Ample sunshine and modest doses of thiamine, vitamin C, and niacin prevent cavities and anorexia. Read more here and here. When attacked by a cold or flu virus, extra vitamin D, vitamin C, and niacin can dramatically reduce the duration and severity of the illness.
If you are looking for good doses to start with, click here.

These four vitamins are the only four associated with a named pandemic deficiency disease. Vitamin C prevents scurvy. Vitamin D prevents rickets. Niacin prevents pellegra, and thiamine prevents beri-beri. As a result, there are recommended daily allowances for all four of these vitamins and all four are added to the food supply.

I have studied the safety and effectiveness of vitamin supplements for the past 15 years. Like any other pill, the effectiveness of vitamin supplements increases with increasing dose, and so does the risk of side effects. Physicians monitor side effects caused by vitamin supplements, and have developed upper limit daily doses for each of vitamin C, vitamin D, niacin, and thiamine. The upper limit represent the dosage that 95% of the population can take daily without side effects.

I believe that the reason for the gap between the RDA’s and the UL’s is that the UL’s are difficult to reach by just eating food. If the RDA’s were set logically (for manufactured drugs, the doses recommended by your doctor are typically the maximum doses 95% of the population can take without side effects), everyone would be required to take pills every day from birth to death. This strikes people as unnatural because it is unnatural.

The pandemic deficiency of vitamin D is particularly tragic. I’m not sure why vitamin D is even classified as a vitamin. The UL’s are easily exceeded without side effects and without pills. All you need to do is get out in the sun – a highly natural activity. Modern living with clothing, electric lighting at night, indoor work during the day, air conditioning, and sunblock is depriving everyone of natural exposure to the sun. This is one deficiency that is simple enough to fix.

My physicians want me to use double-blind, placebo-controlled trials to prove that getting sunshine and taking the UL’s of vitamin C, niacin, and thiamine every day instead of the RDA’s will prevent cavities and anorexia. This can’t be done. How can a double-blind trial be conducted on sunshine? The UL’s of vitamin C and niacin have immediately perceived effects. I would know if I was getting the tablets vs. the placebo which would break the blind. The final point is that those receiving the placebo would be getting variable doses of these vitamins from their diet. Physicians never run double-blind drug trials that include low doses of the drug in the placebo. Even for drugs, the effectiveness of the first milligram is much greater than the effectiveness of the last milligram (e.g. a two milligram dose is twice as effective as a one milligram dose while it is difficult to detect a difference in effectiveness between a 20 mg dose and a 21 mg dose).

In the 1930’s and 1940’s, the decision was made to set recommended doses for vitamin C, niacin, and thiamine that can be readily obtained from food. What else was to be done? Is it really practical to recommend that everyone take vitamin pills every day? Oddly enough, it is the pharma industry that has proven that it is, in fact, practical to take pills every day and they are working hard to see to it that an ever growing percentage of the population takes drugs every day from an ever-younger age.

Someday doctors will, like personal trainers, be paid to prevent medical procedures and drug prescriptions instead of to prescribe medical procedures and drug prescriptions. In the meantime, you’ll need to set your own vitamin doses. There is much to gain and little to lose by getting into the sun and taking supplements of vitamin C, niacin, and thiamine.