In this video, Dr. Patrick McCullough, MD, describes how vitamin D status affects T cell activity, and therefore the effectiveness of the immune system in controlling autoimmune diseases and cancers.
Regulatory T lymphocytes are called the Master Regulators of the Immune System; they are able to turn off autoimmune diseases. Research shows how restoring vitamin D status is also able to restore the functional status of regulatory T lymphocytes.
Vitamin D is also in charge of turning thousands of genes on or off. What happens when genes are “turned on” by vitamin D, and how does that in turn affect autoimmune diseases and other diseases?
Vitamin D controls thousands of genes, and while don’t know exactly what the gene products are or do, we can see the results, which includes lower rates of cancers, especially prostate, breast and colon cancer. As vitamin D levels increase, risk of cancer gets lower.
A landmark study published in 2006 by Liu et al. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s…] outlined the connection between vitamin D and the the production of antimicrobial peptides. Certain immune cells make antimicrobial peptides, which act as the body’s natural antibiotics, and are able to kill different types of microorganisms (bacteria, parasites, fungi, envelope viruses, etc.). This is a process that is dependent on vitamin D.
Unfortunately, most studies use doses of vitamin D that are too low; the key is to use the right amount of vitamin D to trigger the full immune response; it will not work with sub-physiological amounts of vitamin D.
As Dr. McCullough states, “I’m never going to let a patient be vitamin D deficient for the rest of my life…” His use of vitamin D with critically ill patients has been successful at getting many of them well, safely and without any signs of toxicity.