Vitamin D is so crucial to the functioning of your immune system and its ability to enhance immune function to destroy invading microorganisms has been conserved in the genome over 60 million years.
The fact that this action of vitamin D in the immune response has been preserved through millions of years of natural selection, evolution, and is still present in species from monkeys, squirrels, baboons and humans, suggests that this vitamin to be essential for survival, researchers say.
In primates, the action that engages and enables optimal immune system to respond to microbial attack, only works properly with the presence of sufficient vitamin D, which is actually a type of hormone that circulates in blood and communicates certain signals to cells via a receptor.
A protective role of the cell against an overreaction of the immune system
This study from a new angle, genetics, found that vitamin D stimulates an immune response that is innate, activating an antimicrobial protein, which among other effects prevents an overreaction of the immune system, preventing it from overreacting, which sometimes occurs in the case of complications of influenza or pneumonia.
In fact, sometimes it happens a disproportionate immune response of the immune system that will bring and produce in the lungs inflammatory fluids that will reduce the ability of the lungs to absorb oxygen in the blood and cause respiratory insufficiency serious problems.
Vitamin D helps balance the immune response and prevents this inflammation, which was the main cause of death in the case of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, and today is one of the causes of death, particularly among the youngest victims of H1N1.
VITAMIN D CONTROL YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM EXAGGERATED OF ACTION THAT MAY BE FATAL
So not only vitamin D protects against initial infection, but it also prevents your body from overreacting and killing you with inflammation that leads to asphyxiation or lead to a bacterial infection of the lungs.
As we know, to survive and reproduce, the virus must enter the cell. It seems that vitamin D also makes this task more difficult, including by strengthening the cell wall. A virus can enter the cell, is a virus that can harm and above who can reproduce.
What this study shows is that without a sufficient level of vitamin D in your blood, your immune system cannot do its job properly. This is why people who are deficient in vitamin D frequently suffer from colds and flu in the winter.
This study is not only the action of vitamin D to protect the body against infection. The track is so serious that Health Canada has undertaken a study on the subject.
The mechanism by which vitamin D may protect against influenza is not fully understood, but another study suggests that it may induce the production of antimicrobial substances whose activity neutralizes a variety of infectious agents.
But people who have normal vitamin D levels will have their immune system normally and effectively respond to invading pathogens.
As we know, vitamin D is produced in large quantities as a result of sun exposure, and is available in a much smaller from dietary sources.
