I guess our hospital was under luckier stars as only about 12% of our patients were infected and no one died. However, as the epidemic progressed,
I noticed something unusual. First, the ward below mine was infected, and then the ward on my right, left, and across the hall - but no patients on my
ward became ill. My patients had intermingled with patients from infected wards before the quarantines. The nurses on my unit cross-covered on
infected wards. Surely, my patients were exposed to the influenza A virus. How did my patients escape infection from what some think is the most
infectious of all the respiratory viruses?
A short while later, 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.
www.medicalnewstoday.com...
This is a very interesting article. I am convinced there is a cure for naturally occurring viruses as we are intricately woven together w/nature.
Life is simple and we depend upon one another. Read this:
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.
www.medicalnewstoday.com...
The “flu” and the “cold” are winter time illinesses when we have less exposure to the sun hence less Vitamin D.
What do you think about the source of Vitamin D from pills!
I appreciate your input to questions posed:
. 1. Why the flu predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest,1. Why the flu
predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest,
2. Why it disappears in the months following the summer solstice,
3. Why influenza is more common in the tropics during the rainy season,
4. Why the cold and rainy weather associated with El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which drives people indoors and lowers vitamin D blood levels,
is associated with influenza,
5. Why the incidence of influenza is inversely correlated with outdoor temperatures,
6. Why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds,
7. Why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections,
8. Why Russian scientists found that vitamin D-producing UVB lamps reduced colds and flu in schoolchildren and factory workers,
9. Why Russian scientists found that volunteers, deliberately infected with a weakened flu virus - first in the summer and then again in the winter -
show significantly different clinical courses in the different seasons,
10. Why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin D consumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter,
11. Why children with vitamin D deficiency and rickets suffer from frequent respiratory infections,
12. Why an observant physician (Rehman), who gave high doses of vitamin D to children who were constantly sick from colds and the flu, found the
treated children were suddenly free from infection,
13. Why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heart attacks in the winter rather than in the summer,
14. Why African Americans, with their low vitamin D blood levels, are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than Whites are
www.vitamindcouncil.com...
[edit on 5-5-2009 by musselwhite]
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