A reliable source of vitamin D

Hello friends!

As I promised in my last post, I’m back at the drawing board to talk about vitamin D. For those who didn’t read it, my interest in the vitamin D ignited from hearing that it could be a very reliable ally against swine-flu. It turns out the vitamin D protects against a multitude of disease, flu being just one of them many: cancers, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, autism and

“frequent bone fractures, muscle pain and weakness, heart disease, congestive heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, some types of cancer, fibromyalgia, preeclampsia in pregnancy, autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, depression, brain development, migraines, flu, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and periodontal disease” (Collins et al, 2009)

What I’m trying to get at in this post is what predisposes us to vitamin D deficiency (D-ficiency) and what kind of supplements to take. Few reasons why I’m convinced you’d want to know:

1. our modern indoor/sunscreened life style increased tremendously the number of D-ficient people during the past years;  
2. the attention this vitamin is getting continues to be dim, so, unless you show some severe d-ficiency symptoms, this won’t be the first (second or third) thing your doctor will check;
3. the recommended daily intake (RDI) is 400 IU/day; that is way too low and it’s behind the current research whilst research itself can’t seem to reach a consensus in terms of a dosage to suit all needs

Before I start diving in more, I want to express my infinite gratitude to all those who are trying to create the swine-flu hysteria and then to sell us a vaccine that is produced hastily from stuff that’s not going to be tested before it’s used! Without them I wouldn’t have read so much about vitamin D, I wouldn’t have take it as seriously as it should be taken. Alright, I’m wiping off my crocodile tears now and continue.       

Vitamin D is a generic name that refers to vitamin D2 or vitamin D3. The published literature uses micrograms and IU (international units) to express the concentration. This is the rule: 25 micrograms = 1000 IU. The most accessible and efficient source of D3 is the sun – more exactly D3 is metabolized in the skin when exposed to the sun. Some foods like oily fish (salmon, cod) or sun-dried mushroom are rich in vitamin D (1). I mentioned briefly in The (vitamin) D-day which other foods could be prioritized for a good vitamin D intake. Holick 2008 explains that 100 gr (3.5 ounce) of salmon serving gives you 500-1000 IU (depending on where the salmon lived before it landed on your plate). The winner salmon in the vitamin D category is the wild-caught one or the one farmed in Norway, whereas the one farmed in the US contains as little as 10-25% D3 compared to the champ. Some countries like the US, Sweden and Finland fortify their diary products (milk, yogurt, cheese) with D3.

A bit of history on the fortification of milk with vitamin D: the industrialization of the Northern Europe and Northeastern US brought with it dramatic pollution, which resulted in preventing parents to have their children out in the sun, which resulted in the MAJORITY of children in these areas suffering from rickets (softening of bones potentially causing deformity and fractures), which resulted in the understanding that vitamin D deficiency plays a dramatic role in growth retardation, muscle weakness, skeletal deformities (2), which resulted in trying to supply vitamin D through a common and affordable food (i.e. milk fortification). Unfortunately, this took the wrong turn in the mid 1950′s when the over-fortification of milk in Great Britain resulted in more than 200 cases of infantile hypercalcemia (this disorder causes a whole spectrum of serious conditions that spans from impaired growth to impaired renal function, mental retardation and severe heart conditions). You can find here more details. Now, I’m not any sort of specialist to tell you how much that milk has to be over-fortified to have such dramatic consequences but there’s a paragraph in “Safe Foods for Infants – the regulation of milk, infant formula and other infant foods” by LJ Filer, 1993 (J Nutr) that makes me think it’s not easy to achieve that: 

“[...] it must be noted that in 1991 a small interstate dairy in Massachusetts over-fortified its fluid milk with vitamin D resulting in at least seven cases of vitamin D toxicity and one death. Some samples of milk contained 600 times the labeled amount. If uniform distribution of the vitamin D concentrate entering the product had occurred, all products would have contained 65 times [the] label. Investigation of the situation prompted the FDA[] to survey fluid milk samples from 47 states [...] The vitamin D content of 3884 samples indicated that 27% contained >120% of (the amount on the) label”

The point of this detour is that the over-fortification disaster in 1950 caused the milk fortification to be forbidden throughout Europe. Although this story about US still erring dangerously in handling the milk 40 years later, it may be that countries like Sweden and Finland, where btw the sun it’s not usually smiling down on us through the late autumn and winter, can handle better food control and felt more at ease to reintroduce fortification.

Anyway, coming back to the sun, I’ve never heard or read of anybody getting vitamin D intoxication from sun exposure! And, no, I’m not oblivious of the amount of research that is looking at sun exposure and melanoma! What I believe is that some moderate amount of time (some say 20 minutes) spent in the sun – without using a sunscreen – will do a world of good. You can always take a good walk or sit outside with a cup of whatever-something-good before the sun gets too strong. I can’t mention sunscreen without saying that some recent studies have shown that the ingredients in sunscreens have estrogenic effects on cultured breast cancer cells (3) (i.e. in lab experiments the breast cancer cells enjoyed the sunscreen)! And! ..

“The proper application of a sunscreen with a sun protection factor of 15 should absorb 99% of incident UVB photons, resulting in a 99% decrease in production of previtamin D3.” (Holick, 2008)

Fear of the fatal form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma, keeps many people out of the sun. The problem with the theory is that the incidence of melanoma continues to increase dramatically although many people have been completely avoiding the sun for years. We are not saying sunburns are safe, they are not. We are saying that brief, full-body sun exposure may slightly increase your risk of skin cancer but it is a much smarter thing to do than dying of vitamin D deficiency. (from the Vitamin D Council webpage)

Good question but tough to answer! Because there might be no symptoms for years or they are too subtle to spot before you’ve been d-ficient for a long time. They may include softening of bones disorders (rickets in children, osteoporosis in adults), low blood calcium, fatigue, depression, etc. Severe deficiency over a very long period of time may manifest as broken bones or reduced hight. So, how to figure that out before it’s too late?! Well, you may try getting a blood test – for some of us this involves convincing the doctor it is important to do so (not easy, at least in my corner of the world) – and/or think whether your circumstances make you more likely to be D-ficient (4, 7):

- you live at a high or low latitude (say 40 degrees N/S of the equator)

- you’re skin is protected from sun exposure via use of sunscreens, cultural dress, etc and/or you spend very little time outdoors

- you are older than 60 years (at the age of 60 the capacity of the skin to produce vitamin D from sun exposure has dropped to 75% compared to the skin of a teenager)

- you are predisposed to obesity or suffer from malabsorption disorders (Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, and cystic fibrosis)

- you are a nursing mother; that goes also for the infant if the nutrition is exclusively through breastfeeding without vitamin D supplements

What supplements to take?

This question alone gave me headaches for the past 2 weeks! There’s no consensus about the dosage and hence no guidelines either. I guess that for now we have to have the initiative to answer this question each for ourselves. With the total awareness of our current situation: do I live in a place where the sun is a precious site through the winter? (YES!), do I spend most of my time indoors and do I usually put on sunscreen when I’m outside? (YES and NO!), etc… With that in mind you can decide WHEN to supplement (ex, autumn-winter months) and HOW MUCH. Below are some hints that helped me to make up my mind:

1: total body exposure (as in naked) out in the sun (at a 30-40 deg latitude, summer time) for about half an hour results in 10.000 IU (250 microgr) – and this seems to be a natural physiological limit, meaning that by longer exposures the skin won’t produce more vitamin D. 

2: studies have tested various concentrations of oral supplements and come up with recommendations anywhere btw 1.000 IU/day and 10.000 IU/day (4, 5). Several studies (clinical trials) showed no adverse effects of a prolonged intake of 10.000 IU/d for adults (9), while the documented cases of toxicity all involve intake of more then 40.000 IU/d (5).

- a clinical trial reported that doses of 800 IU/d reduced reported incidence of colds and flu (Cannell 2008)

- doses of 2000 IU/d, given during one year, eradicated all reports of colds or flu (Cannell 2008)

- Heaney et al 2003 estimated that an intake of 3,000 IU/d of vitamin D is needed to bring 95% of the population out of the D-ficiency range

- there are well explained online recommendations of 4000-5000 IU/d; you can read more at

 http://quantumpranx.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/avoid-swine-flu-shots-take-vitamin-d-instead/

- 5000 IU/d given to sun deprived older adults over a 1 year period improved bone density (8)

- a comprehensive review from 2006, Epidemic Influenza and vitamin D (10), coming from Dr Cannell who leads The Vitamin D Council group states that:

a) 400 IU/d are INSUFFICIENT to prevent wintertime d-ficiency

b) 600-700 IU/d given as cod liver oil and multivitamin reduced the average number of respiratory infections during Oct-May in a group of 47 children (2 years old on avg) living in NY; “an equivalent dose in a 70kg adult would be about 3500 IU/d“ 

Note: Norway has the highest vitamin D levels in Europe – which is associated with consuming fish and cod liver oil throughout the year

c) in a Canadian study, 4000 IU/d were administered to endocrinology outpatients for 6 months; this resulted in improved levels of vitamin D and “no side effects other than an improved mood”

Finally:

Dosage will depend upon age, latitude, season, skin type, body weight, sun exposure and pre-existing 25(OH)D [vitamin D] levels. Some groups – African-Americans, the obese, and the elderly – may require supplementation with 5000 IU/day during winter but less, or none, during the summer to obtain 25(OH)D levels of 50 ng/ml. These studies indicate that ideal daily doses of vitamin D exceed current recommendations by an order of magnitude. 

3: make up your mind! Start by accepting that the current vitamin D recommendations are inappropriate and misleading (about 10 times lower than they should be), continue by knowing that vitamin D can help prevent flu, influenza and cancer and decide that you want to be healthy. It’s up to you! And one more thing: it is really up to you!

References: 

1. Holick MF. Vitamin D: a D-Lightful perspective. Nutr Rev 2008; 66:S182-94

2. Holick MF. Resurrection of vitamin D deficiency and rickets. J Clin Invest 2006; 116(8):2062-72

3. Klann A, et al. Estrogen-like effects of ultraviolet screen 3-(4-methylbenzylidene)-camphor (Eusolex 6300) on cell proliferation and gene induction in mammalian and amphibian cells. Environ Res 2005;97(3):274-81

4. Collins N, et al. Vitamin D Deficiency: shinning new light on the sun nutrient. Ostomy Wound Manage 2009; 55(4):14,16-7

5. Vieth R. Vitamin D supplementation, 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations, and safety. Am J Clin Nutr 1999; 69(5):842-56

6. Heaney RP, et al. Human serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol response to extended oral dosing with cholecalciferol. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003;77(1):204–210.

7. Weggemans RM, et al. Towards an adequate intake of vitamin D. An advisory report of the Health Council of the Netherlands. Eur J Clin Nutr 2009

8. Mocanu V, et al. Long term effects of giving nursing home residents bread fortified with 125 microg (5000 IU) vitamin D(3) per daily serving. Am J Clin Nutr 89(4):1132-7

9. Vieth R. Vitamin D and cancer mini-symposium: the risk of additional vitamin D. Ann Epidemiol 2009; 19(7): 441-5

10. Cannell JJ et al. Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiol Infect 2006; 134(6): 1129-40

Other reading resources regarding deficiency symptoms:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/vitamin-d-deficiency

http://www.the-vitamin-and-supplement-guide.com/vitaminDdeficiencysymptoms.html

This is what I’m trying to find out these days: can an old pall, such as vitamin D help us fight a new enemy – like the swine flu? And, if you haven’t read or heard about it yet, I’m happy that you do it now! What I can tell you so far is that the reading exercise on the subject is not easy as the reading material is extensive. I’m going to post again on the subject during the next few days as I’ll manage to gather my thoughts a bit more. For now, I’ll share with you how I’m navigating through this sea of information. 

So, I heard a rumor that vitamin D and sunshine can help fight against the flu. You know the link: if you’re out in the sun you’re skin naturally produces vitamin D. If you’re not having too much sun, say you’re in the wrong hemisphere or you spend lots of time inside, you can still get vitamin D from some food or you can take supplements. Here is a comprehensive site describing vitamin D and which are the products you can get it from. According to them the Chinook SALMON is the best source of vitamin D, followed by SHRIMPS, COW’S MILK, COD FISH and EGG. Btw, Wikipedia says that the Chinook salmon lives in the Pacific and it’s kind of scarce and, therefore, pricy, so I suggest we use this list just to get an idea of the kind of foods we should favor in our diet and leave the Chinook salmon swim happily in the Pacific. 

Moving on… I quickly searched PubMed “vitamin D influenza” and got about 30 hits… and that means published journal articles.  The role of vitamin D deficiency in an amazing number of diseases (such as cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, autism, among others) is far from being news these days, that was 5 years ago. Its role in preventing infections and influenza has been researched and published in established journals – although, speaking for myself, I had no idea about this until recently!

Check out this following para from On the epidemiology of influenza, by Cannell et al, 2008  (Virol J) 

“The evidence that vitamin D has profound effects on innate immunity is rapidly growing. In fact, Aloia and Li-Ng presented evidence of a dramatic vitamin D preventative effect from a randomized controlled trial (RCT). [...] they discovered 104 post-menopausal African American women given vitamin D were three times less likely to report cold and flu symptoms than 104 placebo controls. A low dose (800 IU/day) not only reduced reported incidence, it abolished the seasonality of reported colds and flu. A higher dose (2000 IU/day), given during the last year of their trial, virtually eradicated all reports of colds or flu.  (Figure2)

Recent discoveries about vitamin D’s mechanism of action in combating infections led Science News to suggest that vitamin D is the “antibiotic vitamin” due primarily to its robust effects on innate immunity.”

Two concepts are among the building blocks of this paper: innate immunity and adaptive immunity. The adaptive immune system builds on the innate one (which is apparently evolutionary older). The innate system recognizes and responds to infections immediately but doesn’t “remember” the intruders, while the adaptive system is more specialized in the sense that it recognizes old enemies and responds to them more strongly each time. If you want, you can read the entire article online, free, just google it (personally, I think that if you can put up with a bit of scientific gibberish you’ll find it interesting). 

To the question of why the influenza mortality in the elderly has not declined during the past 20 years even though their vaccination rates did (!): 

“Given that influenza vaccines effectively improve adaptive immunity, the most likely explanation is that the innate immunity of the aged declined over the last 20 years due to medical and governmental warnings to avoid the sun. While the young usually ignore such advice, the elderly often follow it. We suggest that improvements in adaptive immunity from increased vaccination of the aged are inadequate to compensate for declines in innate immunity the aged suffered over that same time.”

Oh, and I love this sentence:

“Very recently, articles in mainstream medical journals have emphasized the compelling reasons to promptly diagnose and adequately treat vitamin D deficiency, deficiencies that may be the rule, rather than the exception, at least during flu season“.

And here is from Use of vitamin D in clinical practice, by Cannell and Hollis, 2008 (Altern Med Rev)

“The recent discovery–from a meta-analysis of 18 randomized controlled trials–that supplemental cholecalciferol (vitamin D) significantly reduces all-cause mortality emphasizes the medical, ethical, and legal implications of promptly diagnosing and adequately treating vitamin D deficiency. Not only are such deficiencies common, and probably the rule, vitamin D deficiency is implicated in most of the diseases of civilization. Vitamin D’s final metabolic product is a potent, pleiotropic, repair and maintenance, seco-steroid hormone that targets more than 200 human genes in a wide variety of tissues, meaning it has as many mechanisms of action as genes it targets. One of the most important genes vitamin D up-regulates is for cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum antibiotic. Natural vitamin D levels, those found in humans living in a sun-rich environment, are between 40-70 ng per ml, levels obtained by few modern humans. [...] Three treatment modalities exist for vitamin D deficiency: sunlight, artificial ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation, and vitamin D3 supplementation. [...] Theoretically, pharmacological doses of vitamin D (2,000 IU per kg per day for three days) may produce enough of the naturally occurring antibiotic cathelicidin to cure common viral respiratory infections, such as influenza and the common cold, but such a theory awaits further science.”

You’ll also find good reading on this subject here:

http://quantumpranx.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/avoid-swine-flu-shots-take-vitamin-d-instead/

which is beautifully researched, and here

http://healthspanlife.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/urgent-warning-americanmexican-swine-flu-in-southern-africa/

both articles giving recommendations in terms of units/day needed to boost the system.

You can also read that the Public Health Agency in Canada takes seriously the possibility that swine flu can be fought with the help of vitamin D. Read more here…

OK, I’ll leave the drawing board for now and let you think things over! Meanwhile, I’ll get busy during the next days to read on what are the best natural vitamin D supplements and try to schedule an appointment with a lab to check my vitamin D level.

Servings: for 4 to 6 people, depending on their appetite. 

Ingredients

1 large onion (or two small ones) chopped finely

4-5 cloves of garlic chopped finely

2 tomatoes chopped freely

1 can tomato paste (250-300gr)

bunch of green olives + bunch of black olives

2 carrots sliced in thin slices + 1/2 parsnip chopped finely

celery (the size of a fist) chopped in scales

bunch of green beans

2 medium/small slices of fish (tried salmon) and a similar amount of sea food

2 spoons olive oil

1 spoon balsamic vinegar

tamarin, basil

fresh parsley chopped finely

4 cups of boiling water 

How to prepare

- saute in the oil, the onion, garlic and tomato paste for 2 minutes

- add carrots, parsnip, celery, green beans, olives and saute for another 2 minutes

- add the boiling water and sea food and turn up the heat and let boil for about 3 minutes

- add vinegar and tomatoes

- reduce the heat to medium and add the fish; continue cooking for 12-15 minutes until the fish is cooked (should be tender but not fall apart)

- before the end add parsley, and salt and pepper to taste

Bon appetit!

I guess I have more than one question – what’s so new about this swine flu AND should we get inoculated? I’m not talking about the mental inoculation, that’s happening already, slowly but surely, but should we get inoculated ALSO physically with the wonder-vaccine that’s now in the making? It seems that the name shifted from “swine flu” to “new flu” cause it’s a cocktail of swine, bird and human flu. That’s new! But what’s happening around it – I find that far from being new. The desire to manipulate the public opinion and reaction has been around for some time.    

I’ve been trying to answer my questions by reading this and that from online resources and main-stream media. The information out there is far from being consistent or comprehensive. Do you have a grasp of what’s happening?, cause I would love to hear it. The following is a brief summary of what I could read and my own opinions, so please treat it as such.

What I know is that the big Pharma have just few months to develop, test the efficacy and assess the side effects of the new vaccine. Is that enough time or…? Are we supposed to just trust they know what they are doing? Here are some things for consideration:

1) In 1976, there was a swine flu alert in the US that resulted in about 46 million people taking the vaccine shot. Not long after that few thousands of them accused neurological damages after the vaccination and claim financial compensation. Now, even if you are thinking that some of them were trying to make a buck, I would say it’s very unlikely that some thousands people would come up with such serious accusations without a real foundation. You can watch the CBS documentary on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_9I1L_P370   

2) The World Health Organization (WHO) said that a global swine flu pandemic can be expected, but currently this flu is not more aggressive and does not result in a higher mortality than influenza. They also said that it might mutate -might- and become more aggressive. My knowledge on vaccine development is rather limited, but usually a vaccine includes strains of the virus it protects against. So, if the bugger mutates into another thing, how is the vaccine going to protect against the mutated version?

3) Which Pharma are working to develop the vaccine? Well, first of all, whoever it is, they are working under the blessing of the WHO. It’s Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Baxter… Hold on! Baxter?! Aren’t they..ah…?! Yes, the very same: in Spring of 2009, their facilities in Austria were involved in an incident where they shipped avian-flu vaccines ready to be used on the population to 18 countries. The incident was that these vaccines contained viable H5N1 virus strands (seems they should be inactive!) and were dangerous enough to KILL the entire lot of ferrets that were inoculated with this ready-to-be-used vaccine in a laboratory in the Czech Republic. Yeah, that’s right, the vaccine was supposed to be distributed in this form to the general population. The unfortunate incident was described by the company’s officials as a very regrettable accident!  And that was the end of it! I guess that my definition of accident goes as wide or as wild as breaking a glass or bumping into another car, but NOT dropping a bit of poison into somebody’s glass. Ooops, sorry, I thought it was cinnamon, wanted to spice up your wine a little… Anyways, joke aside, you can read it for yourselves, just Google”Baxter, march 2009, Austria”

Just follow the links below to find reading material on the subject:

http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/live-avian-flu-virus-placed-in-baxter-vaccine-materials-sent-to-18-countries/

http://www.naturalnews.com/025760.html

http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=2009-02-25-5123

http://www.normalesup.org/~adanchin/populus/journalist.html

4) I’m thinking: is there some big gain from making people really worried? Statements like: “we (the Government/ the Health Authority) are going to prioritize this category, this category and that one (say children, pregnant women and adults in a certain age category) because they are the most exposed and there are not enough doses yet for everybody” – what do they achieve? What is your natural reaction when you hear that? Something like “Oh, my God, what if they are not going to include me? What do I do then?!”? Probably! My guess is that you won’t be thinking – what will happen to those who get vaccinated, are there side effects for them? You just want to be included. Thus, by simply making you (us) gravitate around the fear that you’re not among the ‘chosen’ ones can beautiful take away the mind from wondering about unwanted effects.

5) There seems to be an aggressive campaign to convince people they should get vaccinated especially in the US and Western Europe but not in those countries with less money in their national wallet. Some might take this as the rich countries fighting harder and better to protect their citizens. Is it the only interpretation you can think off? Or could it be a slick way of convincing those well-off countries to spend some of their money on vaccines? Sweden, where I live, decided to buy enough for everybody – and if you think we are a small country… it’s still 9 million people x 2 doses/person. Similar decisions were made by the Netherlands, Germany, France. Speaking of France – I read that they are thinking a compulsory vaccination of everybody older than 3 months! Soooo… COMPULSORY! That means somebody is deciding for you to inoculate your body with a substance with unknown side effects or any kind of effects! Isn’t that scary? 

http://www.prisonplanet.com/france-considers-mandatory-flu-vaccinations.html

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2764

6) Let’s not abandon yet the subject of age: France gives the OK for all kids older than 3 months, whereas in Sweden I hear that the vaccine is not recommended for kids below the age of 2 years. At the same time, pregnant women should vaccinate. So, it’s not safe for kids under a certain age (and that age depends on the physical borders in Europe, that’s how biology works!) but OK for embryos/babies in the womb, ha?!   

7) When you read in the news a report about somebody in a serious condition due to swine-flu please check if there’s any mention on what was that person’s health before they got infected. Were they suffering from some illness, were they on some medication that could have been conflicting with the swine flu treatment they got, etc? I certainly can’t find that. Oh, I know, the newspaper has to protect the privacy of the patient, of course!

Now, before I would let anybody inject me with some stuff, I would like to know:

- what does it contain?

- what if the virus mutates – what is the vaccination worth then?

- what are the side effects?

- what does it protect me against?

- how were these last two questions answered: was it a lab test done on animals, was there a representative sample of people used – were they healthy individuals, were they young, were there children tested also – and for how long did they keep their subjects under observation? You know, sometimes the length of a study may be conveniently too short…

WOULDN’T YOU ALSO LIKE TO KNOW THESE ANSWERS BEFORE EVEN CONSIDERING VACCINATING YOURSELF OR YOUR CHILD?!

Be brave and think for yourself, whoever you may be!

Ionelu’s Angel

July 2009