I was wondering the same thing about the pollution. If your lungs are already compromised by pollutions, are you more susceptible to pneumonia? The bad air may get you halfway there all on its own.

It would be kind of ironic if the refusal to address air pollution, ended up making a mild flu into a lethal flu.

In the end, reality always gets the final say on decision made for political and economic reasons.

Here's one link for Vitamin D details: http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/1031002458.html

I'm beginning to be convinced that many people would benefit from getting a vitamin D level done - if only to pay more attention to sun exposure. Apparently UVa rays break down vit D, but UVb actually help skin synthesize it, so folks who get sun only through windows could be more likely to suffer from deficiency.

I have read that if the sunlight strikes the earth at too great an angle none of the UV portion required for the synthesis of vitamin D gets to the surface. Something to do with refraction or reflection. This means that for several months of the year people living at higher latitudes like Boston or London would get zero vitamin D from sunlight. With the likelihood that during these months temperatures are cooler leading to more skin being covered, added to the fact that there are less hours of sunlight, you end up getting a recipe for severely low levels of vitamin D by the end of winter. By the way, a Caucasian individual in swim wear will synthesize overt 10,000 IU of vitamin D in less than half an hour of exposure to the mid day tropical sun so, how much do you think would be a reasonable amount to supplement with during winter?

As for air pollution, that is probably having a severe effect on the other immune system boosting vitamin, vitamin c. I read somewhere that exposure to cigarette smoke can use up as much as 1000mg of vitamin C per day. Now with a RDA of 60mg you can guess where I'm going with this.
I would bet a considerable amount of money that, even the most severe influenzas could be cleared up with sufficient amounts of vitamin C supplemented with equally sufficient amounts of vitamin D. For an idea on the basis for this belief, you can have a look at the work of Robert Cathcart, the web sites of the Vitamin C Foundation, the aforementioned Vitamin D Council and DoctorYouself.com.

Of course, I can't imagine that anybody would want to prevent this sort of belief from taking hold with a wide cross section of the public.(/sarconol). I guess that's why I've heard newscasts on CNN including basically one sentence saying "A new study has found that vitamin C does NOT prevent colds and flu." No references, no background information on who did the study, where, when, how, why or by whom such a study was funded. Just a statement of fact. Go figure! One look at the cold and flu medicine section of your local pharmacy should put things in perspective. It's a huge business.

A couple years ago, a close relative of mine died from cancer. During their last months I got very interested in nutrition and vitamins because, I couldn't figure out how someone 18 months my junior could be so unfortunate. I learned about a big vitamin D study that reported a very significant reduction in the risk of getting cancer in people with high levels of vitamin D, just days before their death. The more I think about it the more it makes sense. Homo Sapiens evolved in the presence of sunlight which raise a few questions:

1) How could sunlight be bad for us? Surely we must have evolved mechanisms for coping with our ever present source of energy.

2) Would we not have evolved mechanisms for using the sun's light to our advantage such as production of vitamin D and the use of vitamin D in key functions?

3) Would it not explain the geographical distribution of races where lighter skin predominates the further away you get from the equator?

I invite anybody who thinks I'm crazy to do a Google search for "death by vitamin overdose" or "vitamin related fatalities" or any other search term and let me know the total amount of documented vitamin related deaths since the discovery of vitamins, compared to the amount of people who die from ingesting household laundry detergent in one year. Of course you could just put your trust in modern medical science (big pharma) and hope for the best.

Best hopes for more "alternative" medicine post peak.

Alan from the islands.