A friend's mother (who is also a good friend) visiting from Canada was telling me the other day that she was just getting over the first virus she's had in three years. That's right folks, no flu, no common cold, no nothing. I asked her what her secret was and her answer was vitamin D. As we enter into a predicted worse-than-usual flu season this was welcome news indeed.
Over two years ago our pediatrician told me to give Eve a vitamin D supplement since I was exclusively breast feeding. Surprised and skeptical I asked him why that was necessary and he gave me two solid reasons:
1) we live above 42 degrees north latitude and everybody knows "it rains 9 months out of the year in Seattle"
2) our modern lives are spent indoors far more than our was bodies evolved to be
I might also add:
3) we organic do-everything-from-scratch girls don't get a lot of the fortified milks, cereals, flours, juice, etc.
I've been doing some additional research (this and this for example) on the benefits of vitamin D and I'm pretty convinced. In fact I'm going today to our local natural pharmacy to ask them more about it and get some snake/fish oil for all of us.
BTW, she said that she takes 3,000 IU per day.
