Scam alert: COVID-19 vitamin pill cold calls

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vitamin-d-supplementation-during-winter-phe-and-nice-statement/statement-from-phe-and-nice-on-vitamin-d-supplementation-during-winter
This is this yesterday’s Gov.UK COVID 19 information regarding Vit D3 intake
Hope this information will be useful.

I have no conception of what 10 micrograms is in terms of a dose. I suppose it must be adequate, but those shown in the illustration accompanying the BBC News article look enormous.

All our medication comes in blister packs – I haven’t seen a bottle of pills for a long time. Time some of these stock images were brought up to date.

10 micrograms (alternatively 10µg or 10mcg) is a very small amount, so most of what you would see is a filler. My cod liver oil capsules provide 5 micrograms of vitamin D3 and are in a plastic bottle. I do have a bottle of multivitamin tablets that were bought with my first online order in March when it looked as if it might become difficult to get some foods.

Pre-packed oily fish will give an indication of how much vitamin D a portion will provide. The recommended dose of oily fish is two portions per week, with meals.

The trouble with blister packs is that when you press them to pop the pill it can be fired out of sight. That is a negative view. We must be more positive.

I wonder how we square our wish to take pills to, presumably, prolong life with the environmental problem of too many people living longer on the planet. Maybe we should work towards everyone having the same (but shorter) lifespan, barring accidents, but totally healthy? No, I thought not.

But I do wonder what the advantage to the individual is of living a diseased, mentally damaged, later life aided by medical advances; or maybe the advantage rests with their family who simply do not want to let go? I’m partly in the latter camp. I would also not want to change our current approach. Just thinking out loud.

Blister packs showing the day of the week (calendar packs) can be useful to help forgetful people remember if they have taken their pills and they can be easier to use that bottles with childproof caps (some elderly people rely on children to open them).

I have made it perfectly clear to my family what to do and not to do when I am surrounded by people in white coats and clinical garb. My Attorneys have clear instructions and I hope I have made it worth their while to follow them. They could regret it if they don’t!

I use vitamin D tablets branded Valupak costing 99p for 60 tablets. Each tablet is less than 1cm diameter and contains 25 micrograms. According to the NHS website,
100 micrograms per day is the maximum allowed for adults and children over 10. Children aged 1-9 shouldn’t take more than 50 micrograms per day.
The tablets are sold in plastic tubs that are far too large; they are nearly empty.
Valupak sell a range of vitamin supplements of different sizes, but all the tubs are the same size.

Hi Chris you do not say if the plastic tubs are preprinted or labeled and are all the same size.
if different sizes were used and preprinted the storage space required for every different product would be huge. but using the same size tube unprinted the storage space is reduced tenfold as the council tax on warehousing storage is far greater than the factory producing the product also hundreds of thousands of labels can be stored on one pallet, therefore, reducing overheads enabling them to sell their product for 99p

My doctor has never advised me to take any unprescribed supplements so I don’t. If she did recommend a vitamin supplement I would discuss it with her.

The current recommendation (see my link above) is that during the autumn and winter months we should take vitamin D. During spring and summer that should be unnecessary for those spend some time outdoors.

Patrick Taylor told us that he had payed for a test that demonstrated that he would benefit from vitamin D. That was when I started to take a cod liver oil capsule (providing half the current recommended amount) per day, reckoning that my oily fish etc. would do the rest.

The NHS article says: “Most people do not need to take vitamin supplements and can get all the vitamins and minerals they need by eating a healthy, balanced diet.” It does not count as a scam that marketing has convinced many to feed themselves with unnecessary vitamin and mineral pills does not qualify as a scam and taking high doses of some supplements, particularly vitamins A and D is risky.

Convincing people they need something when they do not, to sell pills, seems like a scam to me. Maybe the words in the above comment got a bit confused?
I don’t take any “supplements”, relying on a mixed diet and winter gardening. I don’t have any deficiency symptoms as far as I know – depression, brittle bones, muscle ache, excessive tiredness, but I’m quite prepared to be wrong.
Since we’ve evolved with an annual 6 months of low sunlight, and with scarcity of oily fish inland, how have we managed without vitamin D pills?

There’s nothing wrong with my wording, but I do think that the way that marketing of supplements and the fact that marketing has encouraged overuse is detrimental to our health and wealth.

As we age our bodies become less efficient in many ways, the response ability to cope with viral infections such as flu and more serious infections being a well known example. There is good evidence that elderly people are more likely to have a vitamin D deficiency and this may be asymptomatic. When many of us did not reach ‘three score years and ten’ the problem of vitamin deficiency was less important.

Wavechange – Thanks for reviewing and clarifying the meaning of the final sentence in your previous comment.

I agree with the points you have made as well as with Malcolm’s. Many people, even in Victorian times, survived well into their eighties and longer; an early demise was more likely to be due to poverty and occupational hardships. Dietary sources of vitamin D can be relatively expensive and smoking and drinking gave easier gratification but, in excess, led to serious health conditions that shortened lives.

Marketing has a lot to answer for and many publications aimed at the more mature market are stuffed with expensive adverts for wonder remedies and relieving treatments that are designed to prolong active payment. I am not saying elderly people are gullible; they are just expertly manipulated.

I consider ageing to be a form of cancer as the body increasingly fails to replace cells that die, coupled with the normal environmental influences that effect our minds and bodies over time. Supplements can help slow down but not stop the ageing process, but they are no substitute for healthy living and eating habits.

Recent studies on the effect of chlorinated tap water on gut microbiome are quite revealing.

”If chlorine kills so many species of microorganisms, why doesn’t it harm humans? Fortunately, when we ingest chlorinated drinking water, food in our stomachs and the materials normally present in the gastrointestinal tract are probably too low to cause injury.”

Other studies claim persistent drinking of chlorinated drinking water over time can cause dysbiosis, a state of ecological imbalance of gut microbiome, important for regulating the immune system, which can cause IBS, type 2 diabetes, other autoimmune diseases, and the risk increases with age.

There is no question that chlorine is the most effective way of disinfecting our drinking water and it has practically eliminated killer diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, Legionnaires disease and dysentry in developed countries, but it’s important to remember, there is also a carcinogenic by-product, trihalomethane (THM) of the disinfection chlorination process.

To read more on this subject: http://www.res.mdpi.com – The Effects of Chlorinated Drinking Water on the Assembly of the Intestinal Microbiome.

Even if we abstain from chlorinated tap water for drinking, we ingest considerable quantities in various foods and drinks. The question is, should we desire and attempt to live so long that these points become critical?

Unless they drink from village ponds and mountain streams, most of the animals we eat are also consuming chlorinated water, and with increasing artificial irrigation in the name of crop productivity, chlorinated water is used to prevent dehydration and stimulate growth .

You don’t need a special phone, a simple answerphone does the trick. We haven’t had a scam call for about ten years, since we set up our answerphone like this:
1. It is always switched on.
2. It is set to answer after only two rings.
3. If we see a name come up on the screen we pick up, (before it goes to the answerphone), as that means the number is in the phone memory. If we don’t pick up in time, genuine callers start to leave a message, which we can pick up if we choose.
4. If only a number comes up, we let it go to the answerphone & listen to hear any message. In approximately 10 years scammers have never left a message.
5. Genuine callers leave a message, which we can pick up if we recognise it as a genuine call or call back later if we choose to.

Simples!

Exactly, that i why I use my answerphone system & I encourage others to do the same.

You need to block calls from unknown numbers. Many phones can now be set up to do this. But just blocking previous scam numbers is no longer good enough.