Are you taking enough Vitamin D? Most of us are not according to the avalanche of evidence that is coming out saying that Vitamin D is vital for your health. I will summarize a few of the recent articles.
Fighting Infections with Vitamin E: Nature Medicine April 2006
Key Points:
In 1895 Niels Finsen of Denmark effectively treated tuberculosis with exposure to high-intensity light produced from an electric arc lamp. This improved the disease in 95% of the affected people. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1903 for this treatment. (Think the big pharma companies would have been trying to discredit him if he discovered this today?)
Sunlight stimulates the synthesis of Vitamin D which upregulates the expression of a microbe-fighting peptide, LL-37. This peptide, part of your innate immune response, stimulates the white blood cells to more effectively kill a variety of infections, such as bacteria.
American Blacks are particularly susceptible to infection by tuberculosis because they have substantially lower serum vitamin D levels than whites.
Our current recommendations are based on the minimum vitamin D requirements to sustain the health of our skeleton. This study reports that the optimal functioning of our innate immune system might require more vitamin D.
