I am seeing a lot more multiple sclerosis patients than I did 20 years ago. And I am not the only one. Some studies suggest the number of people with MS has tripled in the last 60 years. So doctors around the country are seeing more cases. But, more importantly, this means you are at a far greater risk of developing MS than your parents were.
In case you are not familiar with MS, its a chronic degenerative condition of the central nervous system. It leads to blindness, paralysis, incontinence, and disability. The disease progresses very differently from person to person. Regardless of the speed of progression, its scary to lose any function of your nervous system. And this is another case where conventional treatments are mostly ineffective. So prevention beats treatment by miles.
Fortunately, once you understand some facts about MS, you will see that there is a fairly easy way to prevent the disease.
One of the most striking things about MS is that its incidence goes up the further away you get from the equator. A low latitude (near the equator) means more high intensity sunlight. This type of sunlight provides more UV-B energy. As you go to higher latitudes, say the 42-degree latitude of Boston, the atmosphere absorbs more UV-B. There not as much left to enter your skin when the sun is low in winter. In fact, for months at that latitude, your body cant produce any vitamin D at all – even if you ran around naked in Bostons clammy winter weather.
Even armed with this knowledge for years, medicine has never had a prospective controlled study on vitamin D and MS. I cant answer why for you, but my hunch is that Big Pharma could not make money on a nutrient from sunlight.
Perhaps scientists were wedded to vitamin D only relating to calcium. Once its dogma that a nutrient does one thing, they stop looking for what else it might do.
But vitamin D is not just for calcium, as I have repeatedly reported. It has burst forth as an ultimate immune enhancer. So it only makes sense that the link to high latitude and MS is directly related to vitamin D. But proof is in studying vitamin D serum levels and relating those levels to future development of the disease.
That is exactly what a team headed by Kassandra Munger, MSc and largely funded by the National Institutes of Health was able to do with the help of the U.S. military. The team had access to more than seven million U.S. service personnel blood samples that were obtained at the time of enlistment and stored in a repository.
Sifting through these military records, the team was able to identify 515 potential cases of MS that developed between 1992-2004. They further refined their data to 315 definite cases that had at least one serum sample stored prior to onset of the illness. Then they divided them up so they had two control groups.
The researchers found a 41% decrease in MS risk for every 50 nmol rise in serum vitamin D. MS risk was greatest in those in the lowest 20% of serum vitamin D concentration and lowest in the top 20% of vitamin D concentration. There was an insignificant reduction in risk in levels between 75-100nmol/L. But above 100nmol/L there was a 51% risk reduction.
The researchers further peered into the crucial period of adolescence for vitamin D deficiency. They were able to find enough samples taken before age 20 to show that deficiency at that age greatly magnifies risk. They also analyzed to see if it was MS that was causing the vitamin D deficiency and not the other way around. They were satisfied that vitamin D was the cause.
There are fine points of the study that warrant your attention and confirm my previous reports. Traditionally, orthodox medicine looks at the reference range to tell you if you are deficient or in excess. The reference range of vitamin D is 20-100 nmol/L. Earlier this year, a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition strongly supported optimal levels at the very top of that range (90-100). These levels offered the best protection against periodontal disease, falling, and osteoporosis.
In the MS study, almost everyone was above the lower 20 threshold. Obviously, that lower figure is dead wrong. The authors indicated that the most significant MS protection kicked in where levels were 99 or more! And, higher levels earlier in life may be more important than later. We know that adequate levels of vitamin D in infancy protect against type-1 diabetes, which many consider to be an autoimmune disease.
Likewise, most doctors believe MS is an autoimmune disease. However, Ive made it clear in past articles that I do not believe in the concept of autoimmune diseases. I feel that the term is a misnomer. God did not make your body to attack itself. Its more likely your body inadvertently damages your own tissues in its effort to fight an infection.
And this explains why vitamin D can fight so many different illnesses. All of my mentors taught me that auto immune diseases are the result of an infection. And vitamin D is an ideal anti-infective that helps maintain a healthy immune system. We know that periodontal disease is a bacterial infection. Juvenile diabetes is tied to infection. I strongly believe that researchers will one day tie MS to an infection. These infections can get established years before you see any symptoms. Susceptibility in large part is due to inadequate vitamin D protection.
The study authors admit that supplemental vitamin D may be necessary since half of the white and two-thirds of the black population in the U.S. has levels less than 70 nmol/L.
Yet they close the study by saying, Meanwhile, use of vitamin D supplements for MS prevention should not be undertaken until efficacy is proven. What? If there is no toxicity at these levels, why should not you take it?
That same mentality was shown toward vitamin C and all the other supplemental nutrients. Study after study shows that the accepted levels of nutrients are not enough for your body to perform at its maximum level. But even the orthodox authors who prove these facts way too late to prevent what has already occurred, still wont get their heads out of the sand. They want more studies to cover their behinds. Meanwhile, diseases occur that could have been prevented. How many more cases of MS will it take before a very safe vitamin will be encouraged for a population that is sorely deficient?
The researchers in this new study flatly stated that the average person needs more than 1,000 IU (40 mcg) of vitamin D to bring the blood concentration of the vitamin to 75 nmol/L in at least half the population. And that is only in half!
My position? Even 75 nmol/L is not enough. Another study, this one in the Journal of the American Medical Association, points to a level of 90 nmol/L for ideal MS prevention. There is no known toxicity to vitamin D in levels up to 5,000 IU daily. And if you were running around au-natural in the tropics, your body would generate up to 10,000 IU or much more per day. And that amount never causes toxicity.
Please get your vitamin D level checked (25 hydroxy vitamin D), especially during the season of low sunlight. Check it even if you are taking supplemental vitamin D. Try to get your levels up over 90 nmol/L; 75nmol/L is a bare minimum in my book. Vitamin D is not just about MS, but a host of other well-established benefits, from hypertension and infection to cancer and osteoporosis protection.
If you do not want to spend the money to have the test done, consider taking 5,000 units daily as a supplement. I just cant see how you can go wrong. The 400 IU offered in most multiple vitamins is now proven to be a paltry dose. And make sure you take vitamin D3, not vitamin D2. Vitamin D2 is synthetic and is not absorbed as well.
You can find vitamin D3 in most health food stores. But my favorite brands are available directly from the company. Healthy Resolve now carries 5,000 unit Vitamin D3. Its lanolin-sourced, which I prefer. To order, call 800-728-2288. Another good product is BioTechs D3 (800-345-1199).
Ref: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 84, no. 1, 18-28, July 2006; JAMA, December 20, 2006.