I reported last week on another study documenting how vitamin D helps your higher-powered adaptive immune system kick into gear – an absolute necessity for fighting any vital infection.  Furthermore, vitamin D is known to boost the front line troops of your innate immune system in multiple ways.

Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, has told media that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu.  Data supporting that comment was not part of the published study.  However, antiviral drugs that are highly toxic and too dangerous for children (even though doctors recklessly prescribe them for prevention of the flu) only reduce the chance of getting the flu by 8%.  The data shows that a vitamin is highly superior to these drugs at preventing the flu – a fact that will either be ignored by the FDA or cause their Big Pharma stomachs to churn.

A new animal study tested the ability of carvacrol, the active ingredient in oregano oil, to activate HSP via regulatory T cells and stop experimentally produced autoimmune arthritis.  The researchers found that oregano oil had “an unprecedented capacity” to activate HSP via regulatory T cells.  This completely suppressed the experimentally induced joint damage.  The researchers concluded that carvacrol “can boost protective T cell responses to a self-stress protein and down-regulate inflammatory disease.”

This is a new finding for oregano oil in terms of the published literature and hopefully human studies for RA will be conducted in the hear future.  An earlier animal study showed that the carvacrol in Oregano oil was a potent pain killer.  The primary traditional use of oregano oil is as a germ killer, with documented anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic activity.  It has also been used for pain in traditional medicine.

The scientific fact that vitamin D is required for healthy immune system function is not new.  There already exists an overwhelming body of information that vitamin D adequacy is essential for mounting a proper immune defense, preventing autoimmune disease, and preventing many cancers.  The latest study shows that a lack of vitamin D causes the higher-powered T cells of your adaptive immunity to be unable to activate.  The bottom line of the study is that a lack of vitamin D to your T cells is like having a dead battery in your car.  How much more evidence does a corrupt government need? 

Vitamins prevent disease.  It would cause great pain for the unelected, bureaucratic regulatory goons at the FDA and FTC to admit the massive error of their ways.  However, the scientific facts are the facts - vitamins prevent disease.  The FDA and FTC are living in the Stone Age.  Change the laws – the earth is not flat.  Our government’s corrupt cronyism with the dangerous industries they are supposed to be regulating is no longer going to fly.  Americans are beginning to realize a primary source of the true cost of health care – the fraudulent use of drugs to suppress symptoms and hardly ever produce the result of health.

Our government should be making major public health announcements for the value of nutrition to prevent and even treat disease of all kinds, ranging from obesity to heart disease to cancer and many others.  The science is overwhelming that key fundamental nutrients are lacking in the American diet that set the stage for the common diseases plaguing our health system, including vitamin D, DHA omega 3 oil, magnesium, and antioxidants.  Restoring these basic nutrients to a deficient population would drastically improve the quality of health in America.

The use of insulin to help regulate diabetes has a tendency to provoke an undesirable immune response leading to the production of anti-insulin antibodies.  This causes deterioration of the usefulness of insulin to function correctly in metabolism.  Corosolic acid mimics the function of insulin but it does not cause the production of these problematic auto-antibodies.  While human studies still need to be done, animal studies and traditional use support a powerful use of this nutrient in the regulation of blood sugar.

Other research on corosolic acid shows that it may also help bones.  In an animal study it was found to help stimulate the formation of osteoblasts, the important bone-building carpenter cells.  It is becoming more evident with each passing day that bone health and blood sugar metabolism are highly inter-dependent. 

Yet another study shows that corosolic acid can reduce inflammation in heart cells, preventing hypertrophy, a common problem in diabetes.  It did so by reducing the powerful inflammatory gene signal, NF-kappaB. 
Collectively, these studies show multiple benefits for key issues affecting millions of Americans.

Getting a good response to aerobic exercise is vital to health and longevity.  One problem is that exercise can depress front line troops of your immune system.  This is certainly relevant to active exercisers in the winter bug season.  This study shows that taking colostrum daily can prevent a let down in your immune system function.

While this study was done in healthy men the value of it may be especially important to individuals who struggle with exercise, such as those with fibromyalgia.  In this situation exercise is vital to improvement but performing exercise can be problematic and set off a chain of problems.  It is likely that colostrum, which is a wide-ranging metabolic powerhouse, would be useful to help improve the response to exercise in such individuals. 

Colostrum is designed to support the demands of high growth phase of infants, a nutrient ideally suited for enhanced recovery and regeneration that accompanies the process of rapid growth.  It appears that it fits in nicely as a support nutrient for recovery of excess demands associated with physical performance.  In this case proven in healthy men, but theoretically helping those who struggle to get a good response to exercise (which is consistent with my observation of the nutrient in clinical practice.)

DHA is well-regarded as a nervous system support nutrient. It supports the ability of nerve cells to tolerate stress, helps to boost mood and memory, promotes nerve plasticity, and improves the ability to learn. At the same time, if DHA enters a nerve cell that has turned cancerous it now appears that DHA will act to kill the cancer.

In the study, Swedish scientists exposed neuroblastoma cells from the nervous system to DHA and analyzed the cells for byproducts as the DHA was metabolized into the cells.  Researchers then examined the affect of both DHA and its derivatives on the growth of cancer cells. Results showed that DHA killed the cancer cells, but that the toxic derivatives produced by DHA were even more effective at killing the cancer cells.  The cancer cells were unable to deactivate the accumulation of DHA metabolic by-products which accumulated to the point of killing them.  By comparison, non-cancer cells activate a natural protective system that neutralizes these DHA byproducts as they are produced, preventing toxicity in normal cells.

“We hope that this study can provide a deeper understanding of the actions of omega-3 fatty acids and their products in cancer cells, and why they can be of such high importance in treatment of the disease,” said Helena Gleissman, Ph.D., co-author of the study from the Childhood Cancer Research Unit of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. “Ultimately, we hope that we can be able to cure more children with neuroblastoma, and possibly other cancers.”  The scientists believe that their discovery may lead to new treatments for a wide range of cancers, including neuroblastoma, medulloblastoma, colon, breast, and prostate cancers, among others.

These findings are consistent with other brain imaging studies on ADHD children that show an inability to utilize prefrontal regulation of the brain, which is known to be associated with focus.  This new study shows that the problem is occurring during development.  This means changing the problem is best addressed while the brain is developing.

A major new aspect in the paradigm of mental health is emerging.  Problems with cognitive function and multiple mental health issues involve one or more key areas of the brain simply not able to make functional connections in the proper way.

It is likely that brain inflammation is at the source of the problem which could be coming from multiple sources including chemicals in food, poor quality food, GMO-alteration of food, pollution, stress, environmental instability, immunizations, epigenetic factors, and anything else capable of inducing an inflammatory state of affairs capable of disturbing brain function and inducing wear and tear to brain structure.

On the positive side, aerobic exercise is a major rejuvenator of brain structure.  Anyone with a child who is at all questionable should keep their child active and spend considerable time on physical activity, hobbies, crafts, and learning any new physical skill.  These forms of exercise stimulate new nerve connections to form.  Nutrients that help build healthy brain cells, help build BDNF, and help promote synaptic plasticity are of paramount importance to helping resolve this problem.  These nutrients include DHA, pantethine, phosphatidylserine, magnesium, and blueberries.

If the ADHD issue, no matter how small or large, can be effectively improved during the developmental years of the brain then the person will have a more stable brain as an adult.  Even so, adults with issues can still make improvement – it will just take longer.  This is a far different approach to using speed-like meds to force the brain to focus.  These drugs are actually pro-inflammatory to the brain and will have the long-term effect of burning out brain structure, not making connections with structural integrity.

The researchers looked specifically at the size of the hippocampus, which is regulated in tandem with the entorhinal cortex, brain structures needed for memory, learning, and appropriate behavior. 

Following a three month aerobic exercise training program the hippocampus size of schizophrenia patients increased by 12%.  Nerve transmission within the hippocampus had improved and memory tests also improved. 

It now appears that the front line support for schizophrenia and psychosis should include aerobic exercise, DHA fish oil, and other nutrients that promote healthy brain structure and improved synaptic plasticity. 

Simply relying on drugs like atypical antipsychotics to suppress symptoms is not going to do anything to solve the brain connectivity issues at the source of this problem.  Rather, these drugs make a person overweight and even diabetic, in turn making them more unfit and less likely to do the exercise that would actually help restore the structure of their brain.