Editor: In the September 22nd Sun, just joan writes a portrayal about a significant blind spot in professional awareness/public knowledge in the needs and meaning of Vitamin D in human health. Very recently, on KSVY’s Health Matters program (Wednesdays from 1 to 2 p.m.), we offered a discussion outlining a manufactured crises occasioned in the indiscriminate use of flu vaccines building our discussion upon H. Epstein’s article “Flu Warnings. Beware the Drug Companies,” The New York Review 5/12/11.
Just Joan takes this discussion fully and appropriately forward as she reports “one of the most effective means of flu prevention.” It isn’t just joan however that has made this claim. In 2006, Epidemiology and Infection Journal first published “Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D” by Dr. John Cannell revealing the unfolding researches that show how commonly modern humans routinely suffer this as a deeply chronic (substrate starvation) deficit. Many and various illnesses and dysfunctions occur where adequate vitamin D could add the strength the body needed to overcome these diseases and symptoms. As we enter the ‘flu season’ it is especially timely for everyone who cares about their health and that of loved ones to encounter this newer knowledge. Much thanks to just joan and Lauren Ayers for bringing this to our attention.
For those of us who choose to depend upon strengthening, “firming the root” the Chinese say, rather than medications and shots the recent Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) recommendations about Tolerable Upper Intake Levels is now 4,000 IU from all sources. Their previous recommendation in supplement use had been 400 IU. Dr. Cannell’s Vitamin D Council uses a 10,000 IU figure as the amount most individuals “likely to pose no risk” category. From what I can read the toxicity issues and concerns are almost entirely unfounded. I am not pretending professional expertise however on this entire topic. It represents the best and most compelling information wisdom I have to date. According to what I read there are almost no documented cases of vitamin D toxicity and when the very few were found the claim is there would be initially no symptoms at all but for a slight measureable increase of calcium in the blood. For years there had been public and professional hysteria on the toxicity issue.
For us everyday citizens the message I get is that we are wise to have the 25-hydroxy vitamin D test. Even absent that, unless there are other known important reasons not to, a common inexpensive daily supplement of vitamin D3 is in our best interests if not the vaccine makers. Many group plans are now testing for vitamin D. Why not pay attention to this present science?
Ned Hoke OMD, L.Ac.
Sonoma
Thanks Ned (and Sonoma Valley has some other health practitioners who are very savvy about D) for reminding people how wonderful D can be in preventing the flu.
At the paltry level of fortification of food, it would take 2 ½ gallons of milk to get the current minimum daily dose, which is actually not a very good standard.
A lot of parents think our sunny climate insures kids get enough D. Not true, unfortunately.
We are so far north of the equator that we can only make D in our skin between 11 am and 1 pm. And forget the winter months; from October to March we can’t make any D at all because the tilted earth means the sun is never directly overhead, providing the most direct route to our skin, so ultraviolet B rays are absorbed by the atmosphere before reaching us.
Parents can determine how much D their child might need by looking at either of these articles at GoodSchoolFood.org:
English– http://goodschoolfood.org/pdf/fightfluwithD.pdf
Spanish– http://goodschoolfood.org/pdf/prevenirlagripe.pdf