SINCE THE EARLY 20th century when vitamin supplements first became available, people have generally focused on a single, specific benefit attributed to each vitamin. Vitamin A, for instance, could optimize your eyesight. B vitamins could give you extra energy. Vitamin E could make your skin glow. Thanks to Linus Pauling, vitamin C supplements were popular in the 1970s and 1980s for helping to ward off colds (a theory since debunked by numerous studies). Despite the fact that each vitamin actually delivers a range of benefits, it's often one characteristic that gets all the attention. And thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the public's recent focus has been on vitamin D and its immune system benefits.
A 2020 study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that more than 80 per cent of people hospitalized for COVID-19 had low vitamin D levels. And according to a 2020 report published in Nature.com, an estimated 490 million Indians are vitamin D deficient, which-based on information from the JCEM study-could make them more susceptible to the virus. Before vaccines against the novel coronavirus became available, people started downing vitamin D supplements, hoping to prevent COVID illness.
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