Vitamin D, the immune system and asthma

In reading other eczema blogs, I stumbled upon a paper from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2812815 which I will try to accurately summarize:

Vitamin D, the immune system and asthma

which is dated November 2009 and written by Nancy E Lange, MD, MPH, Augusto Litonjua, MD, MPH, Catherine M Hawrylowicz, PhD, and Scott Weiss, MD from Brigham & Women's Hospital. I'm not familiar with the authors or any of their previous work, but I did find this interesting.  Here are a few excerpts:

This article will summarize some of the emerging evidence on the complex role of vitamin D in the immune system relevant to asthma, and provide an overview of investigations thus far linking vitamin D and asthma.

Key issues

• Recent evidence points to vitamin D as an essential immune system regulator.
• Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency are widespread, regardless of latitude.
• Low vitamin D levels have been linked with many immune-mediated diseases and cancers.
• Basic science and animal models demonstrate the multiplicative effects of vitamin D on cells of the immune system and cytokine profiles.
• Genetic and epidemiologic studies have shown an association between asthma and vitamin D.
• The rising prevalence of asthma may be linked to vitamin D deficiency.
• Further investigation is needed to fully understand the role of vitamin D in the development of allergy and asthma.

Extraskeletal effects of vitamin D

In humans, vitamin D is obtained through ultraviolet B exposure, diet and supplement intake. It is converted to 25-hydroxyvitamin D₃ by the liver. Circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D₃ is converted to the active form, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D₃, in a variety of sites including the kidney and cells of the immune system. Experimental evidence suggests an effect of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D₃ on multiple different processes and cell types. In the immune system it leads to a decrease in the Th1 response, thought to be the mechanism involved in the association between low vitamin D levels and a variety of autoimmune diseases. It modulates the Th2 response affecting cytokines such as IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13. This is one possible link between vitamin D and allergy/asthma. It has been shown to upregulate T-regulatory cells, leading to an increase in the synthesis of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10. In macrophages, vitamin D upregulates synthesis of the antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin, which may enhance the ability to fight infections. In airway smooth muscle cells, it has been shown to modulate chemokine release. Vitamin D may play a role in fetal lung development and in the differentiation of type II pneumocytes and surfactant secretion. Vitamin D has also been associated with a lower incidence of and mortality from a variety of cancers.

The paper concludes with "The role of vitamin D in the pathogenesis of immune-mediated diseases such as asthma is only beginning to be understood. Several ongoing or planned human clinical trials are aimed at clarifying this link in the next 5 years. . . The elucidation of the precise roles of vitamin D in the immune system and in the pathogenesis of multiple diseases has the potential to have profound effects on our ability to prevent and treat these disorders."

I hope my summary was an accurate account, and no disservice was done.

Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil Treatment

Yesterday was our first NAET treatment of the New Year.  My son's eczema flare from the shortening had settled down for the most part, but there was still some residual dry skin putting up of fight.  I brought in a sample of the shortening, made from hydrogenated soy and cottonseed oils.  Muscle testing showed a definite weakness, so we treated for the shortening plus a vial labeled "super heated vegetable oils."  Within a couple hours of the treatment he was looking like a million bucks.  His skin has a glow to it, like that "pregnant glow."  I can't look at him enough, he looks wonderful!  Words can't describe how happy it makes my heart to see the relief brought to my son.

He passed the soy bean treatment from last time, although we have yet to venture into soy.  Maybe I'll make a stir-fry with some soy sauce and see how that goes.  Last time I did (before NAET), I put in about a teaspoon just for flavor and the poor kid looked like Uniqua from the Backyardigans--you know, the pink splotchy one.

Ultimate GOAL

In order to be successful in obtaining what I want, I find it very helpful in writing down my goals and keeping them front and center.  This gives me clarity, focus, and passion to work at what is so important to me.  So I'm going to state my ultimate personal goal for 2011 here:


Get my son to a good place with his food allergies so he's able to go off to kindergarten with confidence and no worries.


What will it take to get us to that point?  Well, we're already in a much better place from 12-15 months ago.  We have reversed the constant new food allergies as he is now able to eat previously forbidden foods.  We're going to continue with NAET as it has given us so much to be encouraged about.  We're going to continue making healthy choices when it comes to food. I am still making most of our foods from scratch as it's now become a way of life for us, and I love knowing what ingredients we are consuming.  And we're going to continue with a handful of supplements that have made a positive impact--Probiotics and Vitamin D for sure.  Like any parent of a food challenged child, I just want to know and have faith that my child will be safe when he's away from home and out from under my watchful eye.  If he can get to the point where he doesn't have to announce that "I'm allergic, I can't have that", all the better.

Damned If You Do

I go out of my way to find special foods and crazy expensive special ingredients, but the one time I cut a corner--BAM!  Eczema.  This time it is shortening.  Yes, I know it's not healthy in the least bit.  But we're out of town and I only had a couple days worth of coconut oil left and didn't feel like spending $13 on a jar to make a batch of cookies.  It's just disappointing when my attempt to do something nice for my kid fails and he suffers for it.   We now have something else to add to our NAET list, but at least we've identified it and can get past it.

Taking the Good with the Bad

Hooray!  My kid was able to eat the Sweet BBQ Sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings!!!  This is another first.  He loved it so much as he dipped his fries, wings, and celery in it.  The sauce consisted of corn and tomato which used to be huge no-nos for him.  He also had some organic corn chips earlier in the day which have always triggered a belly ache that lasted a few days.  He hasn't mentioned any issues once throughout the day, so I'm definitely encouraged.  We tested out the goggles yet again, and no eczema outbreak.  He did have an allergic outbreak on Christmas Eve, which I believe was to a cat at my aunt's house.  The kiddo was perfectly fine until he went downstairs where the cat hangs out.  Within 2 seconds, I'm not exaggerating, the itching kicked in and his eyes were watering, red and swelling up.  He hadn't had any unusual or new foods beforehand.  Fortunately a benedryl cleared him up quickly and he was able to enjoy his evening.

Over the last week he had NAET treatments for shellfish and soy beans.  We have yet to try either, and I'm particularly suspicious of shellfish as he once had a very strange reaction to crab meat.  It wasn't the usual hives and itching, but little purple dots appeared all over his face.  It was like someone took a felt tip marker and dotted him all up.  His practitioner said we could test out shellfish in the office, and if he were to have a reaction then they would re-treat on the spot.  Still makes me nervous.

Firsts

We've had a few firsts around here as of late, and we're very excited!  My son is 4 1/2 and last week experienced his first candy cane!  I quote him, "This is way too awesome!"  I found a natural candy cane at Whole Foods made by Tru Sweet.  So what if there were "on sale" for 2 for $7, it was magical watching his face light up.  We've avoided these in the past due to his corn allergy and the red dye, and will probably continue to go with the natural ones due to the dye.  I also found a company called Pure Fun that makes natural cotton candy, I'm hoping to find a tub of it for a Christmas present.

Tonight was another big first--ketchup!  Or should I say he thinks it's the first since he hasn't had it since it was about 24 months when he started breaking out into hives over tomatoes.  He did fine with Heinz which has tomato and corn syrup in it.

We treated for his silicone goggles last Friday and he wore them on Monday at swim without issue, so the treatment seemed to have worked.  We're heading out of town for the holiday and will be doing plenty of swimming, so we'll really get to put the goggles to the test.

I can't wait for January when our flexible spending account kicks back in and the monthly out of pocket cost for these treatments aren't so painful.  There's so much we need to work on:  soy, shellfish, milk, wheat, oats, broccoli, latex, blueberries, nuts, flavorings, dyes, palm oil, and I'm sure a few more.  It is so crazy that I've seen every one of the listed items cause an allergic reaction, and some very serious.  I have a theory on what is causing the spike in allergies amongst Western kids. I've probably shared it before, but here it goes . . .Todays mothers come from the antibiotic age where these medications were used frequently and excessively.  Antibiotics kill all bacteria, including the good bacteria in the gut.  And then good and bad bacteria repopulate the gut. We now know that about 80% of the immune system stems from the gut. However, I suspect that the balance of bacteria has been thrown off due to antibiotics.  I wonder if there's any records of gut bacteria ratios throughout the century?  I doubt it.  Anyways, a newborn's gut is sterile until it passes through the birth canal and gets it's first exposure to bacteria.  Or they're born to Strep-B mother's who are on antibiotics or via C-section, in either case they are not exposed to the bacteria.  Now, not all kids born via C-section have these allergies and there are siblings born to the same mother where one is fine and the other is allergic.  I would argue that genetics also play a role in this theory--some are pre-disposed for allergies and once they encounter the wrong mix of gut bacteria, then it's an uphill battle.

Where We're At Now

I haven't updated lately mostly because we were out of town, there's been nothing major in my kid's health to report on, and he was stuck on the egg treatment with NAET.

Let me back up a bit . . .I wrote "there's been nothing major in my kid's health to report on."  This is a major statement in and of itself!  Do I dare jinx it to say there has been no coughing, runny nose, or any major or lasting eczema outbreaks?!  He hasn't taken his daily dose of Zyrtec in many, many weeks.  Which I give some credit to the change of season (summer is always tough on him.)  He's sleeping much better at night, not even requiring any Atarax to go to bed.  He doesn't lay in bed and itch like before or demanding his eyebrows be rubbed (they're a trouble spot for him); he actually falls asleep on his own. Come to think of it, the only prescriptions he's currently taking is his nightly dose of LDN, 2 puffs of Flovent to control asthma, and Epiceram cream after his baths on his known trouble spots and the Cera'Ve (not Rx) on the rest of his body.  Aside from that, he gets a daily capsule of probiotics (it's awesome that he learned to swallow pills!), 2000 IUs of Vitamin D, and a multi vitamin.  He's in such a better place these days, and everyone notices.  The best compliment we've received is from one of the ladies that works at the childcare center at the gym who sees him every week.  She said, "I know you're doing this alternative medicine stuff, and I don't understand it especially sine my dad was a medical doctor and my mom a nurse, but it's obvious it's working--he looks great!"

As for NAET, it ended up taking 4 additional treatments to get the all-clear on egg.  Since egg was such an issue for him, we're eventually going to do some additional work on it and I'm not ready to introduce egg at this time. We have since treated for corn which he cleared and we're ready to try.  This past week we actually treated for silicone as his eyes were breaking out to his new swim goggles.  So we'll see how that goes tomorrow at swim class.  He's been eating clementines by the box full, sometimes 2-3 per day, and doing great with tomatoes and pork.  All these foods use to cause immediate hives.  Next up is either soy or shell fish (as I want to be able to give him a krill oil supplement which is more shelf stable than fish oil, and more nutrient dense.)

Boy, what a difference a year has made!

The Vitamin D Council's rebuttal of the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB recommendation

The following post was taken from Dr. Jacqueline McCandless' Yahoo Group LDN and Autism.  Dr. McCandless began using LDN (low dose naltrexone) on autistic children after she discovered their blood panels were coming back identical to that of MS patients who were having success on LDN.  Dr. McCandless is also heading up a study in Africa on LDN and AIDS.


Today, the Food and Nutrition Board has Failed Millions

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif., Dec. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following was released today by the Vitamin D Council:
After 13 years of silence, the quasi governmental agency, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), yesterday recommended that a three - pound premature infant can take virtually the same amount of vitamin D as a 300 pound pregnant woman. While that 400 IU/day dose is close to adequate for infants, 600 IU/day in pregnant women will do nothing to help the three childhood epidemics most closely associated with gestational and early childhood vitamin D deficiencies: asthma, auto-immune disorders, and, as recently reported in the largest pediatric journal in the world, autism (1). Professor Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina has shown pregnant and lactating women need at least 5,000 IU/day, not 600.
The FNB also reported that vitamin D toxicity might occur at an intake of 10,000 IU/day (250 micrograms), although they could produce no reproducible evidence that 10,000 IU/day has ever caused toxicity in humans and only one poorly conducted study indicating 20,000 IU/day may cause mild elevations in serum calcium but not clinical toxicity.
Viewed with different measure, this FNB report recommends that an infant should take 10 micrograms/day (400 IU) and the pregnant women 15 micrograms/day (600 IU). As a single 30 minutes dose of summer sunshine gives adults more than 10,000 IU (250 micrograms), the FNB is apparently also warning that natural vitamin D input – as occurred from the sun before the widespread use of sunscreen – is dangerous. That is, the FNB is implying that God does not know what she is doing. 
Disturbingly, this FNB committee focused on bone health, just like they did 14 years ago. They ignored the thousands of studies from the last ten years that showed higher doses of vitamin D helps: heart health, brain health, breast health, prostate health, pancreatic health, muscle health, nerve health, eye health, immune health, colon health, liver health, mood health, skin health, and especially fetal health. Tens of millions of pregnant women and their breast-feeding infants are severely vitamin D deficient, resulting in a great increase in the medieval disease, rickets. The FNB report seems to reason that if so many pregnant women have low vitamin D blood levels then it must be OK because such low levels are so common. However, such circular logic simply represents the cave man existence of most modern day pregnant women. 
Hence, if you want to optimize your vitamin D levels – not just optimize the bone effect – supplementing is crucial. But it is almost impossible to significantly raise your vitamin D levels when supplementing at only 600 IU/day (15 micrograms). Pregnant women taking 400 IU/day have the same blood levels as pregnant women not taking vitamin D; that is, 400 IU is a meaninglessly small dose for pregnant women. Even taking 2,000 IU/day of vitamin D will only increase the vitamin D levels of most pregnant women by about 10 points, depending mainly on their weight. Professor Bruce Hollis has shown that 2,000 IU/day does not raise vitamin D to healthy or natural levels in either pregnant or lactating women. Therefore supplementing with higher amounts -- like 5000 IU/day -- is crucial for those women who want their fetus to enjoy optimal vitamin D levels, and the future health benefits that go along with it.
For example, taking only two of the hundreds of recently published studies, Professor Urashima and colleagues in Japan gave 1,200 IU/day of vitamin D3 for six months to Japanese 10 year-olds in a randomized controlled trial. They found vitamin D dramatically reduced the incidence of influenza A as well as the episodes of asthma attacks in the treated kids while the placebo group was not so fortunate. If Dr. Urashima had followed the newest FNB recommendations, it is unlikely that 400 IU/day treatment arm would have done much of anything and some of the treated young teenagers may have come to serious harm without the vitamin D. Likewise, a randomized controlled prevention trial of adults by Professor Joan Lappe and colleagues at Creighton University, which showed dramatic improvements in the health of internal organs, used more than twice the FNB's new adult recommendations.
Finally, the FNB committee consulted with 14 vitamin D experts and – after reading these 14 different reports – the FNB decided to suppress their reports. Many of these 14 consultants are either famous vitamin D researchers, like Professor Robert Heaney at Creighton, or in the case of Professor Walter Willett atHarvard, the single best-known nutritionist in the world. So, the FNB will not tell us what Professors Heaney and Willett thought of their new report? Why not? Yesterday, the Vitamin D Council directed our attorney to file a federal Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the IOM's FNB for the release of these 14 reports.
I, my family, most of my friends, hundreds of patients, and thousands of readers of the Vitamin D Council newsletter, have been taking 5,000 IU/day for up to eight years. Not only have they reported no significant side-effects, indeed, they have reported greatly improved health in multiple organ systems. My advice: especially for pregnant women, continue taking 5,000 IU/day until your (OH)D] is between 50 ng/ml and 80 ng/ml (the vitamin D blood levels obtained by humans who live and work in the sun and the mid-point of the current reference ranges at all American laboratories). Gestational vitamin D deficiency is not only associated with rickets, but a significantly increased risk of neonatal pneumonia (2), a doubled risk for preeclampsia (3), a tripled risk for gestational diabetes (4), and a quadrupled risk for primary cesarean section (5). 
Yesterday, the FNB failed millions of pregnant women whose as yet unborn babies will pay the price. Let us hope the FNB will comply with the spirit of "transparency" by quickly responding to our freedom of Information requests.
John Cannell, MD
The Vitamin D Council
1241 Johnson Avenue, #134
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
(1) Cannell JJ.. On the aetiology of autism. Acta Paediatr. 2010 Aug;99(8):1128-30. Epub 2010 May 19.
(2)Karatekin G, Kaya A, Salihoglu O, Balci H, Nuhoglu A. Association of subclinical vitamin D deficiency in newborns with acute lower respiratory infection and their mothers. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2009;63(4):473-7.
(3) Bodnar LM, Catov JM, Simhan HN, Holick MF, Powers RW, Roberts JM. Maternal vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of preeclampsia. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2007;92(9):3517-22.
(4) Zhang C, Qiu C, Hu FB, David RM, van Dam RM, Bralley A, Williams MA. Maternal plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations and the risk forgestational diabetes mellitus. PLoS One. 2008;3(11):e3753.
(5) Merewood A, Mehta SD, Chen TC, Bauchner H, Holick MF. Association between vitamin D deficiency and primary cesarean section. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2009;94(3):940-5.

Probiotics and Skin Health

Great article from Dr. Mercola on what science has yet to discover on the role of probiotics and skin health.

"Signals from these gut microorganisms are sent throughout your body and interact with organisms in your skin and gut mucosa. Researchers are now looking into how these interactions can help with skin conditions like dryness, improve collagen, or stabilize the microflora on your skin to help with irritations."  Functional probiotics for the skin are being developed right now.  Not sure what I think of buying probiotics from cosmetic companies, but hey if they want to jump on the bandwagon then that will draw even more attention to this exciting science.

I shortened the URL, as it was so long:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2bfl5z5

Peanut Allergy Starts in the Womb & GMO Soy

According to a recent study, "More than one million children nationwide have peanut allergies and that number continues to rise.  That's why a study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology is getting so much attention.

It found that of the 500 children tested, the ones whose mothers ate peanuts during pregnancy had nearly a three times greater chance of developing a peanut allergy."

http://www.wvec.com/news/health/Study-suggests-peanut-allergy-starts-in-the-womb-106645529.html

Yep, that was me.  Basically living off peanut butter everyday while pregnant.  I started every morning with peanut butter on toast.  Being a vegetarian, I also now realize that I ate WAY too much soy.  Which I have since learned is largely GMO (genetically modified food.)  It's estimated that 91% of soy is GMO, not to mention 85% of corn.  Something about eating Round Up infused seeds doesn't seem appealing, or healthy.  Not to mention the Russian study that found rats who were fed GMO soy produced offspring that had a 55% mortality rate.  "Within three weeks, 25 of the 45 (55.6%) rats from the GMO soy group died compared to only 3 of 33 (9%) from the non-GMO soy group and 3 of 44 (6.8%) from the non-soy controls."  I first learned about this from Dr. Mercola, but have since seen it published elsewhere:
http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/articles/GE-rat-babies.php