Japanese Study: Vit D Reduces Flu By 67%

Every now and then, a scientific study is done that confirms what many of us already 'know' is true from our common experience. The Japanese have conducted a double-blind placebo controlled study that proves the effectiveness of Vitamin D in preventing the flu. The study shows up to 67% reduction in cases of influenza A among children taking Vitamin D. Then, they ruin it at the end by saying that Vit D should be given at the time of vaccination! UGGG!

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Vitamin D better than vaccines at preventing flu, report claims

Oliver Gillie

(Richard Cannon/The Times)

Vitamin D could cut the risk of flu infection in children by half, the report claims

The risk of children suffering from flu can be halved if they take vitamin D, doctors in Japan have found. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine.

Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, told The Times that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.

Vitamin D was found to be even more effective when the comparison left out children who were already given extra vitamin D by their parents, outside the trial. Taking the sunshine vitamin was then shown to reduce the risk of flu to a third of what it would otherwise be.

Altogether 354 children took part in the trial, which took place during the winter of 2008-09, before the swine flu epidemic. Vitamin D was found to protect against influenza A, which caused last year’s epidemic, but not against the less common influenza B.

The trial, which was double blind, randomised, and fully controlled scientifically, was conducted by doctors and scientists from Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan.

The children were given a daily dose of 1200 IUs (international units) of vitamin D over a period of three months. In the first month children in the group taking the vitamin became ill just as often as those taking the dummy tablet. But by the second month, when the vitamin level in the children’s blood was higher, the advantage of the vitamin was clear.

The Japanese scientists, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, say that the anti-viral drugs zanamivir and oseltamivir reduce risk of flu infection by 8 per cent in children who have been exposed to infection, compared with a 50 per cent or greater reduction with vitamin D.

Anti-virals are also too expensive, and possibly too toxic, to be given to the population as a whole whereas vitamin D has additional benefits. The sunshine vitamin not only prevents bone fractures but is also believed to reduce risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illness, including various bacterial as well as viral infections.

The Japanese finding supports a theory that low blood levels of the sunshine vitamin occurring in winter explain why flu epidemics generally peak between December and March.

Vitamin D activates the innate immune system, enabling the body to produce several proteins such as defensin and cathelicidin which trigger cell activity and disable viruses.

Dr Urashima said: “Vitamin D and vaccine work by quite different mechanisms. Vitamin D enhances innate immunity while vaccine enhances acquired immunity. So we do not have to select only one way of prevention, rather we should do both ways, I think.”

Dr John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, London, said: “This is a timely study. It will be noticed by scientists. It fits in with the seasonal pattern of flu. There is an increasing background of solid science that makes the vitamin D story credible. But this study needs to be replicated. If it is confirmed we might think of giving vitamin D at the same time as we vaccinate.”

Why You've Never Heard The Whole Truth About Vitamin D

Vitamin D Activates Immune System

Many of you who follow this blog remember that I recommended strongly that you and your family take Vitamin D (Cataplex D) as a part of our anti-swine flu protocol. Continuing research is showing why Vitamin D helps with the flu and everything else that requires immunity - infection, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and all the so-called auto-immune disorders. Remember, Vit D is the "Sunshine Vitamin" that is obtained naturally from exposure of the skin to sunlight for at least 20 minutes a day in most parts of the world. Picured are natural Vitamin D crystals. Anyone who lives north of a line drawn from East to West through Atlanta will probably not get enough Vit D in the dark days of winter and will need a Vit D supplement.

Also, keep in mind that dark skinned people will produce less Vit D in their skin due to the action of melanin, so darker people tend to have more severe Vit D deficiency, and hence, a higher risk of diseases affected by Vit D.

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Vitamin D Activates the Immune System

NaturalNews) There is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency sweeping across our modern world, and it's an epidemic of such depth and seriousness that it makes the H1N1 swine flu epidemic look like a case of the sniffles by comparison. Vitamin D deficiency is not only alarmingly widespread, it's also a root cause of many other serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.A new study published in the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a jaw-dropping 59 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient. In addition, nearly 25 percent of the study subjects were found to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.Lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Kremer at the McGill University Health Center, said "Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders."This new study also documents a clear link between vitamin D deficiency and stored body fat. This supports a theory I've espoused here on NaturalNews for many years: That sunshine actually promote body fat loss. Vitamin D may be the hormonal mechanism by which this fat loss phenomenon operates.The research findings on vitamin D, by the way, get even better...
Activator for the immune systemRecent research carried out at the University of Copenhagen has revealed that vitamin D activates the immune system by "arming" T cells to fight off infections.This new research, led by Professor Carsten Geisler from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, found that without vitamin D, the immune system's T cells remain dormant, offering little or no protection against invading microorganisms and viruses. But with vitamin D in the bloodstream, T cells become "armed" and begin seeking out invaders that are then destroyed and carried out of the body.Vitamin D, in other words, acts a bit like the ignition key to your car: The car won't run unless you turn the key and ignite the engine. Likewise, your immune system won't function unless it is biochemically activated with vitamin D. If you're facing the winter flu season in a state of vitamin D deficiency, your immune system is essentially defenseless against seasonal flu. That's why all the people who get sick are the ones who live indoors, work indoors and exist in a chronic state of vitamin D deficiency.That's also why virtually all the people who died from H1N1 were chronically deficient in vitamin D. They had virtually no immune system protection at all and were thus easy targets for the swine flu.These findings about vitamin D "arming" the immune system were published in Nature Immunology. Commenting on the findings, the researchers said, "Scientists have known for a long time that vitamin D is important for calcium absorption and the vitamin has also been implicated in diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, but what we didn't realize is how crucial vitamin D is for actually activating the immune system -- which we know now." (UK Telegraph, source below).It seems the CDC and WHO remain utterly ignorant about this research or they would have been recommending vitamin D to fight the recent H1N1 pandemic rather than vaccine shots. Vitamin D would have been a far more effective (and less costly) defense against the pandemic than vaccine shots, especially given that even vaccines don't work unless there is an immune response, and that immune response requires the presence of vitamin D!And while vaccine shots have undesirable side effects such as causing severe neurological damage in a small number of vaccine recipients, vitamin D's only significant "side effect" is that it prevents 77% of all cancers, too. (http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html)
The common denominator for diseaseWhat's becoming increasingly clear from all the new research is that vitamin D deficiency may be the common denominator behind our most devastating modern degenerative diseases. Kidney failure patients are almost universally deficient in vitamin D and diabetes patients are usually in the same category. People suffering from cancer almost always demonstrate severe vitamin D deficiency, as do people with osteoporosis and multiple sclerosis.

I, Virus...

Most of us take being human for granted. We just assume we are. But are we really 100% human according to our genetic structure? I always wondered about the incorporation of viral genetic material from vaccines and that is one of the reasons I am opposed to the widespread use of vaccines. I wonder if we might be producing 'hybrid humans'. The following article goes even further and asserts that 50% of our genetic material is not human, but viral, hence the title: I, Virus...
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I, Virus: Why You are Only Half Human
by Frank Ryan
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In 1950, rabbits infected with myxoma virus were released into the wild. Within three months 99.8 per cent of rabbits in south-east Australia were dead
Although the myxomatosis epidemic was not planned as an evolutionary experiment, it had evolutionary consequences. The myxoma virus's natural host is the Brazilian rabbit, in which it is a persistant partner causing no more than minor skin blemishes. The same is now true of rabbits in Australia. Over the course of the epidemic the virus selected for rabbits with a minority genetic variant capable of surviving infection. Plague culling was followed by co-evolution, and today rabbit and virus coexist in a largely non-pathogenic mutualism.
Now imagine a plague virus attacking an early human population in Africa. The epidemic would have followed a similar trajectory, with plague culling followed by a period in which survivors and virus co-evolved. There is evidence that this happened repeatedly during our evolution, though when, and through what infectious agents, is unknown (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 99, p 11748).
Even today viral diseases are changing the course of human evolution. Although the plague culling effect is mitigated by medical intervention in the AIDS pandemic, we nevertheless observe selection pressure on humans and virus alike. For example, the human gene HLA-B plays an important role in the response to HIV-1 infection, and different variants are strongly associated with the rate of AIDS progression. It is therefore likely that different HLA-B alleles impose selection pressure on HIV-1, while HLA-B gene frequencies in the population are likely to be influenced by HIV (Nature, vol 432, p 769). This is symbiogenesis in action.
How does that move us closer to understanding the composition of the human genome? HIV-1 is a retrovirus, a class of RNA virus that converts its RNA genome into DNA before implanting it into host chromosomes. This process, known as endogenisation, converts an infectious virus into a non-infectious endogenous retrovirus (ERV). In humans, ERVs are called HERVs.
Germline invaders
Endogenisation allows retroviruses to take genetic symbiosis to a new level. Usually it is an extension of the normal infectious process, when a retrovirus infects a blood cell, such as a lymphocyte. But if the virus happens to get incorporated in a chromosome in the host's germ line (sperm or egg), it can become part of the genome of future generations.
Such germ-line endogenisation has happened repeatedly in our own lineage - it is the source of all that viral DNA in our genome. The human genome contains thousands of HERVs from between 30 and 50 different families, believed to be the legacy of epidemics throughout our evolutionary history. We might pause to consider that we are the descendents of the survivors of a harrowing, if brutally creative, series of viral epidemics.
Endogenisation is happening right now in a retroviral epidemic that is spreading among koalas in Australia. The retrovirus, KoRv, appeared about 100 years ago and has already spread through 75 per cent of the koala's range, culling animals on a large scale and simultaneously invading the germ line of the survivors.
Retroviruses don't have a monopoly on endogenisation. Earlier this month researchers reported finding genes from a bornavirus in the genomes of several mammals, including humans, the first time a virus not in the retrovirus class has been identified in an animal genome. The virus appears to have entered the germ line of a mammalian ancestor around 40 million years ago (Nature, vol 463, p 84). Many more such discoveries are anticipated, perhaps explaining the origin of some of that mysterious half of the genome.
The ability of viruses to unite, genome-to-genome, with their hosts has clear evolutionary significance. For the host, it means new material for evolution. If a virus happens to introduce a useful gene, natural selection will act on it and, like a beneficial new mutation, it may spread through the population.
Could a viral gene really be useful to a mammal? Don't bet against it. Retroviruses have undergone a long co-evolutionary relationship with their hosts, during which they have evolved the ability to manipulate host defences for their own ends. So we might expect the genes of viruses infecting humans to be compatible with human biology.
This is also true of their regulatory DNA. A virus integrating itself into the germ line brings not just its own genes, but also regulatory regions that control those genes. Viral genomes are bookended by regions known as long terminal repeats (LTRs), which contain an array of sequences capable of controlling not just viral genes but host ones as well. Many LTRs contain attachment sites for host hormones, for example, which probably evolved to allow the virus to manipulate host defences.
Retroviruses will often endogenise repeatedly throughout the host genome, leading to a gradual accumulation of anything up to 1000 ERVs. Each integration offers the potential of symbiogenetic evolution.
Once an ERV is established in the genome, natural selection will act on it, weeding out viral genes or regulatory sequences that impair survival of the host, ignoring those that have no effect, and positively selecting the rare ones that enhance survival.
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