Vitamin D reduces autoimmune disease - Dr. Campbell video and transcript - May 2022

Vitamin D reduces autoimmune disease - Dr. Campbell

YouTube - May 29, 2022
Vitamin D regulates a wide array of genes involved in inflammation and immunity,

inconsistently associated with reduced risk of several autoimmune diseases in observational studies

Active form of vitamin D regulates genes, inflammation, acquired and innate immune responses

Dietary marine derived long chain omega 3 fatty acids decrease systemic inflammation in some autoimmune diseases

Evidence is needed on whether omega 3 fatty acids lower the risk of developing autoimmune disease

Vitamin D and marine omega 3 fatty acid supplementation and incident autoimmune disease: VITAL randomized controlled trial

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-066452

To investigate whether vitamin D and marine derived long chain omega 3 fatty acids reduce autoimmune disease risk.
Vitamin D and omega 3 trial (VITAL), a nationwide (US), randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trial
N = 25, 871 consisting of,
12, 786 men ≥50
13, 085 women ≥55
18,046 non- Hispanic white
5,106 black
2,152 as other racial and ethnic groups

Mean age was 67.1

INTERVENTIONS
Vitamin D (2000 IU/day) or placebo
Omega 3 fatty acids (1000 mg/day) or placebo

Participants self-reported all incident autoimmune diseases from baseline to a median of 5.3 years,
these diseases were confirmed by medical record review

In the vitamin D arm
Treatment group 123 developed an autoimmune disease
Placebo group 155 developed an autoimmune disease
Hazard ratio 0.78 P = 0.05
In the omega 3 fatty acids arm
Treatment group 130 developed an autoimmune disease
Placebo group 148 developed an autoimmune disease
P=0.19

CONCLUSIONS
Vitamin D supplementation for five years with or without omega 3 fatty acids, reduced autoimmune disease by 22%
Omega 3 fatty acid supplementation with or without vitamin D, reduced the autoimmune disease rate by 15% (not statistically significant)

The clinical importance of this trial is high because these are well tolerated, non-toxic supplements, and other effective treatments to reduce the incidence of autoimmune diseases are lacking

• Autoimmune diseases
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Polymyalgia rheumatica
• Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, too little thyroid hormone)
• Psoriasis
• Type 1 diabetes mellitus
• Multiple sclerosis
• Lupus
• Inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s Ulcerative colitis)
• Addison’s (too little of cortisol)
• Grave’s (too much thyroid hormone),
• Myasthenia gravis
• Pernicious anemia
• Autoimmune vasculitis
• Celiac disease (gluten protein from grains)
• Inflammatory autoimmune response to self-tissues
  • Third leading cause of morbidity in the industrialized world
• Chronic conditions

Increasing prevalence with age

Lack of effective treatments

More about the VITAL RCT
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01169259?titles=vital&draw=2&rank=7
VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL) A randomized clinical trial, US based
N = 25,871
Investigating

Daily dietary supplements of vitamin D3 (2000 IU), or omega-3 fatty acids (Omacor® fish oil, 1 gram),
reduces the risk of developing,

• cancer
• heart disease
• stroke,

in people with no specific history
5-year intervention phase (study pill-taking, median 5.3 years) has ended
post-intervention observational follow-up, ongoing

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Vitamin D Life - Autoimmune category contains

• 196 items in Autoimmune category
• Vitamin D and   MS    Asthma    RA    Diabetes    Gut   Allergy    Hay Fever    Lupus    Psoriasis
• Predicted 95% autoimmune cured by HIGH-DOSE vitamin D - 2014
• 10% of the UK have Autoimmune Diseases - Lancet May 2023 PDF is behind a paywall
  • Increase in 20 years : coeliac disease 2.19 X. Sjogren's syndrome 2.09, and Graves' disease 2.07
  • All 43 references are FREE on-line
• Autoimmune diseases fought by Vitamin D, especially if have more than 40 ng – Sept 2022
• The BEST Nutrient for Autoimmune Conditions (Vitamin D) - video May 2022
• The number 1 Deficiency behind All Autoimmune Diseases (Vitamin D) video - Dec 2023
• Autoimmune disease clusters run in families having low D
• How Vitamin D reduces inflammation, improves immunity and fights autoimmunity – review Dec 2018
• 120 doctors and 20,000 MS patients using high dose Vitamin D Dec 2018
• Vitamin D has treated Multiple Sclerosis and autoimmune diseases for 16 years – Coimbra April 2018
• Vitamin D Receptor is associated in over 58 autoimmune studies
• More autoimmune disease if higher pollution or lower UVB - Feb 2023
• Many autoimmune diseases associated with low vitamin D or poor Vit D genes – July 2019
  

See also web: consensus that ~50 diseases are autoimmune, ~50 more are suspected:

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Vitamin D Life - VITAL Studies

• Autoimmune risk decreased 30 percent by small amount of vitamin D and or Omega-3 – ViTAL Nov 7 2021
• Stroke not prevented by just 2,000 IU of vitamin D plus 840 mg Omega-3 (VITAL) – Feb 2020
• 2,000 IU of vitamin D and Omega-3 reduced Cancer death rate bv 40% (normal weight) – VITAL RCT Nov 2020
• Omega-3 proven to provide many benefits in 5 year VITAL trial - Nov 2018
• Vitamin D and Omega-3 Ineffective for Preventing Cancer and Heart Disease (too little was used) – Nov 2018 VITAL trial

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Vitamin D Life - Autoimmune Intervention - 8 trials

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Vitamin D Life - Multiple Sclerosis Intervention - 18 trials

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Vitamin D Life - Diabetes Intervention - 56 trials

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Vitamin D Life - Psoriasis Intervention - 2 trials

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Vitamin D Life - Rheumatoid Arthritis Intervention - 4 trials

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Vitamin D Life - Gut Intervention - 14 trials

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Vitamin D Life - Omega-3 Intervention (all health problems) 21 trials

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Vitamin D Life pages with TRANSCRIPT or CAMPBELL in title (34 as of May 2022)

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Transcript

0:00:00.0 Well, you are most welcome to today's talk. It's the end of May, 2022. Now, of course, on this channel, we like to promote health as much as we can give information to allow people to make informed decisions, to prevent disease, delay disease, and optimize health generally. And we're gonna look at a study today, and this shows that regular supplements of vitamin D, relatively small regular supplements of vitamin D, reduce the likelihood of developing autoimmune disease by 22%. And this is not an observational study. It's a prospective interventional study where people were actually compared who gave, who were actually given the vitamin D against placebo group. So it's an interventional study. So that's what this is about. We'll be looking at evidence related to this, and we'll look at some other information around about autoimmune disease. But if you don't want to watch the bottom line is over the age of 50 and probably earlier, we don't know, but over the age of 50 giving relatively small amounts of vitamin D on a daily basis, according to this data reduces the likelihood of developing autoimmune disease and probably other diseases as well.

0:01:08.8 But this paper's just about autoimmune disease. So let's dive straight into that if you want to stick around. Background here, vitamin D regulates a wide array of genes involved in inflammation and immunity. So in autoimmune diseases, we get too much inflammation caused by abnormal immunity and basically autoimmune diseases where the body's immune system attacks its own tissues. It's a friendly fire disease in military terms, the body's immune system is attacking itself, really bad idea, but that's the nature of pathology. Of course it is a bad idea.

0:01:45.4 Now inconsistently associated with the reduced risk in several autoimmune diseases in observational studies. So some of the observational studies have said, well, yeah, vitamin D is helpful. Other observational studies have said, well, no, actually there's not much difference. And that's why this study is important because it's a much higher quality interventional study. They're actually given the vitamin D to compare it active form of vitamin D regulates genes basically turns genes on and off. This is what we call epigenetics now, influencing inflammation and acquired and innate immunity. This is both branches of the immune system. So acquired immunity, that's the specific type of immunity and innate immunity, that's the nonspecific type of immunity, both need vitamin D. And this study is also looking at the omega-3 fish oils, dietary marine derived long chain, omega-3 fatty acids, basically fish oils, decrease systemic inflammation, some autoimmune diseases. So giving these to people that already have autoimmune diseases can be beneficial. Does that mean they'll help to prevent it? Well, we don't know that. And that's what this study is about. To give you a bit of anticipation on that, we don't have evidence for this. Although there is suggestions that it might be true.

0:03:08.3 Evidence is needed on whether omega-3 fatty acids lower the risk of developing autoimmune disease. That's what we don't know. So that's why we're doing this study. Now, fish oils are interesting. And of course you can get fish oils from vegetarian sources as well from different seaweeds and marine phytoplankton if you can get that, sometimes you can buy it as a green powder. Because a lot of people don't realize this, but people talk about fish oils, but it is not the fish that makes the oils. The fish actually concentrate the oils from the marine plants and the phytoplankton that the fish eat. So what human beings need to do is start mass producing marine phytoplankton so we don't have to destroy ecosystems by overfishing, which we are doing at the moment. We can actually cultivate this, can actually cultivate the plant rather than the fish, which is what we need to do and let's leave the fish to maintain ecosystems as far as possible. Anyway, this study here is this is the title of the study.

0:04:11.3 Now it's: "vitamin D and Marine Omega-3 Fatty Acids Supplementation." So this is giving supplements, autoimmune disease. And we'll look at a bit more about this vital trial in a minute, or in a few minutes. "To investigate whether vitamin D and marine derived long chain omega-3 fatty acids reduce the risk of autoimmune disease" is what the study is about. And it's nationwide and it's from the United States, largely based in the Boston area. And it's randomized, and it's double-blind that people don't know whether they're getting the vitamin D or not, the people giving out and assessing the results don't know, and it's placebo-controlled. So this is the best form of trial. Prospective randomized, double-blind control trial. The quality of data from this is way much better than observational studies that we've had in the past. And as we say, the results are very positive and very encouraging.

0:05:08.8 This is one of the things we could expect 'cause we have spend lots of money on developing expensive pharmaceuticals, or we could use things that we already have, like the sunshine or very cheap vitamin D supplement tablets, which are dirt cheap. We need to, okay, so we need clever drugs for some things, but for a lot of things, we just need to promote health. We need to optimize health. This is a whole philosophical approach to healthcare that we really, I feel really does need to be promoted. It's not really being promoted and as well as that, that means people all around the world can benefit not just those of us that are rich enough to afford pharmaceuticals in advanced countries. We can promote health for everyone. It's egalitarian, if it works. And of course, this is showing that it does work.

0:05:52.1 We've suspected it for a long time, but here we have evidence. Now this trial involves nearly 26,000 people. Good split between men and women; 12,786 men, just over 13,000 women. Now, people had to be 50 when they started the trial, women were 55, but the average age was 67.1. So this is in the older age groups. Now this trial only tells us what this trial tells us, but it tells us about the reduced incidences of autoimmune disease in this age group with vitamin D. And I believe, I think there's other evidence, not from this trial, but there's other evidence that shows that vitamin D in younger age groups helps to prevent the autoimmune diseases that occur in younger age groups. Because for example, some autoimmune diseases like diabetes mellitus type one or multiple sclerosis are more likely to occur in younger people. And of course they're both terribly debilitating diseases, but more on the specific diseases if you want to stick around.

0:06:56.5 Now 18,000 were described as the strange way they have defining this in the Americas, non-Hispanic Whites, I think that just means that they were White. 5,106 were to self described as Black and other racial groups. So, we've got a good range of ages. It is looking at the older age groups and we've got a good range of ethnicities, and racial backgrounds. Now what was actually done, the intervention, was 2,000 international units of vitamin D, a day, now that's actually not that much, it's just 50 micrograms. That's a relatively low dose of vitamin D, but it was given every day, or was prescribed for every day. And again, a relatively low dose of omega-3 fatty acids, 1000 milligrams, which of course is one gram. So relatively low doses of vitamin D, 2,000 units a day, just bear in mind with vitamin D, if you go outside, and if it takes you two hours to get sunburned, in an hour, you're going to make about 20,000 units, if you've got a large surface area of body exposed to the sun.

0:08:00.7 So relatively small dose of vitamin D. Participants self-reported all, new or autoimmune diseases, and they went up to 5.3 years, which is great. And they were all confirmed in the medical records. So self-reported and confirmed by medical records. So this is, again, pretty good quality stuff, this is how to do studies, this is good. The treatment group, who got the vitamin D, so they got the vitamin D. 123, developed an autoimmune disease, placebo group, 155. And the difference there is, hazard ratio 0.78, and the P value there is 0.05. In other words, there were only 78% as likely to develop autoimmune disease. In other words, there was a 22% reduction in autoimmune diseases in people that were taking the vitamin D.

0:08:53.7 Now, I think the reason that this works is because the population as a whole is low in vitamin D. So if everyone had been following advice, we've been talking about, for example, on this channel for a long time, this might not have worked as well, because if people already have enough vitamin D, giving extra is probably not going to be affected. But this shows to me that, the fact that this did work, means that vitamin D deficiency is really quite wide-spread, which is unfortunate for many other diseases. But this is only tells us what this one tells us about. So, and we noticed that the P value there is 0.05, which is significant. In other words, there's only a 5% chance that this result arose by chance. So basically, this gets a big red tick, this is case proof. This is evidence. This is what we were looking for. vitamin D supplement is reducing the probability of autoimmune disease.

0:09:49.9 Now the omega-3 group, it did show a difference. 130 who had the omega-3, and the placebo, 148. But the difference there wasn't significant, the difference in the numbers wasn't significant. So we can't say there's an effect there. I'll just show you the graphics that are associated with this because and they're quite interesting. Now, this is the vitamin D one, these aren't vitamin D. So this is active team. In other words this group here had vitamin D. And this group here didn't. Now they were first year, second year, third year, you see, not a big difference, pretty similar. But then, as we get into later times, after one, two, three years, we start to see quite a lot more autoimmune disease in the placebo group who weren't protected by the vitamin D, and less autoimmune disease. And the difference, of course, between those lines is the size of the gap. And it looks like it's only getting bigger.

0:10:48.9 So if this study was extended for 10 years, we'll probably see a bigger effect. So pretty conclusive graphics. Now this is the one for the omega-3s. And that did show a difference between the two groups. I mean, we certainly see a difference there. But it didn't reach significance, the gap there was not as big for the number of people in the study, P equals 0.19, which is not reaching the P equals 0.5 level of significance. But an interesting effect, and would be great if people could have more omega-3 fatty acids, as we say, from phytoplankton sources. So let's hope the food technologists get their act together and start growing up large amounts of marine phytoplankton, because that's where the fats comes from, from the plants.

0:11:46.0 This was the actual study itself here. If you want to look at it for yourself, the whole thing is there, you can download the PDF. And this is the clinicaltrials.org which actually talks about it as well. And interesting here, we see that, we have the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart and Lung and Blood Institute, the Office of Dietary Supplements, the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke. So these are people that don't have any obvious financial interest in this, and this is of course are the trouble with pharmaceuticals, because pharmaceutical industry is motivated to make molecules that it can make money out of and vitamin D, you can't because it's out of patent and it's just a vitamin. That's why we have to look at independently of big pharma. Now, just going on looking at conclusions, vitamin D supplement for five years, with or without omega-3 fatty acids, reduce the risk of autoimmune disease. So this is effective. Omega-3 fatty acid supplement, with or without vitamin D, did reduce the rate but it's not statistically significant. So there may be an effect here but it didn't show it. Whereas vitamin D, the evidence is there in place.

0:13:07.1 Now the clinical importance of this is high because these are cheap, they don't say it to you, but they say, well, tolerated non-toxic supplements. And other effective treatments, really, there aren't that many other, other effective treatments to reduce the incidence. So we can treat these a bit when we've got them largely by giving steroids actually to reduce the inflammation, which isn't the ideal treatment to be quite honest, because steroids have side effects, but in terms of preventing these we're a bit stuck. So this is remarkably encouraging relatively, small doses of vitamin D. So just vitamin D supplements I get these from the supermarket I mean, I don't wanna advertise any particular supermarket, but these are cheap. These are readily affordable vitamin D supplements. Now with 2000 units of vitamin D a day it's probably okay, but the other one that people are often short of it goes with vitamin D is vitamin K2.

0:14:07.4 I personally take... Well, I don't take vitamin D in summer now 'cause I'm getting some sun when I'm out digging in the allotment. But the vitamin K2 I take. Now, the reason I take the vitamin K2 is because we don't get many fermented foods. So this comes from bacterial fermentation. So a lot of us are short of the vitamin D because we don't get enough sun. A lot of us are short of vitamin K2 because we don't get foods that are derived from bacterial fermentation, such as grass-fed meat, grass-fed milk. And the sort of food... They eat lots of these foods in Korea in Japan, the fermented foods. But we don't really eat fermented foods. Although on the continent, you eat quite a lot of sauerkraut which is fermented. We do get some from cheese, but not that much.

0:14:54.5 So the thing is the vitamin D can mobilize the calcium and the vitamin K2 puts the calcium away from the tissues into the bone. So it gives you strong teeth and bones. But it stops the calcium from accumulating in the tissues because of course, vitamin D mobilizes calcium, but we've talked about that in other videos, but they are... It is a bit of a great combination, those two now going... Just that's largely what I wanted to say, but I think we'll just mention autoimmune disease. Rheumatoid arthritis is affecting the joints of course, terribly debilitating disease. Polymyalgia rheumatica gives various stiff muscles, particularly in the morning. Hashimoto thyroiditis messes up the thyroid glands that you don't get enough thyroxine. Psoriasis is an overproduction of skin cells. Diabetes type 1 patient doesn't produce insulin. Multiple sclerosis progressive paralysis due to destruction of the myelin around the nerve cells. And these ones, particularly in fact, lupus as well can occur primarily in young people.

0:16:03.6 Now, this study doesn't comment on these young age group onset conditions, particularly, it gives us the evidence in the older age group, but it will be surprising if it didn't work for the younger age groups as well. But in research, we can only say what the study actually says. That's all we can be definitive about. Lupus is systemic lupus erythematosus which can affect the brain, the heart, the lungs, anywhere, terrible disease. Inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's and colitis that people have often heard of, Addison's disease is not enough of the cortisol from the adrenal glands. Grave's disease is over stimulation of the thyroid gland, all these are autoimmune diseases. Myasthenia gravis causes paralysis. Pernicious anemia reduces the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. Autoimmune vasculitis causes pain for blood vessels and disrupts the blood supply to certain areas, and celiac disease is also autoimmune, which of course is the gluten protein intolerance from grains.

0:17:07.8 So inflammatory autoimmune disease responds to self tissue so the body's attacking its own tissues. Third leading cause of morbidity in the industrial world. Chronic conditions, they don't go away, usually increases prevalence with age, lack of effective treatments. And that means that people suffer from these often for decades, often causing a lot of morbidity and a lot of reduced mobility, for example, which to be quite vulgar and honest about it means they're very expensive to look after as well. And that could be all be reduced according to this data by 22%. What's not to like for vitamin D that costs essentially nothing? Whereas looking after a highly debilitated person is extremely expensive, of course, that's just looking at it from that point of view, this reduces human pain, suffering and death, which is the real good thing about it. Now this trial here, the vital randomized controlled trial now it's actually, it's a bit of a V-I-T D [chuckle]

0:18:17.0 I don't know, that's how they got the vital anyways, straining a bit much out the T bag, but it's vitamin D and omega 3 trial was all about, what it's about. Randomized controlled trial based in the States, large numbers. Investigating D 3 and omega 3 supplementation in the light of reduced risk of developing cancer, heart disease, stroke, as we've seen autoimmune disease in this one, in people with no specific history of these things, which is important because if you've had one... If you just take, for example, autoimmune disease, where you had one autoimmune disease, you're more likely to develop another one, but wouldn't it be nice if we can reduce cancer, heart disease, stroke, which these things may work on, particularly the vitamin D... Consistent with this study.

0:19:03.3 Other studies aren't showing that big an effect actually with the Omega 3, but we'll wait to more studies, because this is a five-year interventional phase study has gone and now we're getting the data crunched out. So hopefully we'll see more ongoing data. And as well as that, these patients are being followed up longer term. But so presumably we'll start... We'll carry on seeing data from this in five year... Lots of data coming out this year but some in five years, some in 10 years, who knows how long they're going to keep this trial going for. So they got pretty convincing evidence to take dirt cheap, very safe, 2000 units of vitamin D a day. Personally, I take more in winter, 22% reduction in autoimmune disease. According to this trial, that is what the data says. That's the best we have at the moment. And it's consistent with so many other things, therefore, should be rolled out in my view by governments, as national policy, pity the UK government for example, and the US government are not following upon this safe efficacious treatment. Let's hope they're not doing that to promote expensive pharmaceutical treatments, but if you do look on national guidelines, they do talk an awful lot about drugs, which are needed of course, sometimes, but of course prevention, you and me know prevention is better than cure. Thank you for watching.