A Natural Solution for New Flu Immunity?

Why do colds and the flu run through populations mostly in winter months but go quiet in the warmer, sunnier summer?

Dr. J.J. Cannel, a psychiatrist and former general practioner began asking that question in 2005 after watching influenza sweep through three out of four floors of a hospital where he worked. Why not the third floor, he wondered? The patients were essentially the same cross-section of the population, suffering from the same disorders. Was it a statistical oddity, or way there something different in their treatment?

As it happens, there was a difference. The men of the third floor were being given large doses of Vitamin D, much larger than that of the average American, and just a bit more than the government's suggested "upper limit," about 2,000 units. For comparison, you get about 100 units in an 8-oz. glass of milk (if it's fortified).

For more comparison, says Dr. Cannel, a 20-minute full sunlight exposure in the depth of summer will put 20,000 units of Vitamin D into your body. But we don't do that much anymore, do we?

Could vitamin D be the reason none of my patients got the flu? In the last several years, dozens of medical studies have called attention to worldwide vitamin D deficiency, especially among African Americans and the elderly, the two groups most likely to die from influenza. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease, depression, chronic pain, depression, gum disease, diabetes, hypertension, and a number of other diseases have recently been associated with vitamin D deficiency. Was it possible that influenza was as well?

Then I thought of three mysteries that I first learned in medical school at the University of North Carolina: (1) although the influenza virus exists in the population year-round, influenza is a wintertime illnesses; (2) children with vitamin D deficient rickets are much more likely to suffer from respiratory infections; (3) the elderly in most countries are much more likely to die in the winter than the summer (excess wintertime mortality), and most of that excess mortality, although listed as cardiac, is, in fact, due to influenza.

Could vitamin D explain these three mysteries, mysteries that account for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year? Studies have found the influenza virus is present in the population year-around; why is it a wintertime illness? Even the common cold got its name because it is common in cold weather and rare in the summer. Vitamin D blood levels are at their highest in the summer but reach their lowest levels during the flu and cold season. Could such a simple explanation explain these mysteries?

[SNIP]

In 1918, when medical scientists did autopsies on some of the fifty million people who died during the 1918 flu pandemic, they were amazed to find destroyed respiratory tracts; sometimes these inflammatory cytokines had triggered the complete destruction of the normal epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract. It was as if the flu victims had been attacked and killed by their own immune systems. This is the severe inflammatory reaction that vitamin D has recently been found to prevent.

He makes a compelling case for his theory.

If he is correct, it would explain why flus go "underground" in warmer weather, and why this "New Flu," the A-H1N1 virus, will probably not reach its highest kill rate until it rebounds from the summer sun.

But if he is correct, it also could mean that we don't so much need manufactured flu vaccines as we need the natural steroidal precursor provided by Nature's God: Vitamin D.

You can get Vitamin D the old-fashioned way, by getting out in the sun for short durations during the day. Not enough to get your skin torched, but enough to start the natural process of Vitamin D input into your body.

We proposed that annual fluctuations in vitamin D levels explain the seasonality of influenza. The periodic seasonal fluctuations in 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels, which cause recurrent and predictable wintertime vitamin D deficiency, predispose human populations to influenza epidemics. We raised the possibility that influenza is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency in the same way that an unusual form of pneumonia (pneumocystis carinii) is a symptom of AIDS. That is, we theorized that George Bernard Shaw was right when he said, "the characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause."

I highly recommend you read his entire article, think about it, and decide for yourself. Nearly everything about our modern lives keeps us from getting the sunshine, and Vitamin D, that we need to ward off colds, flus and respiratory infections.

Maybe it's time we reclaimed some of the old ways.