Posted on 12/06/2009 9:00:19 AM PST by STARWISE
The claims have been sensational. Martin Mittelstaedt checks up on the research behind the hype
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In the summer of 1974, brothers Frank and Cedric Garland had a heretical brainwave.
The young epidemiologists were watching a presentation on death rates from cancer county by county across the United States.
As they sat in a lecture hall at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore looking at the colour-coded cancer maps, they noticed a striking pattern, with the map for colon cancer the most pronounced.
Counties with high death rates were red; those with low rates were blue. Oddly, the nation was almost neatly divided in half, red in the north and blue in the south. Why, they wondered, was the risk of dying from cancer greater in bucolic Maine than in highly polluted Southern California?
*snip*
Exposure to sunshine varies dramatically depending on the latitude. What if that's what was behind the varying cancer rates?
Their hypothesis, painstakingly developed and published six years later in the International Journal of Epidemiology, was that sunlight has a powerful anti-cancer effect through its role in producing vitamin D in bare skin.
Those living at northern latitudes, they theorized, receive less sunlight and make less of the vitamin, which in turn increases their risk of dying from cancer.
Today, with vitamin D so much in the news, it's hard to believe that it took decades for the Garlands' hypothesis to gain traction in the mainstream medical community.
But the benefits of vitamin D are no longer restricted to cancer prevention:
Studies have linked a shortage of the compound to such serious, chronic ailments as multiple sclerosis, diabetes, heart disease, influenza and schizophrenia.
Rest @ link
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Exactly.
I’ve read (long ago) that bear liver is VERY high in vitamin D. Polar Bear liver is the highest.
In the same article I read that if you eat a Polar Bear liver, you can actually die of a vitamin D overdose.
Oh, I see. My goodness, I pray your
health improves.
BTTT
I take 500 MG of niacin (Niaspan) daily too.
I refused to take my cholesterol lowering medicine anymore and my doctor said if you won't take that, please take this niacin daily and he gave me a prescription.
Virol J. 2008 Feb 25;5:29.
Cannell JJ, Zasloff M, Garland CF, Scragg R, Giovannucci E.
Department of Psychiatry, Atascadero State Hospital, 10333 El Camino Real, Atascadero, CA 93423, USA.
jcannell@ash.dmh.ca.gov
The epidemiology of influenza swarms with incongruities, incongruities exhaustively detailed by the late British epidemiologist, Edgar Hope-Simpson. He was the first to propose a parsimonious theory explaining why influenza is, as Gregg said, "seemingly unmindful of traditional infectious disease behavioral patterns." Recent discoveries indicate vitamin D upregulates the endogenous antibiotics of innate immunity and suggest that the incongruities explored by Hope-Simpson may be secondary to the epidemiology of vitamin D deficiency. We identify - and attempt to explain - nine influenza conundrums: (1) Why is influenza both seasonal and ubiquitous and where is the virus between epidemics? (2) Why are the epidemics so explosive? (3) Why do they end so abruptly? (4) What explains the frequent coincidental timing of epidemics in countries of similar latitude? (5) Why is the serial interval obscure? (6) Why is the secondary attack rate so low? (7) Why did epidemics in previous ages spread so rapidly, despite the lack of modern transport? (8) Why does experimental inoculation of seronegative humans fail to cause illness in all the volunteers? (9) Why has influenza mortality of the aged not declined as their vaccination rates increased? We review recent discoveries about vitamin D's effects on innate immunity, human studies attempting sick-to-well transmission, naturalistic reports of human transmission, studies of serial interval, secondary attack rates, and relevant animal studies. We hypothesize that two factors explain the nine conundrums: vitamin D's seasonal and population effects on innate immunity, and the presence of a subpopulation of "good infectors." If true, our revision of Edgar Hope-Simpson's theory has profound implications for the prevention of influenza.
Eeeuuuwww ...
Thanks for this info - will pass it along.
Can you be specific on how Vit D has helped you and your 92 year old mother?
I wish the article would have discussed the autoimmune connection in more detail. Tropical countries have very few cases of severe allergies or autoimmune disorders. Up until now, that has been a big mystery. Now they know why, vitamin D.
I swim with my shirt off! Also, do work in the yard shirtless! Hah!
well i forgot the flame suit
but i am just to caffeinated
personally have changed to vit d from fish oil i hate the stuff
but vit D in pills has varoius buffers and usually all raw materials are from china and they can all choke on it
second you dont absorb enough through milk or there is some evidence that vit d in pill form is poorley digested
so i guess ia m ra ra ing for fish oil
This year in August we both started taking 10,000 iu a day. H1N1 went around in school and wife did not carry it home though most of the rest of the staff did. Then a different respiratory malady went around a month later. She didn't bring me that one either. My adult daughter started coming down with some kind of flu and wife induced her to take a megadose of D3-> 900 iu per pound of body weight per day. She did that for three days and was actually done with the ailment by the time she took the third dose. I can't say for sure that the D3 had an actual effect and that we were not merely lucky this year but we will continue with the regimen. I need it anyway because I work at night and seldom see the sun.
Living in the northeast, I take no Vit D supplements during the summer, but I do take cholecalciferol during the fall, winter and spring.
Niaspan is more dangerous than plain old niacin.
Niaspan, which is sustained release niacin, can cause liver damage. I’d switch to plain old niacin.
It isn’t uncommon for me to spend 3-4 hours outside during the afternoon...in Tucson, in summer. I primarily use sunscreen on my face, where I can burn and blister very easily.
I use the tan rule. If I tan without burning, it is OK. For an hour, I can handle most anything. Times longer than that deserve some help.
Thanks. My doctor put me on it so I'll discuss it with him before changing.
Doctor put me on Niacin as it helps bring up good cholesterol. Raised my good stuff 20 points...(if one is not aware of the bodys reaction to Niacin, its intense itching and flushing unless taken with a FULL glass of water. There is now on the market a non-flushing Niacin. much nicer to take
Sounds reasonable. People that are of a pure Celtic type (the people with red hair and freckles) are the most vulnerable to skin damage; it is an individual issue. I am—like most Americans—a mutt with Celtic, central Euro and Semitic genes, so I can take more sun than the redheads.
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