Personally I think some people are getting slightly over heated here, it is on the whole a well balanced article for a journalist, which is taking it to the medical profession and telling them to get their shit together, get up to date with modern research as to what true healthy vitamin D levels are, and do something about it.
Id say the main problem here is that they have used the term ME, leaving nobody knowing if they mean ME the real disease that was well studied before 1988, or the fairy tale illness CFS invented by the CDC in 1988, I would imagine what their talking about is a mixture of both because not many people know the difference.
As far as ME goes, well almost every single ME epidemic that has ever been reported has been very far away from the equator, Europe, Iceland, US therefore in areas with lower year round vitamin D, they have also manly been in areas where people follow Western lifestyles i.e wearing cloths and tending to spend a lot of time indoors, and behind glass windows which block vitamin D, weather vitamin D has anything to do with this has yet to be investigated, but having low vitamin is proven to damage the immune systems ability to fight all infections, and as most epidemics have been found amongst people who predominantly where indoors i.e. hospital staff, schools, and or areas with low sun exposure it is possible that lower vitamin D makes people more susceptible. Whatever the case, vitamin D deficiency is a very serious illness and nobody with ME should be having to suffer it as well, especially as it is very easy to treat. Although Im not aware of any studies on vitamin D levels in ME patients. The only possible conclusion to come to is that every single person with a serious case of ME, must be vitamin D deficient unless they have been taking supplements, because they are stuck in their houses and often their beds all the time and cant possibly be getting enough sun.
Once again to the best of my knowledge no studies have been done on this theory, but without vitamin D the immune system doesnt work as is shown in this recent study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100307215534.htm if as seems to be the most likely option is that ME is caused by an infection, it is scientifically plausible that raising vitamin D levels to where they should be, not the way to low levels used by all labs in the world, could possibly boost the immune system enough in some individuals, to cure the infection and therefore ME, obviously nobody has studied this theory or done research on it, but it is scientifically a possibility.
My view is that, the medical profession has always been using a reference range for vitamin D that is way too low, and consequently treatment that is way too low, the new research showing what vitamin D does and that we should have way more than previously thought, does open up the possibility of doing research into what if any effects vitamin D at the correct levels has on ME.
As far as CFS goes which is a waste basket diagnosis that includes many conditions including ME, well the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency match those of CFS chronic fatigue, muscle pain, brain fog etc, with the horrendous under diagnosis of Vitamin D deficiency, which has been proven in numerous studies in western countries around the world, and the great enthusiasm of a lot of doctors to give people a CFS diagnosis without checking for vitamin D deficiency, and even if they do almost all of them rely on the out of date reference ranges which are way too low and therefore miss the diagnosis, the only possible conclusion is that there has to be a large number of people with vitamin D deficiency that have been wrongly diagnosed as having CFS, Dr Mirza states that he has in the last decade treated several thousand patients in his practice in New York who were diagnosed as CFS but actually had vitamin D deficiency that he found using the up to date reference ranges.
Obviously as the people who get diagnosed with CFS have a vast array of different medical conditions that have been missed by their doctors, vitamin D treatment wont fix every one. But it will help a lot of people by getting there levels up to where evolution meant them to be.
Regarding the Marshall protocol, all I can really say about that is Vitamin D, is proven to be needed for over 200 genes to work properly in the body, it has been proven to be needed for the immune system to work, a lack of it has been proven to cause osteoporosis and rickets, to cause chronic fatigue, severe bone and muscle pain, depression, a lack of it is implicated as being involved in over 30 different types of cancers, it is implicated as a possible cause, or contributing factor in MS, diabetes and numerous auto immune conditions, and every year the more it is studied the more things they find it is essential to have vitamin D for, for the body to work properly, it is after all a hormone not a vitamin, personally I think the Marshall protocol is nuts, and is a guaranteed way of developing extra serious health problems, and where are all the people who have been cured by doing it??? But each to their own.
All the best
Id say the main problem here is that they have used the term ME, leaving nobody knowing if they mean ME the real disease that was well studied before 1988, or the fairy tale illness CFS invented by the CDC in 1988, I would imagine what their talking about is a mixture of both because not many people know the difference.
As far as ME goes, well almost every single ME epidemic that has ever been reported has been very far away from the equator, Europe, Iceland, US therefore in areas with lower year round vitamin D, they have also manly been in areas where people follow Western lifestyles i.e wearing cloths and tending to spend a lot of time indoors, and behind glass windows which block vitamin D, weather vitamin D has anything to do with this has yet to be investigated, but having low vitamin is proven to damage the immune systems ability to fight all infections, and as most epidemics have been found amongst people who predominantly where indoors i.e. hospital staff, schools, and or areas with low sun exposure it is possible that lower vitamin D makes people more susceptible. Whatever the case, vitamin D deficiency is a very serious illness and nobody with ME should be having to suffer it as well, especially as it is very easy to treat. Although Im not aware of any studies on vitamin D levels in ME patients. The only possible conclusion to come to is that every single person with a serious case of ME, must be vitamin D deficient unless they have been taking supplements, because they are stuck in their houses and often their beds all the time and cant possibly be getting enough sun.
Once again to the best of my knowledge no studies have been done on this theory, but without vitamin D the immune system doesnt work as is shown in this recent study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100307215534.htm if as seems to be the most likely option is that ME is caused by an infection, it is scientifically plausible that raising vitamin D levels to where they should be, not the way to low levels used by all labs in the world, could possibly boost the immune system enough in some individuals, to cure the infection and therefore ME, obviously nobody has studied this theory or done research on it, but it is scientifically a possibility.
My view is that, the medical profession has always been using a reference range for vitamin D that is way too low, and consequently treatment that is way too low, the new research showing what vitamin D does and that we should have way more than previously thought, does open up the possibility of doing research into what if any effects vitamin D at the correct levels has on ME.
As far as CFS goes which is a waste basket diagnosis that includes many conditions including ME, well the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency match those of CFS chronic fatigue, muscle pain, brain fog etc, with the horrendous under diagnosis of Vitamin D deficiency, which has been proven in numerous studies in western countries around the world, and the great enthusiasm of a lot of doctors to give people a CFS diagnosis without checking for vitamin D deficiency, and even if they do almost all of them rely on the out of date reference ranges which are way too low and therefore miss the diagnosis, the only possible conclusion is that there has to be a large number of people with vitamin D deficiency that have been wrongly diagnosed as having CFS, Dr Mirza states that he has in the last decade treated several thousand patients in his practice in New York who were diagnosed as CFS but actually had vitamin D deficiency that he found using the up to date reference ranges.
Obviously as the people who get diagnosed with CFS have a vast array of different medical conditions that have been missed by their doctors, vitamin D treatment wont fix every one. But it will help a lot of people by getting there levels up to where evolution meant them to be.
Regarding the Marshall protocol, all I can really say about that is Vitamin D, is proven to be needed for over 200 genes to work properly in the body, it has been proven to be needed for the immune system to work, a lack of it has been proven to cause osteoporosis and rickets, to cause chronic fatigue, severe bone and muscle pain, depression, a lack of it is implicated as being involved in over 30 different types of cancers, it is implicated as a possible cause, or contributing factor in MS, diabetes and numerous auto immune conditions, and every year the more it is studied the more things they find it is essential to have vitamin D for, for the body to work properly, it is after all a hormone not a vitamin, personally I think the Marshall protocol is nuts, and is a guaranteed way of developing extra serious health problems, and where are all the people who have been cured by doing it??? But each to their own.
All the best