Vitamin D

What is the easiest and most effective way to boost your families immune systems to prepare for the flu and possible pandemic coming this Fall? Serve up a daily dose of vitamin D. Don't need it because you are always in the sun- think again. There are numerous studies coming out that give proof that a large part of the population is low in vitamin D. I am- mine tested at 25-it should be closer to 50-65 to be protected. I always believed that since I live in Arizona that my vitamin D level would be fine. However, after feeling fatigued I asked to have mine checked. Our bodies need vitamin D to function properly. Dr. Mercola site states, "There are only 30,000 genes in your body and vitamin D has been shown to influence over 2,000 of them. That is one of the primary reasons it influences so many diseases, from cancer and autism to heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis.A study by Dr. William Grant, Ph.D., internationally recognized research scientist and vitamin D expert, found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths -- which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States -- could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D even fights colds and the flu, as it regulates the expression of genes that influence your immune system to attack and destroy bacteria and viruses. In fact, it is very rare for someone with optimized vitamin D levels to come down with the flu." Follow this link to view a video clip about vitamin D.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/16/my-one-hour-vitamin-d-lecture-to-clear-up-all-your-confusion-on-this-vital-nutrient.aspx
Dr. John Cannell shows proof of the benifits of taking vitamin D to prevent the flu in this great article.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51913.php
So how much do you need and what type of vitamin D should you use. Vitamin D3 is the type that we need. Adults need 5,000IU a day and children under 12 need 2,000 IU a day.
I do not know if all vitamin D3 is created equal. This is the brand that Melonie Turley was selling at her preparedness class. Buy 1 get 2 free.
http://www.puritan.com/vitamin-d-products-326?afid=27&safid=Google&scid=6831&cm_mmc=Google-_-Vitamin_D-_-vitamin%20d3-_-Phrase+Ad_3050779441%7C-%7C100000000000000005573&cm_guid=1-_-100000000000000005573-_-3050779441&gclid=CNvoh836qpwCFSn6agodUQpIWg

Other good articles if you need more proof-
http://www.ehow.com/about_4571713_vitamin-d-deficiency.html

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Vitamin-D-levels-should-be-multiplied-by-ten-for-children-study

http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/Canada-examines-vitamin-D-for-swine-flu-protection

This great proof of the benefits of vitamin D- from a great article from Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
"Explanations for why flu epidemics occur in the winter when it is cold – people being indoors in close contact, drier air dehydrating mucus and preventing the body from expelling virus particles, the virus lingering longer on exposed surfaces, like doorknobs, with colder temperatures – do not explain why flu epidemics occur in the tropics.
Something that can explain why flu epidemics also occur both in warm and cold climates is this: During a flu epidemic, wherever it may be, the atmosphere blocks ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the Sun. In the temperate zones above latitude 35 degrees North and South, the sun is at a low enough angle in the winter that the ozone layer in the atmosphere absorbs and blocks the short-wavelength (280–315 nanometers) UVB rays. In the tropics during the wet season, thick rain clouds block UVB rays.
Skin contains a cholesterol derivative, 7-dehydrocholesterol. UVB radiation on skin breaks open one of the carbon rings in this molecule to form vitamin D. The activated form of vitamin D (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D) attaches to receptors on genes that control their expression, which turn protein production on or off. Vitamin D regulates the expression of more than 1,000 genes throughout the body. They include ones in macrophages, cells in the immune system that, among other things, attack and destroy viruses. Vitamin D switches on genes in macrophages that make antimicrobial peptides, antibiotics the body produces. Like antibiotics, these peptides attack and destroy bacteria; but unlike antibiotics, they also attack and destroy viruses.
Vitamin D also expresses genes that stop macrophages from overreacting to an infection and releasing too many inflammatory agents – cytokines – that can damage infected tissue. Vitamin D, for example, down regulates genes that produce interleukin-2 and interferon gamma, two cytokines that prime macrophages and cytotoxic T cells to attack the body’s tissues. In the 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 500,000 Americans, young healthy adults would wake up in the morning feeling well, start drowning in their own inflammation as the day wore on, and be dead by midnight, as happened to my 22-year-old grandmother and my wife’s 24-year-old grandmother. Autopsies showed complete destruction of the epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract resulting, researchers now know, from a macrophage-induced severe inflammatory reaction to the virus. In a terribly misguided way, these victims’ own immune system attacked and killed them, not the virus, something in future pandemics vitamin D, in appropriate doses, can prevent.
A creditable hypothesis that explains the seasonal nature of flu is that influenza is a vitamin D deficiency disease. Cannell and colleagues offer this hypothesis in "Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D" (Epidemiol Infect 2006;134:1129–40). They quote Hippocrates (circa 400 B.C.), who said, "Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year." Vitamin D levels in the blood fall to their lowest point during flu seasons. Unable to be protected by the body’s own antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that this gene-expresser engineers, a person with a low vitamin D blood level is more vulnerable to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections (e.g., respiratory syncytial virus).
Studies show that children with rickets, a vitamin D-deficient skeletal disorder, suffer from frequent respiratory infections; and children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get a cold. Given vitamin D’s wide-ranging effects on gene expression, other studies, for example, show that people diagnosed with cancer in the summer have an improved survival compared with those diagnosed in the winter (Int J Cancer 2006;119:1530–36).
A growing body of evidence indicates that rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults (both a softening of bones due to defective bone mineralization) are just the tip of a vitamin D-deficiency iceberg. Tuberculosis and various autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, lupus, and type I diabetes have a causal association with low vitamin D blood levels. Vitamin D deficiency plays a causal role in hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke. It is also a risk factor for metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes, chronic fatigue, seasonal affective disorder, depression, cataracts, infertility, and osteoporosis. At the bottom of the vitamin D iceberg lies cancer. There is good evidence that vitamin D deficiency is a causal factor in some 15 different common cancers. (NEJM 2007;357:266–81.)
The increased number of deaths that occur in winter, largely from pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, are much more likely due to vitamin D deficiency than to an increased prevalence of serologically-positive influenza virus (which also results from vitamin D deficiency).
Experts reckon that an optimum blood level of vitamin D (25-hydroxyvitamin D) is 50–99 ng/ml. (Children need a blood level >8 ng/ml to prevent rickets. It takes a concentration >20 to maintain parathyroid hormone levels in a normal range. A level >34 is needed for peak intestinal calcium absorption. And in elderly people neuromuscular performance steadily improves as vitamin D blood levels rise to 50 ng/ml.) The government’s recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamin D is 400 IU (international units) a day, an amount sufficient to prevent rickets and osteomalacia but not vitamin D’s other gene-regulating benefits. To achieve all of vitamin D’s benefits one has to take an amount ten times the government’s RDA – 4,000 to 5,000 IU a day."
To read the full article follow this link-
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html

Sun Screens actually block the UVB rays that our body need to make Vitamin D.

THE SUNSHINE DEBATE
Because vitamin D is fat soluble, it can be stored in the adipose tissue of the body, presumably for long-term access. Much debate on vitamin D has focused on the need for dietary supplementation versus the body’s endogenous (internal) manufacture of the vitamin from sunlight exposure.
For those living in climates with greatly reduced angles of sunlight (the northern and southern parts of the globe) or where sunlight itself is rare, the need for supplementation is unchallenged. The human body is designed to obtain vitamin D from exposure to sunlight, with only brief exposure providing roughly 80-90% of the body’s vitamin D stores.17 Exposure of the entire body to sunlight may produce approximately 10,000 IU of vitamin D a day.18 To prevent the accumulation of toxic levels of vitamin D, the body naturally limits the amount of vitamin D it synthesizes from sunlight.19
For years, health advocates have suggested that sun exposure may contribute to cancer risk and sunscreen should be used for all sun exposure greater than 15 minutes. New evidence suggests, however, that vitamin D can in fact protect against several forms of cancer. While sunscreen may help protect against the deadliest skin cancer—melanoma—its effect of limiting vitamin D production could lead to a greater incidence of other cancers.20 That does not mean that sunscreens should not be used, as they can significantly protect against premature skin aging (and skin cancers). What this does tell us, however, is that in one way or another, it is critical that we obtain optimal levels of vitamin D.
Cancer occurs more frequently in dark-skinned people, the obese, and regions with limited exposure to ultraviolet B radiation from sunlight. Each of these factors is associated with low blood levels of vitamin D. Furthermore, cancer survival rates are lower when the diagnosis occurs in months of lower sunlight levels, suggesting a protective role of vitamin D. Studies suggest that vitamin D protects against numerous forms of cancer, including widely prevalent cancers such as those affecting the colon, prostate, breast, and lung.1,20
Follow this link to read the full article.
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/mar2006_report_vitamind_01.htm

If you are not taking Vitamin D and you start to come down with the flu like symptoms- Dr. Mercola and others, have said to take 50,000 units a day for 3 days to treat accute infection. Some believe like Dr. Cannell, believe does could be as high as 1,000 IU per dpound of body weight for three days.

Do your research and then decide what you feel is right for you and your family. I personally have the whole family taking vitamin d, multi vitamin, vitamin c and calcium (which your body needs to process vitamin D).

As you can see our bodies need vitamin D. Check your vitamin D level and start protecting your body today!