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What would happen if the morning news headlines read: “New Drug Can Prevent Up to 70% of Cancers” or “Scientific Discovery Identifies Drug That Could Prevent Majority of Alzheimer’s Cases?”
I think most of us would sit up and take notice. The drug company’s stock would skyrocket, the story would be repeated all over the country in the news. Doctors would start prescribing it to almost every patient that walked through the door. It would be a bargain, even if it cost $100-- even if it cost $200 a month! But do you know what? That product already exists, and it isn’t a drug. In fact, it is better than any drug, and has an extraordinary spectrum of health benefits. That miracle is Vitamin D. Did you know that if Vitamin D was a new drug it would be worth 10 billion dollars annually to some drug company? But you can buy it for pennies a day in any health food store.
You would think that any product that could confer such benefits would be in widespread use, yet up to 58% of Americans have low vitamin D levels.
Today I would like to share with you some of the most recent research on the “sunshine vitamin” and the amazing benefits it can have for your health, as well as the reasons so many people are not getting enough of this natural life-saver. Are you getting enough D?
Vitamin D: Although considered a vitamin, Vitamin D is actually a pro-hormone. There are very few food sources for this nutrient. In fact, your body doesn’t need food to get vitamin D at all – it can make it after exposure to sunlight, through the action of your skin cells, liver, and kidneys. It takes approximately 15-20 minutes of direct sun exposure, 2 to 3 times a week, to build up vitamin D levels. Unfortunately, there are a whole host of reasons why your body may not create optimal vitamin D using sun exposure alone. I will have more to say about the challenge of getting enough vitamin D from the sun in the next section.
You probably know vitamin D already for its role in promoting calcium absorption and preventing osteoporosis. But new research that is appearing almost every day is finding that vitamin D helps reduce the risk of heart disease and dementia, prevent diabetes, slow the progress rate of cancer, and even promote weight loss!
Vitamin D Deficiency: If vitamin D can be produced just by exposure to sunlight, why are almost 60% of Americans vitamin D deficient or insufficient? One thing to consider is that the further you are from the equator, the lower the amount of the right kind of sunlight trigger vitamin D production in the skin. Additionally, people who live in the northern climates tend to get little to no sun exposure during the winter months, so their vitamin D levels decline. People with dark skin, especially when living in northern areas, also tend to not synthesize adequate amounts of vitamin D. People who are overweight or obese have adipose layers under the skin that interfere with the spontaneous production of vitamin D initiated by sun exposure. And finally, as we age, our skin becomes less efficient at vitamin D production. Did you know that by the time we are 65, changes to the structure of our skin reduces vitamin D production by up to 60%?
Another challenge to getting sufficient vitamin D is the use of cholesterol lowering drugs. One of the building blocks your body uses for making vitamin D is cholesterol. Greatly inhibiting your body’s production of cholesterol makes it much harder for your body to make vitamin D when exposed to the sun. While not yet fully investigated, I wouldn’t be surprised if this interference in vitamin D production is not one of the reasons that there is an increased cancer risk with the use of these drugs.
The classic sign of severe vitamin D deficiency is soft, weak bones. In children, this is known as rickets, and in adults as osteomalacia. In both cases, treatment is high dose vitamin D supplementation. But low levels of vitamin D are also associated with a vast number of health problems – cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and more. You do not have to have a severe deficiency to have dangerously low levels of this vitamin.
So to summarize, those who are at the greatest risk of vitamin D deficiency include those who are rarely exposed to sunlight - the elderly and people living in northern climates (especially during the winter) - obese individuals, exclusively breastfed infants (breast milk contains only small amounts of vitamin D, and most nursing mothers are themselves vitamin D insufficient or deficient), people with dark skin, especially when living in northern latitudes, and those who have fat malabsorption syndromes (e.g., cystic fibrosis) or inflammatory bowel disease (e.g., Crohn's disease). Scientists studying the human genome have found that there are genetic differences in certain individuals that can greatly limit vitamin D utilization in the body. Other factors that can interfere with natural production of vitamin D include the use of sunscreens, pollution that blocks the sun’s rays, and covering up when outdoors so that no skin is exposed. It is no surprise that so many people are at risk from not having enough vitamin D.
Forms of Vitamin D: D2 and D3: There are two forms of vitamin D used in supplements. Vitamin D2 is the form of vitamin D synthesized by plants. It is also known as ergocalciferol. Cholecalciferol, or vitamin D3, is the form that is produced by the human body. Both D2 and D3 can increase circulating vitamin D levels, although many people prefer to use the D3 form as being closer to what is already found in the body.
Vitamin D for Health
Build bone: Vitamin D aids in the absorption of the bone-building nutrient, calcium. It also helps to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. Vitamin D intake is important for increasing bone density, and reducing the risk of fractures and falls – especially in older individuals. However, vitamin D does not work alone to build bones. Many studies have found that vitamin D and calcium together provide better benefits than either alone. These effects are enhanced when combined with other important bone-building nutrients including boron, copper, zinc, magnesium, vitamin K and others. You can read more about building strong healthy bones in my article Preventing Osteoporosis and Restoring Bone Health.
Prevent Brain disease: By the year 2050, it is estimated that over 14 million Americans will be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. While there is still no cure, great progress has been made in understanding this disease and finding a potential treatment – including the role of vitamin D in preventing and treating dementia. It is becoming very clear that low levels of vitamin D significantly increase your risk of losing brain function or developing Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, a recent study found that being deficient in vitamin D increased the risk of suffering from impaired brain function by 42%. But in people who had severe vitamin D deficiency the risk of mental impairment went up a shocking 394%! (Findings presented at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, Hawaii, 2010).
Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the development of plaques and tangles in the brain. These clumps of protein interfere with communication between brain cells and are considered one of the key signals of Alzheimer’s. Researchers combining vitamin D with curcumin (from the Indian spice turmeric) have found that this combination can actually clear away the plaques! They do this by stimulating the immune system to break down the protein forming the plaques and tangles. I discuss this in more detail in my article What Causes Alzheimer's which you can read on terrytalksnutrition.com.
More good news about preventing brain diseases: high blood levels of vitamin D may reduce the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease (a disease of the nervous system which impacts brain function) by 67%. [Knekt P. Archives of Neurology. 67(7):808-811.]
Stop Cancer: Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with at least 17 forms of cancer. For example, research has found that high levels of D can reduce risk of colon cancer by 40%. Up to 75% of women with breast cancer are vitamin D insufficient, while high levels of vitamin D are associated with a 45% reduction in breast cancer risk. Laboratory studies looking at the effects of vitamin D on breast cancer have found that vitamin D is able to enter breast cancer cells and trigger cell death – in other words, vitamin D can kill breast cancer cells. Other cancers for which vitamin D has shown a protective effect include ovarian, prostate, stomach, bladder, kidney, and lung cancer.
Pregnancy: Some very interesting research has recently been published on vitamin D intake during pregnancy. Researchers in South Carolina tested women in their 2nd or 3rd month of pregnancy and found that 94% of the African-American women, 66% of the Hispanic women, and 50% of the Caucasian women they examined were vitamin D deficient or insufficient. They then divided the women into three dosage groups. Group one received 400 IU of vitamin D, Group two 2,000 IUs, and Group three 4,000 IUs daily. They found that the women receiving the highest dosage of vitamin D – 4,000 IU – had the fewest pregnancy related complications. They were half as likely as the other women to develop gestational diabetes, pregnancy-related high blood pressure, or preeclampsia. They were also less likely to give birth prematurely. Other researchers, not involved in this study, have agreed with their conclusions that pregnant women should take more than the 400 IU of vitamin D currently recommended, and 2,000 IU might be a more reasonable number.
Other benefits
In a famous study of heart disease called the Framingham heart study, researchers found that low vitamin D levels increased risk of heart disease by 62%. A separate study found that vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of peripheral artery disease (circulatory problems in the legs) by 80%. Vitamin D can prevent or delay complications associated with diabetes, reduce pain associated with fibromyalgia, and decrease the severity and frequency of asthma attacks. In a study of older adults suffering from depression, women with low levels of vitamin D were twice as likely to develop depression as women with adequate vitamin D levels.
And if all this information is not enough to convince you to increase your intake of vitamin D, here is one final research finding – in a study looking at vitamin D intake, those who had the lowest levels of vitamin D had a 26% higher risk of death from all causes compared to those with the highest vitamin D levels!
How much vitamin D do you need daily?
The current recommendation for vitamin D intake is ridiculously low, and in fact was set in the early years of the last century before it was possible to measure circulating levels of the active form of vitamin D in the bloodstream. In fact, one study that looked at young women receiving the current recommended amount of supplemental vitamin D (400 IU daily) found they had no increase, and sometimes even a decrease, in their vitamin D levels.
There is still no agreement among experts on how much vitamin D any individual needs, other than “more than 400 IU daily.” When treating certain diseases, dosages of 50,000 to 100,000 IU of vitamin D may be administered. However, for most of us, a daily intake of 1,000 to 2,000 IU is probably adequate.
Conclusion
We’ve touched on an incredible array of health conditions—Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, several forms of cancer, osteoporosis, and even healthy pregnancies and healthy babies. And we have not even covered all the health issues in which vitamin D plays a significant role! I recommend a lot of the natural medicines for specific conditions, like ivy extract for asthma or sea buckthorn for Sjogren’s syndrome. This is a rare pleasure when I can confidently recommend vitamin D to everyone, and I guarantee it will change your health for the better!
©2010 Terry Talks Nutrition | Privacy | Legal Disclaimer
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Zero deaths caused by vitamins, minerals, amino acids or herbs
To hear opponents of natural medicine say it, vitamins and herbs are extremely dangerous for your health. They should be regulated, we're told, because they're so dangerous!
Statistics from the U.S. National Poison Data System prove otherwise. According to a 174-page report just published, the number of people killed in 2009 across America by vitamins, minerals, amino acids or herbal supplements is exactly zero.
Compare that to the 100,000 (or so) Americans killed each year by FDA-approved pharmaceuticals -- and that's even according to studies published in JAMA. Also consider the thousands of women harmed or killed by medically-unjustified cancer treatments following false positives from faulty mammograms. And don't forget about the more than 16,500 Americans killed each year from internal bleeding caused by NSAIDs (over-the-counter painkillers).
As the July 1998 issue of The American Journal of Medicine explains:
"Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalized annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone." (Singh Gurkirpal, MD, "Recent Considerations in Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Gastropathy", The American Journal of Medicine, July 27, 1998, p. 31S)
So if NSAIDs alone are killing 16,500 people a year (or likely much more now, as use of these drugs has risen significantly since 1998), and nutritional supplements are killing zero people a year, why do health regulators try to scare everybody about vitamins being so "dangerous?"
Pharmaceuticals, meanwhile, are openly allowed to be prescribed for off-label use, meaning that doctors can prescribe them for diseases and health conditions for which they've never even been tested!
What's wrong with this picture? It's clearly a war against nutrition -- a war against natural medicine -- being waged by the health regulators of the world who are conspiring with Big Pharma to keep the people trapped in a state of malnutrition (all while profiting from their disease by selling them more patented pharmaceuticals).
The Orthomolecular Medicine News Service published a full article on this issue. Here's what they had to say about the safety of nutritional supplements and the misguided attempts by world governments to limit or outlaw many supplements.
No Deaths from Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids or Herbs
Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements' Safety
There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement in 2008, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 174-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.
Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John's wort, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine, chondroitin, melatonin, or any homeopathic remedies.
Furthermore, there were zero deaths in 2008 from any dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium, magnesium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multimineral supplements. Two children died as a result of medical use of the antacid sodium bicarbonate. The other "Electrolyte and Mineral" category death was due to a man accidentally drinking sodium hydroxide, a highly toxic degreaser and drain-opener.
No man, woman or child died from nutritional supplements. Period.
61 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical and clinical toxicologists. NPDS, the authors write, is "one of the few real-time national surveillance systems in existence, providing a model public health surveillance system for all types of exposures, public health event identification, resilience response and situational awareness tracking."
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.
If nutritional supplements are allegedly so "dangerous," as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?
Those who wonder if the media are biased against vitamins may consider this: how many television stations, newspapers, magazines, and medical journals have reported that no one dies from nutritional supplements?
References:
Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers' National Poison Data System (NPDS): 26th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2009). 47, 911-1084. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/... .
(Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1052-3. Minerals, herbs, amino acids and other supplements are in the same table, pages 1047-8.)
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Heat Stack Tone: What’s in it and How it Works.
Heat Stack Tone is a blend of specific essential fatty acids that attack stubborn Body Fat and maintains lean muscle which creates a more toned you. The body will naturally tighten up from this scientific non stimulant blend that is also heart healthy and good for your hair, skin and nails.
What’s in the Heat Stack Tone Proprietary Blend:
Sesamin: is a lipid and a special fiber known as a lignan. The sesame plant has long been used throughout the world as a food ingredient and as a medicinal plant in traditional medicine systems.
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CLA has been shown to effect body composition by creating a reduction in body fat and an enhancement of lean tissue or muscle. Research studies have been very successful showing significant reduction in body fat as measured by BMI (Body Mass Index). The studies show a significant decrease measured in waistline inches, a positive result for weight loss in mildly overweight subjects and an increase in strength. CLA seems to attack the brown fat areas also known as the stubborn, hard to reach, fat storage areas on the body.
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Heat Stack Trim: What’s in it and How it Works.
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What’s in the Heat Stack Trim Proprietary Blend:
Fucozanthin: Is an active component of brown seaweed that is from the Pacific Ocean. Fucozanthin works by increasing the expression of UCP1 in fat cells. UCP1 (Uncoupling proteins) are mitochondrial transporters in every cell and an expression of UCP1 in fat cells creates heat thus contributing to a thermogenic effect. This is all done by bypassing the Central Nervous System therefore has no side effects and no effect on blood pressure or the heart. In a clinical study of overweight women, the Fucoxanthin group lost an average of 14.5 lbs compared to only 3 lbs for the placebo group. See reverse side for specifics of the study.
T2: is a metabolite of the thyroid hormones T4 (thyroine) and T3 (triiodothyronine). It has specific direct actions which do not involve thyroid hormone receptors, unlike T4 and T3. It boosts basal metabolic rate and is a lipolytic thermogenic (fat burner). T2 also stimulates the conversion of the less active T4 thyroid hormone into more active T3 form. It is useful for the treatment of hypothyroidism and obesity. T2 also stimulates the release of growth hormone, a powerful tissue regenerating hormone.
7 Keto DHEA: is a safe and natural metabolite of DHEA. 7 Keto does not convert to testosterone or estrogen and supports various physiological processes. 7 Keto is effective in stimulating the thermogenic enzymes of the liver, promotes basal metabolism and helps to increase the lean/adipose ratio. It has been shown clinically to produce weight loss compared to placebo.
L-Tyrosine and Iodine: is an amino acid that is vital to the thyroid. Tyrosine and Iodine (an essential mineral) combine to produce hormones in the thyroid gland. Tyrosine and iodine are combined within the thyroid to regulate the body’s basal metabolism. The basal metabolism is the amount of energy expended by the body at rest, and it oversees the functioning of the vital organs. When basal metabolism is low, functions of the body diminish, impacting all areas of health, ranging from skin and liver function to weight gain. Deficiencies of these two important nutrients are common in the American diet.
Fucoxanthin study showed significant Weight Loss:
Placebo
group Fucoxanthin group
206lbs(average weight) 207.7lbs(average weight)
203lbs(average finishing weight) 193.2lbs (average finishing weight)
In 16 weeks Placebo group lost only 3 lbs. Fucoxanthin group lost 14.5 lbs on average
All women in both groups followed an 1800 calorie diet.
16 week study of 150 women.
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