Nourished Magazine :: Wisdom to thrive by

In the past, my husband and I noticed we had a rougher time in winter than in Summer. Influenza, depression, money troubles and relationship problems plagued us. The frequency of these issues increased when we both began to work from home, indoors and on computers. Summer on the other hand is always explosive for business and money and our family life blooms, as does our relationship.

Deeper inquiry into this phenomenon lead me to J J Cannell and associates’ studies of Vitamin D. It seems Cannell and his team have been working with a group of psychiatric patients, experimenting with Vitamin D. Recently, a flu epidemic swept through their hospital affecting every ward except the one that was taking daily doses of the vitamin.

The Chief Medical Officer of the hospital quarantined ward after ward, but the flu continued to ’spread’. Cannell noticed that while the wards below, on either side and across the hall from his were affected, not one of his patients contracted the illness. Like all the patients in the hospital, his patients were on heavy drugs to curtail depression, psychosis and violence. They were neither younger nor obviously healthier. The only difference was, they had taken 2,000 units of Vitamin D every day for the months preceding the outbreak.

Flu epidemics are no new thing. My grandmother is terrified of the flu. Most probably because her parents lost family and friends in the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918. So many millions of people died, they couldn’t bury the bodies. “Young healthy adults, in the prime of their lives in the morning, drowning in their own inflammation by noon, grossly discolored by sunset, were dead at midnight.” says Cannell. “Their body’s own broad-spectrum natural antibiotics, called antimicrobial peptides, seemed nowhere to be found.”

Antimicrobial peptides (proteins) are produced by the body when there is an abundance of calcitriol, the steriod hormone made by the body from Vitamin D. Scientists from UCLA recently published a paper reporting that these peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection.

Dr. R. Edgar Hope-Simpson, the British researcher most famous for his discovery of the cause for shingles, was the first to document the most mysterious feature of epidemic influenza, its wintertime surfeit and summertime scarcity. It seems we are always infected with the virus, it lives in our body all year round. It is only in winter we succumb to it’s symptoms.

Hope-Simpson believed that influenza outbreaks were caused by a deficiency in the human immune system, not by a virus. Clues that tipped him off were records of flu epidemics in Great Britain during the 17th and 18th century. Long before modern transportation, epidemics spread faster than anyone could travel. Communities widely separated by longitude, but which shared similar latitude, would simultaneously develop influenza. Hope-Simpson believed that something was regularly and predictably impairing human immunity in the winter and restoring it in the summer. Could it be the sun?

This theory collaborates with Cannell’s findings as his patients are mostly African Americans with history of incarceration. How much sun have they seen in their lives? Maybe and hour a day. Dark skinned people originate from around the equator, their ancestors wore little to no clothing and spent most days outside. Statistically, the people who suffer and die from flu most are African American and elderly people. Does your grandma go skinny dipping?

What about their mental illness? Could that be related to Vitamin D deficiency from living away from the equator and wearing too many clothes? Could our culture’s penchant for modesty help explain the inordinate amount of African American (not to mention Australian Aboriginal) people in our jails and psychiatric hospitals? We will come to see the role of Vitamin D in mental health as practitioners like Cannell continue their work.

August last year was particularly gloomy for my family. We were tired of the cold weather, we had lost time and money in a business deal, we’d stopped exercising and were working way too hard. To top it off it had rained for almost 5 weeks solid. I went to North West Queensland to attend a cousin’s wedding and, bathing in the desert sun, placed a call to my husband. He said he was feeling really down, a comment I never hear from him. Intuitively I suggested he try some Cod Liver Oil. I could almost hear the face he made at my suggestion. He was force fed Cod Liver Oil as a child and couldn’t bring himself to take it at night when I lined up the kids for their dose. He decided to give it a try. Calling me a few hours later, he excitedly reported to be feeling chirpy again. We were amazed.

Pre-industrialized people tended to eat more animal food the farther from the equator they lived. The innuit thrived on a diet of fish, fish, rotten fish and a side serving of seal blubber. Not often would a vegetable pass their lips and they never ate grains. Scandinavian people, even after industrialization, had quite a lot of fish in their diet and supplemented with Cod Liver Oil. Weston A Price found people all over the world have always included Vitamin A and D in their diet in some form or another. Cultures even ate insects and traded for dried fish eggs to obtain these wonderful nutrients. He also noticed when people began to eat industrial food they became more susceptible to industrial illness, such as influenza.

Vitamin D Sources

Chris Master John, a Weston Price Chapter leader and Nutrition researcher extraordinairre, has shared these figures in the latest Wise Traditions magazine, for Vitamin D sources:

• Anglerfish Liver (100g) has 4,400 IU
• Summer Pork or Bovine Blood (1 cup) has 4,000 IU - Go the Haggis!
• High-Vitamin Cod Liver Oil (1 tbsp.) has 3,450 IU - Available through Green Pastures Australia
• Indo-Pacific Marlin (110g) 1,400 IU - These fish are endangered and top of the food chain - not recommended.
• Chum Salmon (100g) 1,300 IU
• Standard Cod Liver Oil (1 tbsp.) 1,200 IU - 2 tablespoons
• Herring (100g) 1,100 IU
• Cultured Bastard Halibut and Fatty Bluefin Tuna (100g) 720 IU
• Duck Egg 720 IU - YUM!
• Grunt and Rainbow Trout (100g) 600 IU
• Eel (100g) 200 - 560 IU - Go the Sushi!
• Cultured Red Sea Bream (100g) 520 IU
• Mackerel (100g) 345 - 440 IU
• Salmon (100g) 360 IU
• Canned Sardines (100g) 270 IU
• Chicken Egg 120 IU
• Pork Liver (100g) 50 IU
• Unfortified Summer Milk (1 liter) 40 IU
• Beef Liver (100g) 30 IU
• Pork (100g) 28 IU

Synthetic Vitamin D found in rice milk and some breads and breakfast cereals, is only half as potent as cholecalciferol (real vitamin D) and may even block some of cholecalciferol’s beneficial effects. It is more toxic and is the cause of most of the reported cases of vitamin D toxicity. Synthetic Vitamin D Analogues have been known to affect calcium homeostasis, causing hypercalcaemia.

The other source of Vitamin D is the sun. 20 minutes of full body exposure to high noon summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 IU into the circulation witin 48 hours. This can only happen though in the presence of animal fat and various enzymes and minerals and the body only stores it for a few weeks, but it is a good source none the less.

I have a friend who is a naturalist. She’s always trying to get me to one of her nudie parties. On each occasion I have declined, giggling. Next time she asks me I will probably think twice about nude cricket on the beach.

About the Author...

Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader. She loves sauerkraut, kangaroo tail stew, home made ice cream, her husband Wes and her kids Isaiah, Brynn and Ronin (in no particular order…well maybe ice cream first).