Article 49: Vitamin D - A Rat Poison Safer than Water
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This is a periodic newsletter from the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Another Vitamin D Quiz
2. Your blood sugar is closely associated with your vitamin D level. 3. In July, a group from Minnesota found that 100% of elderly patients admitted for fragility fractures were vitamin D deficient despite the fact that half of them were taking vitamin D supplements. a) True b) False True. The authors found that women taking supplemental vitamin D had average levels of 16.4 ng/ml while women not taking supplements had levels of 11.9.ng/ml, both dangerously low. None of the 82 women got enough sun or took enough vitamin D to obtain a level of 40 ng/ml. These were fragility fractures, not fractures caused by unusual trauma. That is, their bones just sort of fell apart. Click here. 4. Women with the lowest vitamin D levels had five times higher risk for breast cancer. a) True b) False True. Women with 25(OH)-vitamin D blood levels less than 20 ng/ml were more than five times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than were women with levels above 60 ng/ml. That is five, repeat five, times less likely! Click here. 5. Avoiding the sun doubles the risk of prostate cancer. a) True b) False True. Again, the risk of avoiding the sun is clear, this time in another study with prostate cancer. However, the authors pointed out that sun exposure increases the risk of skin cancer and believed that proper vitamin D supplementation "may be the safest solution to achieve an adequate vitamin D status." Click here. I also believe supplementation is the only way to go for many people. African Americans are simply unable spend adequate time in the sun. In addition, the sun ages the skin and that fact alone will keep many Americans out of the sun. That said, I go into the sun whenever I can. The reason is simple: it is the most conservative thing to do. Until we know everything the sun does - and it does more than just make vitamin D - the conservative approach is to mimic our ancestors and the environment in which human evolved, whenever we can. Therefore, it makes sense to sunbathe sensibly in the late spring, summer, and early fall and take supplements or use UVB lamps the rest of the time. Click here 6. South Korean researchers associated vitamin D deficiency with Parkinson's Disease. 7. Researchers in England discovered that patients with chronic pain have phenomenally low vitamin D levels. a) True b) False True. The authors added to the evidence that severe vitamin D deficiency is associated with chronic pain. They found that 88% of their patients with chronic pain had levels less than 10 ng/ml. If they treated their patients, they did not report it. However, Swiss researchers recently treated chronic pain patients with vitamin D and reported the pain "disappeared" within one to three months in most of their patients. This is the second open study that showed adequate doses of vitamin D dramatically improve chronic pain. Click here. Ann Rheum Dis. 2005 8. (a) Severe vitamin D deficiency is common in TB patients. (b) Some English doctors don't the difference between ideal and "normal" levels. (c) Most American doctors don't know the difference either. a) All are true b) All are false c) Some are true and some are false All are true. First, the authors reviewed the impressive animal evidence that vitamin D can help treat TB. Then they reported that most of their immigrant TB patients had undetectable vitamin D levels. Then they reported the normal range for their lab was between 5 to 47 ng/ml but "normal" was any level greater than 9 ng/ml. Finally, the researchers reported they treated their patients with "normal daily doses" of vitamin D, without reporting how much they gave. Apparently, they gave just enough to get patients above 9 ng/ml. Click here Keep in mind that different laboratory technique result in different ranges for 25(OH)-vitamin D levels. Now matter what technique is used, ideal levels can roughly be defined as any level above the median. In this case, as you will see below in Dr. Heaney's article, the doctors should have treated their patients with 4,000 units a day. They should also watch for evidence of vitamin D hypersensitivity, which can occur when treating tuberculosis patients for vitamin D deficiency. We can only mourn for the poor immigrants who have to suffer from both TB and vitamin D deficiency. Of course, few physicians in the USA know the difference between the Gaussian definition of "normal" (average ranges for the population tested) and the ideal definition of "normal" (levels above 32 ng/ml). Getting commercial reference labs to report ideal 25(OH)-vitamin D levels should be a priority of everyone involved in trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. 9. (a) Virtually all nephrologists give renal failure patients a vitamin D-like drug. (b) Virtually all renal failure patients are severely vitamin D deficient. (c) Some nephrologists know the difference between vitamin D and calcitriol. a) All are true b) All are false c) Some are true and some are false. All are true. Finally, the truth about renal failure patients: most of them are vitamin D deficient despite taking vitamin D analogs! Most nephrologists prescribe activated vitamin D (calcitriol) or vitamin D analogs but not vitamin D. Calcitriol and vitamin D analogs do nothing to prevent vitamin D deficiency. Renal failure patients need both
John Cannell, MD 9100 San Gregorio Road Atascadero, CA 93422 The Vitamin D Council Click here.
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