Health

DENVER (CBS4) ― There isn't much out there for most of us right now. We are still way short of the number of doses of H1N1 vaccine we need. The government has been stingy about letting our doctors prescribe anti-virals like Tamiflu. If the swine gets you, you're mostly on your own -- if it gets you.

The best idea might be making that "if" a big one. Head to a natural foods store and you'll be overwhelmed with claims about boosting immunity. Smart marketers have been adding claims this year. There's a big "Immunity" claim on the front of Rice Krispies now. In reality, simply eating boosts your immunity, starvation is pretty bad for you.

Here's what experts are figuring out about flu: It usually hits in winter. It is a major killer in nursing homes. They also know that children with rickets have a higher incidence of respiratory infections like the flu. Why, why, why?

The most obvious link to all three is vitamin D. Our bodies get it from exposure to sunlight. We get less in winter. Nursing home patients don't get out much. Rickets is a disorder often caused by a lack of vitamin D.

The University of Colorado School of Medicine's Dr. Adit Ginde and his colleagues studied survey results of 18,000 people to find the higher levels of vitamin D appear to protect against the flu. The National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey is done periodically as a sample of what the U.S. population is eating.

"And throughout that, even throughout that entire population, it was a consistent relationship between having a low vitamin D and having an increased risk of having a respiratory infection," Ginde said.

CBS4 asked about a connection between flu season and vitamin D.

"It's very possible," Ginde said. "You know, we think that it's because we're exposed to cold weather or other things, but there's probably some biological reason and it just so happens in the winter people's vitamin D levels are the lowest and that's also the time that people most get the cold and the flu."

How might it work? The cells that initially contact the flu virus, often in our respiratory system, generate a response and try to kill the virus or the bacteria in colds.

"Vitamin D has an important role in the pathway to produce those … proteins that are responsible for killing. So if you don't have enough vitamin D, that mechanism does not work as well."

The vitamin is a hormone and naturally produced.

"Just like insulin or cortisol. Your body makes it, it circulates it, there are receptors all over the body that would make it work. So it's really something that your body has all the time and we were sort of built around."

Experts also believe we may be getting less vitamin D than we used to, spending time on our computers and playing video games.

"That's one of the reasons you know the vitamin D status of the population has plummeted and one of the reasons if we've become an increasingly indoor population, increasingly inactive."

In addition, while sunlight produces vitamin D very quickly, at this time of year we get far less because we're indoors.

"So that if you're above a latitude of Atlanta, which includes Colorado, in the wintertime there's very little UV radiation to produce vitamin D."

Add to that our drive to protect ourselves from skin cancer with sunscreen. Covering up can block our bodies' ability to produce vitamin D.

So what do you do? Ginde is cautious about saying he's an advocate of vitamin D in the way Dr. Linus Pauling, the man who created the polio vaccine, became an advocate for vitamin C. He and his colleagues are in the process of designing vitamin D clinical trials. It will take 5 to 7 years to come to new conclusions from those trials. In the meantime, he says, "I think it has the most promise. We know more about vitamin C and vitamin E and they don't appear to be particularly effective in preventing respiratory infections."

Ginde says he's taking it and says so are a lot of people in the research community. The government recommended dose is currently 400 International Units. There are suggestions of upping that to 1,000 IU. If you don't like buying supplements, there's sunshine and foods such as fatty fish like salmon or tuna. Most milk has it added and many yogurts are supplemented with vitamin D. Check your labels.

Additional Resources

CBS4's H1N1 Survival Guide contains hospital and clinic information for getting a vaccination -- many of them free. It also contains many useful links, sections and the latest articles and video clips about the swine flu. Visit the H1N1 Survival Guide

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