Every year, at the beginning of winter, your doctors and the pharmaceutical industry create an atmosphere of fear around the flu. You hear and read reports telling you that 20,000 people (or more) die every year from the flu and you are urged to get your flu shot before they run out. What they do not tell you is that flu shots are basically worthless. What? No way! Why, then, do almost all doctors in the U.S. insist that their patient get a flu vaccination? In fact, they make you feel like a slack-jawed idiot if you refuse. It is simply too much to believe that all doctors could be wrong on something like this.

Don’t take my word for it, look at the facts. Dr. Simonson, et al. looked at the effectiveness of the flu vaccine in reducing death. What they found was that even though the percentage of people being injected with the vaccines has increased drastically over the years, the rate of “winter death” also increased. (Simonsen L, Taylor RJ, Viboud C, et al. Mortality benefits of influenza vaccination in elderly people: an ongoing controversy. Lancet Infect Dis. 2007;7:658-666.) Thus, one of the main reasons for scaring our elderly population into getting the shot is bogus. Flu shots do not reduce the risk of death in the elderly.

Additionally, the CDC estimated that this year’s flu vaccination was at the most 40% effective. What they mean by this is that only 40% of the flu cases were caused by the strains found in the vaccine. Now, NO vaccination or drug is 100% effective. What I mean is that not everyone out of the 40% was protected even though the shot did match the strain that caused their illness. So, the number of people who actually got any benefit from the flu shot was well below 4/10. Getting the flu shot is not even as good as a coin flip. You would think, by the way that these shots are promoted, that everyone gets a benefit. Now, who is the slack-jawed idiot? Is it the person pushing a less than 4/10 benefit or the person who decides to pass on the mostly worthless shot?

So, how does vitamin D fit into this story?

One of the exciting examples of how vitamin D can benefit all of us comes from a recent study where the researchers looked at the effects of vitamin D upon tuberculosis (Cutting edge: vitamin D-mediated human antimicrobial activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis is dependent on the induction of cathelicidin. J Immunol. 2007 Aug 15;179(4):2060-3.) What they found was that vitamin D regulated the expression of a molecule called “cathelicidin”. When the cells being studied were made deficient in vitamin D, the tuberculosis took over. When they increased the vitamin D to normal levels (30 ng/dl), the immune cells ended up killing the tuberculosis bacterium! This same substance, as well as other factors affected by vitamin D, has been shown to have anti-viral activity as well. Now, this brought up a very interesting question. Could vitamin D be effective against the flu virus?

The facts are very compelling. First, it has been observed that the flu only occurs during the 6 months of lowest solar activity in the northern hemispheres. In other words, this means during the winter months. Along the equator (where they get direct sunlight all year around), the flu occurs during rainy season. What this means is that the flu goes wild when our blood levels of vitamin D are at their lowest!

The implication is that if we simply supplemented people with vitamin D during the winter months, we could have a significant effect upon lowering the amount of flu we experience every year. Studies will be forthcoming to answer this question more definitively. We do not know how much vitamin D will be needed to protect from the flu acutely. The indication is that the doses could be extremely high; in the range of 100,000 IU in a single dose. However, the indications are that you will be protected from contracting the flu in the first place if you keep your blood levels at or above 30 ng/ml during the winter months. Until we get better data, I think it is prudent to increase your levels of vitamin D during the winter months. To get more information about how to supplement vitamin D read the article: Vitamin D: How To Increase Your Levels.