Skip to main content

Sunshine Vitamin - the New- age Immune Booster

Image
By
Vitamin D, also called the sunshine vitamin, and considered for decades to be needed only for the health of our bones, is emerging as an essential enhancer of our body’s immune system. Recent research findings are increasingly ascribing a key immune- boosting role for this vitamin.

Scientists were surprised to find that patients of tuberculosis undergoing treatment with anti-tubercular medicines cleared their infection faster, and recovered earlier when given Vitamin D in addition.

The research, conducted in England, showed that recovery was almost two weeks faster when vitamin D was added with the infection clearing in 23 days on average, compared with 36 days if they were given antibiotics alone.

Dr Adrian Martineau, from Queen Mary University of London, said "This isn't going to replace antibiotics, but it may be a useful extra weapon, andthere could be an even greater role in preventing the disease.

One in three people have low levels of tuberculosis bacteria in their lungs and have no symptoms, known as latent tuberculosis. However, this turns to full blown TB in about 10% of people. Prof Davies's idea is that giving vitamin D supplements, for example in milk, could prevent latent TB developing.

The idea of using vitamin D to treat tuberculosis (TB) harks back to early times. Before antibiotics were discovered, TB patients were prescribed "forced sunbathing", known as heliotherapy which increased vitamin D production. Many returned cured after a few months of sun bathing in the hills. However, the treatment disappeared when antibiotics proved successful at treating the disease.

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin which can provide for the body's needs in one of two ways...through the action of sunlight on the skin, or through the major food sources of cod liver oil, cold-water fish, butter, and egg yolks.  When the sun shines on the skin, the ultraviolet rays activate a form of cholesterol which is present in the skin, converting it to Vitamin D.  Because the body can provide sufficient Vitamin D to meet its needs simply through exposure to sunlight, it is called the “Sunshine Vitamin”
Vitamin D is needed to stimulate the absorption of calcium.  A Vitamin D deficiency causes rickets in children, and osteomalacia in adults.

It is now known that Vitamin D plays a huge part in boosting the immune system.  One of the best ways to prevent colds, flu, cancer, or any chronic disease is with Vitamin D.  In order to correct the deficiency condition which most people have but don't know they have, 5,000 IU's a day are necessary.   After taking this much for about a month, you will have filled your need for Vitamin D for normal daily processes, and then some of the deeper needs can be filled. 

It is a pity that we do not use the abundant sunshine adequately and keep ourselves toned, fit and boosted!

As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 10th February, 2013.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Uberification of Health Care

By
The imaginative concept of matching transportation demands of people with cab facilities using a smartphone platform that Uber is credited to having created is now beginning to be applied to health care as well. At the outset, let me share with you what I understand of Uber. It is an on-line transportation company that develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to connect with Uber drivers through a software platform for taxi service. Uber itself does not own any assets such as cars, or hire the drivers. Uber was founded by Tavis Kalanick and Garrett Camp as recently as 2009 in San Francisco, but the impact and success of this “start up” has reverberated across the world, being now valued at US $ 62.5 billion. Fresh successful ideas in one domain often tickle the minds of entrepreneurs in other fields. Healthcare experts are now trying to explore if they can bring about a revolution in their sector as well. The proposition se...
Post a Comment
Read more