Panel to post menopausal women: Don’t take vitamin D, Calcium – USA Today: “A government advisory panel’s recommendation Tuesday that healthy postmenopausal women should not take daily low doses of vitamin D and calcium to prevent bone fractures is a wakeup call to millions of Baby Boomer women that more is not always better.”
“In its draft recommendations, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force also said existing research is insufficient to assess the risks or benefits of taking vitamin D — with or without calcium — to prevent cancer in adults.”
Older Women Should Not Take Calcium, Vitamin D, Task Force – Philadelphia Inquirer
Panel: Postmenopausal women shouldn’t take vitamin D, calcium to prevent bone fractures – CBS News
Government Panel Says Calcium, Vitamin D Won’t Prevent Bone Fractures – USA News & World Report
Vitamin D Doesn’t Prevent Osteoporosis in Healthy Women, Task Force Says – Huffington Post
On and on and on and beat me with a stick! What goes on here? Why has this government panel come out now and what have they really said? US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a division of Health and Human Services (HHS). Of course this is ultimately your President, but I suspect he does not have a clue as to what is going on with his health agencies. AHRQ is the same agency that provided the package for the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board that says you only need to take 800 IU vitamin D per day. As I have warned you in the past to ignore studies that use such small amounts, the USPSTF review as based on 400 IU vitamin D and 1000 mg of calcium per day.
The Endocrine Society (ES) was bothered by the IOM’s suggestions and said the IOM was wrong. This was based on practice experience where women have much worse osteoporosis and bone fractures with low levels of vitamin D. The ES suggested that 25(OH)D levels be above 30 ng/ml and not the 20 ng/ml suggested by IOM. My sister-in-law benefited from this understanding. She had multiple bone breaks per year and planter fasciitis. After her endocrinologist went to hear Michael Holick speak, he put her on 4000 IU per day of vitamin D and she healed.
The other thing that is alarming about the USPSTF’s suggestions is that all of the news stories are based on a draft recommendation release. In other words, the government is sending up a trial balloon and maintains deniability. I suspect a real recommendation will never come forward. They have accomplished what they had set out to do – keep people from taking vitamin D because its positive effects are already being seen in the health statistics. Shame on you Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary HHS, for allowing markets before mandates! The medical economy is not more important than our health.
By the way, there is a study showing better than twenty five percent improvements in bone density in a year with 5000 IU/d of vitamin D. Beat me with a stick! Ouch! – Pandemic Survivor
Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor 
(Health and Beauty) Here’s Supplement Facts, 1 tablet: Calcium 333mg Magnesium 133mg Zinc 5mg Vitamin D 200IU I’ve been taikng a variation of this formula for years. At first it was just calcium and magnesium, now Nature Made added vit D and Zinc. I really like the new combination, especially since all the attention is on Vitamin D. Oprah, some years back, had Dr. Oz on, before he got his own show, and he talked in detail about how important it is to take a combination of calcium and magnesium. Dr Oz’s statement, from his anti-aging and fat burning recommendations: Another important supplement to include with your daily vitamins is calcium, but always take it with magnesium. You want to take calcium, but you’ve got to take it with magnesium because if you don’t take them together, the magnesium loosens your poop, he says. The calcium makes it a little bit like concrete. Dr. Oz recommends taikng 600 milligrams of calcium and 200 milligrams of magnesium twice daily. He says twice daily, so one dose should be 1,200 of calcium and 400 of magnesium. You will need 3 pills daily to get the max recommended.
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Yes, need more than 400 IU of vitamin D to strengthen bones
– title of article on same task force reports at VitaminDWiki
http://www.vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=2921
some of the webpage – without hyperlinks
US Preventive Service Task force says 400 IU vitamin D plus Calcium not reduce bone fracture nor cancer
Based on evidence-based review of Dec 2011
Which was based on 2009 data report (so the data is fairly old)
The task force tentative results were widely miss-reported on the internet in June 2012, as you can see from some of the titles:
Government panel recommends against vitamin D for bone health, but some disagree
Vitamin D Doesn’t Prevent Osteoporosis In Healthy Women
Government Panel Says Calcium, Vitamin D Won’t Prevent Bone
Older Women Should Not Take Calcium Vitamin D: Task Force
NPR.org » Panel Questions Benefits Of Vitamin D Supplements
Government panel recommends against vitamin D for bone health, but
Government panel advises against vitamin D, calcium supplements
Don’t Count on Supplements to Strengthen Bones – The People’s
VitaminDWiki knows of only a single study which found that bones would be stronger with 400 IU of vitamin D and Calcium
and that study of twins also used 400 mg of Magnesium