 Is the flu a vitamin deficiency? Is getting sick in general due to our currently poor nutrition? Before we jump into this, we do have to consider one thing, the notion that someone on a lower quality diet will put themselves in a lower quality environment. So not only are you exposing yourself to lower quality foods that have likely been touched by more hands with less care, containing more bacteria, you're probably in an environment that has more bacteria in general. Being a subway from the Bronx packed like sardines at 7am versus driving to work is a huge factor in getting sick. In the former, I feel like I need to take a shower. In the latter, you feel like a normal human being. That being said, there are many anecdotes that can be found online, specifically on ketogenic and carnivore diet forums that will have dozens if not hundreds of posts of people claiming they are no longer getting sick, not having allergies, avoiding the flu, recovering much quicker, if they do manage to get set illnesses. I personally haven't been sick for over a year now and my sister who's been on a carnivore diet rarely gets sick as well, my parents on the other hand, have been sick several times in the past year. More so my father who pretty much only eats bread. Last time he had a cold, he was coughing his lungs out for over a month, sounded like he was going to die. Over the seven years I've been carnivore, the few times I haven't felt well, maybe I had like a mild headache and some congestion for a day or two. My body recuperating much quicker than the average person. Keep in mind, those anecdotes are only from removing inflammation from the diet, not necessarily increasing vitamin intake as these carnivores and ketogenic people don't put too much effort into their food sourcing. They go with whatever is cheap and fits into the diet. There are plenty of clinical studies demonstrating the importance of these nutrients that they are not getting, especially vitamin D3 against things like influenza, aka the flu. High dose vitamin D, 1200 IU, is suitable for the prevention of seasonal influenza as evidenced by rapid relief from symptoms, rapid decrease in viral loads and disease recovery. In addition, high dose vitamin D is probably safe for infants. So 1200 IU for an adult human being is a very insignificant amount of vitamin D as the body can make 25, 30, 40,000 IU per day under ideal circumstances. But for an infant, 1200 IU is considered a pretty high dose, although as they stated in the study, still safe. Ultraviolet radiation, either from artificial sources or from sunlight, reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections as does cod liver oil, which contains vitamin D. My mother takes cod liver oil, she firmly believes in it in preventing her illness and it makes sense. You know cod liver oil does have vitamin D, more importantly large amounts of vitamin A, which we will discuss, and omega 3 fatty acids, which reduce inflammation. A colleague of mine and I have introduced vitamin D at doses that have achieved greater than 100 nanomoles per liter in most of our patients for the past number of years. And we now see very few patients in our clinics with the flu or influenza like illness. In those patients who do have influenza, we have treated them with the vitamin D hammer as coined by my colleague. This is a one-time 50,000 IU dose of vitamin D or 10,000 IU three times daily for two to three days. The results are dramatic. With complete resolution of symptoms in 48 to 72 hours, one-time doses of vitamin D at this level have been used safely and have never been shown to be toxic. We urgently need a study of this intervention. The cost of vitamin D is about a penny for 1,000 IU, so this treatment costs less than a dollar. Ah yeah, I don't think big pharma cares too much about that study, they're just gonna sweep it under the rug. There are fewer trials on vitamin A, but it's at least if not more important than vitamin D. The protein that senses virus infection is literally called retinoic acid inducible gene, retinoic acid being the animal form of vitamin A. So we need vitamin A for our bodies to just be aware of an infection. It plays a significant role in building all cells and tissues related to the immune system and vitamin A deficiency has been shown to reduce immune response. Despite the lack of studies on more specific vitamins, especially clarifying the bioavailability, it's very clear that all evidence points to these nutrients playing a key role in immune status. By following a diet that minimizes inflammation, we are able to improve our immune function and then by incorporating these nutrients we essentially optimize our health. We know all nutrients are synergistic and even if you can't find a study correlating a specific nutrient to preventing illness, you can always link them to an aspect of our diet that removes inflammation, which will inherently improve your immune function. Two examples of this being vitamin K2 synergy with vitamins A and D as well as omega 3 fish oils being shown to reduce inflammation. So thank you guys for joining me today, hopefully this helps some of you out. If it did, definitely hit that like button, subscribe if you haven't, and of course if you can, share the video. 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