Hello,
Excellent post, just a quick bump 
Wondering if Vitamin D3 could help in fat loss, apparently one poster had great success with 4000 IU a day. May start at that dosage.
Regards,
Guillaume.
Latest Vitamin D Newsletter, 8-20-2009
The Vitamin D Newsletter
Vitamin D and schizophrenia
August 20, 2009
This is a periodic newsletter from the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. If you are not subscribed, you can do so on the Vitamin D Councilâ??s website. If you want to unsubscribe, go to the end of this newsletter.
This newsletter is not copyrighted. Please print it out, reproduce it, post it on Internet sites, and forward it to your friends and family. Dana Clark, our underpaid but superb webmaster, will post this newsletter on the website.
As the H1N1 pandemic looms, it is heartening that Dr. Alexandra Yamschchikov and colleagues at Emory University conducted the first meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of Vitamin D treatment of infections, concluding that significant scientific evidence exists to support further research of Vitamin D treating, not just preventing, infections like the flu. The only mistake I can see is that she confused activated Vitamin D and one of its analogs with Vitamin D.
Yamshchikov AV, Desai NS, Blumberg HM, Ziegler TR, Tangpricha V.
Vitamin D for treatment and prevention of infectious diseases: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Endocr Pract. 2009 Jul-Aug;15(5):438-49.
If you have been taking 5,000 IU per day for several years, you know Vitamin D helps, but certainly does not prevent all respiratory infections. Because H1N1 may be deadly, besides taking 5,000 IU per day every day (1,000 IU for every 25 pounds of body weight for children) to prevent deficiency, make sure you have some 50,000 IU capsules of Vitamin D on hand this winter.
I recommend 2,000 IU per day per kilogram of body weight (which is about 1,000 IU per day for every pound of body weight) for three days at the first sign of influenza. While there are no randomized controlled trials showing it will help, there is a randomized controlled trial showing such doses will not hurt. This month, Dr. Bacon and colleagues at the University of Auckland found that a single dose of 500,000 IU (half a million units) did no harm to the elderly; a month after a single 500,000 IU dose, Vitamin D levels were about 40 - 50 ng/ml; two months later they were deficient again, only 30 ng/ml.
Bacon CJ, Gamble GD, Horne AM, Scott MA, Reid IR. High-dose oral vitamin D3 supplementation in the elderly. Osteoporos Int. 2009 Aug;20(8):1407-15.
Urgent Request from the National Institutes of Health:
Most of this newsletter is dedicated to schizophrenia. However, before I begin, Dr. Anthony York of the NIH Division of Infectious Disease asked me to alert the Vitamin D community about two â??immediateâ?? job opportunities for postdocs at the NIH branch in Hamilton, Montana. As he used the word â??urgentâ?? in the subject of his email, I hope this means the researchers at the NIH are aware that Vitamin D may help save some lives this winter when H1N1 arrives.
If you are a postdoc and interested in influenza and Vitamin D, please read the email below and contact Dr. Heinz Feldman at the email address below. The NIH needs two postdocs, to begin next month. â??Postdocsâ?? mean you have finished a PhD or MD and, in this case, want to begin an academic career in the field of Vitamin D and infectious disease, especially Vitamin D and influenza. I used to live close to Hamilton, Montana; if you like nature, it is difficult to beat.
----- Message from âYork, Anthony (NIH/OD) [E]â yorkan@od.nih.gov on Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:23:32 -0400 -----
To: John Cannell
Subject: Urgent Need for Postdocs for NIH Influenza Group
Hello Dr. Cannell,
I recently read some of your review papers regarding vitamin D and influenza and I am hoping you may know of postdocs who are interested in pushing forward this type of research. My group at the NIH, Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, is currently looking for two American (due to funding stipulations) postdocs to join our new flu group as soon as September 2009. The term would be for at least three years, and there would be BSL-4 training and work involved. I would appreciate it if you could pass this message on to anyone that may be interested. For more information, you can contact Heinz Feldmann, M.D., Ph.D., Chief of Laboratory of Virology at feldmannh@mail.nih.gov
http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/labs/aboutlabs/lv/
Thanks,
Anthony York
Laboratory of Virology
Rocky Mountain Laboratories
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
National Institutes of Health
903 South 4th Street
Hamilton, MT 59840
As many readers know, the influenza and Vitamin D theory was published on the internet before it was published in scientific journals.
Cannell JJ. Pascalâ??s Wager. Vitamin D Council Newsletter, November 2005.
Our group then published two papers about Vitamin D and influenza; the second one is available for download in its entirety for free:
Cannell JJ, Vieth R, Umhau JC, Holick MF, Grant WB, Madronich S, Garland CF,
Giovannucci E. Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiol Infect. 2006 Dec;134(6):1129-40. Epub 2006 Sep 7.
Cannell JJ, Zasloff M, Garland CF, Scragg R, Giovannucci E. On the epidemiology of influenza. Virol J. 2008 Feb 25;5:29.
Last week our group responded to a critical letter by Radonovich et al and you can read our reply for free.
Cannell JJ, Zasloff M, Garland CF, Scragg R, Giovannucci E. On the epidemiology of influenza: reply to Radonovich et al. Virol J. 2009 Aug 11;6(1):121. [Epub ahead of print]
Dear Dr. Cannell:
Is the upcoming Belgium conference on Vitamin D only for scientists?
Jane, New York
Dear Jane:
The October 4 through 8 conference on Vitamin D in Brugge, Belgium, is mainly for scientists, as it is about 2/3 basic science and test tube research and about 1/3 more general human research. Scientists interested in Vitamin D should not miss it. You can read the scientific program on the above website and decide for yourself. I will be there because of a generous grant from Bill Sardi, who supported the Vitamin D Council beginning in 2003; Bill was our earliest supporter.
Dear Dr. Cannell:
My son has schizophrenia. Will Vitamin D help him? He started hearing voices twelve years ago and our lives have been a nightmare since then. He stayed with us for 8 years but we never knew when he would come home, when he was taking his meds, when he would become paranoid, and when he would lose his temper. He disappeared for weeks at a time and would show up at our door homeless and in trouble with the law. He became increasingly violent when he was home.
My husband and I had to have him arrested after he attacked his sister and he was eventually sent to prison, where he was finally made to take his medications. We feel so guilty about our role in sending him to prison but we were afraid for our lives.
I know he does not get sunlight in prison and the doctors there will not test his Vitamin D levels. They wonâ??t let us send him supplements to take. Can the Vitamin D Council do anything about this?
Joanne, Sacramento, CA
Dear Joanne:
In my experience at Atascadero State Hospital, treating hundreds of patients with schizophrenia, adjuvant Vitamin D does not reduce hallucinations, paranoia, or psychosis but it does improve mood, reduce tremors, may reduce the amount of antipsychotic medications needed and helps prevent diabetes and the metabolic syndrome, which are common side-effects of â??modernâ?? antipsychotic medications. Care must be taken however, as the same cytochrome P-450 enzymes that metabolize Vitamin D are many of the same enzymes psychotropic medications utilize. Little or nothing is known about such Vitamin D and psychotropic drug interactions, thus Vitamin D levels are mandatory when treating Vitamin D deficiency in someone taking psychiatric medications.
As you are writing from Sacramento, I assume your son is incarcerated in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). At my hospital, we get hundreds of schizophrenic patients per year directly from CDCR and I have yet to find one who was not Vitamin D deficient (> 50 ng/ml) and I have yet to find one who was prescribed Vitamin D by CDCR physicians. I find this ironic as CDCR is under a federal court mandate to improve the health care of inmates.
For those not familiar with schizophrenia, the course you describe is common, especially the pain and guilt schizophrenia inflicts on families. Schizophrenia is such a debilitating disease (losing your mind while knowing you are losing your mind) that about 10% of schizophrenics cure their disease by committing suicide. Of all the diseases I know, schizophrenia is the most vicious.
Recently, researchers at Harvard published an incredible paper.
Kinney DK, Teixeira P, Hsu D, Napoleon SC, Crowley DJ, Miller A, Hyman W, Huang E. Relation of schizophrenia prevalence to latitude, climate, fish consumption, infant mortality, and skin color: a role for prenatal vitamin d deficiency and infections? Schizophr Bull. 2009 May;35(3):582-95. Epub 2009 Apr 8.
What Drs. Dennis Kinney, Emerald Huang and colleagues did was nothing short of brilliant. I discussed their paper briefly several months ago in a newsletter but this month I want to spend the time this paper deserves.
Like autism, schizophrenia has strong genetic roots. However, just like autism, genetic predisposition is not predestination. That is, for reasons no one has yet understood, one identical twin will get schizophrenia but the other one has a 50% chance of escaping the disease; the identical twin concordance rate is about 50%. This implies an environmental trigger.
We can get a clue to that trigger by looking at identical twins and multiple sclerosis. Although their genes are identical, the identical twin that went out in the sun when young was much less likely to get multiple sclerosis than his or her identical twin. For example the adolescent identical twin who listened to the dermatologists, and avoided sun tanning, was 2.5 times more likely to later get MS than his/her identical sibling who ignored the dermatologists and tanned. (I predict similar studies will be published concerning identical twins in both autism and schizophrenia.)
Islam T, Gauderman WJ, Cozen W, Mack TM. Childhood sun exposure influences risk of multiple sclerosis in monozygotic twins. Neurology. 2007 Jul 24;69(4):381-8.
Unlike autism, schizophrenia takes about 25 years to manifest itself; as Professor Robert Heaney would say, it is a long-latency disease. That is, the average age of onset until recently was about 25, which explains why the incidence of schizophrenia has not yet dramatically increased. In fact, autism used to be called infantile schizophrenia and it seems likely, as the current crop of autistic children ages, some will later be re-diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Recent studies, as compared to studies published in the 1980s and 1990s, show schizophrenia is increasing, especially among teenagers. In fact, all of the studies I could find published in the 21st century, as opposed to earlier studies, show schizophrenia is increasing:
Boydell J, Van Os J, Lambri M, Castle D, Allardyce J, McCreadie RG, Murray RM. Incidence of schizophrenia in south-east London between 1965 and 1997. Br J Psychiatry. 2003 Jan;182:45-9.
Preti A, Miotto P. Increase in first admissions for schizophrenia and other major psychoses in Italy. Psychiatry Res. 2000 May 15;94(2):139-52.
Tsuchiya KJ, Munk-Jørgensen P. First-admission rates of schizophrenia in Denmark, 1980-1997: have they been increasing? Schizophr Res. 2002 Apr 1;54(3):187-91.
(If you want to read something scary, read this article about two large US government autism studies about to be released. In ten years you will be reading the same story about schizophrenia)
Kirby D. Autism Rate Now at One Percent of All US Children? Huffington Post; 08/11/09
Before I describe the remarkable paper from Harvard, I want to compliment researchers at the Saint Barthomewâ??s Hospital in England for almost saying what most psychiatrists already know; the incidence of schizophrenia is much higher in people with dark skin. In the 1970s and 80s, that was an accepted fact, until charges of racism were leveled against the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The spineless APA promptly did retrospective chart analyses and announced the incidence of schizophrenia is exactly â?? precisely â?? the same for Blacks as it is for Whites. The ethnicity question is important as the Vitamin D theory is not tenable unless darker skin means a higher incidence.
Coid JW, Kirkbride JB, Barker D, Cowden F, Stamps R, Yang M, Jones PB.
Raised incidence rates of all psychoses among migrant groups: findings from the East London first episode psychosis study. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008 Nov;65(11):1250-8.
Actually, in 2007, a group at Columbia University appears to be the first to break with the APAâ??s political correctness. Dr. Michaeline Bresnahan and her colleagues followed 12,000 children for up to 28 years after birth. African Americans were 3 (three) times more likely to develop schizophrenia than whites and socioeconomic factors could not explain away their findings.
Bresnahan M, Begg MD, Brown A, Schaefer C, Sohler N, Insel B, Vella L, Susser E. Race and risk of schizophrenia in a US birth cohort: another example of health disparity? Int J Epidemiol. 2007 Aug;36(4):751-8.
Getting back to the Kinney et al paper, they examined 188 studies to find 49 studies that used similar diagnostic methods. The authors were quite strict on only looking at the 49 studies that used similar diagnostic criteria as the authors are aware that most psychiatrists dismiss any latitudinal variation in the prevalence of schizophrenia by saying that doctors around the equator are too stupid to make a correct diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Then, the authors explored the three most common theories for the environmental trigger of schizophrenia:
-
Poor prenatal care, -
Low omega-3 fatty acid consumption, -
Prenatal exposure to infections, especially influenza.
First, they found a 10 (ten) fold variance in the prevalence of schizophrenia in the world, from a high of 28 cases per 1000 in Oxford Bay, Canada, near the Arctic Circle, to a low of 1 per 1000 around the equator, confirming Dr. E.F. Torreyâ??s landmark latitudinal findings published in 1987. Kinney et al confirmed that latitude and cold climate broadly and strongly determine the prevalence of schizophrenia. The majority of the 49 studies the authors reviewed were completed before the sun scare, which has driven many equatorial mothers out of the sun, so I predict the incidence of schizophrenia around the equator will soon be increasing.
Second, if you were born in countries around the equator with high infant mortality (a proxy for poor prenatal care), the incidence of schizophrenia was very low. In other words, around the equator it didnâ??t matter if you had poor prenatal care, you still did not get schizophrenia. But, at latitudes away from the sun, prenatal care did matter, and it mattered more and more the further you got from the equator. It appears that high maternal Vitamin D levels around the equator overwhelmed the effect of poor prenatal care.
Third, around the equator, it did not matter if mothers ate Vitamin D-containing fish; it only mattered the further you got away from the equator. That is, latitude overwhelmed the effect of fish consumption; consumption of Vitamin D containing fish only began to matter when the sun was not available to make Vitamin D. If omega-3 fatty acid consumption was the cause of schizophrenia, latitude variation in omega-3 consumption would not matter.
Fourth, they found that skin color only mattered away from the equator, that is, in the very dark-skinned equatorial Indians and equatorial Africans, skin color hardly mattered; the prevalence of schizophrenia was quite low. However, the further poleward you live, dark skin preventing maternal Vitamin D production becomes an increasingly significant risk factor for schizophrenia.
The authors could not dismiss the influenza theory of schizophrenia, but as I hope readers are aware, the association between influenza and schizophrenia is probably mediated by vitamin D. That is, influenza is a symptom of Vitamin D deficiency:
â??â?Œ the characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause.â??
George Bernard Shaw
(Preface on Doctors, The Doctorâ??s Dilemma, 1911)
Kinney et al concluded that the Vitamin D hypothesis correctly predicted the associations between prevalence and skin color, fish consumption, infant mortality, latitude and temperature. The Vitamin D effect â??overwhelmsâ?? the effects of other known risk factors. That is, maternal Vitamin D deficiency is not just â??aâ?? cause, but is probably â??theâ?? cause of schizophrenia.
I love epidemiological studies like this, and Iâ??m sure Professor John McGrath in Australia does as well. It was McGrath who first hypothesized that gestational Vitamin D deficiency causes schizophrenia. I often despair that I have had to wait two years for the world to learn autism is triggered by gestational and early childhood Vitamin D deficiency. John McGrath has had to wait 10 years for his theory to be accepted and will probably still be waiting 10 years from now.
McGrath J. Hypothesis: is low prenatal vitamin D a risk-modifying factor for schizophrenia? Schizophr Res. 1999 Dec 21;40(3):173-7.
Iâ??d like to add one prediction to McGrathâ??s theory. The Vitamin D theory of schizophrenia predicts that the age of onset of schizophrenia should be getting younger. That is, as more pregnant women listened to dermatologists, their children are not only more likely to develop schizophrenia, but are more likely to develop more severe cases that present at a younger age. That is exactly what appears to be happening.
Di Maggio C, Martinez M, MĂŠnard JF, Petit M, Thibaut F. Evidence of a cohort effect for age at onset of schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry. 2001 Mar;158(3):489-92.
Ajdacic-Gross V, Lauber C, Warnke I, Haker H, Murray RM, RĂÂśssler W.
Changing incidence of psychotic disorders among the young in Zurich. Schizophr Res. 2007 Sep;95(1-3):9-18. Epub 2007 Jul 16.
If you know any pregnant women, make sure they read our recent newsletter about pregnancy and Vitamin D.
Dear Dr. Cannell:
How much magnesium do you need to allow Vitamin D to work properly?
Sarah, New York
Dear Sarah:
Severe magnesium deficiencies severely impair Vitamin Dâ??s ability to work. What is not known, is how mild to moderate Mg deficiencies, like most Americans have, affect Vitamin D metabolism. The safe thing to do is to eat green leafy vegetables and a handful of sunflower seeds and nuts every day (Trader Joeâ??s sells a variety of seeds). If you canâ??t, wonâ??t, or donâ??t end up doing that, then take a Vitamin D supplement with added Magnesium. Bio Tech Pharmacal now sells such a supplement, Vitamin D3 Plus, and will make a contribution of one dollar to the Council for every bottle sold. Bio Techâ??s phone number: (479) 443-9148.
Bio Techâ??s new Vitamin D3 Plus formula also contains zinc (the base of the fingers of the Vitamin D Receptor each contains a zinc molecule), Vitamin K2 (Vitamin K helps direct Vitamin D to calcify the proper organs), boron (boron is involved in the rapid, non-genomic action of Vitamin D on the cell wall), a small amount of genestein (about one-half the amount the average Japanese consumes every day), which helps activated Vitamin D stay around longer at the receptor site, and a tiny amount of Vitamin A. Again, the wisest thing to do is to eat green leafy vegetables and a handful of seeds every day as that combination contains the co-factors Vitamin D needs, the co-factors many Americans are deficient in.
Dear Dr. Cannell:
With H1N1 on the way, what is more important, Vitamin D or the flu shot? Iâ??m afraid of the side-effects of the flu shot.
From about 1,000 readers.
Dear Readers:
I donâ??t know. Iâ??m going to do both. The only caveat I have is that if youâ??re going to take Vitamin D, take enough so your 25(OH)D level is between 50-80 ng/ml. I am not concerned about side-effects of the flu shot, like Guillian Barreâ?? Syndrome, because my Vitamin D level is high. When immunizations cause side effects, and they do, it is through an autoimmune phenomenon, like Guillian Barreâ??. I believe, but cannot prove, vitamin D will prevent such immunization side effects (Perhaps prevent a significant antibody response to the flu shot, thus negating its sole purpose. I say â??perhaps,â?? because no one knows about antibody response in vitamin D sufficient people, but I think even small amounts of antibodies against H1N1 are better than none.)
Many people cite the Swine flu scare of 1976 as the reason they will not get the H1N1 vaccine. What they forget is that the epidemic never materialized so there was no way for epidemiologists to compare the incidence of Guillian Barreâ?? after H1N1 immunization with the incidence of Guillian Barreâ?? after H1N1 influenza infection. One of the most common causes of Guillian Barreâ?? is influenza itself.
Furthermore, the world is divided between those who think we must eliminate or prevent toxic substances, whether they be influenza, mercury, lead, or arsenic and those, like me, who think that our body, if Vitamin D replete, will and have handled such insults for millions of years.
Take lead poisoning among African American children. The only good lead level is zero goes conventional wisdom. Actually, we know a lot about lead poisoning in vitamin D deficient children; we know next to nothing about lead poisoning in Vitamin D sufficient children. For example, at first blush it is concerning that black children have higher lead levels (more lead poisoning) in the summer than the winter. Furthermore, the higher the summertime Vitamin D level, the worse the lead poisoning. Yes, higher Vitamin D levels are associated with worse lead poisoning!
Kemp FW, Neti PV, Howell RW, Wenger P, Louria DB, Bogden JD. Elevated blood lead concentrations and vitamin D deficiency in winter and summer in young urban children. Environ Health Perspect. 2007 Apr;115(4):630-5.
What is really happening? Ask Dr. Alan Kalueff, recently at the NIH.
Kalueff AV, Tuohimaa P. Neurosteroid hormone vitamin D and its utility in clinical nutrition. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2007 Jan;10(1):12-9.
As Dr. Kalueff explains in the above paper, Vitamin D is simply exercising one of its many neuroprotective roles, by initiating the mobilization of excess heavy metals in the body, probably through a glutathione mechanism, and delivering the lead to the systemic circulation for execration in the bile. That is, the association of higher Vitamin D levels with higher blood lead levels simply reflects Vitamin Dâ??s efforts to excrete lead.
Of course the black children with lead poisoning never get high enough summertime Vitamin D levels to excrete much of the lead because the next fall and winter their Vitamin D levels disappear. I predict that Vitamin D will do more to solve the problem of lead toxicity than all of prevention, except in cases where the lead burden overwhelms Dâ??s defenses.
For decades, scientists have known that hundreds of human genes exist to help the body fight infection, toxins, cancer, etc. What was not known, but is becoming increasingly known, is what upregulates, or increases, the expression of these prevention and protection genes. As many readers will find this winter, Vitamin Dâ??s upregulation of the naturally occurring antiviral peptide, cathelicidin, will keep many of us well this winter while H1N1 injures or kills the Vitamin D deficient.
John Cannell, MD
President,
Vitamin D Council
This is a periodic newsletter from the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Please reproduce it, post it on Internet sites, and forward it to your friends. Remember, we are a non-profit and rely on your donations to publish our newsletter, maintain our website, and pursue our objectives. Send your tax-deductible contributions to:
The Vitamin D Council
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San Luis Obispo, CA 93422
My wife just had her PARAthyroid glands removed (which regulate mainly calcium levels through secretion of PHTâParathyroid Hormone), because she had hyper-parathyroidism. With no PTH being produced any more she now has to take calcium and Vit. D for the rest of her life; however, the doctor only prescribed her 25 mcg. (1000 IU) Vit. d softgels. Would upping her intake of Vit. d to 4000 IU present any risk of hypercalcinemia?
Thanks,
Crowbar
[quote]crowbar46 wrote:
My wife just had her PARAthyroid glands removed (which regulate mainly calcium levels through secretion of PHTâParathyroid Hormone), because she had hyper-parathyroidism. With no PTH being produced any more she now has to take calcium and Vit. D for the rest of her life; however, the doctor only prescribed her 25 mcg. (1000 IU) Vit. d softgels. Would upping her intake of Vit. d to 4000 IU present any risk of hypercalcinemia?
Thanks,
Crowbar[/quote]
Did you read any of the thread? Not to be a dick, but on just about every single page of this thread, 4,000 - 6,000 was stated as a standard adult dosage and many people have said they use this much and have long term. So sarcasm aside, no it should not. (granted Iâm not a doctor, but Iâm guessing you arenât looking for a doctors advice.)
V
WOW lots of vitamin d fans. What i know from experience working with my neurologist is when i had severe d3 deficiency i had unbearable winter depression to the point it affected my cognitive ability severely. now on a vitamin/mineral/probiotic regimen including 10000iu of d3 daily i sail through winter. thats all the proof i need.
[quote]morepain wrote:
WOW lots of vitamin d fans. What i know from experience working with my neurologist is when i had severe d3 deficiency i had unbearable winter depression to the point it affected my cognitive ability severely. now on a vitamin/mineral/probiotic regimen including 10000iu of d3 daily i sail through winter. thats all the proof i need. [/quote]
Did you just write 10 000 IU ? Thatâs quite a lot, and would ensure that lower dosages such as 4000-5000 IU a day are perfectly safe.
I have read many articles about Vitamin D, I know the body can creates up to 20 000 IU a day, and that someone mistakenly taken 150 000 IU a day (yes) for many months before he was diagnosed, and cured (I should have read that on the website vitamindcouncil if I remember correctly).
Just out of curiosity, did you notice a fat loss while taking vitamin D ?
Regards,
Guillaume.
Vegita, not to be a dick either, but did you read MY post? I was asking about a âspecial populationâ individual, and while I have no reason to believe that sheâll respond any differently to Vit. D than anyone else I simply donât know this for a fact. So,I donât give a good god damn what otherwise healthy people are doing! Yes, I was waiting, really, to get the input of someone more knowledgeable such as Bill Roberts; however, I thought others engaged in this discussion might find the question (and possible answer(s))interesting, if even just from a theoretical perspective.
Never could understand why people with nothing instructive to say (nor who really understand the intent of the question)feel compelled to pipe up?!
Crowbar
Vegita, crowbar46, not to be a dick either but why are you two being dicks?
[quote]crowbar46 wrote:
Vegita, not to be a dick either, but did you read MY post? I was asking about a âspecial populationâ individual, and while I have no reason to believe that sheâll respond any differently to Vit. D than anyone else I simply donât know this for a fact. So,I donât give a good god damn what otherwise healthy people are doing! Yes, I was waiting, really, to get the input of someone more knowledgeable such as Bill Roberts; however, I thought others engaged in this discussion might find the question (and possible answer(s))interesting, if even just from a theoretical perspective.
Never could understand why people with nothing instructive to say (nor who really understand the intent of the question)feel compelled to pipe up?!
Crowbar[/quote]
Iâm sorry â I hadnât seen your post asking about your wife.
I see two factors: First, she can naturally produce far more than that simply from being in good sun a fairly moderate amount. So if it were the case that for example 4000 IU per day would be dangerous for her, it would also be the case that she should be advised to avoid the sun.
The second factor is that clearly she has a serious medical condition and this is a serious matter.
Given the attitude that many doctors have towards nutritional supplementation, perhaps it would be a better approach â if it is believable that your wife may be getting any significant amount of sun â for her to ask the doctor if she should be worried, because she has read that fairly moderate sun exposure can yield 10,000 IU per day of Vitamin D or more, and this is so much more than her oral dosage⌠might it cause her calcium problems?
It would also be relevant how she is monitored for avoiding hypercalcemia.
If the doctor doesnât see the sun as a deadly enemy in her case, and especially if there is means of detecting hypercalcemia, and especially if you monitor blood 25-OH Vitamin D levels, this would seem reasonable to me.
I take Vitamin D3⌠2000 IU with every meal (6x per day). First thing I noticed when I started is that my nails grow like crazy.
Bill, thanks so much for the response. This is essentially the reasoning I had in mind. I will follow up with some questions to her surgeon and GP. Fortunately for us they are very bright and very approachable.
Crowbar
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
I take Vitamin D3⌠2000 IU with every meal (6x per day). First thing I noticed when I started is that my nails grow like crazy. [/quote]
My nails also grow pretty fast, I had not considered Vit D causing this.
Ok the other problem with âgetting Vitamin Dâ is getting too much of it. A vitamin D overdose causes PREMATURE AGING and calcium deposits in tissues, resulting in things like erectile dysfunction in addition to overall aging.
Get that? TLDR version, TOO MUCH Vitamin D = PREMATURE AGING and Limp Dick
Public Service Announcement
[quote]valiant knight wrote:
Ok the other problem with âgetting Vitamin Dâ is getting too much of it. A vitamin D overdose causes PREMATURE AGING and calcium deposits in tissues, resulting in things like erectile dysfunction in addition to overall aging.
Get that? TLDR version, TOO MUCH Vitamin D = PREMATURE AGING and Limp Dick
Public Service Announcement[/quote]
Too much vit D supplementation has the potential to cause harm, thatâs why itâs important to get your levels checked. If you donât want to get checked you could just stick with 2000IU per day, but you may not reach the therapeutic range this way. Given all the benefits of D why not take it?
You canât become vit D toxic from ultraviolet light exposure- your body self regulates it.
[quote]crowbar46 wrote:
Vegita, not to be a dick either, but did you read MY post? I was asking about a âspecial populationâ individual, and while I have no reason to believe that sheâll respond any differently to Vit. D than anyone else I simply donât know this for a fact. So,I donât give a good god damn what otherwise healthy people are doing! Yes, I was waiting, really, to get the input of someone more knowledgeable such as Bill Roberts; however, I thought others engaged in this discussion might find the question (and possible answer(s))interesting, if even just from a theoretical perspective.
Never could understand why people with nothing instructive to say (nor who really understand the intent of the question)feel compelled to pipe up?!
Crowbar[/quote]
Not to be a dick, LOL Just kidding. But in all seriousness, I was under the impression that she was able to go out in the sun, at least you never mentioned anything about her not being able to. So as bill has already stated, she will produce far more than 4-6,000 iu per day with good sun exposure, Supplementing with that range should be fine. But as always, consult a doctor, donât do what some random dick on the internet says.
Also I would read carefully how bill worded the question to the doctor. You go in worrying that sun exposure might be making too much D, when he tells you itâs ok, then you can follow up with ok, so on days where sun exposure is low, supplementing with 6,000 Iu is fine then right.
If you just come out and ask if supplementing with 6,000 Iuâs is ok, you might get a different answer.
I wasnât trying to be a dick, it just seemed like the information you were looking for had already been covered.
V
âMore evidence that vitamin D requirements are much, much higher than traditionally recommended amountsâ :
http://www.drbriffa.com/blog/2009/09/01/more-evidence-that-vitamin-d-requirements-are-much-much-higher-than-traditionally-recommended-amounts/
extract :
Regards,
Guillaume.
Vitamin D Newsletter- 9-5-2009
Vitamin D and H1N1 Swine Flu
So far, Swine flu, H1N1, has killed thirty-six children in U.S. and analysis of CDC data indicates Vitamin D deficient children at higher risk of death.
Iâ??m not sure I can do this, watch our children die this winter from what may be a preventable disease, influenza, Iâ??m not sure Iâ??m strong enough. A few minutes ago, the CDC issued a report on Swine flu deaths among children; thirty-six U.S. children dead so far this season and the season hasnâ??t started yet. The dead children were much more likely to be Vitamin D deficient; but the CDC did not realize they discovered this. However, anyone familiar with the Vitamin D literature will recognize it.
The clue: almost two-thirds of our dead children had epilepsy, cerebral palsy, or other neurodevelopmental conditions like mental retardation. What do we know of these neurological conditions? All are associated with childhood Vitamin D deficiency; I wonâ??t bore you with the references but anyone who has ever cared for these children know it; anyone who has studied these diseases on Medline knows it; anyone who has one of these kids know it; these kids just donâ??t go in the sun very much. If they do live at home and go outside, parents use sunblock because the child is so vulnerable, never robust. In addition to sunlight deprivation, many of these kids take anticonvulsant drugs, which lower Vitamin D levels.
One more thing, thirty-six dead kids so far this season and the season has not yet started. Over the last 4 years, around 100 American kids have died of the flu during flu season; this year the toll is 36 before the season has started.
Swine Flu Sends More Blacks, Hispanics to Hospital
The above racial differences apply to hospitalization rates for H1N1 in Boston and Chicago. It looks as if Vitamin D is a big factor in H1N1. During the 1918-1919 pandemic, Blacks actually had lower illness rates, not higher, perhaps because they had antibodies from previous H1N1 infection in 1916 and 1917. It worried me to read that the 1918 H1N1 was circulating in the world for several years before it devastated that same world in 1918-1919. The same could be true now, that is, this H1N1 may be relatively benign (only kill 50,000 Americans/year) for several years, infect more Blacks than whites, then erupt into a merciless killer in 2011, when Blacks will be relatively protected because of their higher antibodies from higher infection rates in 2009 and 2010.
American Children Vitamin D Deficient
Most American teenagers are Vitamin D deficient and low levels in teenagers are associated with teenage hypertension, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.
In the above paper, Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the NIH (led by Dr. Jared Reis) looked at 3500 American teenagers and found teenagers with the lowest Vitamin D levels, compared to the highest, were five times more likely to be obese, 2.5 times more likely to be hypertensive, 2.5 times more likely to have elevated blood sugar, and about 4 times more likely to have the metabolic syndrome. Only 25% of the teenagers had levels higher than 26 ng/ml while 25% had levels lower than 15 ng/ml.
What upset me the most about this study was that the authors did not conclude teenage Vitamin D deficiency should be treated; they concluded scientists should be given more money to study the deficient teenagers: â??Additional research is necessary . . .â?? and â??evidence from randomized controlled trials is required before Vitamin D supplementation can be recommended . . .â?? One fourth of American teenagers with levels less than 15 ng/ml, H1N1 already here, and Dr. Reis, the NIH and Johns Hopkins doesnât advise anything should be done but give scientists more money? Email Dr. Reis and tell him what you think: reisjp@nhibi.nih.gov.
58 million American children are Vitamin D deficient; 7.6 million are severely deficient and nobody is doing anything about it.
Dr. Jahi Kumar and colleagues at Albert Einstein School of Medicine looked at more than 6,000 American kids (age one to 21) who were carefully selected to be representative of the average American child. Nine percent of the kids had 25(OH)D levels less than 15 ng/ml and 70% (representing 58 million kids) had levels less than 30 ng/ml. The older the child, the blacker the child, the more TV and video games, the fatter the child, the higher the chance the child is deficient. Tragically, 59% of black teenage girls had levels less than 15 ng/ml.
Children with low levels were more likely to have abnormal blood lipids, high blood pressure, obesity, and abnormally elevate parathyroid hormone levels, all risks for future cardiovascular disease. Only 4% of American children take recommended doses of Vitamin D supplements, surely a failure of U.S. pediatricians.
German and British Children, Vitamin D and Long Ago
From 1955 to 1990, all infants in East Germany received 600,000 IU of Vitamin D every three months for a total of 3,600,000 IU at age 18 months.
With the 400 IU/day recommendation of the American Pediatric Association in mind, I ran across this amazing paper while surfing Medline for Vitamin D. According to this paper, all infants in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) received dangerously high doses of Vitamin D every three months in their doctorâ??s office. The policy was in place for 35 years. The first 600,000 IU dose was given at three months and then every three months until the child was 18 months of age. This works out to an average of 6,000 IU per day (actually, for several technical reasons it is not equivalent) for 18 months. The authors collected blood before the dose and then 2 weeks after the quarterly dose to obtain 25(OH)D, 1,25(OH)D, and calcium levels on a total of 43 infants.
Before the first dose, at 3 months of age, the average infant was extremely deficient (median 25(OH)D of 7 ng/ml). Two weeks after the first dose the average 25(OH)D level was 120 ng/ml, the second dose 170 ng/ml, the third dose, 180 ng/ml, the fourth dose, 144 ng/ml, the fifth dose, 110 ng/ml and after the sixth and final dose, 3.6 million total units, at age 18 months, the children had mean levels of 100 ng/ml. That is, by the 15 and 18 month doses, the children were beginning to effectively handle these massive doses.
The highest level recorded in any of the 43 infants was 408 ng/ml at age 9 months, two weeks after the third 600,000 IU dose. Thirty-four percent of the infants had at least one episode of hypercalcemia but only 3 had an elevated serum 1,25(OH)D. The authors reported that â??all the infants appeared healthy,â?? even the infant with a level of 408 ng/ml, that is, no clinical toxicity was noted in any of these infants.
They also reported that â??repeated inquires in GDR have failed to identify clinical Vitamin D toxicity as a result of the prophylactic program.â?? The pediatricians and health officials in the GDR just did not look hard enough for toxicity as such doses will certainly cause clinical toxicity, right? Or maybe such doses only cause asymptomatic hypercalcemia and not clinical toxicity. It would be interesting to look at the infant mortality in East Germany during those years, compared to similar Eastern European countries, as well as current cohorts of German adults who underwent such treatment as an infant.
Two years after Great Britain halved its Vitamin D dose for infants, due to the â??Great Vitamin D Panic,â?? the incidence of infantile hypercalcemia was unchanged.
Fifty years ago, Great Britain laid the foundation for every subsequent U.S. Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) Vitamin D recommendation when England had a fit of hysteria, the â??Great Vitamin D Panic.â?? Professor Bruce Hollis wrote about this scare in some detail in a 2004 paper, and how the British panic affected the American FNB. He also details the role the Williams syndrome played in the â??Great Vitamin D Panic.â?? Williams syndrome is a genetic malformation that causes, among other things, infantile hypersensitivity to Vitamin D, elevated 1,25 levels even without supplemental Vitamin D, and often hypercalcemia in response to supplemental Vitamin D. (In fact, it was by studying the Williams Syndrome that I became more convinced of the relationship of Vitamin D to autism. Kids with the Williams syndrome, the only human disease with greatly elevated serum 1,25 levels around birth, grow up to have an adult personality that is the phenotypic opposite of autism, thus they are an experiment of nature.)
Anyway, in the midst of the panic, Great Britain reduced infant supplementation by one-half in 1957, expecting to see a reduction in infantile hypercalcemia (7.2 cases per month in the country). It did not. Two years later, in 1959, the incidence of infantile hypercalcemia in Great Britain was essentially unchanged (6.8 cases per month.) However, by 1961, the reported incidence was apparently halved to 3 cases per month. The British Paediatric Association concluded â??it remains speculative whether the decrease in hypercalcemia by 1961 is a consequence of reduced Vitamin D intakeâ?? because it was â??not chronologically related to the reduction of Vitamin D intakes introduced in 1957.â??
It seems likely that what happened was this. The â??Great Vitamin D Panicâ?? began in the early 1950s and British pediatricians began drawing lots of blood calcium levels on their infant patients, fearful they were toxic. They kept drawing frequent blood calcium levels and thus detecting high baseline blood calcium levels until 1960 when the â??Great Vitamin D Scareâ?? ebbed and they drew fewer and fewer infantile blood calcium levels. Thus fewer high baseline levels were detected and by 1961 fewer British infants diagnosed with high blood calcium. It was simply due to fewer blood tests ordered for calcium; it had nothing to do with Vitamin D.
Vitamin D and Infant, Childrenâs Health
Low Vitamin D levels associated with increased disease severity in childhood Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE).
Childhood SLE is a tragic disease, one of the autoimmune diseases that have risen to epidemic levels in our children in the last 20 years. Afflicted children develop debilitating kidney, joint, bone, heart, blood, and lung disease; almost all require immunosuppressants (prednisone and hydroxychloroquine) to ward off looming debilitation and death.
Dr. Tracey Wright and colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found severe Vitamin D deficiency was five times more common in SLE children than in controls (37% vs. 9%), that a measure of SLE disease severity was 2.5 times higher in SLE children with Vitamin D deficiency, that 78% of SLE children who were prescribed Vitamin D were still severely deficient (that is, their pediatricians were prescribing insignificant amounts of Vitamin D while telling them â?? correctly in the case of SLE â?? to avoid the sun), and serum activated vitamin D levels (calcitriol) were significantly lower in SLE kids than healthy controls. (Tragically, the true believers of the Marshall Protocol â?? and I know no scientists who are â?? recommend these children get even less Vitamin D.) The authors concluded, â??Vitamin D deficiency may be a modifiable risk factor for morbidity in SLE and represents a target for intervention.â??
Vitamin D deficient mothers with HIV are more likely to infect their baby.
Dr. Saurabh Mehta and colleagues at Harvard discovered higher Vitamin D levels in HIV infected mothers helped prevent fetal death and HIV transmission to the infant. At 24 months of age, toddlers from low maternal 25(OH)D HIV mothers had a 46% increased risk of acquiring HIV and a 61% increased risk of dying. The authors found an insignificant but disturbing trend for increased infection and mortality in mothers with 25(OH)D levels greater than 70 ng/ml but not enough mothers had such levels to draw any conclusions.
Vitamin D appears to be involved in a rapidly increasing number of infections, from influenza, tuberculosis, bacterial vaginitis, sepsis, the common cold, and now to HIV. When are scientists going to get around to looking at the wintertime killer and crippler of kids, meningitis?
More evidence Vitamin D deficiency is involved in infantile cardiomyopathy.
In the above paper, Dr. Jennifer Brown and colleagues at Childrenâ??s National Medical Center reported on four more babies with life threatening cardiomyopathy (when the heart swells up and cannot pump blood effectively). All four babies improved dramatically with Vitamin D treatment including three babies who are now off all cardiac medications (I hope that does not include Vitamin D, which is a crucial cardiac medicine.) and one infant who was taken off the heart transplant list after treatment with Vitamin D.
The problem with the paper was that the authors only looked at infants whose Vitamin D levels were so low that their body could not maintain their blood calcium levels and also had rickets. The authors concluded the cause of the cardiomyopathy in the four infants was low serum calcium. I emailed Dr. Christopher Spurney, the senior author, reminding him that Vitamin D has direct effects on heart muscle cells, above and beyond its effects on calcium, and that he should check Vitamin D levels on all infants with cardiomyopathy and treat those with a low levels, not just rachitic or hypocalcemic infants. He replied that the Childrenâ??s National Medical Center is now doing just that.
Vitamin D Levels
How do statins work? They dramatically raise vitamin D levels.
Several studies have shown that statins raise 25(OH)D levels but last month the above study showed that Crestor nearly tripled Vitamin D levels, from 14 to 36 ng/ml, in just 8 weeks. I loved what the author concluded, â??We have no idea of the mechanism involved.â?? Nor do I as statins should lower, not increase, vitamin D levels because statins reduce Vitamin Dâ??s precursor, cholesterol. As Dr. Yavuz said, â??This is clearly an opportunity for further research.â??
These results are simply amazing, from 14 to 36 ng/ml in 8 weeks and the study was conducted in the winter, when levels should fall, not rise. Just think, if the pleiotropic (many effects) statin drugs work by simply raising Vitamin D levels (and statinsâ?? pleitropic effects are certainly not mediated through lowering cholesterol levels), then that is one expensive way to raise Vitamin D levels. However, it is the perfect commentary on the American health care system; that is, in America we use statins to treat Vitamin D deficiency, not Vitamin D.
Widely fluctuating levels of Vitamin D, due to summer sun exposure and winter sunlight deprivation, may be harmful.
Professor Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto, has produced evidence that widely fluctuating levels of Vitamin D in patients with low baseline 25(OH)D levels may increase the risk of prostate and pancreatic cancer. At least two prostate cancer studies and two pancreatic cancer studies show that higher baseline 25(OH)D levels at latitudes far from the equator increase, not decrease, the risk of these two malignancies. Vieth produces evidence that this increased risk is related to widely fluctuating levels 25(OH)D in those who rely on summer sun exposure for their Vitamin D.
The latency of the intracellular enzymes that activate and destroy vitamin D explains why Vitamin D should be obtained on a regular basis and not in periodic high doses. When 25(OH)D levels fall abruptly, like in the autumn in countries far from the equator, the enzyme that makes activated Vitamin D inside the cell is still set on low and the enzyme that destroys activated Vitamin D is still set on high and it takes several weeks or even months to fully reset. Vieth believes any supplementation strategy that uses large doses at longer than two month intervals should be avoided. However, high or â??Stossâ?? doses, such as 50,000 IU of D3 every week or two should pose no problem. Vitamin D2, or ergocalciferol (Drisdol) should be avoided as it causes wider 25(OH)D fluctuations than D3 does.
Vitamin D Testing
American Association of Clinical Chemists: Vitamin D Testingâ??Whatâ??s the Right Answer?
College of American Pathologists: Vitamin D intrigues, but not a done deal
In the above two reports, what really caught my eye above was at the Cleveland Clinic, Vitamin D blood tests jumped from 1,500 tests a month in 2006 to 12,000 a month in 2009. Cleveland Clinic switched to DiaSorin Liaison method to keep up with the demand. That tells me no matter what the Food and Nutrition Board does, patients and doctors are catching on: Vitamin D deficiency is best treated.
If you want to know about the problems with Vitamin D blood testing, read the above two articles. However, my recommendation is not to read them. It will just upset and confuse you. Even if you are a doctor, maybe especially if you are a doctor, donâ??t read them. You expect lab tests to be accurate, give the same result with the same blood sample. Well, OK, believe that if you want.
Robert Michel, publisher of the Dark Report, just reported on his latest experience with Vitamin D testing. The results are not good, especially for Quest Diagnostics. Michel sent 24 aliquots, or identical samples, of his blood, all drawn the same day, to two different reference labs, which in turn sent them, over a three week period, for 24 Vitamin D blood tests. Again, 24 blood samples, drawn from the same person at the same time, so, in a perfect world, all 24 samples would test the same.
However, the results varied from 36 ng/ml to 66 ng/ml! Questâ??s results: 36, 42, 51, 54, 55, and 66. The Mayo Clinic, which uses the same technique that Quest uses, did better, 48, 48, 51, and 61. The good news was the immunoassay methods used by LabCorp, Clinical Pathology Labs, and ARUP clustered around 44 ng/ml and all 11 samples were within 4 points of 44 ng/ml with the highest 48 and the lowest 39.6.
Long story short, if you use Quest Diagnostics, divide by 1.3 and hope they continue to work at improving their process. Mayoâ??s is better but Dr. Singh must be getting tired of all those Vitamin D tests, which are hard to do on mass spec. If your lab sends out to LabCorp, ARUP, or Clinical Pathology Labs, you are fine.
If you use ZRT, know that it is a mass spec technique; it has to be mass spec to be done on a blood spot. ZRT is also harmonized to the gold standard, that is, corrected to the gold standard. By gold standard I mean the method that the scientific studies use when they study cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease, etc. When you see an article that says a new study showed higher Vitamin D levels are associated with longer life, etc., that study almost always used DiaSorin RIA, the gold standard, or DiaSorin Liaison, which gives almost identical results to the DiaSorin RIA.
I see that Dr. Graham Carter, a great proponent of accurate Vitamin D testing, slammed me in a recent paper in Clinical Chemistry.
Carter GD. 25-Hydroxyvitamin D assays: the quest for accuracy. Clin Chem. 2009 Jul;55(7):1300-2.
Graham is angry, perhaps, because it was not his watchdog organization, DEQAS, that first detected the problem with inaccurate Vitamin D testing at Quest? Instead, he admits, it was the Vitamin D Council who first blew the whistle on Quest Diagnostics.
Dr. Carter said, correctly, that ZRT home testing â??cannot easily be monitored by external proficiency testing schemes.â?? Graham is right, schemes, such as Grahamâ??s DEQAS, cannot easily monitor home testing by ZRT, because ZRT uses blood on a blotter paper and not serum. ZRT may be able to be modified to participate in DEQAS, if ZRT can afford it, ZRT is a small lab. Iâ??ll ask ZRT if they can find a way to participate.
For those who do not know, this is what DEQAS does. Participating commercial labs pay DEQAS a fee (that is not disclosed on their website but reportedly substantial) so DEQAS will check that labâ??s precision. DEQAS then sends participating labs batches of standardized Vitamin D samples. In other words, it seems that the major reference labs keep DEQAS in business.
The problem with DEQAS is they refuse to send the test samples blind, like Robert Michel did for the Dark Report. In reality, the commercial labs all recognize the DEQAS batches when they come in the mail and all the commercial labs run their DEQAS samples very very carefully. The best DEQAS can hope for is to find out if commercial labs can do it right, not if they do it right.
In the best of all possible worlds, all commercial Vitamin D testing would be accurate, patients would not have to seek in-home Vitamin D levels because their physicians would already have done so in the office, and everybody could afford commercial lab fees, which can range up to $200.00 per test. In the best of all possible worlds, if doctors did order a Vitamin D test, they would order the correct test and finally, in the best of all possible worlds, doctors would know how to correctly interpret the tests that they ordered.
Until then, if you have health insurance or can afford it, I recommend using LabCorp, ARUP, Clinical Pathology Labs, or Cleveland Clinic. If you use the home test kit from ZRT, they have already corrected for the DiaSorin RIA/mass spec uniform variance but realize it is a mass spec technique. ZRT also submitted, at my request, samples for comparison with RIA and they were quite accurate. Plus, I review ZRTâ??s results; I know they are not artificially high; in fact, way too many of ZRT results are incredibly low. Falsly elevated results is where the danger lies, thinking you are fine when you are deficient.
Treating Vitamin D Toxicity
Vitamin D toxicity presents with weight loss, malaise and fatigue, followed by anorexia nausea and vomiting, and patients so afflicted almost always have increased thirst, increased urination, and night-time urination.
Ever heard of 50,000 IU tablets of Ertron, or Deltalin or Davitin, or Dalsol? You may have if you went to doctor in the 1930s and 1940s. Some doctors of that time prescribed the above drugs, all of which were Vitamin D2, now prescribed as Drisdol. Apparently, some doctors of the time believed massive D2 doses helped arthritis.
This 1948 paper from Johns Hopkins is remarkable for the dosage the doctors prescribed for arthritis and for the toxicity those doses sometimes caused. In their series of 10 toxic patients, the dose ranged from a low to 150,000 IU/day to a high of 600,000 IU/day and it took anywhere from 2 to 18 months for these daily doses to cause clinical toxicity. Clinical toxicity was manifested by weight loss, malaise and fatigue, followed by anorexia, nausea and vomiting. (Note, if you have these symptoms, you are not vitamin D toxic unless you are taking at least 50,000 IU per day for many months, in which case you have not understood anything I have ever written.)
All toxic patients in the above paper had high blood calcium, anywhere from 12.4 to 15 mg%, and 9 of 10 were anemic; all had evidence of kidney impairment. The two bone biopsies were both normal. Seven of the ten patients insisted their arthritis was improved by Vitamin D toxicity and most complained their arthritis returned several months after withdrawal of Vitamin D; return of said arthritic complaints coincided closely with the return to normal of blood calcium.
Treatment of toxicity was simple, stop the Vitamin D. None of the life-threatening corticosteroid treatment toxic patients are given today. Simply stop the Vitamin D, keep them out of the sun, have them drink 4 liters of water a day, and wait. The clinical symptoms disappear in several weeks. The blood calcium returns to normal in several months. Most patients continued to show evidence of some renal damage but that damage appeared to be improving over time. Unlike modern corticosteroid treatment of Vitamin D toxicity, nobody died.
Vitamin D Meetings
The second meeting of the new Vitamin D Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) held in Washington DC on August 4, 2009.
If you scroll down on the above link you can listen to dozens of presentations at the recent FNB on Vitamin D and the talks range from â??more is urgently needed,â?? to â??nothing should change until scientists get a lot more money,â?? to â??Vitamin D is poison.â?? Of course it is poison, as Paracelsus said, â??All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poison.â?? The readers of this newsletter will remember that vitamin D is used as a rat poison. I love the fact that the U.S. government recommends Americans take a rat poison every day, but they do not recommend enough rat poison.
What will the new Food and Nutrition Board do? What doses will they recommend? All you have to do is listen to the presentations; this FNB may not do very much. I hope Iâ??m wrong. At the very least, I hope they raise the Upper Limit as that may allow research to be done using the correct dose.
If they stick to the current dangerously low daily adequate intake (AI) 200 IU/day recommendations, it will injure pregnant women and their newborn children the most. The reason: the average person will not take a vitamin supplement, but virtually all pregnant women will take one, a prenatal vitamin. If the FNB increases the AI for pregnancy above 400 IU/day, the prenatal vitamin manufacturers will quickly increase the D content of prenatal vitamins, which is now at a meaningless 400 IU/tablet. The good news is that word is spreading; people are talking, telling friends and neighbors how much Vitamin D helps. I know this because Vitamin D blood testing is skyrocketing.
14th Vitamin D Workshop in Brugge, Belgium, October 4th to 8th.
If you are a scientist, do not miss this workshop. If you are a lay person, read the program before you register.
John Cannell, MD
President,
Vitamin D Council
This is a periodic newsletter from the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Please reproduce it, post it on Internet sites, and forward it to your friends. Remember, we are a non-profit and rely on your donations to publish our newsletter, maintain our website, and pursue our objectives. Send your tax-deductible contributions to:
The Vitamin D Council
585 Leff Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93422
[quote]Hog Ear wrote:
valiant knight wrote:
Ok the other problem with âgetting Vitamin Dâ is getting too much of it. A vitamin D overdose causes PREMATURE AGING and calcium deposits in tissues, resulting in things like erectile dysfunction in addition to overall aging.
Get that? TLDR version, TOO MUCH Vitamin D = PREMATURE AGING and Limp Dick
Public Service Announcement
Too much vit D supplementation has the potential to cause harm, thatâs why itâs important to get your levels checked. If you donât want to get checked you could just stick with 2000IU per day, but you may not reach the therapeutic range this way. Given all the benefits of D why not take it?
You canât become vit D toxic from ultraviolet light exposure- your body self regulates it. [/quote]
what is the therapeutic range?
[quote]DarrylLicke wrote:
Hog Ear wrote:
valiant knight wrote:
Ok the other problem with âgetting Vitamin Dâ is getting too much of it. A vitamin D overdose causes PREMATURE AGING and calcium deposits in tissues, resulting in things like erectile dysfunction in addition to overall aging.
Get that? TLDR version, TOO MUCH Vitamin D = PREMATURE AGING and Limp Dick
Public Service Announcement
Too much vit D supplementation has the potential to cause harm, thatâs why itâs important to get your levels checked. If you donât want to get checked you could just stick with 2000IU per day, but you may not reach the therapeutic range this way. Given all the benefits of D why not take it?
You canât become vit D toxic from ultraviolet light exposure- your body self regulates it.
what is the therapeutic range?[/quote]
The therapeutic range for serum is 50-80ng, according to the Vitamin D Council http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/deficiency/am-i-vitamin-d-deficient.shtml
Thanks to this thread I picked up some Vitamin D from WallyWorld. D-3 5000 IU 100 softgels for 5 bucks.