My plans to take vitamin D seemed well funded (lots of positive research these days about high vitamin D levels) and then I stumbled upon this article that promotes the views of Trevor Marshall.
"The Truth About Vitamin D: Fourteen Reasons Why Misunderstanding Endures", by Amy Proal (a biologist), 15/09/2007
The article strongly advises against vitamin D supplementation and contains unusual allegations like these (I've tried to summarize, most of this is not literally from the article):
- 25-D becomes increasingly immunosuppressive starting from levels around 20 ng/ml. Therefore supplementation will damage your health in the long run.
- As a person falls ill with a chronic disease, L-form bacteria begin to live inside the cells of the immune system and in various tissues. These bacteria create proteins that, just like elevated 25-D, are able to bind and block the Vitamin D Receptor and block the ability of the Vitamin D Receptor to turn on the immune system.
- Chronically ill people are not deficient in vitamin D, they often have low 25-D but high 1,25-D.
- To cure many of these chronic diseases vitamin D has to be avoided and low-doses antibiotics have to be used (the "Marshall Protocol" http://www.marshallprotocol.com/ )
- Much vitamin D supplementation research is useless as it doesn't investigate both 25-D and 1,25-D levels and tends to cover only the short run, during which vitamin D provides short term relief with a decrease in toxins, cytokines, and overall inflammation, because it shuts down the immune system. As it shuts down the immune system vitamin D makes people sicker in the long run as the immune system doesn't do its job anymore and L-form bacteria accumulate.
There are a lot of references, but as a lay person it's difficult for me to validate them.
Slides with text and references by Marshall:
This stuff really goes against mainstream opinion.
But then again, mainstream opinion has been wrong before.
Trevor Marshall isn't a medical doctor.
But then again, neither is Aubrey de Grey.
I'm wary of documents titled "The truth about..." and of theories that offer a simple explanation and cure for a whole bunch of diseases.
But then again, what if even part of what he says is correct?
Wikipedia is relatively positive about Marshall, but the neutrality of the article is disputed. It does mention: "Observations that the Marshall Protocol successfully treats certain autoimmune diseases have yet to be fully validated by the medical community. Rosen and Bagwell, in their 2007 review of treatments for sarcoidosis, argue that the Marshalls' 2003 paper, "Antibiotics in sarcoidosis—reflections of the first year" has "serious deficiencies" claiming that the data are not peer-reviewed and that results are not quantified."
Edited by pres, 13 January 2008 - 10:45 PM.