vitamin D

[shell-belle]

THIS INFO CAME FROM THE VITAMIN D COUNCIL WEBSITE:

The Vitamin D Council is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) educational corporation in the State of California, founded in 2003 by Executive Director John J. Cannell, M.D., on the conviction that humans all over the world are needlessly suffering from vitamin D deficiency.
Our mission is to end the worldwide vitamin D deficiency epidemic by means of outreach and awareness, treatment, research and activism.
Our foremost goal is to reach out, bring awareness and educate the general populace, the health industry, and policy makers on the importance of vitamin D. We bridge the gap between the latest peer-reviewed research on the health implications of vitamin D and the general populace, the health industry and policy makers.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-us/

[bcebulla]

Didi,

The Vitamin D Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Information can be found on the website, including information on staff, board, funding, etc…

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-us/

We have done a lot of advocacy work in the past but we’re shifting more into a resource center on vitamin D, working to bridge the gap between research and primary care/laymen.

It’s 1pm in the afternoon right now, and instead of being out in the sun, getting my vitamin D, I’m inside, typing away on a computer. This is why the public suffers from vitamin D deficiency. We evolved outdoors, without clothes, near the equator.

I am going to shift a little away from my organization’s voice over to my own personal voice here. I think one of the greatest disservices the nutrition “industry” does to the public is lead on that they have all the answers. I think most laymen, even nutritionists, have this idea in their head that current medical literature has all the answers to questions on nutrition and diet, when this couldn’t be further from the truth. Right now we have lots of agenda in nutrition, not many controlled trials. We need more controlled trials, way less agenda.

Let’s take diabetes, for example, a serious degenerative disorder that plagues the United States. Like you state, the medical field publicly recommend a plant-based diet to improve this condition. Let’s look at the Mayo Clinic’s “diabetes diet”: They recommend along with veggies and fruits: grains, legumes, and low-fat dairy, and to stay away from saturated fats and cholesterol.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes-diet/DA00027

Yet a randomized study shows that a “Paleolithic diet…mainly lower in cereals and dairy products, and higher in fruits, vegetables, meat and eggs, as compared with the Diabetes diet” resulted in “lower mean values of HbA1c, triacylglycerol, diastolic blood pressure, weight, BMI and waist circumference, and higher mean values of high density lipoprotein cholesterol… Further, the Paleolithic diet was lower in total energy, energy density, carbohydrate, dietary glycemic load, saturated fatty acids and calcium, and higher in unsaturated fatty acids, dietary cholesterol and several vitamins.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19604407

And yet just about every nutritionist you speak to will tell you, without question, that a “diabetes diet” is the healthier diet between the two, when this kind of conclusion isn’t supported by literature. It’s a disservice.

The nutrition field to date leaves many more questions than answers and that is my send home message. There is no magical study that shows that “low-fat” diet is the answer, or for any other type of diet, macronutrient or micronutrient for the matter. It’s just not that simple.

To answer your questions simply, vitamin D is good, but nothing is that good. If you’re obese, don’t exercise and don’t take care of yourself, you’re slowly committing suicide. Eat less, exercise more; that’s what we know. Get your vitamin D, too, we’re discovering. Any definitive recommendation beyond that at this point is a lot of guess work.

[Chumly]

There were 13 patients studied over a 3-month period in that study. That's hardly enough data to base a decision on.

Michael

[Martin68]

I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what is defined as 'normal' vitamin D levels and who is defining it. I just did a google search and excluded results from US sources, and found this link to the British MS Trust.

Here I found this definition of what is 'normal' and what is inadequate:

Optimal: greater than 75 nmol/l (30ng/mL)
Sufficient: 50-75 nmol/l (20-30ng/mL)
Insufficient: 25-50 nmol/l (10-20ng/mL)
Deficient: less than 25 nmol/l (10ng/mL)

(I am dividing by 2.496 to get ng/mL)

Now what am I missing? Is there some reason why Americans need more vitamin D than British people do? I know it rains all the time in England - does that mean we're all used to low Vitamin D levels?

[Kiki]

Didi, thanks for the article. I had missed that recall. I get my D tested at Quest though. So, I guess it doesn't apply to me?

GeoffryLevens, thanks so much for your detailed response. I was actually diagnosed a couple of years ago, and I do get tested a few times a year. It took me a year of 50,000 IU per week & for several weeks per day to get to 30 ng/mol. And, unfortunately, my D seems to drop at a rate of 1 ng/mol per week without supplementation, and 50,000 IU of D3 only raise it by 2 ng/mol. So, I have to take 100,000 IU/month as a maintenance dose to keep it around 30 ng/mol. To get and maintain 40-50 ng/mol requires even more D. So, deciding on 30 or 50 or more ng/mol, based on conflicting recommendations is difficult.

[Knut]

"The Vitamin D Council is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) educational corporation in the State of California, founded in 2003 by Executive Director John J. Cannell, M.D., on the conviction that humans all over the world are needlessly suffering from vitamin D deficiency."

Small world. I worked with Dr. Cannell several years ago and a friend of mine assisted in the Vitamin D studies.

I take 3000 iu. myself.

[didi]

Dr. Cannell is a psychiatrist.

I am a diabetic. I do not low carb. I eat rice, potatoes, wheat etc. This morning my blood sugar was 75. Yesterday it was 78. These are usual readings. My retina specialist has found no eye problems at all. I go twice a year.

Fat causes insulin resistance. Fat in the diet and fat on the body. If you are eating a diet with fat your blood sugars will test low because fat does not raise blood sugar. However, as Atkins himself found out, eventually your sugars will rise because all that fat makes you insulin resistant. So in his first book he bragged that his diet was the perfect diet for diabetics, but changed his tune in the second book. The real test of a diet is not what the tests show but are your arteries clogging over time? Maybe there is more than one way to achieve healthy arteries. Maybe not.

I do not know if it is possible to eat a real paleolithic diet today. Game animals are only about four per cent fat. Eating termites will give you more fat--they are about 23 per cent fat. The vietnamese for instance, traditionally eat insects. Feedlot animals are unhealthy and unhealthful. Hardly the food of caveman. And anyone can claim to eat a paleolithic diet if he eats a whole foods unprocessed diet. Traditional diets range from the 96% animal and 4% carbs diet of the Inuit to the 41% animal and 59 percent plant diet of the Evenki reindeer herders to the 5% animal and 95 percent plant diet of the Quechua highlanders of Peru. Humans traditionally have eaten what is available in their environments and survived long enough to reproduce and raise their children which is all that nature requires. We hope to outwit nature.

Please forgive me for being leery of any councils or advocacy groups. It is not unknown for big business to start groups like this for their own purpose. I did notice that supplement suppliers are sponsors of the vitamin D council. It is possible that the group itself could be non profit but that doesn't mean that someone isn't profiting from it. I am a very untrusting person. While everyone rails against big pharm and their profit driven motives, does anyone think that the billions earned by supplement manufacturers are going to charity? And their ferocious lobbying has exempted them from the rigors of testing, regulation and standardization that pharm companies are held to.

The important thing about Esselstyn's patients is that the Cleveland Clinic recommended them to Esselstyn when no other medical or surgical intervention would help. And they improved to live on for more years than their doctors expected.

Didi

[GeoffreyLevens]

I tend to trust the info from the vitamin D council because (among other reasons) I found out about the importance of vitamin d quite a few years before the council came into existence and everything they say agrees with what I found out on my own by by reading what research I could find and experimenting on myself.

[EmmetFitzhume]

Let’s take diabetes, for example, a serious degenerative disorder that plagues the United States. Like you state, the medical field publicly recommend a plant-based diet to improve this condition. Let’s look at the Mayo Clinic’s “diabetes diet”: They recommend along with veggies and fruits: grains, legumes, and low-fat dairy, and to stay away from saturated fats and cholesterol.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes-diet/DA00027

Yet a randomized study shows that a “Paleolithic diet…mainly lower in cereals and dairy products, and higher in fruits, vegetables, meat and eggs, as compared with the Diabetes diet” resulted in “lower mean values of HbA1c, triacylglycerol, diastolic blood pressure, weight, BMI and waist circumference, and higher mean values of high density lipoprotein cholesterol…

I don't doubt that a so-called paleolithic diet will have better short term results for diabetics than the mayo clinic diabetes diet. You get your blood sugar lower by eating very few carbs - I get it. But not all starch centered diets are created equally. I'm sure the mayo clinc allows way too much fat. So-called low fat diets that allow 25-30% of calories from fat are a joke. That simply isn't low enough to get the most health benefits from a starch centered diet.

Compared to what we are doing here with the McDougall plan the "diabetes" diet is a steaming pile of crap.

[didi]

Some people with diabetes take a pill, eat what they want and think they are being cured. Others, especially those on some diabetes support groups, are most sincerely interested in helping themselves, finding the best diet and exercising and in general changing their lifestyle in ways that will reverse or at least control their diabetes.

That is why it is so difficult for me to drop in on these groups. I haven't found one person --not one--who agrees with a plant based diet and especially who agrees that starches (or carbs as they call them) are not harmful. Some on these groups are type 1's, some are a strange mixture of 1 and 2 and several have other serious health problems. Some are thin type 2's and resent the suggestion that their WOE is responsible for their diabetes.

Over and over again their mantra is repeated--less carbs, less carbs, less carbs. And over and over you read--I am following the diet but my sugars keep rising and I have added more insulin (or more or different meds). As a group they are appalled by Deen's cooking but only because it is excessive, not because it contains fats, oils, eggs, dairy and meat. Many do indeed seem to be following the Paleolithic diet. I do not know if the mayo clinic diet has improved all the risk factors which emmet quotes but for most of them it doesn't seem as if they have been able to give up their meds and insulin. Just the contrary.

I do understand that if you are on the "Paleolithic" diet (the real paleolithic diet was whatever people could find to eat in their environments) and your sugars decrease and your other values seem to improve then you would be likely to stick to it no matter what studies people showed you. I feel the same about Fuhrman, McDougall, Esselstyn etc. But if my sugars start to rise and I am getting bad test results and need to go on meds then I (and any who are on any diet that isn't working ), should use common sense and try some changes--no matter what your particular guru has to say.

As for vitamin D--reports are coming in that people who were thought to be immune to certain viruses are not immune and should be re vaccinated. Evidently environmental assault is causing a failure of these vaccines. D is a hormone, the result of chemical reactions between the sun and whatever chemicals are natural to the body. It would not surprise me in the least that the same pollutants that decrease the effectiveness of vaccines are also doing a number on the synthesis of D. Is the answer massive amounts of a manufactured product or something else?

Didi