The Real Reason Flu Hits In Winter - And How To Stop It Naturally
Dr. Robert J. Rowen, MD 12-15-6
 For decades we've heard the myth that flu strikes in winter because of the colder weather. But numerous studies have all debunked that theory. Studies have shown that flu hits the tropics in their "winter" when it's still quite warm (usually during the rainy season).
No, there's another reason flu hits in winter. And it gives you an easy way to stop the flu before it hits. And it doesn't involve getting a flu shot.
We already know that our bodies produce a lot less vitamin D during the winter. But is it possible the reduced vitamin D levels in winter contribute to the flu?
The evidence is there. Years ago, an observant British general practitioner, R. Edgar Hope-Simpson, connected influenza epidemics in the northern hemisphere with winter solstice. So, flu hits right when vitamin D levels begin to plummet. Conventional medicine has largely ignored his work, until now.
Just this year, two major medical journals released a report written by Dr. John Cannell, a California psychiatrist at the Atascadero State Hospital in California. This is a maximum security facility for the criminally insane. In his report, Dr. Cannell noted that wards all around his got hit hard with a severe flu-like outbreak in April 2005. None of his 32 patients caught the flu - even after they mingled with infected inmates from other wards.
Dr. Cannell wondered why his ward avoided the flu when it hit all the others. He soon realized it was the high doses of vitamin D he prescribed to all the men on his ward. He had found that his patients, like most other people in the industrial world, had a deficiency. (He must be one of the very few psychiatrists that pays attention to nutrition!) His efforts to correct the deficiency boosted their immune system and completely protected them from the flu.
Why does it work? Science recently discovered that vitamin D stimulates your white blood cells to make a substance called cathelicidin. Researchers haven't studied this chemical on the flu virus yet, but they have previously reported that it attacks a wide variety of pathogens. These include fungi, viruses, bacteria, and even tuberculosis.
So, it turns out that my suggestions for you to have your vitamin D levels checked this time of year were right on target. But now, armed with this new information, I don't even think it's necessary to spend the money on a test. Vitamin D is cheap. And it stimulates your body to make what might be the ultimate antibiotic! One with no toxicity at all and only kills those organisms invading you (not your own cells).
Arm yourself with the incredible protection of vitamin D. Get sunlight when you can. Just be sure not to burn. If you are mostly indoors, I strongly suggest that you add vitamin D to your daily regimen. I recommend 5,000 IU per day. I see no downside to this dose, especially in the winter months!
Robert Jay Rowen, MD
Ref: FASEB Journal July 2006; Epidemiology and Infection, online, December 2006.
 Why Flu Epidemics Occur in Winter
Issued by John Cannell MD of the Vitamin D Council. The cure for flu epidemics right under the noses of all the bacteriologists and epidemiologists all along. Read every word. Stock your home with vitamin D3 capsules. Dismiss any and all claims that high-dose vitamin D is potentially toxic. Side
effects don't begin till 40,000 units are consumed for many months.
As we wait for this year's influenza epidemic, keep in mind we are also
waiting for the big one, the pandemic (pan: all, demic: people). A severe pandemic
will kill many more Americans than died in the World Trade Centers, the Iraq
war, the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina combined. Perhaps a
million or two in the USA alone. Such a disaster would tear the
fabric of our society. Our entire country would resemble New Orleans after Katrina.
Also, it's only a question of when it will come, not if it will come. Pandemics come every 25 years or so,
severe ones every hundred years or so. The last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu,
occurred in 1968, killing 34,000 Americans. In 1918, the Spanish flu killed
more than 500,000 Americans. So many millions died in other countries, they
couldn't bury the bodies.
The
Influenza Pandemic of 1918
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.
An overwhelming immune response to the influenza virus - macrophages releasing
large amounts of inflammatory agents called cytokines and chemokines into the
lung of the afflicted - resulted in millions of deaths in 1918. Nature. 2004 Oct 7;431(7009):703-7.
Keep in mind, that the Germans recently discovered that vitamin D is intimately involved in reining in the macrophages,
holding their cytokine production back, so they don't overshoot, and kill their owner along with the invader.
Blood. 2005 Aug 23; [Epub ahead of print]
Your annual flu shot won't help when the big one hits, the antigenic
shift one. Once the pandemic starts, a new
vaccine, specific to the new virus must be manufactured and that
takes time. You can and should get some antiviral
drugs from your doctor in advance. Once the pandemic starts –this
year, or ten years from now - the supply of antivirals may be limited and the
lines will be long.
It may surprise you that influenza
remains an enigma. Current theory holds that influenza infects like measles,
one person gets it, gives it to others, in a chain of infectious events. That
theory has some problems. For example, Dr. Carolyn Buxton Bridges, of the CDC,
recently published a review paper on the transmission of influenza. She noted,
'Our review found no human experimental studies published in the English-language
literature delineating person-to-person transmission of influenza.' Clin Infect Dis. 2003 Oct 15;37(8):1094-101
Most experts also think pandemic strains
originate in birds or other animals. Dr. Ann Reid and Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger,
of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology recently wrote, 'it is important
to recognize that the mechanisms by which pandemic strains originate have not
been explained yet.' Furthermore, there is a persistent theory that influenza
lies dormant in humans, not birds or swine, where it mutates into a killer strain. J Gen Virol. 2003 Sep;84(Pt 9):2285-92.
Vaccine. 2002 Aug 19;20(25-26):3068-87.
So, get your flu shot for this year's
flu, stock up on some antivirals, and let's go looking for some ignored
facts that might improve your family's chances when the pandemic comes.
Last month we saw that aggressive treatment of vitamin D deficiency prevented
children from getting infections. Dr. Rehman didn't differentiate between
viral and bacterial infections but most of the illnesses vitamin D prevented
were probably viral. J
Trop Pediatr. 1994 Feb;40(1):58.
When looking for ignored facts, one should always start with epidemiology, the detective branch of medicine. Epidemiologists look for clues, clues that lead to theories, theories that can be tested, and,
if true, save your family's lives. One of the world's pioneering
epidemiologists died recently, R. Edward Hope-Simpson. He used meticulous, and
solitary, detective work to discover that the chickenpox virus was reactivated
in adults, causing shingles. Dr. Hope-Simpson became famous. Proc R Soc Med. 1965 Jan;58:9-20.
In 1979, he turned his attention to
influenza A. He studied two remote populations, one in Wales and the other in
England. He found that most affected households had only one case of influenza.
Furthermore, no serial time intervals could be identified in cumulative household
outbreaks, that is, different families didn't get sick one after another,
but around the same time. He discovered other facts that just didn't fit
with the theory that influenza A is primarily spread by person-to-person transmission
of this year's virus. J
Hyg (Lond). 1979 Aug;83(1):11-26.
Then he spent the rest of his life
trying to alert us to one of the basic facts of influenza. It is distinctly
seasonal. All theories about its transmission must take into account its seasonality.
Hope-Simpson reminded us what Davenport said, 'Epidemiological hypotheses
must provide satisfactory explanations for all the known findings – not
just for a convenient subset of them.'
Going back to 1945, he discovered
that influenza epidemics above 30 degrees latitude in both hemispheres occurred
during the six months of least solar radiation. Outbreaks in the tropics almost
always occur during the rainy season. Hope-Simpson concluded, 'Latitude
alone broadly determines the timing of the epidemics in the annual cycle, a
relationship that suggests a rather direct effect of some component of solar
radiation acting positively or negatively upon the virus, the humans host or
their interaction.' That is, something may be regularly reducing our immunity
every fall and winter. J Hyg (Lond). 1981 Feb;86(1):35-47.
In 2003, researchers confirmed that
influenza epidemics in the tropics occur, with few exceptions, during the rainy
season - when vitamin D levels should be falling. Paediatr Respir Rev. 2003 Jun;4(2):105-11.
Furthermore, in his 1981 paper, Hope-Simpson
wondered how the same virus could cause influenza outbreaks at exactly the same
time (middle of winter) over a six-year period (1969 - 1974) in two widely separated
areas (Prague, Czechoslovakia, and Cirencester, England). Surely, during the
middle of the Cold War, infected people did not arrive at two locations hundreds
of miles apart, in the middle of winter, for five years in a row to infect the
well people. On thing Prague and Cirencester do have in common, they are both
at 50 degrees latitude.
In 1990, researchers confirmed a relative
lack of country-to-country transmission, by looking at two countries with heavy
tourist traffic between them. J Hyg Epidemiol Microbiol Immunol. 1990;34(3):283-8
Hope-Simpson rejected the theory that
this year's virus is only transmitted from actively infected persons to
well persons, concluding instead the facts were more consistent with transmission
by symptomless carriers who become contagious when the sun is either in the
other hemisphere or obscured by the rainy season. He theorized that annual movement
of the sun caused a 'seasonal stimulus that reactivates latent virus in
the innumerable carriers who are everywhere present, so creating the opportunity
for epidemics to occur in the wake of its passage.' And thus the celebrated
scientist committed heresy.
Everyone knows influenza transmission is direct; the ill people infect the well
people. The accepted theory of pandemics is that the virus first spreads in
birds, perhaps jumps to a mammal (pigs in 1918), then jumps to humans already
infected with a common influenza strain. There it combines and mutates (reassortment)
to a hybrid virus in the index case and that single person spreads it to others
who spread it to others, etc. No, said Hope-Simpson, the epidemiology just does
not fit that theory. Heresy, said the experts.
Hope-Simpson practiced medicine in
a small village in southwest England, Cirencester. He went back and looked at
16 years of his medical records and found evidence of 20 influenza outbreaks,
spaced over those 16 years. In every outbreak, he found young children were
the most frequently affected but in none of the 20 outbreaks did the children
appear to be major disseminators of the influenza virus. Furthermore, all ages
seemed to get sick around the same time. He concluded, 'Such age-patterns
are not those caused by a highly infectious immunizing virus surviving by means
of direct transmissions from the sick, whose prompt development of the disease
continues endless chains of transmissions.' J Hyg (Lond). 1984 Jun;92(3):303-36.
No one listened. Everyone knew, and
still knows: influenza only occurs when sick people infect well people, who
in turn infect other well people. I don't think so, said Hope-Simpson.
In search of more evidence, he went to all the parishes in Gloucestershire,
separated by many miles. He looked at burial records for the last 500 years
and found evidence of repeated influenza epidemics. He concluded, 'In each
century, influenzal excess mortalities in Gloucestershire parishes coincided
with the date of the relevant influenza epidemic as recorded from widely different
parts of Britain.' That is, long before modern rapid transit, everyone
in Britain got the flu around the same time! How could one person come down
with the flu, infect others, etc, when everyone in Britain got sick at the same
time, long before modern rapid transit? J Hyg (Lond). 1983 Oct;91(2):293-308.
In fact, after studying influenza
epidemics in schools, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe also decided that direct spread
by infected children could not explain what was happening. They theorized that
influenza viral precursors were reaching earth from outer space! Nature.
1987 Jun 25-Jul 1;327(6124):664.
Content to stay on earth, Hope-Simpson
published a detailed theory of influenza's infectivity in 1987, based
on the facts he observed. Right or wrong, Hope-Simpson's paper is wonderful
reading for anyone interested in influenza. Here is a great mind at work. He
noted any theory of influenza must explain a number of facts:
'Vast explosions of disease which may attack 15% or more of a large community
within six weeks and then cease,' 'Successive outbreaks of type A
influenza in small relatively remote communities often coincide closely season
after season with those of the country as a whole and, although the virus changes,
the identical strains of virus appear contemporaneously in the two situations,'
'Cessation of epidemics despite abundant available non-immune subjects,'
household outbreaks occur all at once, not one after another, 'Low secondary
attack rates within households,' 'epidemic patterns of influenza have
not changed in four centuries . . . and does not seem to have altered with the
increasing speed and complexity of human communications.' Epidemiol Infect. 1987 Aug;99(1):5-54.
Hope Simpson proposed that symptomless
carriers became infective in response to a seasonal stimulus and then infect
others causing simultaneous explosions of disease in widely different areas.
Furthermore, he concluded that those who got sick were not particularly contagious.
He proposed that the stimulus for infection 'is dependent on variations
in solar radiation, an extraterrestrial influence unaffected by the rapidity
of human travel. The rapidity of influenza spread was as rapid in previous centuries
as it is at present because it does not depend on case-to-case transfer.'
He added, 'The primary agency mediating seasonal control remains unidentified.'
That is, something is weakening our immune system, every year, as regularly
as changing of the leaves and declining vitamin D levels, but he didn't
know what it was. Hope-Simpson's 1987 paper was his last. In 1992, he
compiled all his work on influenza into a book. He died in 2003, at the age
of 95.
The
Transmission of Epidemic Influenza (The Language of Science)
I wish Hope-Simpson could have lived a while longer, to read Dr. Colleen Hayes
and her colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is one of the
brightest vitamin D researchers out there. In 2003, she reviewed the profound
effect vitamin D has on the immune system, including the role vitamin D plays
in fighting infections. Cell Mol Biol (Noisy-le-grand). 2003 Mar;49(2):277-300.
Yes, as regularly as the flu season,
vitamin D levels plummet in the fall and winter. Yes, vitamin D has profound
effects on the immune system. Yes vitamin D may be involved in the epidemiology
of influenza. But is there any direct evidence?
Two animal studies showed vitamin D prevents the flu and one showed it does
not. Nothing after 1956. If you obtain and read the first citation below, you'll
see the very first animal paper indicting vitamin D protected rats from influenza
was published in Japan during World War II, apparently part of Japan's
biological weapons research. The CIA confiscated the paper after the war.
Proc Soc Exp Biol Med. 1949 Dec;72(3):695-7.
Virology.
1956 Jun;2(3):415-29.
One last thing, when you give flu
shots to hemodialysis patients, those taking activated vitamin D develop significantly
better immunity. Nephron.
2000 Sep;86(1):56-61.
Will normal vitamin D levels protect
your family against the flu? No one knows. It would be nice if we had a report
from a big hospital, were some patients were on vitamin D and some who weren't
and see what happened when the flu struck the hospital. Were the patients on
vitamin D less likely to get the flu?
In the meantime, it seems to me the
smart thing to do is to take enough real vitamin D (cholecalciferol) or get
enough sunlight to get and keep your 25-hydroxy-vitamin D level at about 50 ng/ml. Of course, it is a good idea to keep your level around 50 ng/ml year around even if you
don't fear the coming influenza pandemic. 50 ng/ml is the normal human
level and protects the owner from a myriad of chronic diseases. J
Nutr. 2005 Feb;135(2):317-22.
Eur J Clin Invest. 2005 May;35(5):290-304.
Also, don't depend on high levels
in the summer being stored and used in the winter. Vieth believes that the intracellular
kinetics of vitamin D metabolism means that declining vitamin D blood levels
may cause rapidly declining intracellular levels. That is, declining levels
in the autumn may be as dangerous as low levels in the winter. Int J Cancer. 2004 Sep 1;111(3):468
Professor Robert Heaney believes healthy
blood levels may require up to 4,000 units a day for those with no sun exposure.
Most people need to take more in the winter than the summer. Big people need
more than little people. African Americans need more than whites. Sunphobes
need more than those who enjoy God's invention. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2005 Jul 15
Children over 50 pounds need up to
2,000 units a day. Under 50 pounds, about 1,000 units a day. There is no way
to know for sure how much you need without a blood test, called a 25-hydroxy-vitamin
D. That test should be conducted in the late winter, when your levels are the
lowest, and at the beginning of fall, when your levels are the highest. Then
you can figure out how much you need to take to keep stable levels. Or adults
can simply take 4,000 units a day, every day, except for those late spring,
summer, and early fall days when you go into the sun.
John Cannell, MD
The Vitamin D Council
9100 San Gregorio Road
Atascadero, CA 93422
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