Certain nutrients are better than others at strengthening your immune system.
There’s an enormous body of evidence that singles out Vitamin D3 in particular for supporting your immune system’s natural defenses. Go to pubmed.gov and put vitamin D and immunity in the search bar. The last I checked, there were over five thousand research articles published supporting Vitamin D’s importance in maintaining immune health.
Vitamin D3 supplementation is especially important in the wintertime when the prevalence of vitamin D3 deficiency rises due to a lack of sunlight exposure [Your body makes D3 when your skin is exposed to the sun]. That means you need to supplement this nutrient in larger amounts during the winter for a healthy, activated immune system, to build a stronger resistance to colds and the flu, to both prevent ‘catching something’ and reduce the duration and severity of symptoms for those bugs you can’t avoid.
The latest research shows that 42% of Americans are Vitamin D3 deficient [and that’s by the very conservative medical communities relatively low ‘normal’]. Low levels of Vitamin D3 are linked to impaired immunity, slow wound healing, fatigue, depression, bone loss, and muscle pain.
WAIT! Vitamin D3 also helps your body absorb calcium and the most recent research shows that, unless your diet is totally lacking in calcium-containing foods, when you have enough D3 you absorb enough calcium from dietary sources that you don’t need to supplement with calcium, even if you are post-menopausal.
BUT Vitamin K2 helps that calcium be deposited in bone. Without the right amount of K2, that calcium can be deposited into arteries or joints instead. So, for daily use, a D3/K2 supplement is necessary.
AND to give your immune system a boost when you feel an illness coming on, take a bolus of Vitamin D3 [1000 IU’s/2.2#’s of body weight] three days running. You’ll get the best results if you start this on the day you realize that something is coming, usually, the day before symptoms actually appear.
We work hard to keep a highly bioavailable D3/K2 supplement and an emulsified D3 for use in the bolus on our shelves during the winter. You should have both in your immune-boosting arsenal.