Vitamin D for Cold and Flu Prevention

When it's Vitamin D.

The substance called Vitamin D is actually a powerful steroid hormone created by the human body when skin is exposed to ultraviolet light. By definition, a true vitamin is something that your body cannot create by itself. Vitamin C, E, and B vitamins such as niacin, riboflavin, and cyanocobalamin are all necessary to life, but they cannot be created by the human body. Instead, they must be obtained from food and drink.

So what's the big deal with Vitamin D?

Well, even though your body can create Vitamin D, how much it can create is limited and depends on a number of factors, including:

* Age
* Skin color
* UV/Sunlight exposure

The older you are, the less Vitamin D your body can produce. Vitamin D production is also a self-limiting activity. The more sunlight you are exposed to, the darker your skin becomes, and the less you are able to produce. This means that people with dark skin cannot produce Vitamin D as effectively. This has less to do with race than it has to do with actual skin darkness.

But even under optimal conditions, most of us cannot produce sufficient quantities of Vitamin D to keep us healthy. Unless you live in a very sunny climate and get a lot of sun exposure, or use tanning beds a lot, you probably are deficient in Vitamin D.

Vitamin D deficiency used to be associated with rickets, a bone disease which causes bow-leggedness and used to affect children working in factories. Doctors discovered that by supplementing these children with Vitamin D, the children no longer developed rickets. This is why Vitamin D began to be added to pasteurized milk and still is to this day. For decades, this was Vitamin D's only real recognized use.

But today, there is increasing evidence that Vitamin D has a profound impact on whether or not you will get a cold or flu during the Fall and Winter months. Dr. John Cannell, a psychiatrist in a hospital for the criminally insane, supplemented the patients in his ward with 2000 IU of Vitamin D during influenza season. That year a small influenza epidemic broke out at the hospital, and many patients in every ward came down with the flu, some of them severely. Every ward, that is, except for Dr. Cannell's. His ward was the only one with patients taking Vitamin D supplements. The hospital nurses covered all wards, including his, so his patients were undoubtedly exposed to the virus. But the exposed patients who were taking Vitamin D did not get sick. You can read Dr. Cannell's full article in Medical News Today.

To understand why this happened, it helps to understand exactly what Vitamin D does. The influenza virus is not necessarily all that dangerous by itself. It is the secondary infections and the over-response of the body's immune system that creates most of the problems from influenza infection. Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that helps regulate the body's immune system. Unlike artificial steroids, Vitamin D does not weaken or suppress the immune system. Instead it helps regulate the immune system, causing the body to reduce the number of cytokines released by the body, while increasing the number of antimicrobial peptides that actually destroy the infectious agent.

There is also growing evidence that optial Vitamin D levels can lower cancer risk. In a study of 2400 people, half of whom had colorectal cancer, researchers found that those with high levels of Vitamin D had a 40% reduced risk of developing colorectal cancer.

So how much Vitamin D should you take to prevent the cold and flu? First you must find out how deficient you are in Vitamin D, if at all. This can be determined by a simple blood test given by a lab testing center or your doctor. The test is for blood calcidiol (25-hydroxy-vitamin D) and is the most accurate way to determine your level of Vitamin D deficiency. The test measures Vitamin D levels in terms of ng/ml, with 0 to 19.9 ng/ml being deficient, and 30 to 60 ng/ml being optimal. Second, you must calculate how much Vitamin D is required to get you to an optimal level. This will depend on how deficient you are, however, it is best to start small (less than 2000 IU a day) and then have your levels retested after 2-4 weeks.

While Vitamin D supplementation can be a fantastic way to avoid getting sick, it's important to make sure that your levels of calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus are sufficient as well. If they are not, Vitamin D can actually increase the uptake of toxic metals like lead and aluminum. Make sure you are supplementing these minerals as well to avoid this.