Here is the link


In early April of 2005, after a particularly rainy spring, an influenza epidemic (epi: upon, demic: people) exploded through the maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane where I have worked for the last ten years. It was not the pandemic (pan: all, demic: people) we all fear, just an epidemic. The world is waiting and governments are preparing for the next pandemic. A severe influenza pandemic will kill many more Americans than died in the World Trade Centers, the Iraq war, the Vietnam War, and Hurricane Katrina combined, perhaps a million people in the USA alone. Such a disaster would tear the fabric of American society. Our entire country might resemble the Superdome or Bourbon Street after Hurricane Katrina.

It's only a question of when a pandemic will come, not if it will come. Influenza A pandemics come every 30 years or so, severe ones every hundred years or so. The last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu, occurred in 1968 - killing 34,000 Americans. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic killed more than 500,000 Americans. So many millions died in other countries, they couldn't bury the bodies. Young healthy adults, in the prime of their lives in the morning, drowning in their own inflammation by noon, grossly discolored by sunset, were dead at midnight. Their body's own broad-spectrum natural antibiotics, called antimicrobial peptides, seemed nowhere to be found. An overwhelming immune response to the influenza virus - white blood cells releasing large amounts of inflammatory agents called cytokines and chemokines into the lungs of the doomed - resulted in millions of deaths in 1918.

As I am now a psychiatrist, and no longer a general practitioner, I was not directly involved in fighting the influenza epidemic in our hospital. However, our internal medicine specialists worked overtime as they diagnosed and treated a rapidly increasing number of stricken patients. Our Chief Medical Officer quarantined one ward after another as more and more patients were gripped with the chills, fever, cough, and severe body aches that typifies the clinical presentation of influenza A.

Epidemic influenza kills a million people in the world every year by causing pneumonia, "the captain of the men of death." These epidemics are often explosive; the word influenza comes from Italian (Medieval Latin ?nfluentia) or influence, because of the belief that the sudden and abrupt epidemics were due to the influence of some extraterrestrial force. One seventeenth century observer described it well when he wrote, "suddenly a Distemper arose, as if sent by some blast from the stars, which laid hold on very many together: that in some towns, in the space of a week, above a thousand people fell sick together."

I guess our hospital was under luckier stars as only about 12% of our patients were infected and no one died. However, as the epidemic progressed, I noticed something unusual. First, the ward below mine was infected, and then the ward on my right, left, and across the hall - but no patients on my ward became ill. My patients had intermingled with patients from infected wards before the quarantines. The nurses on my unit cross-covered on infected wards. Surely, my patients were exposed to the influenza A virus. How did my patients escape infection from what some think is the most infectious of all the respiratory viruses?

My patients were no younger, no healthier, and in no obvious way different from patients on other wards. Like other wards, my patients are mostly African Americans who came from the same prisons and jails as patients on the infected wards. They were prescribed a similar assortment of powerful psychotropic medications we use throughout the hospital to reduce the symptoms of psychosis, depression, and violent mood swings and to try to prevent patients from killing themselves or attacking other patients and the nursing staff. If my patients were similar to the patients on all the adjoining wards, why didn't even one of my patients catch the flu?

A short while later, a group of scientists from UCLA published a remarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA group confirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturally occurring steroid hormone - a hormone most of us take for granted - was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killing bacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increases the body's production of a remarkable class of proteins, called antimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showed these remarkable antibiotic properties was plain old vitamin D.

All of the patients on my ward had been taking 2,000 units of vitamin D every day for several months or longer. Could that be the reason none of my patients caught the flu? I then contacted Professors Reinhold Vieth and Ed Giovannucci and told them of my observations. They immediately advised me to collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 units of vitamin D, not just the ones on my ward, to see if the results were statistically significant. It turns out that the observations on my ward alone were of borderline statistical significance and could have been due to chance alone. Administrators at our hospital agreed, and are still attempting to collect data from all the patients in the hospital on 2,000 or more units of vitamin D at the time of the epidemic.

Four years ago, I became convinced that vitamin D was unique in the vitamin world by virtue of three facts. First, it's the only known precursor of a potent steroid hormone, calcitriol, or activated vitamin D. Most other vitamins are antioxidants or co-factors in enzyme reactions. Activated vitamin D - like all steroid hormones - damasks the genome, turning protein production on and off, as your body requires. That is, vitamin D regulates genetic expression in hundreds of tissues throughout your body. This means it has as many potential mechanisms of action as genes it damasks.

Second, vitamin D does not exist in appreciable quantities in normal human diets. True, you can get several thousand units in a day if you feast on sardines for breakfast, herring for lunch and salmon for dinner. The only people who ever regularly consumed that much fish are peoples, like the Inuit, who live at the extremes of latitude. The milk Americans depend on for their vitamin D contains no naturally occurring vitamin D; instead, the U.S. government requires fortified milk to be supplemented with vitamin D, but only with what we now know to be a paltry 100 units per eight-ounce glass.

The vitamin D steroid hormone system has always had its origins in the skin, not in the mouth. Until quite recently, when dermatologists and governments began warning us about the dangers of sunlight, humans made enormous quantities of vitamin D where humans have always made it, where naked skin meets the ultraviolet B radiation of sunlight. We just cannot get adequate amounts of vitamin D from our diet. If we don't expose ourselves to ultraviolet light, we must get vitamin D from dietary supplements.

The third way vitamin D is different from other vitamins is the dramatic difference between natural vitamin D nutrition and the modern one. Today, most humans only make about a thousand units of vitamin D a day from sun exposure; many people, such as the elderly or African Americans, make much less than that. How much did humans normally make? A single, twenty-minute, full body exposure to summer sun will trigger the delivery of 20,000 units of vitamin D into the circulation of most people within 48 hours. Twenty thousand units, that's the single most important fact about vitamin D. Compare that to the 100 units you get from a glass of milk, or the several hundred daily units the U.S. government recommend as "Adequate Intake." It's what we call an "order of magnitude" difference.

Humans evolved naked in sub-equatorial Africa, where the sun shines directly overhead much of the year and where our species must have obtained tens of thousands of units of vitamin D every day, in spite of our skin developing heavy melanin concentrations (racial pigmentation) for protecting the deeper layers of the skin. Even after humans migrated to temperate latitudes, where our skin rapidly lightened to allow for more rapid vitamin D production, humans worked outdoors. However, in the last three hundred years, we began to work indoors; in the last one hundred years, we began to travel inside cars; in the last several decades, we began to lather on sunblock and consciously avoid sunlight. All of these things lower vitamin D blood levels. The inescapable conclusion is that vitamin D levels in modern humans are not just low - they are aberrantly low.

About three years ago, after studying all I could about vitamin D, I began testing my patient's vitamin D blood levels and giving them literature on vitamin D deficiency. All their blood levels were low, which is not surprising as vitamin D deficiency is practically universal among dark-skinned people who live at temperate latitudes. Furthermore, my patients come directly from prison or jail, where they get little opportunity for sun exposure. After finding out that all my patients had low levels, many profoundly low, I started educating them and offering to prescribe them 2,000 units of vitamin D a day, the U.S. government's "Upper Limit."

Could vitamin D be the reason none of my patients got the flu? In the last several years, dozens of medical studies have called attention to worldwide vitamin D deficiency, especially among African Americans and the elderly, the two groups most likely to die from influenza. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, autoimmune disease, depression, chronic pain, depression, gum disease, diabetes, hypertension, and a number of other diseases have recently been associated with vitamin D deficiency. Was it possible that influenza was as well?

Then I thought of three mysteries that I first learned in medical school at the University of North Carolina: (1) although the influenza virus exists in the population year-round, influenza is a wintertime illnesses; (2) children with vitamin D deficient rickets are much more likely to suffer from respiratory infections; (3) the elderly in most countries are much more likely to die in the winter than the summer (excess wintertime mortality), and most of that excess mortality, although listed as cardiac, is, in fact, due to influenza.

Could vitamin D explain these three mysteries, mysteries that account for hundreds of thousands of deaths every year? Studies have found the influenza virus is present in the population year-around; why is it a wintertime illness? Even the common cold got its name because it is common in cold weather and rare in the summer. Vitamin D blood levels are at their highest in the summer but reach their lowest levels during the flu and cold season. Could such a simple explanation explain these mysteries?

The British researcher, Dr. R. Edgar Hope-Simpson, was the first to document the most mysterious feature of epidemic influenza, its wintertime surfeit and summertime scarcity. He theorized that an unknown "seasonal factor" was at work, a factor that might be affecting innate human immunity. Hope-Simpson was a general practitioner who became famous in the late 1960's after he discovered the cause of shingles. British authorities bestowed every prize they had on him, not only because of the importance of his discovery, but because he made the discovery own his own, without the benefit of a university appointment, and without any formal training in epidemiology (the detective branch of medicine that methodically searches for clues about the cause of disease).

After his work on shingles, Hope-Simpson spent the rest of his working life studying influenza. He concluded a "seasonal factor" was at work, something that was regularly and predictably impairing human immunity in the winter and restoring it in the summer. He discovered that communities widely separated by longitude, but which shared similar latitude, would simultaneously develop influenza. He discovered that influenza epidemics in Great Britain in the 17th and 18th century occurred simultaneously in widely separated communities, before modern transportation could possibly explain its rapid dissemination. Hope-Simpson concluded a "seasonal factor" was triggering these epidemics. Whatever it was, he was certain that the deadly "crop" of influenza that sprouts around the winter solstice was intimately involved with solar radiation. Hope-Simpson predicted that, once discovered, the "seasonal factor" would "provide the key to understanding most of the influenza problems confronting us."

Hope-Simpson had no way of knowing that vitamin D has profound effects on human immunity, no way of knowing that it increases production of broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides, peptides that quickly destroy the influenza virus. We have only recently learned how vitamin D increases production of antimicrobial peptides while simultaneously preventing the immune system from releasing too many inflammatory cells, called chemokines and cytokines, into infected lung tissue.

In 1918, when medical scientists did autopsies on some of the fifty million people who died during the 1918 flu pandemic, they were amazed to find destroyed respiratory tracts; sometimes these inflammatory cytokines had triggered the complete destruction of the normal epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract. It was as if the flu victims had been attacked and killed by their own immune systems. This is the severe inflammatory reaction that vitamin D has recently been found to prevent.

I subsequently did what physicians have done for centuries. I experimented, first on myself and then on my family, trying different doses of vitamin D to see if it has any effects on viral respiratory infections. After that, as the word spread, several of my medical colleagues experimented on themselves by taking three-day courses of pharmacological doses (2,000 units per kilogram per day) of vitamin D at the first sign of the flu. I also asked numerous colleagues and friends who were taking physiological doses of vitamin D (5,000 units per day in the winter and less, or none, in the summer) if they ever got colds or the flu, and, if so, how severe the infections were. I became convinced that physiological doses of vitamin D reduce the incidence of viral respiratory infections and that pharmacological doses significantly ameliorate the symptoms of some viral respiratory infections if taken early in the course of the illness. However, such observations are so personal, so likely to be biased, that they are worthless science.

As I waited for the hospital to finish collecting data from all the patients taking vitamin D at the time of the outbreak - to see if it really reduced the incidence of influenza - I decided to research the literature thoroughly, finding all the clues in the world's medical literature that indicated if vitamin D played any role in preventing influenza or other viral respiratory infections. I worked on the paper for over a year, writing it with Professor Edward Giovannucci of Harvard, Professor Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto, Professor Michael Holick of Boston University, Professor Cedric Garland of U.C., San Diego, as well as Dr. John Umhau of the National Institute of Health, Sasha Madronich of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Dr. Bill Grant at the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center. After numerous revisions, we submitted our paper to the same widely respected journal where Dr. Hope-Simpson published most of his work several decades ago.

Epidemiology and Infection, known as The Journal of Hygiene in Hope-Simpson's day, recently published our paper. The editor, Professor Norman Noah, knew Dr. Hope-Simpson and helped tremendously with the paper. In the paper, we detailed our theory that vitamin D is Hope-Simpson's long forgotten "seasonal stimulus." We proposed that annual fluctuations in vitamin D levels explain the seasonality of influenza. The periodic seasonal fluctuations in 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels, which cause recurrent and predictable wintertime vitamin D deficiency, predispose human populations to influenza epidemics. We raised the possibility that influenza is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency in the same way that an unusual form of pneumonia (pneumocystis carinii) is a symptom of AIDS. That is, we theorized that George Bernard Shaw was right when he said, "the characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause."

In the paper, we propose that vitamin D explains the following 14 observations:

1. Why the flu predictably occurs in the months following the winter solstice, when vitamin D levels are at their lowest,

2. Why it disappears in the months following the summer solstice,

3. Why influenza is more common in the tropics during the rainy season,

4. Why the cold and rainy weather associated with El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which drives people indoors and lowers vitamin D blood levels, is associated with influenza,

5. Why the incidence of influenza is inversely correlated with outdoor temperatures,

6. Why children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get colds,

7. Why cod liver oil (which contains vitamin D) reduces the incidence of viral respiratory infections,

8. Why Russian scientists found that vitamin D-producing UVB lamps reduced colds and flu in schoolchildren and factory workers,

9. Why Russian scientists found that volunteers, deliberately infected with a weakened flu virus - first in the summer and then again in the winter - show significantly different clinical courses in the different seasons,

10. Why the elderly who live in countries with high vitamin D consumption, like Norway, are less likely to die in the winter,

11. Why children with vitamin D deficiency and rickets suffer from frequent respiratory infections,

12. Why an observant physician (Rehman), who gave high doses of vitamin D to children who were constantly sick from colds and the flu, found the treated children were suddenly free from infection,

13. Why the elderly are so much more likely to die from heart attacks in the winter rather than in the summer,

14. Why African Americans, with their low vitamin D blood levels, are more likely to die from influenza and pneumonia than Whites are.

Although our paper discusses the possibility that physiological doses of vitamin D (5,000 units a day) may prevent colds and the flu, and that physicians might find pharmacological doses of vitamin D (2,000 units per kilogram of body weight per day for three days) useful in treating some of the one million people who die in the world every year from influenza, we remind readers that it is only a theory. Like all theories, our theory must withstand attempts to be disproved with dispassionately conducted and well-controlled scientific experiments.

However, as vitamin D deficiency has repeatedly been associated with many of the diseases of civilization, we point out that it is not too early for physicians to aggressively diagnose and adequately treat vitamin D deficiency. We recommend that enough vitamin D be taken daily to maintain 25-hydroxy vitamin D levels at levels normally achieved through summertime sun exposure (50 ng/ml). For many persons, such as African Americans and the elderly, this will require up to 5,000 units daily in the winter and less, or none, in the summer, depending on summertime sun exposure.

By: J. J. Cannell

Acknowldegement: We wish to thank Professor Norman Noah of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor Robert Scragg of the University of Auckland and Professor Robert Heaney of Creighton University for reviewing the manuscript and making many useful suggestions.

–– Dr. John Cannell, Atascadero State Hospital, 10333 El Camino Real, Atascadero, CA 93422, USA, 805 468-2061, [email protected]
–– Professor Reinhold Vieth, Mount Sinai Hospital, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Department of Medicine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
–– Dr. John Umhau, Laboratory of Clinical and Translational Studies, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
–– Professor Michael Holick, Departments of Medicine and Physiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
–– Dr. Bill Grant, SUNARC, San Francisco, CA
–– Dr. Sasha Madronich, Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA
–– Professor Cedric Garland, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA
–– Professor Edward Giovannucci, Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA

I started taking 2000 units a day a few days ago. Seems reasonable to me.

I'm taking either a 400 IU or 1000 IU pill every day with my multivitamin.  Got the kids in college (dorms and apartments) taking it too.

I hope it doesn't fuck us up in some other way, though.

Interesting read.  I've always been a big believer in the cold & flu fighting powers of vitamin C.

I guess I'll have to start taking a look at D now as well.

I took the 2000 units when you mentioned it in the thread I started about getting sick. Either it worked or the B12 but Ive still got some snot but its about all out of my chest. No more fever, sore throat or headache 12 hours after taking it. Bought another bottle today.

How about a condensed version of that novel?

I got bored after the first paragraph, and then realized there were 87 more

It said you'll be fine on a diet consisting exclusively of Pepsi and Twinkies.

Hey, it's your health...not ours.

Looks like you'll continue to be uneducated.
 

I would be careful of "too much of a good thing." From what I understand too much vitamin D is also bad for you.

Absolutely.

You certainly can take too much. I'm happy with going with the 2000/ day route though. It's an acceptable number and it seems as though it is enough to make a difference. All I can do is wait and see if I get sick.

I'm going to buy a bottle for all of my employees and their families too.

I think it mentioned Marlboro's and Camel Turkish Gold's too.  

Order you Pizza Hut online.  Try coupon code 452, it works for some locations and not others.  If it works you get a 1 topping large pizza for $7.  Also try code 430 and get any large pizza for $9.99.  When that code first came out it worked for any combination.  I ordered a pepperoni lovers pizza with extra cheese and double sausage and got it for $9.99.  Now you can either order 4 or 6 toppings or any specialty pizza but it is still a good deal.

Good stuff!  So Pizza Hut pizza has enough vitamin D to prevent the flu!



Whoda thunk it!



(On a side note, how in the hell did you manage this one.  I guess you were trying to post in the Pizza Hut scam thread.)



 

I work in the trades.

Most of the folks I know spend many hours a day outdoors, including myself.  

I wonder if this is why guys in the trades rarely get sick?  That would be an interesting research study.  According to quick research, just 10 minutes in the sun produces 10,000IU of Vitamin D.  (ETA - If that's correct, my body must be making millions IU of Vitamin D daily. I would guess I spend 3-5 hours per day in the sun)

I've also noticed that my kids classmates have been sick this year.  In fact, at the start of every year, it seems that they are always telling me about so-and-so being out sick.  Yet my kids rarely, if ever, get sick until about November.  Of note is that they spend probably an hour or more per day in the sun in the pool up until the end of September/beginning of October...

Did you miss the part about "a 20min full body exposure to SUN Light triggers the body to produce @ 20,000 iu of vitamin D in2 48hrs"?

Nope I saw that, but I'm not usually running around completely nude during the winter either. Are you?

One of those articles that has a solid basis in science, but the conclusions are completely wrong.



Anyone who has an understanding of history and epidemiology can tell you that people in the US are living longer, not shorter, lives, and those lucky half-naked people in the Third World who don't use sunscreen and produce plenty of vitamin D are the ones who are doing all the dying from infectious diseases nowadays.

You don't practice your nude weak side run and gun? Your not gonna be on my zombie squad. you are the weakest link.... goodbye.

I started taking vitamin D after reading a comment on here about people not getting swine flu were taking D. I'm not real persistent but I try to take one pill a day.

My doc put me on 2000 IU last week. He mentioned a study WRT Blacks and their inability to fight cancer as well as Whites. He said it was due to vitamin D deficiency. Their skin is colored to protect them from equatorial sunlight, and when they relocated to the US, their dark skin works too well, which results in vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D is taking center stage these days.

I am going to buy a tanning bed...

Sounds good, I've been in the sun a lot this year and no sickness. Last year, I spent most of my time indoors with a weak back and almost no tan, I got the flu.

What is the suggest brand of vitamin D?  The article says you need natural D or something.

The "natural" vitamin D he is talking about is from dietary sources and sunlight, not supplements.  But there's no chemical difference between "man made" and "natural" supplements; the patients in his "study" were taking the "artificial" stuff.





 

If I only get 6 slices I'm gonna be pissed!

 

I use Nature Made. The doc said a supplement was fine. If you want natural D, then you need to eat foods rich in D such as herring. But you would need probably 5 oz a day to get 2000 IU. I don't think I can eat that much fish.

The two forms of Vitamin D supplements are D2 and D3.  Google info.

I bought D3 without knowing the difference.

I was told by a Dr friend that most of the people he has been seeing that have either the flu or H1N1 are D 3 deficient, and its a good idea to take D3 during flu season.  Been taking one 1000 D3 a day since then.. no flu. FWIW

I am more of a Dr. Pepper and Chocodile kind of guy. Is that an appropriate subsitute?

You want to take D3. Right now there are many scientific studies that show:

1. D3 is the better form for supplemeting over D2.

2. Up to 10,000 IU's a day is considered the NOS dose (no observed side effects), unless you are taking meds in which case you would want to consult with your doctor before starting D3. You're more likely to die from drinking too much water than from taking too much vitamin D.

3. You need to adjust the amount you take if you are heavier.  

4. Supplementing with pills gives you the SAME benefit as sitting in the sun.

5. You body stops producing vitamin D after about 20 minutes in the sun. So longer is not better. After about 15 minutes in the sun your body will have produced 15 to 20,000 IU's of Vitamin D.

6. To get the benefit from the sun, your shadow must be no taller than you, if it is then the sun is too far away to produce Vitamin D.

7. You can get vitamin D from tanning beds. I wouldn't suggest trying it in your local tanning salons, a home brought version would be better.


There's really lots of great sites out there devoted to Vitamin D and there's some very good videos on youtube as well. Do some research, it really is worth it. As for why there are people in third world countries that run around 1/2 naked and get lots of sun yet still get sick? Well there are plenty of variables that need to be considered such as longitude and latitude of the location, time of the year...etc....etc....do the research for yourself, it really is eye opening.

Wouldn't be nice if our politicians and doctors just told people to get some sun if they don't want the flu?

But I guess there is no money in that, nor an opportunity for them to gain more control because of a "crisis"

Most black people are vitamin D deficient.  It's a real problem.  I know a number of black people who have started taking vitamins and were shocked at how much better they felt.  Vitamin D is just one of many.  A lot of health issues in the black population are dietary in origin, but all that most black people here about is salt and obesity.  It's more complex than that.

And this has what to do with GD???

The latest studies indicate D3 is more effective in humans. So, you're GTG.

This was a good read, but one should be careful not to over-do this based on this article I just read:



http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/v/vitamin_d_overdose/book-diseases-7a.htm

Also, note the NIH considers 2000 IU the upper limit for daily use for adults.

One can overdose on D. It takes a while to build up in your system, but it can happen.

http://vitamins.lovetoknow.com/Vitamin_D_Overdose
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp#h8

That's interesting because most docs are recommending 2,000 IU daily these days.

My guess is that if you supplement with it for the winter months only, it would be much less harmful than making a daily routine for the whole year.



ETA: I'm not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination.

Vitamin D is the only one that can build to toxic levels in your system, and be tough to get rid of.

Megadoses of others are more benign.

Interesting read. Thanks for posting.

Do the research out on the net, it's there for anyone to read. Multiple studies are now showing 10,000 IU's a day are very safe. You'd have to ingest 50,000 IU's a day for quite a while to build up any toxicity and even that is subjective.

A Pepsi and some candy helps me stay away from the flu....

Me too. I got out commercial construction about 5 years ago and went to work in maintenance. Most of my work is indoors now. I have been sicker in the last 5 years than I ever was the 20 before that.

Wrong. Vitamin A is quite dangerous in high doses.

Dibs

I've been getting 200 IU in my daily multi, which is pitiful but I never thought about it till this thread.



Just added another 2000 IU

I really don't get much sun in the winter.

Come summer, I'll scale it back to 1200 IU total.





Also "Vitamin D" would appear to also be "Vitamin D3"

regardless what the front of the bottle says...

The ingredients tell the tale.

After my trip to Walgreens, I want to remind you to read the ingredients.

Indoor environments are generally more hospitable to germs.

guess i know where i will be headed in the am.  

thanx for the info krpind.