Sunshine is necessary to develop immunity - watsupptoday.com
Sunshine is necessary to develop immunity
Posted 05 Aug 2020 05:03 PM


Watsupptoday Desk


Vitamin D has proven to be a prophylactic in the fight against Covid-19.

While science is at work to create a vaccine or protocols to control Sars-CoV-2, a marketplace has arisen of substances and foods that claim to promote �resistance� and �immunity�.

The journal Nutrition of the Swiss research publishing group, MDPI carries a paper by the Boston University School of Medicine and the department of medicine, Mahidol University, Bangkok which goes into the mechanism of the immune reaction and how it could be influenced. And, apart from several physiological benefits of adequate Vitamin D, the paper reports a positive indication that the vitamin could protect people from Covid -19.


The immune reaction of the body is brought about mainly by white blood cells, or lymphocytes, which arise in the bone marrow. Cells called monocytes lead to bodies called macrophages, which destroy particles or organisms that do not match cells that are native to the body, and this is the innate immune system. Monocytes also give rise to the adaptive immune system, through the dendritic cells, or Antigen Presenting Cells, that identify and hold out the active features of the virus to other cells.

The T helper cells carry this information to B cells, which give rise to antibodies, or agents that can attach to the features of the viruses and deactivate them. In short, there is a well-oiled system of identifying invaders and generating agents that can keep them under control.

The template of antibodies against an infection can stay, as a memory, for very quick action if the invader should come again � what we call acquired immunity. The interesting thing about these different cells of the immune system is that they all have surface features, or receptors, which enable them to attach to Vitamin D.

And then, there is recorded evidence that low levels of Vitamin D are associated with conditions that are the result of tepid immune response to infection, or excessive response, to the body�s own cells, as in �auto-immune� diseases. Vitamin D is thus found both to enable immune cells to act against invaders as well as to restrain their action against the body�s own cells � making it an immunoregulatory hormone.

Vitamin D, in its useful form, is called a hormone because it is the kidneys that convert Vitamin D that the skin generates when exposed to sunlight, or we take as supplements, into the active form that regulates body functions. As for sources of Vitamin D, very few foods are sources � eggs, oily fish do contain the vitamin, but not in great quantities.

The practical source is only the action of UV light from the sun, on the skin. When UV light falls on the skin, there is instantaneous generation of Vitamin D, which gets transported by the bloodstream to the kidneys, where it changes to the active form. Ninety percent of our vitamin D comes from exposure to sunlight, the paper says. A well-known function of Vitamin D is to help absorption of calcium and phosphorus, for healthy bones, and for over a century, Vitamin D supplements have been prescribed to prevent Rickets and bandy legs in children.

Influenza in the northern hemisphere, for instance, is known to peak during the winter months, when nights are long and daytime sunlight is feeble. It is also known with more waking hours spent indoors, the incidence of bone related ailments has increased.


As for tuberculosis, the instances described are rheumatoid arthritis, sepsis and respiratory illness, influenza, whose incidence increases with Vitamin D deficiency.

In the case of Covid-19, it is still early to establish a connection. But what we do know is that in the US, there are disproportionately more cases of Covid-19 among black Americans and among those who are obese. Now, the incidence of Vitamin D deficiency is the highest, in the US, among black Americans, at 82 per cent. In this category at any rate, there is a clear correlation with Covid-19 and the Vitamin D level.

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