What is the Real Cause of Influenza Epidemics?
Influenza does not follow the predicted patterns for infectious diseases. In fact, there are several conundrums associated with influenza epidemics, such as:
1. Why is influenza both seasonal and ubiquitous — and where is the virus between epidemics?
2. Why are influenza epidemics so explosive?
3. Why do epidemics end so abruptly?
4. What explains the frequent coincidental timing of epidemics in countries of similar latitudes?
5. Why did epidemics in previous ages spread so rapidly, despite the lack of modern transport?
A theory gaining weight in the scientific community explains influenza epidemics as a result of a dormant disease, which become active in response to vitamin D deficiency secondary to a lack of terrestrial sunlight. This theory provides answers for many of the above questions. A disease that remains dormant until vitamin D-producing sunlight exposure is reduced by a winter or rainy season would explain a widespread seasonal disease with a rapid onset and decline.
There is compelling epidemiological evidence that indicates vitamin D deficiency is just such a “seasonal stimulus.” Recent evidence confirms that lower respiratory tract infections are more frequent, sometimes dramatically so, in those with low levels of vitamin D. Researchers have also found that 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day abolished the seasonality of influenza, and dramatically reduced its self-reported incidence.
The vitamin D levels in your blood fall to their lowest point during flu season, which generally coincide with low-sunlight seasons. Low Vitamin D levels alter mitochondrial function and response. This leads to tissue level damage in those with medical co-moribidities. Most people with diseases have sub-optimal vitamin D levels. Less than optimal vitamin D levels will significantly impair both arms of the immune response and make you far more susceptible to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections. Innate system needs high levels of Vitamin D to prevent the virus from entering the cell. The adaptive immune system is immunosurpressed by terrestrial sunlight to limit the cytotoxic storms that are associated with ICU admission and mechanical ventilator needs.
Dr. John Cannell and colleagues introduced the hypothesis that influenza is merely a symptom of vitamin D deficiency in their paper Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D, published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection several years ago, which adds even more weight to this latest research in the Virology Journal on the effect of sunlight on coronaviruses.
Unfortunately, conventional medicine’s answer to preventing the flu is not to increase vitamin D levels via terrestrial sunlight exposure, but rather to encourage, or even mandate, flu shots. What they don’t tell you is that flu shots, at best don’t work, and at worst, can make your health worse. There is PEER reviewed papers that show that flu shots make soldiers more susceptible to future coronavirus infections.
A recent study published in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that vaccinating young children against the flu had no impact on flu-related hospitalizations or doctor visits during two recent flu seasons.
Additionally, no studies have conclusively proven that flu shots prevent flu-related deaths among the elderly, even though this is one of the key groups to which they’re pushed.
Yet despite these findings, physicians like Dr. Danuta Skowronski, epidemiologist at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, keep insisting that the benefits of the flu vaccine outweigh the risks for most people. That is a belief that support the grant money and salary of academics.
I wholeheartedly disagree that assessment.
If you actually weigh the benefits found by these studies (no apparent benefits) against the reported risks (fever, malaise, the flu, allergic reactions and Guillain-Barré syndrome, just to name a few), you’d have to employ some fairly odd math to come to that conclusion. When you realize the response is tied to salary and grant money only then does it make sense.
In the CBC News article here, a man who contracted Guillain-Barré syndrome and was paralyzed for almost five months after receiving his flu shot wants to warn others of the risks inherent in this widely pushed vaccine.
Guillain-Barré syndrome is an autoimmune disease that attacks your nervous system – similar to muscular sclerosis. The B.C. Centre for Disease Control estimate your chances of developing that particular disease from the flu shot as one in a million. However, if you get it, the consequences can be severe.
Research Shows Optimal Vitamin D Levels Protect You From the Flu, using Nature
In the United States, the late winter average vitamin D is only about 15-18 ng/ml, which is considered a very serious deficiency state. It’s estimated that over 95 percent of U.S. senior citizens may be deficient, along with 85 percent of the American public. No wonder the flu runs rampant each year.
Remarkably, researchers have found that 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day abolished the seasonality of influenza! Most of you I am no fan of supplementation for Vitamin D, but during a pandemic this might have a place for those humans who want to avoid ICU admission and intubation.
Please note that this is far higher than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) spouted by public health agencies like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which just announced that they’re doubling the RDA of vitamin D for children to 400 IU. This new guidance still falls absurdly short of what’s needed to keep kids healthy, especially during flu season. Kids deficient in Vitamin D have serious risks of a COVID-19 Kawaski like disease.
In order to prevent the flu, children need 2,000 IU a day of vitamin D, while adults need anywhere between 4,000 to 5,000 IU per day. Solar exposure depends on many factors such as haplotype, Fitzpatrick skin type, and SNP and SAP’s. The key is to make sure you monitor your vitamin D levels by blood testing, to make sure your levels are therapeutic and not toxic. The toxic levels of Vitamin D are a lot higher than public health experts spout off.
If you want more info on terrestrial sunlight please my Patreon blog on how to build your solar callus nature’s way.
Vitamin D Can Also TREAT the hypoxia associated with RNA viruses!
If you are taking the above doses of vitamin D the odds of you getting the flu are very remote. However, if you do come down with the flu, keep in mind that you can also use vitamin D therapeutically to TREAT the flu.
The therapeutic dose of vitamin D is 2,000 units per kilogram of body weight (one pound is 0.45 kg). The dose would be taken once a day for three days. (This could be a very large dose if you are very heavy – as high as 2-300,000 units per day).
This is the dose that Dr. John Cannell, founder of the Vitamin D Council, has been using very successfully for a number of years.
If you start this program early on in the illness, it should be able to completely wipe out the flu in short order. This is rarely done in the hospital setting. You need to have a clinician who understands the literature and can pack your parachute.
Another useful supplement you could try, should you come down with a case of the flu, is olive leaf extract, which you can find in most any health food store. I prefer to eat olive leaf stuff with meat and seafood. Olive leaf extract has been found to be a potent broad-spectrum antiviral agent, active against all viruses tested, including numerous strains of influenza and para-influenza viruses.
Bottom line is stick with nature. Sunlight raises your venous O2 saturation. Nothing on planet Earth I know can do that but sunlight to venous blood.
The thin layer of Earth’s atmosphere hasn’t always contained oxygen. An experiment that used lasers to zap carbon dioxide suggests ultraviolet light from the sun might have helped boost oxygen gas levels in Earth’s ancient atmosphere.
In a new experiment, researchers used a laser to decouple a molecule of carbon dioxide, or CO2. It yielded both carbon and oxygen gas, also known as O2.
Air hasn’t always been rich in oxygen. Billions of years ago, other gases dominated. Carbon dioxide was one of them. At some point, algae and plants developed photosynthesis. This allowed them to make food from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. One byproduct of this process is oxygen gas. And that’s why many scientists had argued photosynthesis must have been behind the buildup of oxygen in Earth’s early atmosphere. But is the belief true? No, it is not.
A new study suggests that ultraviolet light from the sun could have cleaved oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And this could have converted CO2 to carbon and O2 long before photosynthetic organisms evolved. The same process also may have produced oxygen on Venus and other lifeless planets rich in carbon dioxide.
CITES:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2631809/pdf/11384511.pdf
B. Mole. “Lasers wrest oxygen from carbon dioxide.” Science News. Oct. 7, 2014.
S. Ornes. “The algae invasion.” Science News for Students. May 11, 2010.
S. McDonagh. “Earth’s early oxygen boost.” Science News for Students. Feb. 9, 2004.