Monthly Archives: July 2009

Nutrients for Back Pain

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As you know from My Story, I ‘grew’ out of back pain by taking nutrients that allowed the vertebral disc to heal.  Now modern medicine says that this is not possible, but let us explore these two brief stories from people that I know that helped me get to the understanding of the nutrients that I took.

First it was a friend that was somewhat of an athlete.  After a surgery on his knee to removed damaged cartilage, he spent enormous amounts of time in the sun with his shirt off.  Against his doctors advice he continued to run.  It is important to keep up exercise for cartilage health as this is the only way that fluids move in and out of the cartilage to provide nutrients.  Cartilage is not feed directly by the blood system.  After a year he went back to the doctor and had his knee imaged as a follow up to the surgery.  The cartilage had grown back.

Second, I knew a lady that had back pain.  She said that after the summer in her garden that her back pain had gone and that she had grown an inch in height.  Again, significant height variation that is more than the normal from hydration is an indication of the health of vertebral disc.

The only thing that was in common with these two healings was sunshine and exercise.  The sunshine provided the vitamin D and the exercise allowed nutrient flow to the cartilage.

Nutrients that I took:

Vitamin C 1000 mg/d

Multivitamin

Magnesium as glycinate 800 mg/d

Vitamin D3 – enough to keep my serum 25(OH)D3 above 50 ng/ml for me at 203 lbs this was about 10,000 IU/d  in the winter and in the summer I only took 5000 IU/d

Vitamin A – from fish liver oil 5000 IU/d

Zinc – 25 mg/d

Boron – 3 mg/d

Calcium – 500 mg

Sulfur – MSM 1000mg/d and glucosamine sulfate 1500 mg/d

I could not really walk so I had purchased an inverter about three years prior.  I am not promoting the Hang-Up brand but this is the one that I used and it worked very well.  I would not really hang upside down but would rock 45 degrees back and then forward and this would work my spine like an accordion to pump fluids in and out.  I did this twice each day for 10 to 15 minutes.

Now from looking at these vitamins it is hard to imagine that is all that I did.  Let me tell you when you are in pain and the back is screaming at you the vitamin D does wonders.  Of course I was under the care of doctor during this time and he told me not to take the vitamin D3 in such large amounts that it would make my organs turn to ‘stone’.  He checked my serum calcium and my 25(OH)D and was satisfied that I was not doing anything harmful to myself.

There was not anything on the net about improving back pain with vitamin D at that time.  However, now Dr. Gerry Schwalfenberg, University of Alberta, has published case studies on using Vitamin D. Improvement of Chronic Back Pain or Failed Back Surgery with Vitamin D Repletion: A Case Series Gerry Schwalfenberg, MD From the Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Canada

In his case studies, he does not use as much vitamin D as I did.  I do think that you should try to maintain your serum 25(OH)D level above 50 ng/ml as I stated above.

The pain got much better for about a 4 month period.  It then started to hurt up and down my back, but the places where the bulges existed got much better.  What was going on with my back as the disc healed was that the nerve roots were trying to find new homes as the disc increased in height.  I could exercise the part of my spine that was hurting and it would get better the next day.  After the first three months I was able to go to the gym.  I had a very kind trainer that would help me exercise without putting any compression on my spine. Within 10 months I was able to do 125 lb dead lifts and the pain in my back was gone.  I had grown back to my original height of 6 ft after six months and at the end of 10 months I was two inches taller than I had ever been.  I am sure because I was kept out of the sun as a child because of my heat stroke that my DNA had never fully expressed itself.

I think that it is very important for cellular differentiation that you get both Vitamin A and Vitamin D.  I got the largest growth spurt when I was taking both.  Also please note that I was not using beta-carotene but vitamin A from fish liver oil.  There has been much comment about not taking this preformed vitamin A.  We always ate liver every other week when I was growing up and I never had any problems.  Liver about the size of your hand has 100,000 IU of vitamin A.  I say eat as the endogenous people did – like the wolf where the internal organs are consumed first.  If you like liver then you have it made.

Again, do this only in the care of a doctor in particular if you have injuries in your cervical disc.  I had stenosis so bad at C3-C4 and since this is where the nerve for the lung originates the surgeon was really concerned I would just stop breathing.  I had severe sleep apnea (central) from this but after the pain was gone the doctor would not operate.  The sleep apnea took almost two years to resolve but it finally got there.  I have no more poping or snapping in my neck at all and can move it in any direction at will.

Sounds simple, it is simple.  I still do not understand why no doctor ever asked to take my vitamin D level when DDD is so similar to rickets.  I am truly sadden by the number of people that are still out there hurting when the solution is so simple.  There is hope for your pain so be of good cheer.  I know that it hurts and my prayers are for you.

Go nekkid into the sun!           – Pandemic Survivor

Another Pandemic – H1N1 – Protect Yourself

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And the swine flew.  I had a friend that every time something unusual was uttered he would let out the phrase, ‘and pigs will fly out of my butt too’.  I guess that he meant that it was a total impossibility.  So now we have the swine flu and the ‘pigs are flying out of my friends butt’.

It truly seems strange to me that this virus is made up of two different versions of ‘bird flu’ that I believe are from two different continents and two different versions of the swine flu from two different continents and a version of the human flu.  WHOOO!  ‘Pigs are flying out of my butt’ as well.  When I think of a bird that flew his flu from North America and infected an Asian bird that infected an Asian swine that infected a European swine and ended up as the H1N1 in North America humans of a California variety, it makes me believe that pigs truly can fly.  Here is a summary of the WHO teleconference on the apparent origins of the various strains as a pdf. Note: All the links are set to open in another window.

Now there is another story that is floating around the alternative health blogs like Dr. Mercola and Mike Adams.  It seems that an investigative journalist from Austria has evidence that some sort of intentional release of this virus was made and she has filed criminal charges with the FBI against a host of people.  Here is the index page from Mike Adams, Natural News for the H1N1 virus. Also, here is Natural News pandemic page for the H1N1. Here is the article on charges being filed by author Barbara Minton:  It also is interesting that Jane Burgermeister has a blog on word press that is http://birdflu666.wordpress.com .  Cute url!?  Jane, for your sake, I truly hope that you have the ‘goods’ on all of these people because these are some really serious charges.  For the world’s sake, I hope not.

The other thing that is really concerning is that this version of the virus is mutating regularly so the vaccine, if you chose to take it, may not be effective on the mutated version.  This means you will have to take multiple boasters.  Also this virus has more activity in the lungs that the just ‘plain vanilla’ version of the seasonal flu.  What this means is that as the virus attacks you that pneumonia bacteria will take over in an opportunistic fashion and will result in a serious course for the combination of diseases.  It is the bacterial pneumonia that kills you and not the flu.  Here is an explanation from Dr. Donald W. Miller on LewRockwell.com on how he believes that it would be better not take the shot for multiple reasons.  Well, he agrees with Jane that you should not take the shot, but for medical reasons.  He says to take vitamin D!  What!?  Vitamin D not only affects chronic diseases, but infectious diseases as well.  Wow, it is no wonder that Oliver Gillie of the UK’s Health Research Forum in Sunlight Robbery says that vitamin D3 is a ‘magic shotgun’.

I like Dr. Miller because he writes well researched articles and his information is very clear.  I have used many of his articles to change my supplementation regimen.   Here is his index page for recent articles: http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller-arch.html His article on iodine has benefited me greatly: http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller20.html

So can we find more on taking vitamin D and how it affects the flu?  Yes, Dr. John Cannell, Director Vitamin D Council, has written two papers on vitamin D and the flu and how vitamin D controls the flu in a seasonal manner.  That is that you typically get the flu in the colder months and closer to the equator during the rainy season when there is less sun.  Here is how to protect yourself from Dr. Cannell at the Vitamin D Council Newsletter for H1N1.

I know this is a lot of information, but you know since I have kept my serum 25(OH)D above 50 ng/ml starting January 2005 I have not even had a cold.  I am just one anecdotal story but if you multiply that by all of those people that have taken Dr. Cannell’s advice then what a major study!!

Have a sunny day with lots of vitamin D year round!!!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

The Tragedy of Deficiency Disease

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I was at the gym this morning on the treadmill when a woman that was a friend of my friend that was on the treadmill next to me came in.  She had a cane and I discovered that she had just had a knee implant.  It seems that she had a minor injury some 15 years ago and her knee continued to get worse until there was apparently no cartilage left.

I did not ask her age, but she appeared to be about 40 years old.  She had dark skin which is a real problem for vitamin D deficiency.  From the material that I have read it appears that about 80 percent of the population with light colored skin are deficient and 99 percent of people with dark skin are deficient.  Here is an article today from the Visit Bulgaria website.  It is a worldwide problem.

Of course the problem with dark skin is that the melanin content of the skin slows the rate of production of vitamin D3.  This means that to get the same amount of vitamin D a dark skin person may need to stay in the sun 2 to 10 longer than a person with light skin depending on skin pigmentation amount.

If this lady had been treated with vitamin D when she first had the injury and educated in how much she needed to heal her knee, she would not have to had the replacement.  It is difficult to imagine the amount of pain and the pain that she continues to have.

This first came to my attention with my neighbor that was an athlete and played baseball for a local college.  He would have made it in the pros but it seems that he had a problem in hitting the curve ball.  He had to have knee surgery when he was in his twenties.  His doctor told him that he should not run.  He loved the sun and spent as much time as he could in the sun with his shirt off.  He ignored his doctor and continued to run.  Later he had his knee imaged and discovered that the cartilage had regenerated.  Sun and exercise seem to be the magic formula for him as the sun gave him vitamin D and the exercise allowed the flow of fluids to his knee.

Think about the list of diseases that you have read from a prior post and we see this ever day with friends and acquaintances that we meet.  Pain from diseases are debilitating and life destroying.  It truly grieves my heart.

To think that there truly is a relative simple solution of keeping the vitamin D level up is tragic.

GO INTO THE SUN AND SUPPLEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D3 Good, Vitamin D2 Good for Rats

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This post was originally written three years ago, July 19, 2009.  Since we have been discussing D3 and D2, I thought that would be a good idea to revisit my thoughts at that time.

Well it seems like almost since the start of understanding vitamin D in the 1930’s that vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, is equal to vitamin D2, ergocalciferol. This thought continues on today even by some of the best researchers on vitamin D.

Now before we dive right into this discussion let’s just say that vitamin D3 is better than D2 for humans because of the impact on genes and it is less toxic. In other words, take D3 and not D2 as D3 is better. If your doctor prescribes D2, ask him if it is okay for you to take an equal amount of D3 as it will be more effective to your health. Vitamin D3 is readily available even in 50,000 IU quantities (since this post was written, the FDA has approved 50,000 IU of D3 from Bio Tech Pharmacal to fill scripts). If your doctor says no,  then get a second opinion or at least have him read from the journals listed below.

I would like to say thank you to the journals and to the authors who have made their papers open access to help in the understanding of treating chronic disease.

Consider this article that was written in 2008: “D2 as Effective as D3 in Maintaining Circulating 25(OH)D Levels” Holick et al, : J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2008 Mar;93(3):677-81. Epub 2007 Dec 18 Now this article was written in part by Dr. Michael Holick and I consider him to be one of the best researchers of vitamin D. After all he did get fired from his job after writing the book the “UV Advantage.” But the above paper really puzzles me and you have to read the abstract carefully to understand what Dr. Holick is saying.

First, he is talking about levels of serum 25(OH)D that are necessary to heal rickets. That is that 99% of all rickets is healed at 25(OH)D level of 20 ng/ml or less. So here is where the problem begins. Also read this statement carefully from the Conclusion: “A 1000 IU dose of vitamin D2 daily was as effective as 1000 IU vitamin D3 in maintaining serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and did not negatively influence serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels. Therefore, vitamin D2 is equally as effective as vitamin D3 in maintaining 25-hydroxyvitamin D status.”

Note very carefully in this statement how 25(OH)D, 25(OH)D2, and 25(OH)D3 are used. This is the language of confusion that has always been used in vitamin D research where everything that even closely resembles a D compound is called vitamin D. The sum of 25-hydroxyvitamin D2 plus 25-hydroxyvitamin D equals the total value of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. In the future, you should be very careful at the higher serum levels above 50 ng/ml because most of the work with vitamin D is now being done with D3. When you go to the higher levels,  then the above conclusion no longer holds.

At higher levels, the effect of serum 25(OH)D is better understood from this paper:

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 89, No. 11 5387-5391 Copyright © 2004 by The Endocrine Society, Vitamin D2 Is Much Less Effective than Vitamin D3 in Humans, Laura A. G. Armas, Bruce W. Hollis and Robert P. Heaney

Consider this statement from the abstract: “Vitamin D2 potency is less than one third that of vitamin D3. Physicians resorting to use of vitamin D2 should be aware of its markedly lower potency and shorter duration of action relative to vitamin D3.”

As you read the two papers you see that they are talking about two different ranges of 25(OH)D. The efficacy of disease prevention and treatment only begins’ at the higher ranges. And many researchers think that to get the best benefit, the 25(OH)D level should be above 60 ng/ml and that it should be 25(OH)D3. Now the normal of a sunny country according to a paper, Benefits and Requirements of Vitamin D for Optimal Health: A Review   by Dr. William Grant of SUNARC,  is a level of 25(OH)D3 of 54 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml. This sounds like a target for a normal range and is much more predictive of preventing disease than the range that the medical professions currently use of 20 to 100 ng/ml. It’s just that the minimum level needs to be raised.

I may have used the word efficacy above and should not have. Equal potentcy does not mean equal efficacy. That is that they treat disease at the same level of quality or with the same outcome. So even at the lower levels of potency where D2 and D3 are equal at raising 25(OH)D levels, I suspect that 25(OH)D3 is more efficacious in treating disease. Ah, the language of misdirection and the medical profession should be a blog on its own.

Equal potent does not mean equal efficacy!

Efficacy is what opponents to the population taking enough vitamin D to have an effect on disease are screaming about. “There is not enough research on the efficacy of vitamin D they scream,” but they have much thinner research on the various drugs that they are touting. “Heal the population but do not heal the portion that I have targeted for my drug because I have spent millions in research and we would not want something like sunshine to keep me from making a profit.”  Boy, I believe I was a lot angrier three years ago than I am now.  Of course this practice of confusing the population for profit goes on as shown by the conflicts of interest allowed by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board in 2011.

Of course it is forgotten that the test on efficacy was run during the twentieth century when most of the population was taking two tablespoons full of cod liver oil per day or about 2600 IU of D3. Ever hear of anyone dying from vitamin D toxicity? The Vitamin D Council on toxicity.  Neither have I. How about have you ever heard of anyone dying from liver failure where consumption of acetaminophen is the number one cause?

I am not bitter from the 25 years of chronic pain I suffer, just using this energy of healing to try to help the rest of you folks. Sorry if sometimes it sounds like whining but I will repeat from a previous blog that standing in Germany and watching the holocaust without taking action does not sit well with me and neither does watching people suffer and needlessly die from chronic disease.

And second so what do rats have to do with vitamin D2 and D3. Well it seems like rats just love vitamin D2 as it works better for them than does vitamin D3. Rats are nocturnal animals and get their vitamin D primarily from eating plants and fungi that have made D2 after being irradiated with sunshine. Isn’t it interesting that we have used rats extensively in testing for vitamin D when vitamin D2 is more efficacious in rats than vitamin D3 and this is the opposite for humans?

In the following paper, Dr. Vieth, a real hero in vitamin D research from the University of Toronto, shows how in other species that D3 is more effective by a factor of 10 at potency and that D2 is more effective for rats.

Here is the open access paper: The case against ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) as a vitamin supplement Lisa A Houghton and Reinhold Vieth, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 84, No. 4, 694-697, October 2006

So why and when did we start to use D2 and not D3. JY Moon and Dr. CJ Reich considered this very problem from a 1975 paper entitled “The Vitamin D Problem” . This is a most read and explains how the cases of toxicity did not start until we started to use D2 and how D2 can lead to more disease. Now this is in 1975 just prior to the time that I begin to start suffering pain and there was not one doctor good enough to ask about my serum vitamin D level – D2 or D3!  Don’t go into the sun and if you do wear sunscreen as it will prevent skin cancer, but what about the disc disease in my spine that is very similar to rickets?

Where are the government agencies that are supposed to protect us from the misadventure of profiteers? Oh yeah, they are protecting the profits and the economy for Wall Street.

Go into the sun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When you cannot, supplement with D3 only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!                                         – Pandemic Survivor  Well, it does not look like much has changed over the last three years in the clinical practice of treating vitamin D2 and D3 as equals!  I suspect there will be a lot of papers become unless when the effects of 25(OH)D2 versus 25(OH)D3 are finally determined.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Vitamin D

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Where did we go so wrong with sunshine and vitamin D?  Were these just people in the medical professions ignoring the facts as they concentrated each day on how to heal chronic disease?  If they were truly concentrating on chronic disease, why wasn’t the pharmacology of vitamin D studied more for determining how it could possibly help to heal disease?

This is a lot of questions considering the millions of people who have died of these diseases in the twentieth century.  How can we make sense of this without considering that just maybe some misdirection was happening?  In the early forties, one researcher made the statement that the amount of skin cancer that was prevented by staying out of the sun was minor compared to all the other cancers that could be prevented by going into the sun.  What happened to him and why wasn’t this line of research pursued?

Well it seems that there was some fear going on by those who held intellectual property rights to vitamin D and how it could be used to treat disease.  Supplements that you could buy over the counter had been made with extremely small amounts of vitamin D to the point that it was not beneficial for use.  It seems that the manufacturers thought that these supplements would interfere with their sales of prescription drugs.  I suspect there was also the thought that there were other applications like cancer that could be treated and prevented with higher amounts and the dollar signs were going off in their eyes.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation held the rights to the vitamin D patents and licensed them to anyone who wanted to make vitamin D products.  It seems that they were trying to manage the license to maximize profits without concern of what they were doing to the health of the community.

The government brought suit against WARF and 17 other entities for trust violations on vitamin D in 1944.  It appears that there was ‘arbitrary and unreasonable prices’ and limited the potency of preparations so that it would not compete with their pharmaceutical products.  Now since this was when WWII was raging, I doubt that anyone in the press was paying too much attention.  What were a few kids with rickets not being able to get the vitamin D they needed as opposed to all that was going on with the war?

The settlement in the case happened when WARF turned over the patents for public use.  Here is the headline from the NY Times in 1946:

VITAMIN D PATENTS GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC; U.S. Court Decree Ends Civil Anti-Trust Suit Against Wisconsin Foundation PROHIBITIVE COST CITED Asst. Dist. Attorney Says Persons Who Most Needed Rickets Cure  Were Unable to Get It

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 15, 1946, Tuesday
Page 16

CHICAGO, Jan. 14–Patents controlling Vitamin D, the so called “Sunshine Vitamin,” which prevents and cures rickets, became public property today when Federal Judge John P. Barnes signed a consent judgment terminating a civil anti-trust suit filed last October against the Wisconsin Alumni Foundation and seventeen other defendants.

You can purchase the article from the NEW YORK TIMES archives.

It seems that this brought an end to the misadventure with vitamin D as far as rickets was concerned.  The patents had become public property so that anyone could make D3 and the market place would make the vitamin readily available to those who needed it.  But then THE LIE began to be perpetuated about how D3 and D2 were equal in the human body in the 1930’s.  This was great news for WARF because they continued to control the rights for many D analogs and perhaps D2 as well.  D2 is not a natural substance in the body as it is made from irradiating fungus.

But of great concern is that the beneficial findings on vitamin D and its effect on chronic disease were not published because WARF wanted to protect its intellectual property.  It appears that letting people die was okay as long as WARF protected its property.  You can hear a recent presentation at youtube where Hector De Luca, professor of biochemistry UWM, describes this very thing.  You can hear how wonderful the drug has been to Wisconsin in funding research but says nothing about how many people died because they did not publish the beneficial findings.  Vitamin D, the New Old Wonder Drug:   Listen to the introduction about how many vitamin D analogs have made life wonderful for millions of people and profited WARF.  It just makes me angry as this protection of an institution for profit brought much disease that led to pain and death to others in not telling how just plain vitamin D3 would get the job done.  All very legal and deadly! It looks like the thing that they were sued for in 1944 is still going on in a different format.

If you really wanted to protect your patents on vitamin D analogs and improve your market size, how would you do it?  You certainly would not want to report how good a job just plain old vitamin D3 would do as this is the least expensive of the supplements on the market.  If people got replete with D and 75% of chronic disease disappeared what would happen to the medical industry?  After all, it has a right to protect itself and its growth.

You know what would really be great for the growth of this industry would be to figure out some way to keep people out of the sun.  If we can’t keep them out of the sun at least figure out a way to prevent the skin from making vitamin D.  Remember that cute little girl with her ‘hiney’ showing bright white as the dog pulled her paints down from the 1960’s?  And here is Plough, Inc. finding a great new market for selling a consumer product that would be really beneficial to millions to reduce burns and prevent skin cancer – sunscreen – the DAMN LIE.

It did prevent sun burns and this was great for the entertainment industry and all the ‘fun parks’ that were being developed because people could stay out in the sun longer and spend more money.  However, since sunscreen was presented in the sixties, the rate of skin cancer has gone up about two fold or more.(See Note 1.)  There is a great article in To You Health called, “ The Sunscreen Dilemma”,  by Jacob Schor, ND. For further reading you may also consider this as well hypothesis about melanoma from 1993: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8287144 .  The increase of many other chronic diseases has been documented during the same period.  The vector of vitamin D3 in so many chronic diseases is amazing and I suspect the number one cause of the increase in chronic disease.  The second being exposure to so many industrial chemicals that in some cases are put into our foods and call ‘food’.

So Plough did really well in the sixties selling Coppertone and its Dr Scholl’s line of foot products.  So what if you created a market by keeping people out of the sun and increasing chronic disease – how could you profit from it?   By developing and selling drugs for treating chronic disease.  So Schering  a company that specialized in drugs to treat chronic disease merged with Plough in 1971 to form Schering-Plough, Inc.   In a recent review of SP’s annual report it was interesting to note that 20 percent of their income was from their sunscreen products and 80 percent was from statins, hypertensive, chemotherapy, and other drugs for treating chronic disease.  It was the ‘70’s when the push for really using sunscreen products truly began and it was a great marketing campaign to sell pharmaceuticals for treating chronic disease.  What—?

Now with a pending class action suit that was filed against SP and others in California in 2006 and at least one study coming back to show that sunscreen may actually make the incidence of skin cancer worse, Schering-Plough sells out to Merck.  Now I suspect depending on how the common stock was handled that the liability exposure was significantly reduced by this acquisition.

Ah, lies, damn lies, and the conforming to the institution for protection of the institution truly is evil as described by M. Scott Peck in ‘People of the Lie” when empathy is not taken into consideration.  Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council simply says that we have ignored the facts over the years.  I say that we have ignored the facts as negligent misadventure with intent to profit from death and disease.

GO INTO THE SUN AND DO NOT WEAR SUNSCREEN.  STAY ONLY LONG ENOUGH UNTIL YOU JUST START TO TURN PINK.  WEAR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CLOTHES POSSIBLE DURING THE MIDDAY SUN. IN THE WINTER USE TANNING BEDS OR SUPPLEMENT WITH VITAMIN D3.           – Pandemic Survivor

Note 1:  Skin cancer rates from 1975 to 1995 annual percentage rate increase was 5.1 percent.  Given that the natural logarithm of 2 times 100 is about 70.  70/5.1 = 13.7 years to double.  So at 28 years we would have a factor of times 4. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/othskin.html   SEER fact sheet on skin cancer.

Genetic, Epigenetic, and Vitamin D3

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Researchers clear your minds as this is the opportunity for new novel designs for preventing and healing disease.

Note 1.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council says that Vitamin D3 targets over 2000 genes or about 10% of the genome.  We have long thought that we are predisposed to get this disease or that disease because our genes were pre-programmed.  We have thought that the genes were responsible and this is correct.  But in the human body it is not only that the genes exist, it is whether it is turned off or on.

Not being hampered by an education in the biological sciences I can freely speculate about how this happens.  We too often are so tied into how a certain thing works.  Our models that we have created in our minds become permanent fixtures. This may or may not be how a process actually presents itself.  Science has had a long history of confirming a certain theory only to find out later that there is more or worse it is not even close to being accurate.  However, the theories that we have developed allow for many wonderful outcomes.

This is the case with genetics.  It is my belief that everybody has a reasonably reliable gene map.  That is; it is capable of given you a healthy life.  Something in our environment has allowed this gene map to be turned off/on.  Genes are almost ‘digital’ in this matter.  Only on occasion do we have a part on gene and part off gene.  Or some cells may be turning on a gene and others may be turning off the same gene or a ‘fuzzy logic’ sort of action.  This happens in tumors where the immature cells continue to grow and their program to stop growth does not act for apoptosis or programmed cellular death.

The genes are present so you cannot really say that we are genetically predisposed.  What has happened is that either because of the stress of the environment or the diet that we consume has had a significant impact on our genes.  Yes there is imprinting from parent to child, but can that be affected by our present environment and our diet.  Evidently this is how the vitamin D3 works.

Here we introduce epigenetics as a way to turn off and on genes.  Epigenetics time line can be seen at this google page where a history of our understanding of this science is displayed.  We see that most of the work in this science did not start to happen until the twenty first century.  We mapped the genome and found that we could not with certainty say that this gene caused a certain happening.  The gene existed, but it was whether it was turned off/on.  This control ‘above genes’ is known as epigenetics.

This idea about how our environments stressed us and our diets affected us in this manner was promoted in a book by Bruce H. Lipton, Phd ( you may find his work here: http://www.brucelipton.com/) called ‘The Biology of Belief’.  Now this was too far out for most doing research in the biological sciences because they had always believed that if the gene existed it would give you a certain result.  It is like saying that because you have a light bulb with power attached that you will have light without consideration for whether the switch is turned off/on.

Some years ago Dr. Randy Jirtle at Duke University starting doing work with twins to try to make some sense of biology versus nurture.  His discovery was that it is both.  You can find out more about his work at this PBS Nova Science Now website.  There is a short video describing his findings.  Be sure to watch one of his researcher’s ‘Tale of Two Mice’ in the middle of the page.  In brief what they found was that by feeding the mother certain nutrients that they could make the offspring either thin with a brown coat or fat with a gray coat.  I am like the fat mouse with the gray coat.

This lead to the discovery that bisphenyl-a or BPA could give an undesirable effect.  Many recent news articles have been published about how BPA would affect your baby.  Here is a recent article form the Chicago Sun-Times. If the bottles that you were using had this form of plasticizers then you could expect a not so good effect on you child.  I believe that by now all of the baby bottle manufacturers have voluntarily removed BPA as they were most likely concerned over the liability.

If you would like to read more about Dr. Randy Jirtle’s work you can find it at his geneimprint website. Also here is his Duke web page for the researchers. It has a brief description of the current work on carcinogenesis.

It seems that methylation or the binding on the surface of genes by methyl groups (free radicals) keeps the genes from expressing themselves for your health.  There are some great images from ‘A Tale of Two Mice’ above that clearly show how this works.  Now some genes we want turned on and some we want off.  In the case of the mice it was a ‘fat gene’ that was staying on constantly.  By feeding the mice methyl donors, the gene was forced off. This seems like a very precarious balance that we need to negotiate.  After all in the press we read about how ‘free radicals’ are really bad for us but in some cases it appears that they are a necessity.  I would suspect that when you are eating the right things this ‘fat gene’ gets turned off and tells the body to not eat any more food.  I also suspect that the mounds of junk food that we eat do not have the right kind of methyl donors.

Now Dr. Cedric Garland and Dr. John Cannell (Newsletter on Vitamin A) have both expressed concern over too much Vitamin A as they believe that it somehow ‘blinds’ the receptors for vitamin D or VDR’s. Dr. Cannell thinks that taking any preformed vitamin A may give you a problem.  He thinks that people should only get their vitamin A from carotene and let the body make whatever retinol and retinoic acid that it needs.  I do not believe this is the case.  This gives me a real disconnect when you read articles about how too much beta-carotene is not good if you have prostate cancer and lung cancer.  This most likely is because vitamin A and vitamin D are antagonist and they deplete each other as the body is using them for health.  Without enough vitamin D to balance the A the cancer gets worse.

During the healing of my vertebral disc, I found that by taking vitamin A from fish liver oil that the cartilage healed quicker.  I had my major increase in height where I actually grew an inch and one half (a sign of healing vertebral disc) in three months when I started taking this form of vitamin A.

I had found from the Oregon State Micro Nutrient center; and from this article from Japan;  that vitamin A and vitamin D worked together for cellular differentiation of chrondrocytes or the cells that form cartilage.  There were many more articles but these two will get you started.

It seems that dimers are formed from the large family of retinol receptors or RXR and vitamin D receptors or VDR.  Also I found that retinoic acid receptors, RAR, and thyroid receptors, TR, work in synergy for cellular differentiation as well. I also started a seaweed supplement for iodine for a healthier thyroid.  If you chose to read more then you may find a paper on this understanding at the Journal of Biological Science, Nuclear Import of the retinoid X receptor, the vitamin D receptor, and their mutual hetrodimer.

So where does this lead us.  Given the body of work by the many scientists on how vitamin D prevents so many different diseases, I propose that vitamin D3 is the ‘master switch’ of epigenetics from nutrients.  It acts like a shepherd in allowing the body’s various hormones to act for your health.  Genes that need to be on get turned on and genes that need to be off get turned off.

The new body of research and drug development for treating various diseases should be pointed toward the combination of nutrients for healing.  I know that the work will most likely be pointed toward drugs and we will just have to read the research to find out what combination of foods will give us health.  After all, our system of medicine is about treatment, the money that results, and not prevention.  However, now that we know the ‘master switch’ or vitamin D3, we can start down the road to health.

I have not lost the weight even though vitamin D3 has a significant effect on blood sugar and insulin which are some of the controls for appetite.  I am that fat gray mouse.  What are those methyl donors -give me some of that!  Somehow I need to overcome the ingrained statement in our family at dinner; ‘Now I need just a little something sweet.’  I suspect that this saying is gene imprinting from my mother-in-law.  Don’t worry; she does not have a computer.  Our environment and how we perceive ourselves and our needs definitely affect our genes.

Get rid of all the bad carbs, eat more good fats, be sure to get enough protein, eliminate the artificial sweeteners because we do not have a clue, and GO INTO THE SUN. 

– Pandemic Survivor

1. Okay researchers, how are you going to make some sense of the combination of nutrients?  I do not think our present statistical method for evaluation of combination of factors will get the job done.  I know that we have forever been using analysis by the variance.  This type of model requires way too much data to determine what is happening with certainty and really does not point to which factor and their interactions that gives you the result.  In manufacturing, I learned a method of analysis of the means which allows you to use small data sets of 3 to 10.  It will plainly show which factor causes what result and more importantly the interaction of the factors and results.  This interaction is what is extremely important in epigenetics. ANOM has been shown by many scholarly papers to be as precise as AOV.  Ellis R. Ott, (ASQ bio) developed ANOM for his work in military and industrial applications which require much accuracy before making a process change.  You can learn the method from his book: ‘Process Quality Control’.  This graphical method will point you to the correct solution without headache.  I am sure that it is available from Amazon as well.

Vitamin D, Disease, and Research

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In 2006, I went to PubMed, the government clearing house for medical publications, and just entered vitamin D in the search engine and limited the search to that year.  There were over 2,100 papers.  I just did this for 2008 and there were over 2,300 papers.  If you limit it to the last ten years it comes up with over 17,000 papers.  The published recent work on vitamin D is voluminous.

The Vitamin D Council has provided a wonderful list of diseases that have been associated with vitamin D deficiency on their research page.  You go there, pick the disease and it sends you to PubMed right to the abstract of the article.  If you do not have a subscription to the particular journal you can purchase the article from the publisher online.

In reading this list, it makes me wonder why there are so many diseases and so much research and yet the medical profession is not treating with vitamin D.  There are so many diseases that are a result of or have a component related to D deficiency, you would think the news organizations would be all over this, but I digress.

If you are a doctor or a researcher and you are trying to just get a feel for the research that is out there then Dr. John Cannell has organized the research by disease.  It is a starting place as there are still many diseases that he has not listed.  For example, I had degenerative disc disease that is really a form of osteoarthritis.  This disease caused severe chronic pain, muscle wasting in my legs, central sleep apnea, memory loss from brain shrinkage with the pain, and other symptoms from oxygen deprivation from the sleep apnea.  If we took sleep apnea we find that it is not in the list because no one has done any research on it and vitamin D even though it has an obesity and stenosis vector which both can be tied directly to vitamin D deficiency.  There is a lot of work that is left to be done and a lot of miss-education of doctors, researchers, and the public in general that needs to be corrected.

Another disease that is not listed is psoriasis and I know that it can be treated with vitamin D according to Dr. Michael Holick of Boston University.  Dr. John Cannell has done a great job and we are grateful for his work, but the tentacles of vitamin D reach far and long in the course of human health and disease.

If you do not find the disease that you have interest with, then just go to PubMed and search on the disease itself and components of vitamin D.  Also I am sure that if you can identify research and that has not been listed then the Vitamin D Council would be interested.  Send that along to them.

Let’s just make a copy of the list without comment to see how long it is:

Vitamin D Council Research Links by Disease

Addison’s Disease
Allergic Hypersensitivity
Alzheimer’s Disease
Ankylosing Spondylitis
Asthma
Autism
Autoimmune Illness
Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
Bladder Cancer
Brain Cancer
Breast Cancer
Cancer
Celiac Disease
Cerebral Palsy
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
Chronic Pain
Cognitive Function
Colon and Rectal Cancer
Cystic Fibrosis
Depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder
Diabetes
Endometrial Cancer
Epilepsy
Ethnicity and Vitamin D
Eye Cancer
GastrointestinalFunction
Gaucher’s and Fabry’s Disease
Vitamin D and Genetics
Graves’ Disease
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Heart Disease
HIV and AIDS
Hypertension
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Influenza
Innate and Adaptive Immunity
Liver Cancer
Liver Function
Lung Cancer
Lymphoid Cancer
Melanoma
Mental Illness
Mineral Metabolism
Multiple Sclerosis
Muscular Weakness and Falls
Obesity
Osteoarthritis
Osteomalacia
Osteopenia
Ovarian Cancer
Pancreatic Cancer
Parathyroid Function
Parkinson’s Disease
Pediatrics
Post menopause
Pregnancy and Lactation
Premenstrual Syndrome
Prostate Cancer
Renal Function
Rickets
Sarcoidosis
Sickle Cell Disease
Skin Cancer
Stroke
Toxicity
Toxin and Radiation Exposure
Tuberculosis
Turner’s Syndrome
Vitamin D Deficiency

Other items of interest for Vitamin D with links to the research:
Best Science
Commentaries and Editorials
Genetics
Requirements
Reviews
Treatment
UV Exposure
Veterinary and Animal Studies
Worst Studies

Vitamin D Council Research Links by Disease

Well, I hope that you find this useful and that you do not think that just because your disease of interest is not in this list that it does not have a vitamin D vector.  This seccosteroid is the most important steroid of the human body – Vitamin D3.

There is a lot of pain and death listed above.  Shine the light on this research!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

The Legal on Vitamin D

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You would think with as much solid research as there is on vitamin D that the attorney’s would be ‘jumping right in’ there.  What is up with this.  It is about the money.  As soon as someone with money figures out that companies and institutions need to pay up for their misadventures, the courts will be ‘slammed’ with cases on vitamin D.  I mean just think about the tobacco issues.  It only really involved cancer and perhaps heart disease.  It did not involve all chronic disease.  When this starts to happen there will have to be congressional action to save the medical profession.  Of course now congress will not take action to save you from some really serious diseases.

So what has happen with the legal.  What I know to date:
In 2001 the FDA and FTC got together and took on the sunscreen and sunblock industry to get them to change the rules of marketing after combining 9 lawsuits.  It seems with the INCREASE in skin cancer by about a factor of X4 since the 1960’s that the sunscreen industry was participating in false advertising.  The marketing changes would have been to assure that the consumers understood that there was really no science to support the industry claims of preventing cancer.  This really seems odd that we would let a judge decide something scientific instead of just letting the facts be the facts – oh yeah, there is money involved.

So the sunscreen industry formed a powerful lobby group and hired a powerful attorney and sucessfully defected the FDA and FTC.  This attorney was so good that he was later made Chief Justice of the Surpreme Court.  Yes, that’s right Chief Justice John Roberts.  Wall Street Jounral Law Blog comment.
Now if I were an attorney and wanted to start a large class action lawsuit that would most likely end up in the supreme court and may take as much as a decade to litigate would I want the final decision maker to have been on the payroll of the group that I was fighting against?  Sounds like ‘trouble in river city’.

Now there is a new suit that was filed in the spring of 2006 agaisnt this same bunch of snake oil producers.  “Sunscreen is the snake oil of the 21st century” says Samuel Rudman filing attorney for the plaintiffs.  That is really some strong language which I think is justified when we are just causing death with many diseases by chasing people out of the sun.

You know what I really think is interesting is that you can go to the store and get a bottle of sunscreen today that has no warning label at all and says that it will prevent cancer if you use it.  The warning label should at least say something like: 

WARNING: THIS PRODUCT PREVENTS THE FORMATION OF THE MOST ESSENTIAL SECCOSTEROID OF THE BODY AND WITHOUT THIS VITAL STERIOD YOU WILL DIE FROM ONE OR MORE OF ALL THE CHRONIC DISEASES THAT INCLUDE THE BIG THREE KILLERS – HEART DISEASE, CANCER, AND DIABETES.

This would better describe the reality of what the product does to you.  In all seriousness, even if the science is confounded which it is not, the label should read that the sunscreen product will prevent the production of vitamin D.  This would at least allow the consumer to make his own decision.

You know it is really interesting that there were not any cohort studies on the tobacco issues.  It was just ‘good men’ doing what was right for you.  Oh yeah, and government stepping in and taking a piece of those large margins made from selling tobacco products.  There have been a large number of cohort studies completed in the last decade on vitamin D and chronic diseases and the research continues to come in at multiple of thousands of new studies every year.  It is a mountain of evidence.

Lawyers are really just waiting for prior case law to be complete so that they will not have to battle.  They will simply walk in and take the spoils from your dying friend or family or from your death.  What a great land of scavengers for profit that we live in.  It is no wonder that people yell that captilism is not the right form of government when the real issue is that our institutions are being corrupted for money that is just like a third world country with a flair for class.

I have the will but not the money.  Is there someone out there that would like to start a legal fund to take on the largest institutions in the land for their misadventure of ignoring the science for profit?

GO INTO THE SUN!!!   – Pandemic Survivor

Healthcare Institutions and the Struggle

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“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmond Burke; British Statesman, Philosopher 1729-1797

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.  – Proverbs 14:12 NIV

A comment on the frustration of people needlessly dying.

It has really troubled me since I have been healed from the vitamin D pandemic that our institutions are not reacting in a way that would mean significant improvement to health. How is it that since the 1970’s there has been an extreme campaign for people to stay out of the sun and yet skin cancer rates have increased four fold. Where are the doctors in this and why have our organizations that we have set up through government not taken action more vigorously?

It is not only in the healthcare field that this is happening. It is also in the other major segment of our economy – energy. I have commented before that I have pretty much ignored the governments unwillingness to bring about significant change to the energy economy because it was just about the money. But with healthcare it is about the life. When I think that the number four priority that was listed for the secretary of HHS was ‘Markets before Mandates’ and ‘To Value Life’ was last sends chills down my spine, my newly healed spine.

It seems that we can take on any institutions that appear to be poisoning us and destroy them if necessary. We have done things like take on the tobacco industry and just recently to remove BPA or the plasticizer in plastic bottles that was causing an issue. Both of these were done on much ‘thinner science’ that what is now available on Vitamin D. There was no cohort study ever done on tobacco. Another one is DDT that was causing an issue with the environment. Also think about the fact that we dumped about 50 million tons of lead beside the highways until the mid ’70’s in a form that could readily be adsorbed by the body under the guise that it would increase gasoline mileage. Lead is an extemely dangerous carcinogen and neurotoxin. I do know a ‘little bit’ about lead as I worked in lead-acid industry for twelve years. Asbestos, red dye number 5, cocaine in cola, lithium in Pepsi, and PCB’s just to name a few.

If you put a toxin into our bodies because you may profit from it, eventually we will take action to eliminate your misadventure. However, can you name one substance that has been withheld and we have taken action to stop this misadventure? The only things that I can think of are types of fat and eggs. It seems that we were told that eating eggs was bad for us but now that has been changed. It was not ever proven that eating eggs was bad, it was just assumed that because there was a significant portion of cholesterol that they were bad for us(see note 1 below). And the fats have been all over the map. It seems that margarine was tauted to be extremely healthy for us and now it turns out that is not the case. I believe that one was just about the money but I do not think that anyone was significantly penalized.

And now all you hear from the agencies and doctors is that there is not enough “science” to recommend that everyone take enough vitamin D to prevent the majority of chronic disease. What these proclaiments are really saying is that he herd is not headed ‘our’ way. In M. Scott Peck’s book “People of the Lie” he describes the two poles of evil as being conforming to a group without empathy and malignant self-love or narcissism ( see note 2). I belive that the practice of allopathic medicine or the practice of treatment and not prevention has led us down a road of conforming to the herd without empathy and created a very evil state of death. The group acts as perceived protection for the group as believed by the leader of the group – the economy. In the case of our sick care system protection of the group means “Markets before Mandates” or in the immortal words of James Carville – ‘its about he economy stupid.”

That may be okay if we are talking about the energy economy where it truly is about the money, but it is another matter when we, with intent by ignoring the facts, kill people. Al Gore just made the statement yesterday about his battle on global warming that it was like fighting the Nazis in the 1930’s. I would like to say to Al that my frustration of seeing people die from vitamin D defficiency is like observing the Holocaust without the ability to take action to stop it. There is the blood of hundreds of thousands of people every year because we have not acted.

Al, there is only three percent of the carbon dioxide that goes into the air every year created by man. Is that really going to do all that you say? The Nation Academy of Sciences in 2006 said that if you take all of the matter that we know in space including star systems, black holes, and hydrogen distributed in space that it only represents a total of 4 percent of the energy of the universe. We cannot see or detect the rest (hence dark energy at 73% and dark matter at 23%) but know that it exists because the universe is expanding at an increasing rate of speed as shown by the Hubble light telescope and confirmed by the Chandra x-ray telescope. Knowing this, how can we say that we are creating global warming our ‘science’ can only identify 4% of the total energy in the universe. Now there is the science. Where are you Al? Is it about the money?  Nothing personal Al, but please do not distort the facts for profit.

The really exciting thing about this dark energy is that it appears that we can ‘tap’ it for our energy needs. There are a multiple patents that already exist for this purpose including one by NASA for space craft boosters.

Good men need to take action. The only real action that you as an individual need to take is to convince two people that vitamin D will prevent disease and save lives and have them each convince two more people. This geometric progression will move around institutions that are all about the money. We have personal word of mouth and the experts on the internet and I encourage you to go for it. I am writing this blog because of this understanding that our institutions have been ignoring the facts for about 100 years.

Go into the sun and take two people with you and wear only enough clothes to keep from getting locked up.

– Pandemic Survivor

1. Vitamin D3 is made in the skin when cholesterol in the skin is radiated with UVB light. The skin and the liver make cholesterol screaming at you to go into the sun and then your levels of cholesterol will get to where they need to be. This is my belief.

2. Narcissism is when there is love for only the self without empathy. Obviously loving yourself is important just as institutions are important. In all cases there should always be empathy for others or it is just evil. I know this one ear, nose, throat doctor really well and when I told him that by getting replete with vitamin D that I do not have to clean the wax out my ears but twice a year instead of every month his comment was – do not tell anyone about it as that is half of my business. At first I thought he was just trying to be funny, but later I considered that maybe he was somewhat lacking in empathy.