Renegade Neurologist

Nine years ago I was invited to present a series of lectures to physicians in Sydney, Australia. On the evening before the conference I had a discussion with a local physician about multiple sclerosis and the topic of the geographic distribution of the disease came up. Weve known for more than half a century that those individuals who lived their early years in northern latitudes had a significantly increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis compared to those who lived in more southern regions. Interestingly, the Australian doctor revealed that there was a similar geographic phenomenon noted in his continent. Those Australians who spent their early years far south of the equator were also at increased risk for the disease. At that point I began to wonder if sun exposure could relate to M.S. risk, possibly because of the decreased vitamin D production in individuals living far from the equator. I quickly fashioned a Powerpoint slide that evening and added it to my presentation the next day, mostly to serve as a point of discussion about this topic. It certainly seemed plausible, especially when you recognize that vitamin D serves as an antioxidant.

So it brought a smile to my face when recently reading JAMA when I noted an article entitled, Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels and Risk of Multiple Sclerosisin which Harvard researchers found a dramatically lowered risk of MS. in individuals with the highest vitamin D levels. Their report not only describes this relationship, but also points out that administration of vitamin D prevents the development of MS. in experimental animal models. And in addition to having antioxidant activity, the report points out that vitamin D is a potent modulator of the immune system which has implications for other immune related diseases. As the authors state, Vitamin D supplementation in infancy seems to exert a strong protective effect against the autoimmune disease type 1 diabetes and vitamin D levels in early childhood could also have an impact on the risk of MS.

We now must look upon vitamin D as having a far greater role in maintaining health than simply keeping our bones strong. And the need for D starts in infancy as I describe in my book, Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten.