[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
In an incredible fit of ego, after posting doses that I had recommended, by “recommended doses” I meant the ones I had referred to, as well as other posters: not the FDA.[/quote]
HA with all the great info, your ego is allowed to do what it wants !
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
In an incredible fit of ego, after posting doses that I had recommended, by “recommended doses” I meant the ones I had referred to, as well as other posters: not the FDA.[/quote]
My misunderstanding- thought you were talking about the FDA RDA.
It wasn’t clear, true.
Generally speaking it can’t be assumed that RDA values are appropriate intakes. Some of them are, but many are not. The Vitamin D value is a good example of one that is not. The value chosen is sufficient to avoid rickets.
Without wanting to be positive and dogmatic on it as there may be exceptions, my understanding of the general method is that, as you say, an amount is determined that is a minimum that successfully avoids symptoms of deficiency and then with a fairly arbitrary multiplier used for a safety factor.
But sometimes that works out okay where interests, as they should be, extend past merely avoiding frank deficiency. Coincidentally I was just messaging a woman regarding potassium, and potassium is a reasonable example of this. The RDA for potassium is the same regardless of gender or weight (go figure) and is moderately less than personally I think best for a male athlete of say 200 lb. But for most women it’s a perfectly decent figure.
But for different nutrients, for example Vitamin D, not so.
Actually, Potassium doesn’t have an RDA.
If you eat a variety of foods in your diet from all food groups of the Food Guide Pyramid (grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy and fat), you should have adequate potassium in your diet.
[quote]Serd wrote:
Actually, Potassium doesn’t have an RDA.[/quote]
That is harping on a technicality, I think.
The FDA does call the value in question a “Daily Reference Value” and in fact no longer uses the term RDA at all for anything, but you will find any number of sources other than the FDA that continue to use the term RDA.
I have no desire to use the term “DRV” and if I did use it, the communication value would be near zero.
As for your claim that potassium intake will be what it should be simply from following your above advice, one area where that winds up frequently not being necessarily so is a rapid fat-loss situation. Potassium needs don’t decrease as calories decrease, but potassium intake from foods does decrease. Additionally, when dieting a higher percentage of caloric intake often is from sources that are low in potassium. Therefore, a “just eat all the food groups” prescription with regard to potassium, rather than, as I recommend, in fact figuring what the situation is, can wind up falling short.
Even when not dieting, completely reasonable bb’ing food choices can still leave potassium intake modest enough that some additional intake, for example via using “Lite Salt” or “Salt Substitute,” is advisable.
It’s not practical to assume everyone is consuming 10 servings of fruits and vegetables per day (not that you said exactly that), nor to assume that the advice one can give that they will actually follow to improve their situation is to tell them that is their only option: that or nothing.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&fkt=971&fsdt=4279&q=vitamin%20d&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#
Latest from the Vitamin D Council:
Influenza kill around 35,000 Americans every year and similar viruses cause additional mortality and untold morbidity. As I have said, It appears Linus Pauling was right about everything he said about vitamin C, but he was off by one letter. The Vitamin D Council, the nearly broke non-profit educational organization, now believes most influenza deaths and many other respiratory infections, like the common cold, could be prevented if Americans, and their doctors, understood some simple facts:
Vitamin D is not a vitamin, but a steroid hormone precursor, which has profound effects on innate immunity.
The amount of vitamin D in most food and nearly all multivitamins is literally inconsequential.
The correct daily dose of vitamin D for adults is approximately 5,000 IU/day, not the 200-600 IU recommended by the Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Medicine and the FDA.
The only blood test to determine vitamin D adequacy is a 25-hydroxy-vitamin D, not the 1,25-di-hydroxy-vitamin D test many physicians now order.
Healthy vitamin D blood levels are between 50-80 ng/ml, levels obtained by fewer than 5% of Americans.
Medicare?s new proposed rule change, which forbids Medicare carriers for paying for virtually all vitamin D blood tests (Draft LCD for Vitamin D Assay Testing (DL29510), will kill tens of thousands of Americans yearly.
The mechanism of action of vitamin D in infection, dramatically increasing the body?s production of broad-spectrum natural antibiotics (anti-microbial peptides or AMP) suggests pharmaceutical doses of vitamin D (1,000 IU per pound of body weight per day for several days) will effectively treat not only influenza and the common cold, but help treat a host of other seasonal infections, including meningitis, septicemia, and pneumonia, in both children and adults.
In 1997, when the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) set the current guidelines for vitamin D intake, they forgot to correct for the widespread sun avoidance that began in the late 1980?s when the AMA?s Council of Scientific Affairs warned against sun-exposure, and recommended that all Americans should make every effort to never let a photon of sunlight strike their skin. The failure of the 1997 FNB to compensate for sun-avoidance, has led to millions of deaths around the world.
Physicians who ignore vitamin D deficiency will eventually suffer medical-legal consequences.
While many think the influenza virus causes influenza, Cannell notes it was George Bernard Shaw who first understood: ?The characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause.? George Bernard Shaw, (Preface on Doctors, The Doctor?s Dilemma, 1911).
John Cannell, MD
The Vitamin D Council
9100 San Gregorio Road
Atascadero, CA 93422
It would have been nice if he’d provided a reference for this claimed use at 1000 IU per lb of bodyweight for several days. If it is anywhere on their site, either, it isn’t easily found.
It’s true that the acute toxic dose is higher than that, so it’s not patently impossible, but as for the above dosage being a known pharmaceutical use, I think most readers will not have known that it is or know where to find substantiation.
On doctors supposedly facing legal consequences for ignoring Vitamin D deficiency as defined by the Vitamin D Council (as opposed to frank existence of, for example, rickets) I don’t think so.
It kind of doesn’t help when hot air is added in with good points. Claiming flu to be a symptom is not going to be well-received, though the general point that one may or may not have good immunity to the flu virus is absolutely true. Quoting George Bernard Shaw on medical issues is just silly. Saying that the medical profession has advised people to not let a single photon of light hit them is more than enough to make many skeptics dismiss this entire thing as the work of a nut job. It’s a shame how he wrote this, because there are good points.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
It would have been nice if he’d provided a reference for this claimed use at 1000 IU per lb of bodyweight for several days. If it is anywhere on their site, either, it isn’t easily found.
It’s true that the acute toxic dose is higher than that, so it’s not patently impossible, but as for the above dosage being a known pharmaceutical use, I think most readers will not have known that it is or know where to find substantiation.
On doctors supposedly facing legal consequences for ignoring Vitamin D deficiency as defined by the Vitamin D Council (as opposed to frank existence of, for example, rickets) I don’t think so.
It kind of doesn’t help when hot air is added in with good points. Claiming flu to be a symptom is not going to be well-received, though the general point that one may or may not have good immunity to the flu virus is absolutely true. Quoting George Bernard Shaw on medical issues is just silly. Saying that the medical profession has advised people to not let a single photon of light hit them is more than enough to make many skeptics dismiss this entire thing as the work of a nut job. It’s a shame how he wrote this, because there are good points.[/quote]
Bill, though I agree that hot air and professional medicine doesn’t mix well, but the statement that flu might be just a symptom of vitamin D deficiency is very accurate. If you define symptom as a sign of an ailment, then indeed, flu is the symptom of low vitamin D status. Just think when flu usually hits. Around February and March. And guess when vitamin D level of Northern hemisphere population is at it’s lowest. That’s right, February and March. Coincidence? I don’t think so!
I’ve been taking 4000-5000IU/d for past 3 months and surprise, surprise I didn’t get flu this winter, when everyone in my family (except for my brother who was ALSO supplementing with vitamin D) and bigger half of my university friends got sick. Not to mention that a flu that hit this winter was very tough S.O.B. and people were having 39C fever that was very unresponsive to antipiretics. I live in Lithuania by the way (Easter Europe).
As I said I do agree that hyperbolic statements usually get written off as signs of incompetence and arrogance. But the situation in which the peoples population is regarding vitamin D status is terrible and the longer it takes for everyone to understand it the worse it will get.
I agree. It just seems to me that so far as persuading the medical profession, that style of writing is not the way to go.
On whether flu is only a symptom or in fact an illness: I believe the thing to say would be that flu is a frequent CONSEQUENCE of Vitamin D deficiency. But calling it a “symptom” is I think not medically correct: perhaps an MD on the board can advise more precisely on this point.
I’m just a med student today but maybe I can answer your question, Bill 
For example in the case of AIDS we are taught to see opportunistic infections as symptoms of the underlying cause.
Symptoms are actually signs of a disease. Maybe it would be easier to accept that statement if you look at them that way.
I would like to once again say that the pro-vitamin D camp also has partial blame to take, because their suggestion that we should go to tanning salons 3 times a week to acquire safe and adequate vitamin D blood concentration causes most dermatologist go against them in fury, because UV rays are what they are fighting against (even though pro-vitamin D camp is right and their proposed solution to fight vitamin D deficiency would work and in the long run overall cancer numbers would fall). But we must understand one thing: optimal blood 25-hydroxivitamin D concentration is what we are after! And we are indeed very lucky that we can absorb and use supplemental vitamin D3 in our bodies as our own endogenous vitamin D. And now we have pretty good data showing that 4000IU/d of vitamin D is safe and enough dose to reach adequate blood levels, because with such supplemental protocol (which lasted 3 months) blood 25-hydroxivitamin D level plateaus at around 90-100nmol/l exactly the number we should be aiming for. I’m just sorry I can’t find the study right of the bat, but it was conducted by Vieth (the pioneer of vitamin D deep research).
A difference between your example of opportunistic infections associated with AIDS is that HIV is recognized as a disease.
Will the great majority of physicians reading the article consider typical Vitamin D levels to in fact be a disease?
If not, then your statement “symptoms are actually signs of a disease” would not be reason for them to disagree with calling influenza a symptom, not an illness in its own right.
There’s just no reason, when wishing to persuade a given audience, to throw out stuff they flat will not agree with, on account of wording you just had no need to use.
What do you think?
When most physicians read, “While many think the influenza virus causes influenza,” is their thought going to be, “What dummies those people are!” or are they going to be thinking “Ah, yes they do, and I’m one of them… so are all my colleagues… the writer is out in the fringe.”
?
Lastly, I exceedingly doubt any claim that influenza requires being low in Vitamin D. That good Vitamin D levels are largely protective, I don’t doubt, but that the flu requires levels of Vitamin D in the range typical of unsupplemented or poorly supplemented Americans in winter would seem a highly suspicious claim.
First, if it were true, this remarkable fact could have, with modest work, highly impressive evidence given to back it up. If I were a skeptic reading this article, I’d consider it the burden of the author to provide this evidence. It isn’t provided. (I don’t think it exists.)
Second, I personally know of a case of a person having taken Vitamin D3 at 4000 IU/day for several months and getting the flu. Additionally, I am pretty sure that, for example in Asia in subtropical latitudes, the flu exists among individuals getting hours of sun from working outdoors, and thus in individuals not deficient in Vitamin D.
I wonder if this writer would be so bold as to allow himself to be exposed to one of the virulent human-infecting forms of bird flu, what with his ridicule of the idea that the influenza virus causes flu? Somehow I suspect he would not.
Anyway, it was just another example of how it seems to me this was written, in many regards, in a counterproductive way for persuading the medical profession. Which is a shame because the medical profession needs to be persuaded on this, and one would think that this is an organization that ought to be focused on being effectively persuasive to that target audience, rather than on using hyperbole that is much more likely to turn that audience off than to persuade them.
I am always interested in the sun exposure and cancer argument. I live in Australia with my father, who has been getting skin cancer cut from his face, neck, and shoulders constantly for years. Easily over 10 years. Strangely we both believe that vit d is important and we all need more of it. We have also noticed the disconnect between the need for more vit D and fear of the sun. However there IS a cancer risk. Ask my father who never wore sunscreen and spent most of his life burnt and peeling. Obviously someone who wouldn’t be deficient in vitamin D. Yet skin cancer haunts him now.
Im not saying hide from the sun. I am just saying that sun exposure should be moderate. Get your exposure in the morning or afternoon. Not during the midday sun (even the local aboriginals get out of the sun during midday). Don’t deliberately tan, and don’t judge your exposure by your tan.
Id also make a GUESS, i have no proof for this, but don’t burn. I think the process of burning might not be a good thing. Cell trauma? I am not saying that sun exposure is bad, just that some people’s degree of sun exposure and how its done is inappropriate.
On the other hand its an opportunity for the supplement industry to advance its cause for wide spread public supplementation. Get all the benefits of vitamin D whilst minimising the risk of sun exposure.
One problems with debating vitamin D deficiency and supplementation is the complexity of the processes involved. Our “normal” method of acquiring vitamin D is through sun light exposure, but the mechanisms involved go far beyond photon->vitamin D. It’s possible that some of the benefits we attribute to vitamin D are actually due to other processes going on at the same time as UV exposure.
Vitamin D levels might be correlated with other benefits, such as immune response, but might not be causative.
For example, Melanin Stimulating Hormone (MSH) is generated during UV exposure also. MSH not only stimulates melanin, (duh!) but is involved in reactions necessary to release stored fat from adipocytes. You can supplement all you want with oral vitamin D, but you won’t get the effects of lipolysis from the MSH.
[quote]Beatnik wrote:
Id also make a GUESS, i have no proof for this, but don’t burn. I think the process of burning might not be a good thing. Cell trauma? I am not saying that sun exposure is bad, just that some people’s degree of sun exposure and how its done is inappropriate.[/quote]
Doctor Mercola is a little bit unusual, perhaps alarmist, but he says the same thing. Get your sun exposure but just don’t burn.
I even got my dermatologist to admit there’s a balance to strike between sun exposure and cancer risk. I was quite surprised.
Then there’s always the three-step recovery program:
Works for me.
I dont know if its proven, but I get very little sunlight during the winter (short days, lots of time in the lab, etc.) and I think Vitamin D has eliminated my seasonal depression. It was like WOW! I just took a pill in the morning and I felt normal again.