Getting Enough D?
Thursday, November 27th, 2008One of the most fascinating findings of nutrition research in recent years concerns Vitamin D on two counts:
1. Deficiency is linked to many common health problems.
2. The great majority of the population is deficient as confirmed by blood tests.
Yesterday I ran across yet another article, not on a specific health problem and vitamin D’s role, but on death itself. A USA Today article from 8/11/08 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-08-11-vitamin-D-death_N.htm) reports on a study published that week in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Bottom line it found that people with low vitamin D levels were 26% more likely to be dead at the end of the study than those with higher vitamin D levels.
Study author, Erin Michos, assistant professor of cardiology at Johns Hopkins said:
We took into account 30 different variables — including age, weight, diabetes, cholesterol, high blood pressure, whether they exercise, smoking — and we found that low vitamin D levels, independent of all these other risk factors for heart disease, predicted an increased risk of dying from any other cause. So we found a new risk factor for death.
Another study concludes that vitamin D deficiency causes one million deaths per year through increased breast and colorectal cancers. (Nutrition Reviews, August 2007, Volume 65, Supplement1, 91-95)
Some of the other health problems we now know are connected to vitamin D include:
- Breast, colon, prostate, bone and skin cancer
- High blood pressure
- Autoimmune diseases — MS, Type I diabetes, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis
- Psoriasis & eczema
- Flu & colds
- Asthma
- Depression
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Heart disease
- Migraines
- Crohn’s disease
- Autism
- Macular degeneration
- Osteoporosis
- and more
Most authorities I am reading suggest 4,000 iu per day of vitamin D-3 — 10 times the amount in the typical multi-vitamin. This is especially true in the winter months when you cannot get vitamin D from the sun. I recommend our Vitamin D4000 product, that I use and that gives you 4000 iu’s of D in just one capsule per day. To order, copy and paste this link:
http://www.pacifichealthcenter.com/shop/avactis-system/admin/catalog_editproduct.php?Vitamin_D_4000-pid883.html
What’s your experience with vitamin D? If you’ve noticed improvement in any particular health problems after increasing your levels, I’d love to hear your story.
Monte Kline
