I really had to chuckle when I read the news article from Family Practice News.  Headline: “Vitamin D Boost Fluticasone’s Allergic Rhinitis Effect”  First sentence reads: “ORLANDO – Daily oral treatment with a vitamin D supplement significantly improved the ability of fluticasone nasal spray to relieve the total, daytime symptoms of seasonal rhinitis in a pilot, placebo-controlled study of 35 patients.”  It is hard to describe how many levels of wrong that is made with this statement.  It would seem that just pure reasoning would get you to the point that rhinitis and colds are less in the summer than in the winter.  Warmth has been shown to not be the issue so really the only thing that is left is vitamin D.  Why such a surprise?  I guess that I am hedging somewhat here because pollen count that drives allergic rhinitis is higher in the spring and other allergens are higher in the fall.  But the thing that is even more wrong is to assume that the vitamin D is improving the performance of a drug when the vitamin D is doing all the ‘heavy lifting’ by itself.

The writer then goes on to explain that he would like to get the funding to do a larger study to show what is causing the primary effect.  He then explains that he most likely cannot get funding if the effect is just from the vitamin D.  He plans to solicit the NIH, but they would have no more interest in improving the health of the nation than pharma.  The truth of it is I personally know more than fifty people who have discovered that vitamin D has a significant impact on the symptoms of the common cold. What is even more interesting is that I suspect that total cold remedy sales are significantly down this year because more people are supplementing with vitamin D and spending more time in the sun.  This small shift in the total amount of vitamin D in the serum of the population affects the frequency of the common cold as a first result.

What the researcher should focus on is the combination of vitamin D and vitamin C to stop the rhinitis.  I have found that 500 mg of vitamin C every hour that I have a runny nose gives me relief in most cases.  However, the combination of vitamin C and vitamin D (about 20,000 IU for a couple of days) just makes all of the symptoms go away and the issue is totally resolved.  If the runny nose is from an allergy, add sulfur (as MSM) and magnesium and the results may surprise you.  Of course, this does nothing to boost sales of the pharmaceutical market or provided care to make a drug recommendation.  People would lose jobs and Obama would be blamed, so why would the NIH want to fund the study for people to lose jobs? I continue to chuckle as the merry-go-round plays its magic tunes.  – Pandemic Survivor