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Forget Vitamin C to Cure a Cold, How About Vitamin D? |
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Written by Jeff Behar
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Traditional advice for avoiding these winter ailments has been to swallow large quantities of vitamin C. But we may have been turning to the wrong vitamin.
Researchers from Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York, found that giving supplements of vitamin D to a group of volunteers reduced episodes of infection with colds and flu by 70 per cent over three years.
All the participants were Afro-Caribbean women whose dark skin means that they make less vitamin D. The researchers said that the vitamin stimulated "innate immunity" to viruses and bacteria. The decline in vitamin D levels between November and March could be the "seasonal stimulus" that accounts for the peak in colds and flu in the winter. "Since there is an epidemic of vitamin D insufficiency in the US, the public health implications of this observation could be great," the researchers from Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York,wrote.
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