Vitamin D Better at Fighting Flu than Vaccine
March 16, 2010
Times Online
By Oliver Gillie
The risk of children suffering from flu can be halved if they take vitamin D, doctors in Japan have found. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine.
Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, told The Times that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.
Vitamin D was found to be even more effective when the comparison left out children who were already given extra vitamin D by their parents, outside the trial. Taking the sunshine vitamin was then shown to reduce the risk of flu to a third of what it would otherwise be.
Altogether 354 children took part in the trial, which took place during the winter of 2008-09, before the swine flu epidemic. Vitamin D was found to protect against influenza A, which caused last year’s epidemic, but not against the less common influenza B.
The trial, which was double blind, randomised, and fully controlled scientifically, was conducted by doctors and scientists from Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan.
The children were given a daily dose of 1200 IUs (international units) of vitamin D over a period of three months. In the first month children in the group taking the vitamin became ill just as often as those taking the dummy tablet. But by the second month, when the vitamin level in the children’s blood was higher, the advantage of the vitamin was clear.
The Japanese scientists, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, say that the anti-viral drugs zanamivir and oseltamivir reduce risk of flu infection by 8 per cent in children who have been exposed to infection, compared with a 50 per cent or greater reduction with vitamin D.
Anti-virals are also too expensive, and possibly too toxic, to be given to the population as a whole whereas vitamin D has additional benefits. The sunshine vitamin not only prevents bone fractures but is also believed to reduce risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illness, including various bacterial as well as viral infections.
The Japanese finding supports a theory that low blood levels of the sunshine vitamin occurring in winter explain why flu epidemics generally peak between December and March.
Vitamin D activates the innate immune system, enabling the body to produce several proteins such as defensin and cathelicidin which trigger cell activity and disable viruses.
Dr Urashima said: “Vitamin D and vaccine work by quite different mechanisms. Vitamin D enhances innate immunity while vaccine enhances acquired immunity. So we do not have to select only one way of prevention, rather we should do both ways, I think.”
Dr John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, London, said: “This is a timely study. It will be noticed by scientists. It fits in with the seasonal pattern of flu. There is an increasing background of solid science that makes the vitamin D story credible. But this study needs to be replicated. If it is confirmed we might think of giving vitamin D at the same time as we vaccinate.”
Click here for the full report.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-16-10
Today, Kevin explains how low Barack Obama will go just to get his healthcare bill passed and why people in higher power always end up losing their sense of morality.
Plus, get the headlines you aren’t hearing anywhere else:
Vitamin D Proven More Effective Than Vaccines at Preventing Flu
WHO Admits Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors
Bananas May Prevent HIV Transmission
Former FDA Commissioner ‘Ordered’ Agency Not to Enforce DSHEA
IMF Proposed Plan to Raise Climate Change Funds
Gender-Bender Chemicals Are Turning Boys Into Girls
Dean Foods Pulls Bait-n-Switch!
3D TV May Be The Future Despite Fears of Causing Health Problems
Weed Killer Known to Chemically Castrate Frogs
E.Coli & Chicken Feces Allowed by USDA
Illinois Residents Scared by Local Cancer Study
Heart Treatments for Diabetes Causing Harm
Plavix Gets New FDA Warning
It’s ALWAYS About The Money
Maximize Your Downline
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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-10-10
Today, Kevin explains why the government is suppressing the free flow of information and why the medical community wants you to be deficient in vitamin D.
At Least 3 of 4 Americans Don’t Get Enough Vitamin D
1 in 6 Americans Infected with Herpes
FDA Approves Drug Banned In 160 Countries
Chemical Substances Found in All Commercial Meat
The Government Regulation of Supplements
Vitamin D Essential For Activating Immune System
Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Drug Makers Can Be Sued
Most Drug Studies Don’t Help Docs Pick Best Treatment
Tainted Ingredient Sold After Salmonella Found
Bone Strengthening Drug Linked to Fractures
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Vitamin D is the Key!
March 10, 2010
Chicago Tribune
By Julie Deardorff
As far as Dr. Joseph Mercola is concerned, vitamin D is the magic bullet we’ve all been looking for. A lack of this wonder nutrient, the controversial natural health advocate said, can set the stage for no fewer than 33 disorders, including autism, cancer, diabetes and infertility.
“Vitamin D appears to reduce your risk of dying from virtually ANY disease,” he wrote on his popular Web site. His recommendation? Get more sun, relax in a tanning bed or try supplements such as “Sunshine Mist,” a vitamin D spray he sells.
Long ignored and feared in high doses, vitamin D is being hailed as the answer to nearly every health issue under the sun. The excitement stems from a flurry of preliminary studies finding links between vitamin D deficiencies and various illnesses, and this summer the federal Institute of Medicine plans to announce revised recommendations regarding dietary intake of vitamin D and calcium that almost certainly will be higher.
Despite the scientific attention being paid to vitamin D, experts caution that claims of wide-ranging health benefits are not yet supported by clinical evidence.
Though D is thought to hold tremendous promise, we’ve been down this garden path before: Hopes for the powers of vitamin E, beta carotene, antioxidant vitamins, selenium and other nutrients collapsed under the weight of rigorous, randomized clinical trials.
“It’s premature to go out and make a big deal out of vitamin D supplementation when we don’t have the evidence,” said endocrinologist Anastassios Pittas, co-director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts University Medical Center in Boston. “We’ve been burned before on nutrition-based interventions,” he said.
Yet already, bread, pasta, orange juice and soy foods are being fortified with vitamin D, and sales of vitamin D supplements grew 116.5 percent, from $108 million to $234 million, from 2007 to 2008, according to Nutrition Business Journal estimates.
The body naturally makes the vitamin when the sun’s ultraviolet rays hit the skin, but fear of health risks and modern lifestyles have limited sun exposure for many.
Mercola, a non-practicing osteopathic physician who owns a clinic in Hoffman Estates, is one of the nutrient’s most public and ardent supporters, with an evangelical style that can grate on the nerves of more cautious physicians.
Unlike most doctors, Mercola recommends universal baseline testing and widespread high-dose supplementation. “I’ve been preaching about this for a long time,” said Mercola, who started his campaign 10 years ago. “Eventually the evidence comes out.”
Mercola said children should get almost six times the amount of vitamin D recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, while adults and pregnant women should be receiving 5,000 International Units, or IUs, per day.
Most leading vitamin D researchers recommend no more than 1,000 to 2,000 IUs a day, citing insufficient evidence for higher doses. The federal guidelines, which are widely considered to be woefully inadequate, range from 200 to 600 IUs, depending on age.
“Dr. Mercola popularizes and promotes vitamin D in a very passionate way,” said Dr. Gregory Plotnikoff, a senior consultant at the Center for Healthcare Innovation in Minneapolis who is conducting vitamin D trials. Mercola’s high dosing recommendations “may be correct, but we need supportive data,” he said.
Still, Plotnikoff and other researchers have high hopes for the vitamin, saying it could prove to be the single most cost-effective medical intervention in the U.S. today.
Best known for preventing rickets in children — the reason it is added to milk — vitamin D shines most in the role of absorbing calcium, which we need to form bones. A deficiency of vitamin D can contribute to osteoporosis by reducing calcium absorption.
Unlike vitamin E and others, vitamin D is a potent steroid hormone that has receptors in most, if not all, cells of the body. Mounting evidence suggests the so-called sunshine vitamin may also influence conditions unrelated to the skeleton, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders and mortality, said Dr. Michael Hollick, director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine.
“Vitamin D is as important for every cell in the body as thyroid hormone, estrogen and testosterone,” said Plotnikoff. “These hormones turn on and off genes in our DNA. At least 1,000 key genes are under at least partial control by vitamin D. This was never the case for vitamin C, E and others.”
Though observational studies have found a link between low vitamin D levels and an increased risk of disease, such an association doesn’t prove a deficiency caused the problem. Low levels of D could also be a consequence of the illness.
The results of studies can also be skewed by the people participating (vitamin D trial subjects are disproportionately white) or if the research does not account for sunlight exposure or consumption of D in foods. The doses studied are sometimes too low, experts said.
When Pittas and his colleagues systematically reviewed studies on vitamin D’s effect on Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, for example, they found “no clinically significant effects at the dosages given,” according to the research published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They called the vitamin a “promising but unproven” new factor in cardiometabolic disease management.
“There’s a potentially large problem with leaping from observational studies to making decisions about interventions,” said Dr. Ethan Balk, associate director of the Center for Clinical Evidence Synthesis at Tufts Medical Center, a co-author of the Annals study.
“Advocates take the studies and say, ‘If we can move someone’s vitamin D from low to high, the risk would go down.’ While that might be the case, there may be another explanation,” said Balk.
In some ways, it’s much easier to study drugs than nutrients because “everyone starts a pharmaceutical study at the same point, namely … zero,” said Plotnikoff. “In contrast, everyone starts a nutritional study with baseline measurements all over the map. Everyone is given the same dose as if one size fits all. This is a huge mistake.”
Drug effects, meanwhile, tend to be immediate, focused and measureable, while vitamins may have long-term, subtle effects.
Proponents also may oversell the study findings. Mercola’s Web site, for example, recently headlined an item on a new study this way: “Vitamin D fights Crohn’s disease.” But the lead researcher, Dr. John White of the Research Institute of McGill University Health Center in Montreal, said the data came from a lab study that “will have to be borne out in the clinic, which may be tricky.”
“Data is coming, but there’s a good reason to be skeptical — people have been on this bandwagon before,” said White, an endocrinologist. “When it gets into the clinic, it often doesn’t work out quite as well.”
The debate over optimal amounts of vitamin D and how to get it, meanwhile, is ongoing and likely will not be settled by the new National Institutes of Health guidelines.
But one thing is clear: Vitamin D levels are lower than they were 20 years ago. Most Americans, especially those with dark skin, are likely deficient — the result, some say, of widespread campaigns for sunscreen use and sun avoidance, as well as smog and cloud cover, living indoors and rising national trends of inactivity and obesity.
Cardiologist Diane Wallis is one doctor who will continue to test her patients’ vitamin D levels, even though it’s an unproven treatment in her field. “We’re at the threshold,” said Wallis, of Midwest Heart Specialists in Downers Grove, who 10 years ago began seeing female patients with chest pain but no obvious signs of heart trouble. When she tested them, they all had one thing in common: low vitamin D levels. “When I started it we’d just gotten off the whole vitamin E fiasco and people thought I was crazy,” she said. “Anything that had the word ‘vitamin’ led to derision. But no one is making fun of it anymore.”
Click here for the full report.
Fight Disease With Sunshine
March 10, 2010
DailyMail.co.uk
By Fiona Macrae
A spot of sunshine doesn’t just lift your spirits, it also boosts your immune system.
Research shows that vitamin D, made when our skin is exposed to sunlight, plays a key role in activating white blood cells that protect the body from flu, food poisoning and even cancer.
Without the ’sunshine vitamin’, the cells do not join the fight against disease.
The discovery could help in the development of vaccines and ways to combat auto-immune diseases and cancer.
It is well known that vitamin D is vital for calcium absorption and bone health and some studies have suggested it has an anti-cancer effect.
But scientists had not realised what a crucial role it played in the immune system.
A series of laboratory tests showed that the vitamin triggers dormant white blood cells into turning into ‘killers’ that seek out and destroy infections. Other white blood cells turn into ‘helpers’ that enable the immune system to build a ‘memory’ of the infection, allowing it to mobilise more quickly on the next encounter.
Researcher Carsten Geisler, of the University of Copenhagen, said: ‘If the T-cells (white blood cells) cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won’t even begin to mobilise.’
The discovery, documented in the journal Nature Immunology, could shed new light on conditions caused by immune system malfunctions, such as multiple sclerosis and organ transplant rejections.
Although vitamin D is found in foods such as oily fish and eggs, most of that found in the body comes from sunlight exposure, and many of us simply do not have enough.
In England, half the population is low in the vitamin when winter ends. In Scotland, it is two-thirds.
Click here for the full report.
Vitamin D Deficency Causing Rickets
Natural News
By E. Huff
A clinical review paper published in the British Medical Journal is warning the public that widespread vitamin D deficiency is resurrecting the once-obsolete disease called rickets. According to Professor Simon Pearce and Dr. Time Cheetham, authors of the paper, people are getting far too little sunlight exposure which is necessary for the body to produce adequate levels of vitamin D.
Nowadays, children spend most of their time indoors staring at computer and television screens rather than playing outside in the sunlight. On the rare occasion that they venture outside, zealous parents are quick to apply UV-blocking sunscreen that prevents the sun’s useful UVB rays from penetrating their skin and producing vitamin D. The result is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency that is leading to all sorts of illness and disease.
Rickets, a disease in which a person’s bones do not properly develop and harden, results when a person is getting too little vitamin D and most likely not enough calcium. The U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is a mere 400 IU, an amount that is said to be adequate for preventing rickets.
To put this amount into perspective, however, exposure to the summer sun for about 20 minutes is enough to produce up to 20,000 IU of vitamin D in the body. At this level, far more optimal health can be achieved. Yet the fact that children are beginning to develop rickets suggests that they are not even getting 400 IU a day, an amount that should be relatively easy to attain through a moderately healthy diet or a few minutes in the sun every day.
In the U.K., there are several hundred cases of rickets reported every year. According to statistics, more than 50 percent of the adult population in the U.K. is deficient in vitamin D as well. During the winter and spring months, more than 15 percent experience severe deficiency.
Researchers suggest that people with darker skin pigmentation are at a higher risk for rickets because they do not assimilate vitamin D from the sun’s UVB rays as easily as those with lighter skin do. Some experts believe that the changing ethnic profile of the U.K. may play a significant role in the onset of rickets while others point primarily to an overall lack of vitamin D among all ethnic groups.
Either way, the changing lifestyles among all people are partially to blame as people are not spending enough time outside and, when they do they are using too much sunscreen to obtain any sort of benefit from the sun. Overuse of sunscreen can be blamed on government health authorities, regulatory agencies, medical professionals, and mainstream media outlets that continually exaggerate the threat of developing skin cancer from sunlight exposure to the point that some people are afraid of getting any at all.
Click here for the full report.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 3-9-10
Today, the ‘all-seeing’ Kevin Trudeau explains how the exercises in Washington affect your life directly and gives you the headlines he has been preaching for years:
Despite Costs, More Companies Replace High Fructose Corn Syrup
The Unbelievable Benefits of Omega-3’s
Vitamin D Crucial For Immune System
How to Create a Perpetual Moneymaking Machine
Get Your KT Fix 5 Days a Week!
Plus, Tim Cox, the founder of GOOOH, shakes up the status quo by telling you about a non-partisan plan to evict all 435 politicians from the U.S. House of Representatives. Find out what you can do to help take money out of politics, fire career politicians and break the stranglehold the two parties have on our system! Click here to begin your fight for freedom today!
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Vitamin D Essential For Activating Immune System
March 8, 2010
TheMoneyTimes.com
By Neka Sehgal
Adding to the multiple health benefits of vitamin D is the latest research, which indicates the nutrient is an effective tool in building up the immune system to help ward off viruses and other infections.
Lead author of the research, Professor Carsten Geisler, from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen stated, “We knew vitamin D was important for calcium absorption and fighting diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis – but we didn’t realize how crucial it was for activating the immune system.”
Role of vitamin D in immune responses
According to researchers, Vitamin D is crucial for the activation of T cells that guard the body against serious infection.
Without an adequate amount of the nutrient, the T cells remain dormant and are unable to identify, directly attack or destroy infections allowing bacteria to invade.
Explaining the role of vitamin D in helping the immune system of the body, the researchers stated, “When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signaling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D. This means that the T cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won’t even begin to mobilize. ”
In the case of flu infection, the scientists stated that vitamin D helps produce antibacterial peptides that shields against flu.
That is why a lack of sunshine in winters leads to a deficiency of vitamin D and people get infected with flu viruses.
Important breakthrough
According to researchers, recognizing the role of Vitamin D for immunity is an important breakthrough which could be vital to fight anti-immune reactions of the body.
It would also help suppress the natural defense of the body to prevent organ rejection after transplants and lead to new ways to combat infectious diseases on a global scale.
Professor Geisler stated, “They will be of particular use when developing new vaccines, which work precisely on the basis of both training our immune systems to react and suppressing the body’s natural defences in situations where this is important – as is the case with organ transplants and autoimmune disease.”
The findings are published in the latest edition of Nature Immunology.
A little about vitamin D
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in very few foods but is available as a dietary supplement.
It may be obtained in the recommended amount with a well-balanced diet, including some enriched or fortified foods. It can also be found in fish liver oil, eggs and fatty fish and supplements.
The body manufactures vitamin D when exposed to sunshine, but people are spending more time indoors and are deficient of the nutrient. Experts recommend 10 to 15 minutes of sunshine 3 times a week.
Click here for the full report.
Vitamin D Produces Less Falls in Elderly
Febraury 22, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Seniors who take a large daily dose of vitamin D may be significantly less likely to suffer from falls, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Center on Aging and Mobility at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and published in the British Medical Journal.
“Falls are important events to prevent,” said researcher Heike A. Bischoff-Ferrari, “and 700 to 1000 IU of vitamin D per day is safe and inexpensive.”
Approximately one-third of all adults over the age of 64 and 50 percent of those over the age of 49 fall at least once per year. In 9 percent of these cases, a visit to the emergency room is required. In 6 percent of cases, a fracture results. Falls are often one of the primary events resulting in admission to a nursing home.
Researchers analyzed the results of eight different studies on a total of 2,400 people over the age of 64. All the studies looked at whether vitamin D supplementation could reduce the risk of falls in the elderly.
The researchers found that at doses below 700 IU per day, there was no reduction in the risk of falls. Above this level, however, the risk of falls was reduced by as much as one in four.
“It takes 700 to 1000 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day and nothing less will work,” Bischoff-Ferrari said. “At the higher dose of 700 to 1000 IU vitamin D, the benefit on fall prevention is significant — at least 19 percent, 26 percent with vitamin D3.”
Although vitamin D2 is the form most commonly found in supplements, the body absorbs vitamin D3 more effectively.
The researchers found no difference in effectiveness between supplements marketed as “active” and those that were simply unmodified D2. “Active” supplements, however, are significantly more likely to lead to high calcium levels, which may cause hormone problems and cancer.
Click here for the full report
Low Levels of Vitamin D Linked to High Blood Pressure
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Vitamin D deficiency may triple a person’s risk of high blood pressure, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago.
“Our results indicate that early vitamin D deficiency may increase the long-term risk of high blood pressure in women at mid-life,” researcher Flojaune Griffin said.
The researchers recruited 559 white women from Tecumseh, Michigan, who were between 24 and 44 years old when the study began in 1992. The participants’ vitamin D blood levels were measured at the beginning of the study and once a year after that for 15 years.
At the beginning of the study, 5.5 percent of the women who were deficient in vitamin D suffered from high blood pressure, compared with only 2.8 percent of the women who had sufficient levels of the vitamin. At the end of the study in 2007, 10 percent of the women in the deficiency group had high blood pressure, compared with only 3.7 percent in the “sufficient” group.
“This is preliminary data so we can’t say with certainty that low vitamin D levels are directly linked to high blood pressure,” Griffin said. “But this may be another example of how what you do early in life impacts your health years later.”
Vitamin D is known to play a crucial role in producing strong bones and teeth. New research increasingly suggests that it also helps regulate the immune system and protect against cancer, autoimmune disorders and heart disease.
The body naturally produces vitamin D upon exposure to sunlight. A number of factors have led to widespread deficiency, however, especially at latitudes far from the equator. These factors include less time spent outside and overuse of sunscreen. Dark-skinned people living at extreme latitudes are also especially vulnerable, as their bodies produce less vitamin D from the same amount of sun than those of lighter-skinned people.
Click here for the full report
