In the late 1800s most children in North America and Europe had rickets. Rickets is a terrible bone disease. The doctors told parents to have their children stay out in the sunlight to prevent this.
In 1922 while researching a cure for rickets, they discovered vitamin D. This was the cure for rickets. So rickets was caused by a vitamin D deficiency. Since then most of the research done on vitamin D was about bones.
But in recent years they have been researching vitamin D and its effects on other diseases and they have learned a great deal.
For example vitamin D helps the body get rid of toxins and toxins are associated with cancer and autism. Joe Predergast M.D. says that vitamin D increases immune system strength 3 to 5 times.
The stronger the immune system is, the better it is at preventing cancer and the flu. Vitamin D is so important to health that you do not need to get it from food. Your body can create it when you are outside in sunlight if the sunlight is strong enough.
You can look up on the internet the UV index of a certain area at a certain time. If the UV index is 3 or higher, then you can get vitamin D from sunlight.
With cancer and the flu there are many other factors but vitamin D may be the most important factor. On a video, Dr. Oz says that vitamin D causes cancer cells to commit suicide.
People have a greater chance of getting the flu during winter than in the summer. In the winter people are out in the sunshine less and are wearing more clothes that blocks sunlight.
In the summer people wear less clothes and are outside more. Please note that wearing sunscreen blocks the production of vitamin D.
Johns Hopkins website says:
Sun exposure also appears to influence a man's risk of developing prostate cancer. Research suggests that men who were born in sun-drenched areas of the United States are about half as likely to develop prostate cancer later in life as men born in an area with low sun exposure.
Harvard Medical School has an article called Time for more vitamin D. It says that it was first printed in September 2008 issue of Harvard Women's Health Watch.
It talked about a trial that was done where women were given 1,100 IU of vitamin D supplements daily for 4 years. They say that it reduced non-skin cancers by 77%!
Harvard is recommending that a study be done with 20,000 men and women and they are looking for funding for it from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But many experts say to get maximum protection from cancer, people should take around 8,000 IU daily.
The Mayo Clinic says that people taking 50,000 IU daily of vitamin D for several months has created toxic levels. So that is too much to take over that much time. They say that it is rare to have toxic levels of vitamin D.
The Vitamin D Council says that taking 40,000 IU daily of vitamin D for 2 months or longer is too much. The most accurate way to find out how much you need to take is to get your blood level of vitamin D tested by a doctor.
The Grassroots Health group says that for maximum protection against cancer people should have a blood level of vitamin D serum concentration of 60-80 ng/ml.
There is one case of death from too much vitamin D that I could find. In Canada they were putting excessive levels of vitamin D in milk by accident. One elderly lady died from drinking that milk.
Chuck Bluestein has studied natural health, nutrition, personal growth and related subjects for many years. He has also written many articles on them.
For more about the importance of vitamin D and how it affects cancer, the flu, autism and other health challenges see Cancer, Autism and Vitamin D.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Chuck_Bluestein
