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A Return To The Dark Ages



 
 
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Old December 6th 10, 12:17 PM posted to misc.health.alternative,misc.kids.health,sci.med
john[_5_]
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Default A Return To The Dark Ages

A Return To The Dark Ages: Nutrition Board Confuses "Normal" With "Healthy"
And Sets New Vitamin D Requirements To Levels That Condemn Americans To
Chronic Illness

By Bill Sardi

On a day that should have been heralded as "D-Day" for vitamin D's conquest
over chronic disease, it is being called "disease day" by critics of new
vitamin D guidelines issued by health authorities today.

Confusing the commonly-found range of vitamin D (20-30 nanograms per
milliliter of blood serum) with the healthy range (50-80 ng says The Vitamin
D Council), the nation's Food & Nutrition Board (F&NB) ignored experts who
have made strong appeals for higher doses in fortified foods and vitamin
pills.

What the F&NB cannot fathom is how widespread vitamin D-related illness is.
If 97% of Americans have a vitamin D level that falls within the 20-30
nanogram range as the F&NB says, and most of the people experience less than
optimal health in this range, then this certainly cannot be assumed to be a
normally healthy range.

Dr. William Grant of the Sunlight, Nutrition, and Health Research Center
(SUNARC) in San Francisco, suggests hundreds of thousands of Americans would
avert premature death if their blood levels of vitamin D extended beyond the
F&NBs normal range. He calculates an estimated 400,000 premature deaths per
year could be avoided if all Americans raised their serum vitamin D levels
just to the 45 nanogram level. "This would reduce the mortality rate by 15%
and extend life expectancy by about 2 years."

Adequate vitamin D food fortification would produce an unprecedented rise in
life expectancy, greater than that achieved by the introduction of
antibiotics. Since mean vitamin D levels in the US are around 26 nanograms,
it would take an additional 2000 IU over and above what is produced by
dietary and solar-generated vitamin D to achieve that 45 nanogram level.

Eighty-eight years after its initial discovery, this overlooked vitamin is
still being shunned by modern medicine. Today is a day when the opportunity
to triumph over maladies that have historically plagued mankind has been
lost.

Instead of foods and vitamin pills being fortified with meaningful doses of
this sunshine vitamin, which would have ensured that children, the infirm,
the uneducated and disadvantaged would have obtained adequate levels of
vitamin D, the Food & Nutrition Board chose to take a baby step when it
should have taken a giant leap for mankind. Now, with this disappointing
pronouncement from the Food & Nutrition Board, it's every man for himself.

Two years ago I wrote the Food & Nutrition Board a letter which indicated
the current requirements for vitamin D were absurdly low --- 200
international units (IU) as a minimum for young children, which would not
prevent rickets in dark-skinned infants, and 2000 IU as a safe upper limit,
an amount that wouldn't even raise blood levels.

A day of infamy

November 30, 2010 will go down in infamy in the history of modern medicine.
The It is the day the Food & Nutrition Board elected to marginally increase
vitamin D requirements to 600 IU (that's just 15 micrograms or 15/1000ths of
a milligram) and the upper safe limit to 4000 IU (100 mcg), the point where
blood levels only begin to rise.

For comparison, 600 IU is equal to just 4 minutes of mid-day full-body
summer sun exposure. About 30 minutes of sunshine would produce ~4000-5000
IU of natural vitamin D, what the new F&NB guidelines indicate may be an
overdose. Of course, this is ridiculous since millions of Americans do this
at the beach every summer without side effect. Knowledgeable health
authorities have long recommended at least 30 minutes of sunshine daily.

Instead of throwing a game winning touchdown against chronic nutritional
deficiency-related disease, the Food & Nutrition Board elected to kick a
field goal and lose the battle against chronic ailments that burden the
nation with mushrooming health care bills. Americans are big losers in this
game while modern medicine drags its feet over implementation of any true
disease prevention plan.

Maybe it was too much to ask of a disease-care system that masquerades as a
healthcare system and addresses most health problems as a drug deficiency.
It is maybe too difficult to fathom that something as cheap as solar
radiation, or its stand-in -- a 10-cent vitamin pill -- is essential for
human health.

In a public health pronouncement that defies the latest published studies,
the Food & Nutrition Board increased vitamin D requirements by such a
marginal amount as to condemn North Americans to certain levels of
preventable chronic illness.

The advantage of modern humans is that, rather than waiting for weather to
improve, sunshine can be acquired from a pill, or fortified in foods, when
wintertime vitamin D levels are typically low and when there is a dramatic
seasonal increase in cancer, heart and infectious disease. That modern man
would shun the availability of vitamin D pills suggests lunacy or
intentional misdirection.

Widespread vitamin deficiency burdens America

A prevalent shortage of vitamin D, which cannot be corrected by the best
diet, and which is not likely to be prevented in a population that has been
taught to be sun phobic over concerns of skin cancer, is now linked to
widespread morbidity and mortality.

There is not a chronic disease -- ranging from heart disease to cancer, from
the flu to tuberculosis, from diabetes to schizophrenia, from rickets in
infants to osteoporosis among older women -- that is not exaggerated by
shortages of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency is a universal factor in all
disease states, even for populations living in sunny areas where natural
vitamin D production is expected to be high.

Savings in healthcare dollars

My guesstimation is that $4 trillion of health costs could be averted over
a decade if adequate food fortification and/or supplementation program were
to be implemented, which would save Americans ~$1300 per person per year, or
~$3900 per family of 3 annually. These savings won't be achieved now that
the Food & Nutrition Board has only taken baby steps to remedy a widespread
deficiency in a sun-deprived population.

Say again?

A report in The New York Times says the F&NB concluded a vitamin D blood
serum " level of 20 to 30 nanograms is all that is needed for bone health,
and nearly everyone is in that range." But there is so much more to
vitamin D than bone health. What the level of vitamin D that is normally
found is not the healthy range. Studies show the normally-found vitamin D
levels in North Americans, even among those who live in sunny areas, is not
sufficient to maintain year-round health. Many sun-phobic Americans enter
the winter months with little or no vitamin D stored in their liver for
wintertime protection from disease, especially those who live in northern
areas where virtually no vitamin D is produced from sunlight exposure in
winter months.

The hidden agenda

And we get a hint at modern medicine's real agenda in solving the vitamin
D-deficiency health crisis - vitamin D-like drugs! Forget sunshine, it's
bad for you and might cause skin cancer. Forget vitamin D pills, you might
overdose on them. Instead, trust Big Pharma to bring you patentable
man-made analogs of vitamin D, at a cost no one can possibly afford!

If you think I'm being overcritical, search here to learn more about vitamin
D drugs in Big Pharma's R&D pipeline. Glenville Jones PhD, a panel member
on the 14-member committee that determined the new vitamin D guidelines, and
who is quoted to say most people " probably don't have vitamin D
deficiency," is a scientific advisor for a company developing drugs that
mimic vitamin D.

Imagined risks of overdosing

An Associated Press news report quotes Institute of Medicine authorities who
warn "the nation's health craze" for vitamin D "could be risky." Dr. J.
Christopher Gallagher, director of the bone metabolism unit at the Creighton
University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., agrees, saying, "The onus is
on the people who propose extra calcium and vitamin D to show it is safe
before they push it on people."

But just how risky could vitamin D be? Toxicity doesn't begin till 40,000
IU is consumed for many weeks. That would be equivalent to ingesting
one-thousand 1000 IU vitamin D pills each day!

Reinhold Vieth, a noted vitamin D researcher, notes that it takes a blood
concentration of 240 nanograms to produce hypercalcemia, a condition where
there is too much calcium in the blood which results in headaches, nausea,
constipation and vomiting. A person would have to ingest 1 million units of
vitamin D to induce hypercalcemia. Physicians inject a quarter of a million
units of vitamin D in a single day for wintertime bone health in their aged
female patients without a reported side effect. The risk is overstated,
while the consequences of deficiency are downplayed.

Vieth suggests a safe upper limit of 10,000 IU for healthy adults, which is
"likely to pose no risk of adverse effects in almost all individuals in the
general population."

Michael Holick, a professor of medicine at Boston University School of
Medicine, recommends that adults take 2,000 to 3,000 IUs per day*and notes
that he had done studies giving subjects 50,000 IUs twice a month for six
years and seen no harmful effects. " There is no downside to increasing your
vitamin D intake, and there are more studies coming out almost on a weekly
basis," he said.

New York Times health reporter Gina Kolata, in her report on the new vitamin
D guidelines, chose to quote dismissive doctors who claim vitamin D pills
may cause kidney stones in older females. Had Kolata done her homework she
would have found the biases of modern medicine. Since vitamin D is usually
accompanied by calcium in bone-building supplements, it is calcium, or the
use of vitamin D drugs (calcitriol), not vitamin D, that induces stones.
This is how wives tales regarding imagined fears of dietary supplement
overdosing gets started. The New York Times desperately needs
fact-checking.

The buildup to the F&NB report

Follow along here in the scientific buildup to the long anticipated update
of vitamin D requirements by the Food & Nutrition Board, released today
(Nov. 30).

On Oct. 29 a report published in the Journal of Internal Medicine indicates
individuals with vitamin D levels ~15 ng are 330% more likely to be
diagnosed with high blood pressure. This report was followed by a report
published on Nov. 8 where researchers in Austria reported that vitamin D
supplementation reduces blood pressure by 2-6 points (2-6 mg Hg systolic
pressure). This is equal to or better than most blood-pressure lowering
drugs.

On Nov. 23 investigators, reporting in the Nutrition Journal, examined the
records of 2198 cancer patients and found they were abjectly vitamin D
deficient (their mean vitamin D level was 19.1 nanograms, which rose to 36
ng with 8000 IU vitamin D supplementation per day). Low vitamin D levels
are indicative of poor immunity to cancer.

On Nov. 25, researchers at the University of California, Davis, reported
that 30% of North Americans with metabolic syndrome (overweight, elevated
blood sugar and heart and blood vessel disease) were deficient in vitamin D
(their blood serum levels were below 20 nanograms per milliliter of blood
serum), compared to just 8% among healthy individuals.

In the November issue of the Journal of the American Medical Directors
Association, vitamin D researcher William Grant noted that the disparities
in measurable health parameters between blacks and whites can largely be
explained by differences in vitamin D levels. African Americans have a
vitamin D level around 16 nanograms compared to 26 ng for Caucasians. (The
lack of an impetus to correct this nutritional deficiency in African
Americans may be explained by their misdirected focus on gaining greater
access to high-technology medical treatments rather than preventive
medicine.)

In Finland researchers compared blood concentrations of vitamin D with death
rates. The study population included 552 men and 584 women aged 53-73 years
who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer in 1998-2001. The study
revealed dramatically decreased death rates as vitamin D blood
concentrations increased. Vitamin D levels are a life-and-death issue. Note
that African Americans typically have vitamin D blood concentrations ~16
nanograms versus ~26 nanograms for Caucasians, and the difference in death
rates is almost double.

Range of vitamin D blood concentration and mortality
Source: European Journal Clinical Nutrition Oct 26, 2010
Vitamin D blood concentration, nanograms per millilter

3.56-13.62

13.66-20.30

20.31-45.19


Deaths, percent
39 of 379 (44.8%)

31 of 378
(35.7%)*

17/379
(19.5%)


* African Americans are typically in this range and experience nearly double
the death rate compared to Caucasians.

While the Institute of Medicine report maintains that most Americans are
sufficient for vitamin D, a University of Tennessee Health Science Center
study contrary data, with 87% of patients being mildly to severely
deficient.

Severe (less an7 ng/ml) 17%
Moderate (7.0-20.9 ng/ml), 53%
Mild (21-31.9 ng/ml) 17%
Sufficient (more than 32 ng/ml) 13%

The Nov. issue of International Archives of Medicine published a study
showing persons with vitamin D blood concentrations below 20 nanograms were
85% more likely to experience mental depression compared to individuals with
blood levels 30 nanograms.

So, in the face of these recently published studies cited above, how could
the Food & Nutrition Board have come up with its errant conclusions? None
dare call it what it is - modern medical racketeering, or what has been
called disease mongering, only in reverse - there is disease everywhere
except nutritional-deficiency diseases. All of this misinformation is
delivered under the guise of authority by public health officials.

Researchers outside the US are not as conservative as the US Food &
Nutrition Board. For example, while European researchers concede that more
studies are needed to conclusively determine whether low vitamin D levels
are related to strokes, they say "we do, however, believe that currently
published data on the multiple health benefits of vitamin D and the easy and
safe and inexpensive way by which it can be supplemented already argue for
the prevention and treatment of vitamin D deficiency in order to reduce
stroke associated morbidity and mortality." In other words, they aren't
waiting for conclusive science that is years away.

More biases revealed

While the F&NB is said to have reviewed over 1000 scientific reports
involving vitamin D before it drew its mistaken conclusions, one wonders how
many of those published reports were like the blatantly biased report
published in a recent edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Robert P. Heaney MD, a noted authority on vitamin D at Creighton University,
in a letter to the editor of that journal entitled "Does inconclusive
evidence for vitamin D supplementation to reduce risk for cardiovascular
disease warrant pessimism?," demanded to know how a journal of such prestige
(the world's leading journal of internal medicine) could have published such
"such poorly conceived systematic reviews of vitamin D's effects on the
cardiovascular system."


Dr. Heaney points to a review of six prior studies, only 1 which used actual
vitamin D. The review concluded that supplemental vitamin D only provided
modest risk reduction for cardiovascular disease. The other 5 studies that
were reviewed employed a vitamin D-like drug (calcitriol), which is in some
ways inferior to vitamin D itself. Ultimately, vitamin D converts to
calcitriol in the body, but this requires that the prevalent form of vitamin
D in the blood circulation (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D) is in a 1000-fold
greater concentration than calcitriol, explains Dr. Heaney. Then cells can
naturally produce as much calcitriol as they need in local tissues, without
inducing systemic toxicity.
Dr. Heaney dispels concerns about over-dosage and points to the fact that
outdoor summer workers commonly exhibit blood levels between 48-80
nanograms, without report of sun poisoning. He indicates 4000 IU of oral
vitamin D is required to produce blood serum concentrations of 48 nanograms.
Dr. Heaney says these are not high doses since they are achieved by outdoor
workers and should be considered within the natural physiologic range.

Requirements to raise blood concentrations of vitamin D:

To raise blood levels of vitamin D by 1 nanogram/milliliter of blood serum
requires 100 IU (2.5 mcg)

To raise blood levels of vitamin D by 10 nanograms/milliliter of blood serum
requires 1000 IU (2.5 mcg)

To raise blood levels of vitamin D by 20 nanograms/milliliter of blood serum
requires 2000 IU (2.5 mcg)



Chart adapted from: Robert P. Heaney, Functional indices of vitamin D status
and ramifications of vitamin D deficiency, Am J Clinical Nutrition; 80
(supplement): 1706S-9S. 2004.

© 2010 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc. Not for posting on other
websites.


 




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