Vitamin D

I recently had a sinus infection that just wouldn’t go away. I rarely get sick, although I am historically prone to sinus problems. Although this one wasn’t very painful, it just wouldn’t quit. I happened across an article by one of my favorite bloggers (link below) that discussed Vitamin D and its importance in killing viral infections like influenza. I’d been largely treating my sinus infection as either bacteria or fungal with 10 different remedies, with no luck, and I suspected it must be a viral infection. Also, my kids had all had a brief bout of the flu right when my sinus problems started, so that was suspicious. The study I found mentioned something called the “vitamin D hammer,” and I had to learn more. Within 24 hours of trying it, I was significantly better for the first time in a month, and within a few days I wasn’t sick anymore. It was magical.

The “vitamin D hammer” is a one-time dose of 50,000 IU in one day (or 10,000 IU 3 times a day for 2 or 3 days), for adults with viral infections who haven’t been previously supplementing with sufficient amounts of vitamin D before they acquired the infection. As the FDA only recommends 400 IU of vitamin D daily for adults, this is a much larger dose than I’d ever heard of taking. Many people recognize that the FDA recommendation is wholy inadequate, and daily doses of 1,000-5,000 are common. According to the research, it takes almost 9,000 IU per day for 97.5% of adults to reach serum vitamin D levels of 50 nmol/L or more. Some vitamin D scientific researchers advise taking doses high enough to reach serum vitamin D levels of closer to 100 nmol/L, especially while fighting a viral infection like influenza. Up to 75% of Americans are deficient in vitamin D, which is actually a hormone usually produced by the skin’s exposure to sunlight.

According to the researchers from Canada who discovered the “vitamin D hammer”, “The results are dramatic, with complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours. One-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely and have never been shown to be toxic. We urgently need a study of this intervention. The cost of vitamin D is about a penny for 1,000 IU, so this treatment costs less than a dollar.”

Another group of researchers interested in the “remarkable seasonality” of influenza noted that the sunshine causes “robust seasonal vitamin D production in the skin; vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and activated vitamin D, a steroid hormone, has profound effects on human immunity. [Vitamin D] acts as an immune system modulator, preventing excessive expression of inflammatory cytokines and increasing the ‘oxidative burst’ potential of macrophages” (white blood cells found at sites of infection). His research found that not only did a study involving volunteers injected with influenza have more fever and illness in the winter, but that children with vitamin D deficiencies had higher rates of viral respiratory infections.

I was not only amazed by vitamin D’s ability to stop influenza in its tracks, but in my resulting research I found scientific links between high vitamin D levels and the prevention of many other illnesses and conditions, including autoimmune diseases; type 1 diabetes (which many researchers believe to be an autoimmune disease); insulin resistance including prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (also associated with obesity); neuromuscular issues including muscle weakness, a reduction in falls of elderly patients (one study found a 20% reduction and another found a 72% reduction in falls), idiopathic low back pain, and fibromyalgia; multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis (40% reductions in the risks of developing either with supplementation of vitamin D); as well as a possible protective effective in cardiovascular disease by lowering systolic blood pressure and heart rate; and cancer (by inducing cell death in some kinds of cancer cells, including breast, colon, ovarian, and prostate cancers).

Obviously, I had largely underestimated the importance of vitamin D supplementation. It is found in animal based foods like eggs, salmon and other seafood including cod liver oil, beef liver, and cheese; but since the researchers are showing that we need 9,000 IU/day, food sources are not enough. I now buy 5,000 IU gel caps, and recommend taking enough that your levels are close to 100 nmol/L, when tested by your doctor, especially in the winter months.

Learn more:

https://www.cheeseslave.com/how-to-get-enough-vitamin-d/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4210929/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4463890/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870528/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317188/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2426990/

Insulin Resistance

Why are so many of us overweight, and what links does obesity have to diabetes and other major disease of our time, like heart disease and cancer? Even the "experts" agree that these diseases are all linked - its called the "Metabolic Syndrome," and that insulin plays a major role.

The part that is unclear to most nutritionist and doctors is the cause and effect. Most health care professionals believe that obesity is caused by simply eating too many calories and that its the obesity itself that causes insulin problems in the body. I believe they have it backwards.

Insulin is a hormone in the body that plays many roles. Its primary job is to enable us to use glucose as fuel for our cells. It is, in fact, the only hormone that causes fat to be stored. We have insulin receptors on our cells - all cells. Heart, liver, adipose (fat), muscle, and brain all have insulin receptors that sense the presence of glucose in our blood stream, and allow the addition of GLUT4 receptors on the cell membrane to uptake the glucose into our cells.

When the body is overwhelmed by the presence of carbohydrate, the insulin receptors begin to stop being as productive. They become resistance to the presence of glucose. (Fructose as well, which is a major cause of the problem, and I'll get to that in a little bit.) Sometimes the receptors work properly, but they are unable to signal the introduction of the GLUT4 receptors that actually absorb the glucose into the cell. Either way, the body responds by releasing additional insulin from the "islets of Langerhans" cells in the pancreas. This additional release of insulin has tragic consequences.

Frequently, the first cells to become resistance to insulin, and thus become unable to use the glucose as fuel, are the muscle cells. Usually adipose tissue is less insulin resistant. So the body responds to this additional insulin by dumping fat and protein into the fat cells. See, its not even the glucose that gets stored. Many in the field of nutrition talk about glucose as being the "preferred fuel" but that doesn't make sense, as glucose is simply empty calories. The body is poisoned by the glucose because it raised blood sugar levels, which have to be kept within strict limits - between 4-6 mM. Because the body wants to be rid of the glucose, it stores the fat and protein in the blood stream for energy use after the glucose is burned off. And any excess glucose is stored as well.

Fructose is even more poisonous to the body. It only exists in the wild in very small amounts in fruit. Most fruit grows in the summer, or in tropical climates, when there is ample sunlight available to also produce large amount of vitamin D in the body. Vitamin D plays a big role in the digestions of carbohydrates and the release of insulin, although this relationship is not well understood. Fructose is digested exclusively by the liver, and has to be packaged into very-low-density-lipoproteins (VLDLs) to be carried through the blood stream. These VLDLs have strong links to heart disease. Also, the fructose often get stored in the liver, and has strong links to fatty liver and liver cirrhosis, also known as "non-alcoholic fatty liver disease." Fructose makes up half of the sugar molecule, as well as about half of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and has never been present in the human diet in the amounts seen today. Mainly this consumption comes from soda (which I call the "cigarette of the future"). There is a growing body of evidence that the fructose itself is what causes the insulin resistance in the first place, and creates the situation where the body can't effectively digest glucose.

So how do we improve our insulin sensitivity, especially in the muscle cells? How do we get our bodies to begin to use the glucose in our blood streams as fuel, rather than storing it as fat, along with the dietary fat and protein? How do we lose weight?

There are a number of things we can do. The first and most obvious, which I have written about extensively, is to cut our carbohydrates, especially sugar and other forms of fructose like HFCS and excessive fruit. A little fruit is not the problem, but it's also not the health food it's made out to be. It's meant to be eaten in the fall at harvest time, in order to store fat for winter, or eaten in tropical climates with 8 hours a day of sunlight on the skin.

In addition to vitamin D (which is needed in much larger amounts in places like Minnesota -I take 10,000 IUs a day), the other less obvious solutions include supplements of magnesium and fish oil. The long chain fatty acids in fish oil improve our cell membrane structure, and allow the body to heal from insulin resistance.

And most importantly, we can engage in a type of exercise called "interval training". This includes small periods of high heartrate-inducing exercise, followed by periods of rest. Usually about 60 seconds on, and then 75 seconds off. This is more effective than long periods of cardio, which is suspected to be hard on the heart and nervous system. It's not so much the "calories" burned by the exercise, as it is the increased insulin receptors that the exercise creates on the muscle cells. When we have additional insulin receptors on our muscle cells, our body is able to use the (small) amount of glucose that we consume as fuel, rather than only storing it and the food we eat with it, as fat. 

This not only enables us to continue to safely eat a little carbohydrate, but it helps us lose weight and improves our resistance against metabolic diseases, which are the number one killer in our society!