Dr. Stengler reviews a large trial demonstrating that vitamin D supplementation reduces the risk of acute respiratory tract infections.
Hi. I'm Dr. Mark Stengler naturopathic medical doctor.
And today I want to talk you about something very timely and that is the association between vitamin D deficiency and the use of vitamin D supplementation and acute respiratory tract infections.
A two thousand published article if you will in the British Medical Journal reviewed the published literature involving 25 trials and more than 11000 people on use of vitamin D supplements to prevent acute respiratory tract infections. And this is what the authors concluded. They conclude that vitamin D supplementation was safe and it protected against acute respiratory tract infections. Now the people who are more deficient, had better results, but nevertheless overall, they found there was benefit. Even for people who weren't, or who didn't have a major vitamin D deficiency. And there's reasons for this because vitamin D has been shown in multiple studies to enhance the immune response against pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. It enhances your white blood cell count, specialized properties of your immune system which fight these germs so to speak. As well vitamin D is anti inflammatory, and so, vitamin D is actually a hormone in the body. When you take it as a supplement, it acts like a hormone in the body. It's a messenger. It actually acts on the DNA in your cells to carry out certain processes which help your immune system. And so you have receptors on immune cells and other areas of the body which help with their proper immune response.
With my patients normally in the winter time, adults, most people are using around five thousand units daily. You take with a meal. Some people need a little bit less. Two thousand. Some people need more. Really the best is blood work on blood work. Usually the range on most labs is about 30 to 100. So we're shooting for people would be about 50 maybe a little bit higher. The optimal dose no one really knows but I think 50 and a little bit higher is it is a good marker to shoot for. So, if you're the kind of person not getting a lot of sunshine during the week, if you're using a lot of sunscreen, if you have a history of vitamin
D deficiency No it appears that being vitamin D deficient may predispose you to acute respiratory tract infections. Now on the other hand like this large trial showed vitamin D supplementation appears to be protective against acute respiratory tract infections. For more information go to MarkStengler.com, there we have a lot of free articles and videos on how to enhance your immune system naturally as well as all the other common conditions what you can do nutritionally and using integrative medicine.
