Presentation - Why does Vitamin-D 'Work' So Well

Type: Conference presentation
Presenter: Trevor Marshall, PhD
Conference: 11th International Congress on Autoimmunity
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Date: May, 2018

This is a presentation given at the 11th International Congress on Autoimmunity in Lisbon on 19 May 2018.

A decade ago I wrote that the various forms of Vitamin D were not 'vitamins', but a secosteroid hormone and its precursors. I showed how every human cell makes the 'Vitamin D' it needs to transcribe genes without any of the precursors being present in the diet. Nobody has refuted my analysis, yet Medicine seems to have paid little attention.

There is still active debate over whether I was correct in warning about long-term deleterious actions of 'Vitamin D' in the human body. The consensus in the short-term is quite clear - most people find that taking high-dose 'Vitamin D' (the steroid precursor) makes them feel better.

I do not disagree, indeed, there is a good reason why 'Vitamin D' 'works' so well in the short-term, 1-10 years, timeframe. That reason is embodied in the statistic that 60% of US adults are taking a drug for at least one diagnosed chronic disease, and that 12.5% have 5 or more diagnoses. Any drug which modulates the symptoms of chronic disease is therefore going to affect a very large proportion of the population, and the Vitamin D precursors do just that. Supplementing with a precursor suppresses the patient's innate immune responseThe body's first line of defense against intracellular and other pathogens. According to the Marshall Pathogenesis the innate immune system becomes disabled as patients develop chronic disease. - just as cortisone or prednisone would do, but less aggressively, with fewer short-term side-effects.

For nearly 16 years I have been observing a cohort of hundreds of elderly folk with chronic immune diseases who have chosen to avoid dietary sources of 'vitamin-D.' Their measured blood 25-DThe vitamin D metabolite widely (and erroneously) considered best indicator of vitamin D "deficiency." Inactivates the Vitamin D Nuclear Receptor. Produced by hydroxylation of vitamin D3 in the liver. levels are routinely below 12ng/ml, below the level usually considered 'severely deficient'. Why hasn't this made their bones weak, and their chronic condition worse?

Is it perhaps because every human cell makes all the active Vitamin D it needs to transcribe DNA without any of the precursors being present in the diet, just as we have described?

We will revisit how the vitamins-D affect the human body, and discuss some of the options available to help mitigate chronic symptom surges