Vitamin D

The past year I’ve been nagging friends and family to take lots of Vitamin D. Whatever is good for me is good for all of you. I was feeling affirmed because the medical establishment has finally discovered, oh, hey, beriberi and scurvy aren’t the only inconveniences linked to vitamin deficiencies and body-breakdown. It made me happy to not hide (well, lie) to my doctor about the daily snarfing of 10,000 supplements to fend off terminal napping and limping like Captain Ahab.

I have some chronic health issues (very boring) that my doctor monitors. She’s knowledgeable and kind. Bonus. Last year she tested Vitamin D levels and found them low enough to prescribe 40,000 IUs a week until I could level off to 2,000-3,000 a day. It can be subjective, for sure, but it seems to help me feel better. And, of course, since no drug company owns Vitamin D it’s a cheap fix.

On Monday of this week I could name four or five people in just the last few days, people, whose lives, I told them, would be smarter better richer for taking Vitamin D. From bone health to depression Vitamin D helps bodies maintain better working order. Find out for yourself. Just google a reliable source and read the literature.

However. Warning. Not that you believe all sources. We need to be very, very careful. Because on this very past Monday (see above) Denis sent me an article from the NYT. Now, I have an emotionally volatile relationship with the NYT just like everything else in my life. If it agrees with me and makes me happy, well and good, I love it. But if not. Then I am flying to New York to find the idiot editor who signed off on this or that ridiculous opinion or who possibly wrote the piece himself/herself and force feed him/her lutefisk until he/she pukes. At the least.

In the case of “Report Questions Need for 2 Diet Supplements” I was upset. I felt chagrined and confused after so much indiscriminate honking about the benefits because it attacked my cherished vitamin D. Really? And calcium. You mean I don’t need to be taking all those calcium horse pills? Who are these “experts?”

I contacted my own favorite expert, who used to be the chairman of a department of internal medicine at Rochester Mayo Clinic and is now at Mayo in Scottsdale where he practices what’s called Consultative Medicine, to ask if I was crazy or what. He’s also a killer (wordchoice) diagnostician – according to others more worthy than myself. I sent him this email:

Hi Larry,

I’ve been telling people they need to take a lot more vitamin D.
Why do I do this? (Rhetorical. Please don’t answer.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30vitamin.html?emc=eta1
Who to trust? I tend to be cynical about some of the experts wondering if it’s partly because Vit D is easily available and not expensive.
You can comment if you have chance or time. If not, I’ll make up a quote from you. jk.
m

Luckily, he replied:

Hi Margie,
My cynicism is for expert panels that find supplements not helpful but prescription medications are. My favorite is a study several years ago published in Journal of the American Medical Association saying St Johns Wort is not helpful for depression. It was a big deal at the time and made headlines in newspapers. However if one read more than the title of the article they would find out it did not work for people with major depression but the part of the study which got no press was that the control group received sertraline (Zoloft) and it did not work either for major depression. Also, no good herbalist would ever consider using St Johns Wort for major depression anyway.

The pharmaceutical industry would like nothing better than to have all supplements banned since they are direct competition for them and articles like these only help them. The pharmaceutical industry heavily sponsors studies and advertises in the major medical journals.  Both journals and researchers need research funding so what do you think they would rather publish?

Take your vitamin D, 1000 units daily because you live in Minnesota and when was the last time you went out to lay in the sun? In fact, when was the last time you even saw the sun? (I know what it is like in Rochester!) If your have a big dairy intake with 4 glasses of milk or equivalent you don’t need calcium supplements but how many use this much dairy? Despite the increase in calcium supplementation these past few years, there has not been an increase in kidney stones.

A recent study said high calcium supplementation may cause a tiny increased risk of heart attacks but did not make a comparison to how many people will fall down and break a hip and die from osteoporosis if calcium supplementation stops.

Exercise, Nutrition, Stress reduction, the key to health. Supplements are supplements to diet so if one has a good diet, few supplements are ever needed.

How is life otherwise? I hope articles about Vit D and Calcium are the biggest stressor in your life during this joyous season!

Larry
 

Thanks much. (I know he gets about a billion emails a day.) Okay. Am feeling mollified. Perhaps even a little joyful, after all it’s Advent Season and I live in Minnesota where it’s NOT 120 degrees 300 days of the year, Larry.