The true health impact of vitamin D seemingly rises by the day. Two new studies have linked the sunshine vitamin to successfully preventing and treating tuberculosis (TB).

In the former study, white blood cells convert the most natural form of vitamin D -- the kind your body generates from sunlight -- to a form used to make active proteins that kill the bacteria that leads to TB.

In the latter, Indonesian scientists compared the effect of vitamin D versus a placebo on 67 TB patients for some nine months. Treating TB patients with 10,000 units of vitamin D daily versus a tiny fraction (400) usually advocated by conventional medicine certainly made a difference: It resulted in a 100 percent cure rate.

Makes you wonder what would happen if patients with cancer, heart disease, dementia, autoimmune disease, influenza A, chronic pain, depression, gingivitis, the common cold and many more diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency, were treated with adequate doses...

For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, however, the colder, shorter days of winter make it darn impossible for our bodies to get enough sunshine, thus generate healthy amounts of vitamin D. Until spring has sprung, you'll want to take a high quality cod liver oil, then switch back to fish oil as the temperatures climb.

Science February 23, 2006

Acta Med Indones, Vol. 38, No. 1, January-March 2006: 3-5

Forbes.com February 23, 2006