Worried about the potential swine flu pandemic? Take vitamin D. Lots of it. After studying vitamin D last year, I took daily supplements of it all winter long. I did not catch cold this winter nor did I get any of the normal winter sinus infections that I usually get once or twice.
Anecdotal? Yes. But I’m going to continue taking vitamin D.
Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D
Epidemiology and Infection, known as The Journal of Hygiene in Hope-Simpson’s day, recently published our paper. The editor, Professor Norman Noah, knew Dr. Hope-Simpson and helped tremendously with the paper. In the paper, we detailed our theory that vitamin D is Hope-Simpson’s long forgotten “seasonal stimulus.” We proposed that annual fluctuations in vitamin D levels explain the seasonality of influenza. The periodic seasonal fluctuations in 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels, which cause recurrent and predictable wintertime vitamin D deficiency, predispose human populations to influenza epidemics. We raised the possibility that influenza is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency in the same way that an unusual form of pneumonia (pneumocystis carinii) is a symptom of AIDS. That is, we theorized that George Bernard Shaw was right when he said, “the characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause.”
