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so how do you treat this?? this is great for my kids though. do we just supplement more vit d...mine was low again..taking 4000iu a day and at a 39...up from a 17 though..so cheer..bob...what do we do?? i have never seen an article that difinative..thanks for posting it.

Hey Hutto...
I've been giving my 14 year old 2,000IU of vitamin D daily for the last year. We live in southern Ca. and he's outside in the sun almost everyday...but he's fair, like his Dad (he's his mini-me) and wears sunscreen. I just think it's a good thing. Also a good idea for kids to eat healthy dairy products. Jeff takes 6,000IU vit. D a day and gets his sun.

I know Bob wants the study to back this up....so do I. Just thought it was interesting to post, as it looks like a roll-out preview to the Plos publication. I don't think Dr. Ebers would make such claims without science behind it...and I don't think the Times would print an "agenda" series on MS and vitamin D, invoking Oxford, without facts behind it. But I could be wrong....(it's happened once or twice before ) Once again, time will tell. Til then, nothing wrong with some vitamin D supplementation.

AC

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Ta - Dah!!! Sorry to post w/out the abstract. Here it is.

Expression of the Multiple Sclerosis Associated MHC Class II Allele HLA-DRB1 is Regulated by Vitamin D

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I've been pumping my kid with Vit. D since she was about 7 or 8 (she's almost 13 right now). I was listening to a Sunday morning local AM show on my way to racquetball one weekend morning when the guy on there was talking about how he doesn't get any of his family flu shots anymore. He said it was due to the high vitamin D levels they supplement with during the winter. And it's grey flannel skis here pretty much all winter so even when the kids play outside, there really isn't much sun normally. So my initial impetus to start pumping her full of it was motivated by that, but I'm glad I started doing it now. However, I quit using anything other than number 4 sunscreen on my daughter, and that's only at the beginning of summer. She's on the swimteam and stays dark brown all summer. I just read that abstract everytime I log on here (because it's right on the home page) about fathers being more likely to pass MS on to their kids. I take 4000 IU of it per day and my little one gets 2000. Last year I read a link someone posted about the sunbathing doctor in Australia who has MS. I tried it and I just tell you that while I couldn't see very well while in the sun, I felt better after and subsequently became a sun worshipper this year. I think it really makes you feel good to soak it in.

i loved australia the sun had its high beams on and i was never that brown in my whole life before or since - it was GREAT ...
i miss the sun worship. and now that i'm back in the frozen north i take a drop of hi-test d3 liquid roughly once a week. my one drop = 25,000IU and i make sure to take calcium mag and zinc each day too.
and since i'm here in all the snow ... lew where can i get me some grey flannel skis? ;) ;) ;) sounds like an interesting challenge hehehe

My husband has MS and so does his sister. Many of those in his family (including my husband) who have had their Vitamin D levels checked have had low levels of Vitamin D. My daughter also had very low levels which were checked by her endocrinologist. She has Graves Disease which also has a connection to low Vitamin D. Everyone should have their levels checked - especially people with "autoimmune" diseases.

Physicians need to request this test for their patients. I had to ask my doctor and my husband's doctor to test our levels. And then, many doctors do not even know the correct test to request.

While this is interesting news, I can't help but read words like "appears to be", " most likely" and " seems to be"!! In other words, another theory in the long list of theories held about the origin and cause of MS.

If only someone could take this information and scientifically prove it, the MS world of medicine would take a giant leap forwrad. Let's hope this will happen here.

Harry

They seem to have a hard time proving anything. Talks cheap.

Gee, maybe after Revimmune this time, if I need it, I will just take a bunch of Vitamin D to prevent from reactivating.

I am willing to bet I get the least amount of naturally occurring Vitamin D than anyone on here who is not in a chair permanently already.

The more I read about the whole Vitamin D thing in functional medicine and MS the more I think it may be a major issue for not just MS but the whole populous.

I believe this is a very important research finding. Good news for us who have been following Ashton Embry's Best Bet Diet. Ashton proposed years ago based in part on some of Dr Ebers earlier work that MS could end up being a long latency vitamin D deficiency disease. Even more of a reason to keep my kids on the vitamin d supplements.

what about the people that are in the sun all the time and their d levels are at the max but still get ms?

I think it's important to understand what this research claims- it's looking at MS prevention thru pregnancy and childhood intervention with vitamin D supplementation. Here's a breakdown of the study -

1) So far, the largest genetic correlation researchers have found towards developing MS comes from chromosome six (which contains the gene variant known as DRB1*1501)

2) The researchers found that proteins activated by vitamin D in the body bind to a particular DNA sequence lying next to the DRB1*1501 variant, in effect switching the gene on, making MS more likely to occur.

3) In people with the DRB1 variant associated with MS, vitamin D plays a critical role- if too little of the vitamin is available during childhood, the gene may not function properly later.

4) The researchers hypothesize that this gene-environmental interaction may affect the ability of the thymus. The thymus produces millions of different T cells, each designed to recognize a specific pathogen, but there is a risk that one type might mistakenly identify one of the body's own myelin and create MS.

Ebers has been looking at vitamin D and this specific gene for years- he hasn't been looking for "a cure" or "the one reason MS occurs." This is just another piece of the puzzle...and gives more weight to the vit. D discussion.
AC