Mind Body | HealMind Body, MindBody Medicine

Ronald Peters, MD, MPH
Integrative Medicine

Nancy Brem, L.AC.
Acupuncture

Tammy Leiner
Thermography

Colleen Dugie, LMT
Integrative Massage

Vensa Cupara-Peters
Macrobiotics

Mind > MindBody

What's New

Vitamin D better than vaccines and medications at preventing flu

Doctors is Japan have found that you can cut in half your risk of catching the flu by taking vitamin D. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine.

Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial said that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.

Altogether 354 children took part in the trial, which took place during the winter of 2008-09, before the swine flu epidemic. Vitamin D was found to protect against influenza A, which caused last year’s epidemic, but not against the less common influenza B.

The children were given a daily dose of 1200 IUs (international units) of vitamin D over a period of three months. In the first month children in the group taking the vitamin became ill just as often as those taking the dummy tablet. But by the second month, when the vitamin level in the children’s blood was higher, the advantage of the vitamin was clear.

The Japanese scientists, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, say that the anti-viral drugs zanamivir and oseltamivir reduce risk of flu infection by 8 per cent in children who have been exposed to infection, compared with a 50 per cent or greater reduction with vitamin D.

Anti-virals are also too expensive, and possibly too toxic, to be given to the population as a whole whereas vitamin D has additional benefits. The sunshine vitamin not only prevents bone fractures but is also believed to reduce risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other illness, including various bacterial as well as viral infections.

The Japanese finding supports a theory that low blood levels of the sunshine vitamin occurring in winter explain why flu epidemics generally peak between December and March.

Vitamin D activates the innate immune system, enabling the body to produce several proteins such as defensin and cathelicidin which trigger cell activity and disable viruses. Dr Urashima said: “Vitamin D and vaccine work by quite different mechanisms. Vitamin D enhances innate immunity while vaccine enhances acquired immunity. So we do not have to select only one way of prevention, rather we should do both ways, I think.”

Dr John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine, London, said: “This is a timely study. It will be noticed by scientists. It fits in with the seasonal pattern of flu. There is an increasing background of solid science that makes the vitamin D story credible. But this study needs to be replicated. If it is confirmed we might think of giving vitamin D at the same time as we vaccinate.”

Mind and Body are One

The following is the Introduction to my book, Edgework, Exploring the Psychology of Disease, Beyond Diet and Fitness. It will help you to understand the powerful controlling influence of the mind on the body, or, more accurately stated, the unity of the mindbody.

The mind controls the body. We have heard about this paradigm-shifting notion time and time again in the last half of the twentieth century. Research in immunology has contributed to dozens of books telling us about improved immunity based on positive states of mind and, conversely, reduced immune function due to negative states of consciousness. Physicians and psychologists have told us about the hostile aspects of Type A behavior and the epidemic of heart disease that plagues our society. Many other researchers have spoken, a bit more cautiously, about features of the cancer prone personality. Anxiety and depression contribute to numerous other illnesses, and continue to afflict up to one quarter of the American population. Books have been written on the psychosomatic aspects of common diseases like asthma, hypertension, ulcerative colitis, peptic ulcers, and diabetes, just to mention a few. Yet none have stated the essence of the mind/body issue as succinctly as the great psychoanalyst Dr. Franz Alexander, when he wrote: "The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life..."

But in spite of this outpouring of information on the mind/body relationship, little has changed in the doctor's office to reflect this new understanding. Doctors still devote most of their time trying to find out what is wrong with the body, and patients still try to get rid of their symptoms with the latest offerings from the drug industry. Many of us take vitamins and minerals, try to exercise and relax more, perhaps meditate occasionally, but really little has changed, and the problems in health care continue on. Indeed, paradigms shift slowly as they bear the weight of institutional, social and personal belief systems.

Based on my twenty years of holistic family practice, I too have learned that the origins of most physical disease are within consciousness - the body is the messenger of the conflicts, sustained fears, suppressed emotional traumas, disturbed patterns of thinking, and other imbalances that lie within the conscious and unconscious mind. I have learned this by listening to thousands of patients tell the stories that preceded the onset of their illness. I have heard again and again of childhood patterns of neglect, smothering control, abandonment, and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. I have heard of the failed relationships, years of marital conflict, and the pain of loneliness. I have heard about decades of unfulfilling employment, foiled personal creativity and the quiet desperation of a slowly dying spirit. I have heard about relentless anxiety, depression, denied emotions, destructive beliefs, hopelessness, helplessness, "giving up", and an endless variety of recurrent stresses.

Most importantly, I have seen patient after patient backtrack into consciousness and find the dis-ease within the mind that precipitated the dis-ease in the body. The answers may not come quickly as many issues are hidden in the shadow, or unconscious mind, but they do come and the results of such personal in-depth healing are transformational. I have seen cancer, multiple sclerosis, colitis, hepatitis, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, and all types of chronic and often "incurable" diseases go into remission or quiescence. These are the reasons I have written Edgework.

Edgework refers to the edge between what you know about yourself and what you do not know. Dis-ease of any kind is the body's way of getting your attention and inviting this self-exploration, thereby offering true healing. The path maybe scary, as change itself is scary for most of us. It is easy to understand what the noted English poet W. H. Auden meant when he wrote: "We would rather be ruined than changed; we would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die."

MIND IN BODY

"The concept of a network, stressing the interconnectedness of all systems of the organism, has a variety of paradigm-breaking implications. In the popular lexicon, these kinds of connections between body and brain have long been referred to as "the power of the mind over the body." But in light of my research, that phrase does not describe accurately what is happening. Mind doesn't dominate body, it becomes body - body and mind are one."

Candace Pert, Molecules of Emotion, Scribner, NY, 1997, page 187

When you recognize the governing influence of thought and emotion, conscious and unconscious, over your body, you have established the foundation for health, healing and over-all well-being.