Autoimmune Condition and Vitamin D

Hi, I’m back, and I wanted to talk about vitamin D in autoimmune diseases. There’s a huge connectionto this. The first thing I want to talk about is the thymus gland. It’s located on top of the heart.It’s not the thyroid gland. It’s a little lower, right underneath your breastbone,and it’s an immune gland. The thymus produces a very specific T cell called the T regulatory cell.Another name for the cell is the T-suppressor cell. One of its main jobs is to prevent

autoimmune diseases. Now, if we take a look at what an autoimmune disease is, it’s a tissuethat has antibodies against itself. One of the prime functions of a T-regulatory cellis central tolerance, tolerating our own body tissue and not attacking it. The autoimmunecondition is really an inappropriate immune response. Your body is attacking tissues thatare friendly. A big function of the thymus gland is to determine the self from a foreign enemy or

a pathogen. Be able to determine the good guys from the bad guys because the last thing you wantis your army starting to turn against itself. It’s called friendly fire. The thymus ensuresthere’s no traitors in the body. If they do find a traitor, and I mean an immune cell that’s goingto self-attack, it will find it and execute it. Okay, so that’s one of the big functions.And this T regulatory cell inhibits inappropriate immune responses. In fact,

they’re even using those cells as a treatment in certain autoimmune diseases. Well, it just sohappens that the T regulatory cells majorly need vitamin D. And if you don’t have this function,your risk for allergies go up, your risk of asthma goes up, and even miscarriage. Because if youthink about it, when a woman goes through pregnancy and she has an autoimmune disease,did you realize that that disease turns off while she’s pregnant and breastfeeding,

which is fascinating. And the reason is because this cell goes in hyperdrive and starts increasingso it can suppress and prevent our immune system from attacking the fetus. If you’re deficient inthis cell, your chances of getting a miscarriage go up because your own immune system is identifyingthe fetus as something that is foreign that shouldn’t be here. And that’s a really bigmistake. There’s a significant correlation between the regulatory T cells and vitamin D.

And this also probably explains why a vitamin D deficiency increases your risk of gettinga miscarriage because of how it feeds this T cell right here. And one of the reasons I wanted to dothis video is to just show you the importance of vitamin D when a woman is pregnant. If she’sdeficient. There’s all sorts of problems that can occur with that baby, risk for allergies, asthma,all sorts of other things, including autoimmune diseases. Now, if you have an autoimmune disease,

you should be taking high amounts of vitamin D because vitamin D is an anti-inflammatorynutrient. And so are the T regulatory cells. They’re anti-inflammatory and their action isprofound. These T-cells are immunosuppressive. They keep the immune system in check. They keepit balanced, and they mainly keep the immune system from being overenthusiastic and creatingall this collateral damage. If you want more information about vitamin D, check out this video

right here.