Vegetables: Staying healthy in flu season
We've got sick people all around us right now - Chelsea is surrounded by little germ machines at work, and Maria is home from school today with a fever. Nick was felled by a bug (possibly H1N1) that kept him home from school for several days a few weeks ago.
Chels and I saw some research the other day about the role Vitamin D can play in strengthening immunity, particularly against the flu. Here's an item from earlier this year that was posted in the "60 Second Science" blog at Scientific American:
"People with the worst vitamin D deficiency were 36 percent more likely to suffer respiratory infections than those with sufficient levels, according to the research in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine. Among asthmatics, those who were vitamin D deficient were five times more likely to get sick than their counterparts with healthy levels. And the risk of respiratory infection was twice as high among vitamin D-deficient patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than in lung patients with normal levels of the vitamin. ...
"Lab work has shown that lack of vitamin D is associated with weaker production of an antimicrobial peptide called hCAP-18, a protein that works with immune-system cells to kill pathogens. 'We think that if you're exposed to a virus [and] you have sufficient vitamin D, those cells will be better equipped to fight off that organism so you don’t get an infection,' says Ginde, an assistant professor of surgery in his university's department of emergency medicine. In people with vitamin D deficiency, it's possible that 'those cells don’t work as well so you're more like to get a cold or infection or something more severe.'"
Vitamin D, of course, is that funky one that gets produced in your skin when you're exposed to the sun. What intrigued us most was this observation about the relationship between flu epidemiology and solar radiation:
"For whatever reason, in temperate areas such as North America, flu largely is a fall and winter phenomenon.
"A couple of theories have tried to explain that seasonality, but in recent years an intriguing new idea has emerged:
"Levels of flu-fighting vitamin D reach their lowest point in the winter when ultraviolet light disappears.
"Vitamin D, which is made in large amounts in the skin when it is exposed to solar radiation, is a hormone that regulates hundreds of genes. Some of those involve the body's innate immunity and its defenses against viruses, especially those affecting the respiratory system.
"The idea is that if people increased their levels of vitamin D, it might help ward off outbreaks of flu.
"For as far back as records exist, flu outbreaks have occurred around the planet when solar radiation was at its lowest. No one has been able to say why.
"'It virtually disappears in the summer in temperate climates,' said William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. 'In the tropics it kind of smolders all year long. Its seasonality is not nearly as pronounced.'"
Since H1N1 seems to have a respiratory spin to it, and since we live in a part of the world where the phrase "winter sunbathing" would be the punch line of a joke, we're now taking Vitamin D supplements to see if we can ward off The Big Bad Bug.
Chels and I saw some research the other day about the role Vitamin D can play in strengthening immunity, particularly against the flu. Here's an item from earlier this year that was posted in the "60 Second Science" blog at Scientific American:
"People with the worst vitamin D deficiency were 36 percent more likely to suffer respiratory infections than those with sufficient levels, according to the research in this week's Archives of Internal Medicine. Among asthmatics, those who were vitamin D deficient were five times more likely to get sick than their counterparts with healthy levels. And the risk of respiratory infection was twice as high among vitamin D-deficient patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) than in lung patients with normal levels of the vitamin. ...
"Lab work has shown that lack of vitamin D is associated with weaker production of an antimicrobial peptide called hCAP-18, a protein that works with immune-system cells to kill pathogens. 'We think that if you're exposed to a virus [and] you have sufficient vitamin D, those cells will be better equipped to fight off that organism so you don’t get an infection,' says Ginde, an assistant professor of surgery in his university's department of emergency medicine. In people with vitamin D deficiency, it's possible that 'those cells don’t work as well so you're more like to get a cold or infection or something more severe.'"
Vitamin D, of course, is that funky one that gets produced in your skin when you're exposed to the sun. What intrigued us most was this observation about the relationship between flu epidemiology and solar radiation:
"For whatever reason, in temperate areas such as North America, flu largely is a fall and winter phenomenon.
"A couple of theories have tried to explain that seasonality, but in recent years an intriguing new idea has emerged:
"Levels of flu-fighting vitamin D reach their lowest point in the winter when ultraviolet light disappears.
"Vitamin D, which is made in large amounts in the skin when it is exposed to solar radiation, is a hormone that regulates hundreds of genes. Some of those involve the body's innate immunity and its defenses against viruses, especially those affecting the respiratory system.
"The idea is that if people increased their levels of vitamin D, it might help ward off outbreaks of flu.
"For as far back as records exist, flu outbreaks have occurred around the planet when solar radiation was at its lowest. No one has been able to say why.
"'It virtually disappears in the summer in temperate climates,' said William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. 'In the tropics it kind of smolders all year long. Its seasonality is not nearly as pronounced.'"
Since H1N1 seems to have a respiratory spin to it, and since we live in a part of the world where the phrase "winter sunbathing" would be the punch line of a joke, we're now taking Vitamin D supplements to see if we can ward off The Big Bad Bug.
