Are Your Vitamin D Supplements Making You Sick?

Some research scientists believe that autoimmune disease is caused by a massive intracellular invasion of bacteria, which hijacks the body's vitamin D receptor.


The Marshall Protocol is an ongoing research study, which believes that where low levels of vitamin D have been associated with disease, this is not because low levels are causing disease, but because the disease processes themselves have taken control of the vitamin D regulatory process. This would mean that the low values of vitamin D are the result, not the cause, of the disease.

What is Vitamin D?

Vitamin D was designated a nutrient, and vitamin during the 20th century, but it is actually a seco-steroid transcriptional activator. This means it is a hormone, with a complex control system. The clinically accepted role of the vitamin D metabolites – regulating calcium homeostasis – is actually just a small part of what these hormones do.

How Does Vitamin D Work in the Body?

Vitamin D is the primary ligand (linking ion or molecule) that activates the VDR receptor. This is a key intracellular hormone receptor; once activated by vitamin D, it produces certain gene-products, including anti-microbial peptides and proteins. These are both very important to our intra-phagocytic immune defenses - they are our bodies’ defence against those bacteria that have developed the ability to live inside the nuclei of our cells.
The VDR also converts 25-D (the non-active form of vitamin D) into 1,25-D (the active form, or hormone) which in turn activates the VDR to produce an enzyme to inactivate 1,25-D – preventing it from reaching high concentrations. In this way it has its own feedback system: once levels of 1,25-D reach a certain level, the system switches off.
The VDR is also involved in the transcription and translation of DNA: the receptor belongs to the family of transacting transcriptional regulatory factors, and has been found to affect up to 27,091 genes within the body. (1) These include genes and proteins known to be active in cancer (1) and those that are key to our immune systems: beta-defensin and cathelicidin. (2)

Low Levels of Vitamin D in Disease

Researchers on the Marshall Protocol believe that pathogens invade the nuclei of many of the body’s cells over time, causing inflammation and chronic disease. They also release substances that stop the VDR from working correctly; so it is unable to produce anti-micrbial peptides and proteins to kill the pathogens, and it is unable to regulate itself – it has no ‘turn off’ switch, and so levels of 1,25-D (the active form of vitamin D) keep growing.
The pathogens also hijack the RNA/DNA messaging – and can change over 900 genes within the body (all of those transcribed by the VDR). And because the pathogens block the VDR’s action, other nuclear receptors (the VDR, PXR, GCR, Thyroid-alpha-1 and beta-1) are all seriously affected. The loss of the GCR – the glucocorticoid receptor – and thyroid homeostasis, or balance – leads to diagnoses of hypo-thyroidism and adrenal insufficiency.

Can’t Doctors Measure the Vitamin D and Spot the Problem?

The ‘vitamin D’ that doctors measure is 25-Hydroxyvitamin-D (25-D) – the inactive metabolite form. But this doesn’t mean the body is deficient in vitamin D – it means the body is no longer regulating it correctly. Because the VDR isn’t functioning correctly, it can’t degrade the 1,25-D to 25-D even when levels are high; so the level of 1,25D becomes ever higher, affecting the body’s other receptors. So the body tries to block metabolism at the pathway, by downregulating the level of 25-Hydroxyvitamin-D. This is why people with autoimmune diseases show a ‘deficiency’ of the ‘vitamin’. (http://marshallprotocol.com/forum39/11053.html).

Should I Stop Taking Vitamin D Supplements?

The Marshall Protocol researchers certainly think so; but their research is not yet accepted by the medical establishment as the preferred treatment. The Marshall Protocol team believe that all forms of supplemental Vitamin D is converted into more and more 1,25-D, causing increasing receptor problems. Plus the vitamin D that we eat, and the 25-D that is hydroxylated from that both act to displace the active metabolite from the VDR.
Read more:
The Marshall Protocol Cure
Can Antibiotics Cure Hashimoto's Disease?
The Marshall Protocol Home Website

1. “Large-scale in silico and microarray-based identification of direct 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 target genes”, Wang, Tavera-Mendoza, Laperriere, Libby, MacLeod, Nagai, Bourdeau, Konstorum, et al, Mol Endocrinology: 19 (11): 2685-95
2. “Human cathelicidin antimircobial peptide gene is a direct target of the vitamin D receptor and is strongly upregulated in myeloid cells by 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3”; Gombart, Borregaard, Koeffler; FASEB J. 19(9):1067-77