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How can you strengthen your immune system? How can you naturally prevent getting sick from Covid? What are the natural remedies that can help us to get through the winter months healthy?
What is this mysterious healer I am talking about? The answer is Vitamine D. But unlike its name suggests Vitamine D is not a vitamin. It instead belongs to the group of fat-soluble steroid hormones. Vitamins are characterized by their need to be taken in through our diet because the body is not able to make these compounds by itself. Vitamin D on the other hand is produced in our skin when hit by the sun. As a general rule, we can say that about 10% of our Vitamine D comes from our diet and 90% is synthesized in the skin. When UVB radiation of the sun hit our skin they interact with a form of cholesterol and convert it into Vitamin D.
It then moves through the bloodstream to the liver where it gets converted for the first time. From there it travels to the kidney to get converted into the form the body can actually use. This gives us an important clue: If we take Vitamin D in supplement form, especially during the winter in the northern hemisphere we often don’t get enough exposure to sunlight, we also need to make sure that our organs function in a healthy way. The liver and kidney are essential to make Vitamin D available to our body. Hydration for example is critical for our kidneys to function as intended.
What is Vitamin D good for?
Vitamin D plays an important role in our health. It is for example needed to absorb calcium from the gut into our bloodstream. It, therefore, supports bone density and is essential for our sexual function. But Vitamin D is also an epigenetic controller. It influences several hundred genes and is associated with the prevention of autoimmune disease, MS, dementia, and type 1 diabetes. An epigenetic controller influences our genetic expression and therefore ‘determines’ whether we express health or sickness. Vitamin D is vital for our cell health, we can see that because almost all cells have receptors that Vitamine D can bind to. If a cell mutates Vitamine D will give the cell instructions of how to re-establish cell health or if that is no longer possible it will help the cell to destroy itself so it does not lead to cancer. There are interesting studies that show the potential to prevent and even treat cancer with Vitamin D. As an immune modulator it also has the ability to heighten or lower our immune function. This is what makes it so important in regards to Covid-19. Often what we see when patients get severely sick by this virus is caused by an ‘over-reaction’ of the immune system. Studies show that the risk to end up in the ICU (Intensive care unit) is twentyfold higher when deficient in Vitamin D.
This can also make us rethink our so-called ‘flue season’. This is the time of the year when in the northern hemisphere the sun only comes out for a short amount of time and does not nearly have the same strength as during the summer. So after a while, the majority of citizens become deficient in Vitamin D and this perfectly correlates with the time that everyone seems to catch a cold or gets bound to bed with a flue.
How can we get enough Vitamin D?
There are foods that are high in Vitamin D like wild-caught salmon, egg yolk, and mushrooms. The best way is always though getting enough sunlight and exposing your skin to it. If you live in a place where getting sun is not possible during the winter supplementation is a way to make it through these months. Vitamin D 3 is the most bioavailable form. But remember that for making the Vitamin D accessible to your body you also need your liver and kidney to function. Last but not least Vitamin D is fat-soluble and should therefore be taken together with a meal that contains fat.
Thank you to Shawn Stevenson and his Masterclass on Vitamin D to inspire this article.