads to massive public health problems.
Could nutrient deficiency lead to bad COVID outcomes? How could any nutrient-deficient organism large or small fend off any disease efficiently when in a compromised state?
Magnesium and Vitamin D Deficiency as a Potential Cause of Immune Dysfunction, Cytokine Storm and Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation in covid-19 patients
February 2021. Emphasis added.
Magnesium and Vitamin D each have the possibility of affecting the immune system and consequently the cytokine storm and coagulation cascade in COVID-19 infections. Vitamin D is important for reducing the risk of upper respiratory tract infections and plays a role in pulmonary epithelial health. While the importance of vitamin D for a healthy immune system has been known for decades, the benefits of magnesium has only recently been elucidated.
Indeed, magnesium is important for activating vitamin D and has a protective role against oxidative stress. Magnesium deficiency increases endothelial cell susceptibility to oxidative stress, promotes endothelial dysfunction, reduces fibrinolysis and increases coagulation. Furthermore, magnesium deficient animals and humans have depressed immune responses, which, when supplemented with magnesium, a partial or near full reversal of the immunodeficiency occurs. Moreover, intracellular free magnesium levels in natural killer cells and CD8 killer T cells regulates their cytotoxicity. Considering that magnesium and vitamin D are important for immune function and cellular resilience, a deficiency in either may contribute to cytokine storm in the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) infection.
Magnesium Deficiency Leads to Immune Dysregulation
It was recently discovered that intracellular free magnesium regulates the cytotoxic functions of natural killer (NK) and CD8+ T cells and that decreased intracellular free magnesium causes defective expression of the natural killer activating receptor NKG2D on NK and CD8+ T cells and impairs their cytolytic responses...
Magnesium Deficiency Increases Oxidative Stress and Cytokine Storm
Magnesium deficiency leads to increased oxidative stress and intracellular glutathione depletion. There is also an increase in inflammatory cytokine release from monocytes, macrophages and leukocytes during magnesium deficiency... Thus, having a low magnesium status may increase the risk for inflammatory cytokine storms, damage to the endothelium and trigger the coagulation cascade leading to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC)...
Magnesium Deficiency Increases Endothelial Dysfunction and Coagulation
Magnesium deficiency increases the susceptibility of endothelial cells to oxidative damage and promotes endothelial dysfunction whereas magnesium supplementation improves endothelial function. Magnesium also has antithrombotic effects...
Magnesium is Required to Activate vitamin D
Magnesium is needed to move vitamin D around in the blood and to activate vitamin D.Magnesium deficiency can also reduce active vitamin D (1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D) levels and impair parathyroid hormone response...
Vitamin D and Its Importance for Immune Health
It is estimated that one billion people worldwide are vitamin D deficient and around half the global population is vitamin D insufficient. Epidemiologically, influenza infection is most common worldwide when vitamin D levels are at their lowest...
As noted previously, vitamin D insufficiency is highly prevalent in severe COVID-19 patients.3 This provides sound scientific reasoning for vitamin D supplementation in COVID patients. Patients who have had their vitamin D levels measured in the year before COVID-19 testing, the relative risk of testing positive for COVID-19 was 1.77 times greater for those who were deficient in vitamin D compared to those who were sufficient...
Table 1
Reasons why Magnesium and Vitamin D Deficiency may lead to Immune Dysfunction, Cytokine Storm and Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation in COVID-19 patients
- Low intracellular free magnesium levels in NK and CD8+ T cells reduces their cytotoxicity.
- Patients with genetically low intracellular free magnesium, who are supplemented with magnesium, have a partial or near complete reversal of dysfunctional NK and CD8+ T cells and a reduced viral load.
- Dysfunctional CD8+ T cell cytotoxicity leads to increased proinflammatory death in virally infected cells and healthy bystander cells, as opposed to silent apoptotic death, increasing the risk of cytokine storm in the lungs.
- Magnesium activates vitamin D into the hormone calcitriol.
- Active vitamin D is required to boost the expression of cathelicidins.
- Magnesium deficiency slows fibrinolysis and increases coagulation and thrombosis.
- Low magnesium status increases damage to tissues and cellular membranes and reduces antioxidant defense systems leading to increased oxidative stress and damage.
- Magnesium deficient animals have a depressed immune response.
...
Conclusion
Magnesium and vitamin D supplementation should be considered in the general population with special consideration during the COVID-19 pandemic.
WIND: see the full paper for detail. This paper is starting point for investigation, not a proof. Much larger and better studies are needed. But no nutrient-deficient organism large or small can fend off any disease efficiently when in a compromised state.
What might widely distributed Vitamin D and magnesium (MgCl or at least citrate) have done for public health vs COVID? It shocks the conscience that our so-called experts on COVID never talk about key nutrients. But it’s not surprising.
Why would you knowingly take a chance on your health by walking around being deficient in any nutrient?
Vitamin D and magnesium supplementation are no-brainers. You don’t need a study to know that it won’t hurt, and might help, if only to create a stronger immune system overall, COVID or otherwise. Make sure you are not magnesium deficient, because magnesium is required for Vitamin D to be activated, as well as to prevent excess calcium from going where it should not.
Magnesium takes part in as many as 800 different physiological process, as well as being crucial to the most critical cellular functions such as mitochondrial function. It is thus inherently unsafe to be deficient in it. You don’t need to wait 30 years for science to get its shit together to know that no organism can see anything result but grief in a state of nutrient deficiency.
Do NOT buy supplements with magnesium oxide (MO)—they do not absorb and will quickly give you toilet fun. Use magnesium chloride for best absorption, or magnesium citrate (less good but not bad). Shun excitotoxin forms like magnesium aspartate.
Some doctors think magnesium is “useless”, dismissing it out of hand—I heard this very recently as a direct quote. Few doctors are even aware of the accurate test for it (hint: not serum magnesium). It is best to assume that your doctor is so ignorant of nutrition the s/he will jeopardize your health because of it—you will be right nearly every time. I’m keeping track, and I’ve yet to visit a doctor who demonstrates anything remotely approaching competence when it comes to nutrition and how it affects health. No organism deficient in nutrients can have optimal health.
So follow the money—medical science is a big business uninterested in baseline health and vitality as a rule—it’s about bandaids in the full sense of the word. Nutrition doesn’t make the profitability cut, even if it could separate itself from another huge industry and its shenanigans (Big Food). Medicine is a business like any other; it’s primary driver is not health and well-being, but money. Hence fix it when it breaks is the highly profitable mantra with a guaranteed steady supply of new and repeat customers that you will likely never see fixed.
So instead of raising the health of the population as a whole, we instead mandate vaccines. We try to save people too late, using rigidly proscribed care that discourages anything outside dubious “best practices”, which have a track record of poor outcomes.
