Although vitamin C & zinc have historically received most of the press regarding their ability to help resist cold and flu, Vitamin D is the big winner here.  In fact recent studies have shown that people with the lowest vitamin D levels are often the most susceptible to colds and flu.

“The findings of our study support an important role for vitamin D in prevention of common respiratory infections, such as colds and the flu,” says researcher Adit Ginde, MD, MPH, of the University of Colorado, Denver, Division of Emergency Medicine, in a news release. “Individuals with common lung diseases, such as asthma or emphysema, may be particularly susceptible to respiratory infections from vitamin D deficiency.”

“We are planning clinical trials to test the effectiveness of vitamin D to boost immunity and fight respiratory infection, with a focus on individuals with asthma and COPD, as well as children and older adults — groups that are at higher risk for more severe illness,” Ginde says. “While it’s too early to make any definitive recommendations, many Americans also need more vitamin D for its bone and general health benefits.”

A group of scientists from UCLA published a remarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA group confirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturally occurring steroid hormone – a hormone most of us take for granted – was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killing bacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increases the body’s production of a remarkable class of proteins, called antimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showed these remarkable antibiotic properties was plain old vitamin D.

A few years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in the vitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it’s the only known precursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activated vitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors in enzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D – like all steroid hormones – damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as your body requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic expression in hundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as many potential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks.

Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normal human diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day if you feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmon for dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that much fish are peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes of latitude. The milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D contains no naturally occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. government requires fortified milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but only with what we now know to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounce glass.

The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don’t expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements.

The third way vitamin D is different from other vitamins is the dramatic difference between natural vitamin D nutrition and the modern one. Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that’s the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as “Adequate Intake.” It’s what we call an “order of magnitude” difference.

Our advice – get tested to check vitamin D levels in your body.  Take vitamin D supplements derived from natural sources.  Last and certainly not least, get 20/40 minuits of exposure to sunlight daily.  For more information Click Here about vitamin D supplementation.

This simplistic yet sound advice is more applicable today than ever before.  It has been reported that thousands of  people in America alone have been infected with the H1N1 (Swine Flu) Virus.  There is however a greater danger lurking in the darkness that is receiving very little press.

According to the National Institutes of Health, over the past forty years, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA – “flesh eating” Pneumonia)) has changed from a usually controllable nuisance into a serious public health problem.  It is believed that the over use of antibiotics has caused this mutation and subsequently created an antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  In a paper published in the June (09) addition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases a type pf pneumonia is discussed that has proved fatal in 75% of reported cases.  At first, it was primarily one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. But in recent years, new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, often dubbed “super bugs”, have popped up in communities and caused severe, even life-threatening infections in otherwise healthy people, involving the skin, heart, blood or bones.  The weakening of the immune system by the H1N1 virus has made people particularly susceptible to the CA-MRSA virus.  Since CA-MRSA  is a community acquired virus it is best to avoid hospitals at all costs if you have been effected by the H1N1 virus or any other malady that may have weakened your immune system.

Doctors at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta write in The Lancet Infectious Diseases article that CA-MRSA has become well known for causing skin and soft-tissue infections that are transmitted by person-to-person contact or contact with contaminated objects. However, now there are increasing cases of CA-MRSA caused pneumonia that kills lung tissue. And those becoming sick with the disease aren’t necessarily the old and/or physically weak. In fact, according to the report from the Emory team led by Alicia Hidron, MD, an infectious diseases fellow and Henry Blumberg, MD, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Emory, CA-MRSA pneumonia appears to most commonly affect young and previously healthy patients.

Dr. Hidron and Dr. Blumberg also noted in their paper that, besides causing a high fever, CA-MRSA pneumonia can sometimes cause low blood pressure that progresses to septic shock and requires patients to be placed on mechanical respirators in order to breathe. Another important point discussed in the article may turn out to have special relevance due to the emergence of H1N1 influenza, especially by the time flu season rolls around this fall: potentially deadly CA-MRSA pneumonia appears to occur most commonly following a flu-type illness.

Serious MRSA disease can strike anyone, regardless of age, health or where they live. Outbreaks have occurred among young athletes who play contact sports and among people living in close quarters, such as nursing homes, military facilities, nursing homes, and childcare centers.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases advises using these precautions to help prevent CA-MRSA infections:

Practice good hygiene.
Keep cuts and scrapes clean and bandage until healed.
Avoid contact with other people’s wounds or bandages.
Don’t share soiled or used personal items, such as towels, washcloths, razors, or clothes.
Use hot water and bleach to wash soiled sheets, towels and clothes.

Zradical – Is the only liquid beverage on the market with pure fucoidan using a proprietary cold water vaccum extraction, Zradical supports the immune system, helps joint function, improves healthy cell maintenance.

About 4 percent of the total dry weight of many types of brown seaweed consists of a polysaccharide known as Fucoidan.  Fucoidan is a sulfated polysaccharide that possesses a complex structure.  Its chief components include a sulfuric esterified L-fucose, and the trace elements of galactose, xylose, and glucuronic acid.

Japanese researchers discovered that a polysaccharide known as Fucoidan found in kombu and other types of brown seaweed (wakame, mozuku, and hijiki), causes various types of established cancer cell lines to self-destruct.  Examples of cancer cell strains where this self-destruct phenomenon was observed include human acute promyelocytic leukemia cells (HL-60 cell line), human stomach cancer cells (AGS cell line), human colon cancer cells (HCT-116 cell line), and cancer cells of the descending colon (SW-480 cell line/WiDr cell line).  Moreover, this self-destruction was observed to take place without affecting normal cells.  Currently, efforts are underway to clarify the precise mechanism by which this phenomenon occurs.

From ancient times (dating from the Jomon era, approximately before the 2nd Century BC onwards), brown seaweed has been a mainstay of the traditional Japanese diet.  The inhabitants of Okinawa, Japan enjoy some of the highest life expectancies in Japan.  Okinawans happen to have one of the highest per capita consumption rates of kombu — 1 gram per person per day.  It is noteworthy that the cancer death rate in Okinawa is the lowest of all the prefectures in Japan.

The average per capita consumption rate of kombu in Japan is approximately 0.5 grams per day.  Such a serving of kombu would include roughly 5 mg of Fucoidan.  In vivo experiments are currently underway to determine the effects of Fucoidan within living organisms.  If it is confirmed that Fucoidan can help bring about apoptosis solely in cancer cells that are multiplying at uncontrolled rates, we would then have within our reach the long-dreamed-of cancer drug — one that does its job without causing adverse side effects.

1. Hepatology Research, Volume 35, Issue 3, Pages 190-198
A. Saito, M. Yoneda, S. Yokohama, M. Okada, M. Haneda, K. Nakamura

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