Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Get A Move On, Outside



O there’s sunshine, blessed sunshine,
While the peaceful, happy moments roll;
When Jesus shows His smiling face
There is sunshine in my soul.

Low vitamin D levels linked to increased disease disability in optic nerve damage
Posted on September 13, 2014 by Vitamin D Council

A new study has found that patients with neuromyelitis optica have lower vitamin D levels than healthy controls and that low vitamin D levels are associated with an increase in disease related disability.

Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a medical condition in which the optic nerve and spinal cord become inflamed and damaged. NMO has many different causes, with no known cure. Certain cases of NMO can be considered an autoimmune disease when the immune system mistakenly attacks a protein that the body makes.

There is an extensive amount of scientific literature that shows patients with autoimmune diseases have lower vitamin D levels and that within these patients, lower vitamin D levels correlate with increased disease related disability and disease activity.

Therefore, researcher working out of the United Kingdom and South Korea wanted to investigate the relationship between autoimmune NMO, vitamin D status, and disability related to NMO.

They collected blood samples from 51 autoimmune NMO patients and 204 healthy controls and compared the vitamin D levels between the two groups.

The researchers then recorded the disease related disability in NMO patients by using the expanded disability status scale (EDSS). EDSS is a method of quantifying disability in NMO patients.

Results showed vitamin D levels were significantly lower in NMO patients compared to healthy controls and that vitamin D levels were negatively associated with EDSS scores, meaning patients with lower vitamin D levels had greater disease related disability.

“It remains to be determined whether low vitamin D levels predispose to NMO and/or modify disease severity, or are secondary to neurological disability. In either case the results could also be of relevance to other neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis as well as NMO,” the researchers concluded.

The researchers call for future studies that administer vitamin D supplementation to patients with NMO and see how it affects the development of the disease.

Source

Min, J. et al. Low Levels of Vitamin D in Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder: Association with Disease Disability. PLOS ONE, 2014.

Addition Dr. Morris:

The more I study health, supplements, holistic care the more I realize the importance of sunlight in my life.

In my lifetime, human beings have moved inside and there is more sickness than ever before in history. Children no longer choose to play outside in the sun, rather, to stay inside with air conditioning, video-board games, television. Even when the fortunate ones go to the beach, parents instead of using some control over their sunlight dosage just cover their bodies with sunblock. The body needs vitamin D, essential in the battle of every disease from Alzheimers to Diabetes, and the best source of vitamin D is God's great provision of sunshine.

There was also a time when the elderly would sit outside in the sun enjoying not only sunshine but fresh air. I wish I could go to one nursing home where the patients were treated to a daily exposure to real sunlight. It does no good at all to sit behind sunlight filtered by glass or plastic. During the winter months, usually November through March, the body starves for sunshine. People below the 34th parallel, say, Atlanta, Georgia, enjoy much more sunlight than those in the northern climes. But, as always, in this time of big pharma-big medicine, making big bucks from big sicknesses, like your food intake, like exercise, like abuse from alcohol, your doctor will seldom mention these subjects to you. Healthcare people (doctors, hospital CEO's) do not buy houses on "pill hill", do not have several Mercedes in the driveway, from the resources of healthy people. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that God provided every chemical found in edible food that we need for good health. The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself, if it gets the right raw materials... nourishment. The colorful vegetables growing in your garden, just as the colorful flowers (colors beyond mans ability to duplicate or describe) are in vegetables because God, who created it all, knew the exact formula-calculation needed between Earth's elements, Earth's water supply and Earth's sunlight. Exercise is essential for health, metabolism of everything going on in God's chief creation. Get a move on, outside, in the sunlight!

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