Welcome to the Doctor Burg, Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Now, your host, the man taking your health to a whole new level.

Doctor Eric Burg.

Well, hello.

Today we're going to talk about vitamin D in relationship to your immune system.

Now, I had this idea that I already had this video and I searched and I couldn't find it.

There may be a video out that I just can't find that I already did, but I'm just going to do a video specifically on the immune system.

First thing you need to know is that vitamin D is intimately connected to every single immune reaction.

In fact, the white blood cells have the ability to make vitamin D active, so vitamin D is very important.

In fact, viruses as one of their strategies is to downgrade or turn off the vitamin D receptor.

So you can't get any more vitamin D because apparently they know that vitamin D is very, very important.

And so that's one way that they thrive.

So vitamin D deficiencies occur when there's not enough sun right in the winter.

Why do you think we have the spike of flu and other viral infections?

It's because the vitamin D is low.

In fact, in the pandemic of 1918, the Spanish flu, it peaked in January, which is in the winter.

Now, another thing that's interesting about the winter months, or basically between November and March,

is much higher incidence of autoimmune diseases, like lupus, MS, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel disease.

Why? Because vitamin D is a natural kind of a steroid anti-inflammatory, and so it has a key function in reducing inflammation.

When you have an autoimmune disease, the thing that really creates the damage is the inflammatory process.

So if you have enough D, you can have a lot less inflammation.

It's the inflammation that causes all the collateral damage.

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