FDA’s New Supplement Label Rules

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Mark Pegram

It is amazing to me that the FDA can routinely decide that it will change the daily amount of vitamins and minerals and how they are described with just a wave of the hand. With their new rules on labeling, they have effectively changed the amounts of vitamins and minerals that are suggested as needed for health. Of course these numbers did not mean much anyway because they are typically stated as what is required for an average weight person to prevent certain diseases while ignoring other possibility of disease. However, it is very confusing to the average consumer as well as me and I suspect the FDA. Proposed labeling changes:

Vitamins and Minerals of concern as reported by the Alliance for Natural Health are:

Vitamin B9 or folate: The FDA wants to stop the use of folate and only allow folic acid. Folic acid is a manmade molecule that was manufactured in the laboratory in the mid 1940’s. Folate is very significant in how the methylation cycle occurs. Methylation has been shown to be responsible for how your blueprint of DNA is read and new proteins duplicated. Diseases that are impacted are everything from neural tube defects, oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, mental disorders, and arthritis to colon, breast, and prostate cancer.

Vitamin A: The FDA’s suggested change is from IU to milligrams of RAE or retinol activity equivalents. This is suggesting that beta carotene is equivalent to all the other isomers of vitamin A and ignoring the value of the pro-vitamin A and other carotenoids. Depending an individual’s enzyme profile, not all beta carotene is converted equally. It also depends on whether the beta carotene is delivered as a supplement or from natural sources.

Vitamin E: Only alpha tocopherol is recognized as the active form totally ignoring the other seven isomers of vitamin E with gamma and delta being the most important. They also ignore the value of tocotrienols for neurodegenerative disease.

Changing the DV’s or daily value has impacted the following vitamins and minerals: Reducing the amounts: Vitamin B12, zinc, vitamin B6, riboflavin, selenium, copper, zinc, and pantothenic acid or B5. Slightly higher DV’s: Vitamin C, vitamin D, and calcium. These changes could have significant impact on health because of misstating the amount of needed nutrient.

The above is a brief summary from the article at Alliance for Natural Health. I highly recommend that you read the original article: FDA Needs a Lesson in Supplement Science – Pandemic Survivor

Keep Them out of the Sun!

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Since this past fall, there has been an orchestrated campaign against the findings of health from vitamin D. The latest such attack has come from Dr. Mark Bolland, lead researcher in a recent finding. This in today’s Daily Mail: “He and his colleagues in the department of medicine at Auckland University, New Zealand, analysed the results of nearly 50 trials involving more than 200,000 people. They found that vitamin D supplements had little or no impact on the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer or even bone fractures.”

From the same article, Professor Philippe Autier of France is even more blatant: “The vitamin D fad, he says, is just ‘a commercial promotion campaign’ in which sellers of supplements, UV lamps, fortified foods and blood tests are ‘taking advantage of disease-mongering around so-called vitamin D deficiency’”

Then there is this news release from Columbia University: “Study Finds No Evidence That Vitamin D Supplements Reduce Depression”

Given that they believe their own work, I think the solution is simple; keep them out of the sun for a year with no vitamin D supplements. If they survive this experience, then, we can see what type of diseases they have developed during this test. It all seems very reasonable to me. If they survive and develop no disease then we can say that they are correct. If they developed significant disease states, then this could be documented and their contribution to science and health would have been achieved.

We should also add the journalist to this cohort as well for just passing along information that is based on lack of logic and science. The number of people that have jumped on this band wagon should give us a very large cohort. I say lack of science because most of the studies reviewed are based on supplementation with very small amounts of vitamin D and second the studies are based on supplementation and not serum levels of vitamin D. Serum levels do not respond equally to supplementation or sunshine exposure.

Small amounts in supplementation in many studies are just ridiculous. Consider that we have long told the population of the world that all they needed was 400 IU of vitamin D daily. Studies have been based on this amount that is used to keep a ten pound (4.5kg) baby from getting rickets. So just how much vitamin D is this? 400 IU is equal to 0.01 milligrams or 10 micrograms. This is the amount that people with light skin color would make in about thirty seconds in the midday summer sun with sixty percent of their skin exposed. Okay, so let’s rewrite Dr. Bolland’s statement with this understanding: “They found that thirty seconds in the midday summer sun had little or no impact on the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer or even bone fractures.” Hunh? I guess that I could have just figured that out without a study. What about thirty minutes in the midday summer sun Dr. Bolland? Isn’t that how we used to cure tuberculosis?

How easy it is to just jump on the ‘band wagon’ for a joy ride because everyone else says that it will be fun. Journalist, are you prepared to spend a year without sunshine to prove the scientist correct? I am glad I am not the person paying for these studies – wait, maybe I have through one of the divisions of Health and Human Services. Anyway, this type of logic almost killed me from severe sleep apnea to say nothing of three decades of pain. – “Disease mongering around vitamin D deficiency” – Pandemic Survivor

Wellness from the Sun has Changed Forever

Posted on March 22, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Henry Lahore of Vitamin D Wiki and with the help of others is putting out a video to help people understand how our relationship to the sun has changed over the last fifty years. We have moved from outdoors to indoors. Activities including work and play have all moved inside. All of our energy for health which includes all the food that we eat comes from the sun. Now, with sunscreens to shield us from the sun and sheltering inside, chronic diseases have increased significantly.

Highlights of the video include:

Diseases from low sun exposure
How food sources from decades ago were higher in vitamin D
How much vitamin D to take to get started
Blood test should be used to determine if your vitamin D level is high enough
The science behind the understanding of how vitamin D works for wellness
The video is to be made available so that it can easily be provided with voice over for eighty eight different languages
All of this in only five minutes in an easily understood format

One of the features of the video is a doctor that raised serum levels of vitamin D for his patients to 80 ng/ml. This is well within the normal ranges of 30 to 100 ng/ml. The patients in his clinic went from an average of four visits per year to one visit per year. This statement should be significant in raising your awareness of the power of the sun and how it affects us and society as a whole. I will let you know when this video becomes available. When it is available, please pass it along on face book, twitter, and any other public means that you have available. – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D3 Deficiency Causes Autism

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Mark Pegram

This is very exciting news! Mechanisms have been discovered that shows how vitamin D deficiency causes Autism. The authors’ state at the end of the abstract – Supplementation with vitamin D and tryptophan is a practical and affordable solution to help prevent autism and possibly ameliorate some symptoms of the disorder.

What happens next will be very interesting. A government health department that was concerned for its citizenry would make a national response. A special would be presented by the Surgeon General or/and the Secretary of Health and Human Services. They would go on all the Sunday morning talk shows with this valuable information. News organizations would pick this up to alert all expectant mothers of this new information. Families that are now suffering the trauma of an Autistic child would have significant hope. There would then be a follow up on Sixty Minutes.

Here is a digestible version of the news at Science Daily – Science Daily – Ames’ Study: Vitamin D causal link Autism

Yet, what we have are a few organizations striving to help people understand our connection to the sun and the value of vitamin D3. Autism is just one of the many diseases that may be moderated by vitamin D3. I am sure that the Vitamin D Council, Grass Roots Health, VitaminDWiki, and others will publicize this great information to the best of their ability. But where is our government on this? We will just have to wait and see. In the meantime, you are on your own in figuring out how to supplement. All of the above mentioned organizations have information on how to do it. If you have an Autistic child, you may want to contact Dr. John Cannell, Vitamin D Council, on how to proceed with treatment. Here is an interesting comment by one board certified pediatrician that wrote to him. – Pandemic Survivor

Popeye Ashamed of his Government

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Mark Pegram

Popeye always saved Olive Oyl from the dastardly Bluto with the help of spinach. It was thought at the time that the iron in spinach was the key to its ‘super properties’ and was promoted through the Popeye cartoons. However, it is now known that the advantages of spinach are because of the large amounts of trimethylglycine and hydrofolate. Both of these nutrients allows for the methylation cycle to occur for proper reading of your genetic map.

The FDA is now trying to keep the word folate, vitamin B9, off of labels for supplements. Only folic acid, the synthetic form, is to be used. This is an outrage on two fronts. First, many people’s livers do not adequately process the synthetic form of folate, folic acid. That is about thirty to forty percent of the population. This increase of concentration of folic acid in the blood stream is thought to suppress the immune system and has caused an increase in lung, prostate, and colon cancer. Second, over sixty percent of the population has a mutation that reduces or prevents the enzyme, MTHFR, from being made. This is the enzyme for completion of the conversion of hydrofolate into methyl folate. Here is the complete story: Alliance for Natural Health – ” Breaking News: FDA’s Sneak Attempt to Ban Another B Vitamin”

Poor Olive Oyl, what is she to do? Will Popeye be strong enough to save her by supplementing with a man made molecule that was made in the laboratory in the 1940’s, folic acid? Maybe a can of boiled spinach followed by a good punch in the eye of that dastardly FDA would do the trick. Merck and FDA shaking hands to protect a market and create illness so that they can buy fast cars and appeal to Olive Oyl’s adventurous side is much worse than anything Bluto ever did. “I’m through to the finish ‘cause I eats me spinach, I’m Popeye the sailor man.” Ah, the days of super heroes when heroes were really super – Pandemic Survivor

Assault on the Nervous Systems by Anti-Cognitive Chemicals

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Mark Pegram

What do chloramines, fluoridation, lead corrosion, vitamin D deficiency, bromine, mineral sulfate removal, and iodine deficiency have in common? They should all be classified as anti-cognitive biological chemical processes. We can be our own worst enemy. We have been highly successful in our use of chemicals for technological advancement. We try to protect ourselves from toxic substances and pathogens, while creating health problems through unintended consequences. This has been the case for increases in Alzheimer’s, ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and other general cognitive impairment. Halogen (iodine, bromine, fluorine, etc.) physiology along with mineral deficiencies needs to be significantly reviewed in the US and the use of halogens in our food supplies and water sources need to be adjusted accordingly.

Consider in the late 1990’s that the EPA decided it would be a really great thing to reduce the amount of chloromethane created from the chlorination of water. They did this by forcing the use of ammonia added to water at the treatment plants creating chemicals in the water called chloramines. Chloramines formed in water are so toxic that fish cannot live in it. However, it is a longer lasting water disinfectant and it does not seem to generate as much chloromethane, a carcinogen. However, the other toxic disinfectant byproducts (DBP’s) that are created and unregulated are of concern. One of these may be halogen acetic acids. HAA’s have a stated standard with standards for chloro-acetic acid and iodo-acetic acid, but no standard for fluoro-acetic acid.

Chloraminated water is much more corrosive, most likely from the created HAA’s. This causes the leaching of lead from water pipes in supply and distribution systems (my city has thousands of miles of iron pipe held together at the joints with lead like must municipalities) and home potable water systems that are joined with solder lead joints. There have been several studies showing an increase in lead content in water after the start of chloramination or the use of chloramines.

Fluoride has been shown to aid the build-up of the concentration of lead in the human body. So by fluoridation of water to supposedly improve our dental health along with the use of chloramines, we have inadvertently created higher amounts of lead. This is of major concern for the developing brains of our children and the aging brains of elderly.

The US is the only country in the world that allows the use of bromine in baking and in cloudy citrus drinks. This iodine mimic causes significantly physiological malfunction in the thyroid as well as other functional biological iodine processes. Consider that children have a ten to fifteen times higher uptake of iodine versus adults and consider the damage. Bromine is not used in other countries because it is a carcinogen.

Add to this vitamin and mineral deficiency. Vitamin D is responsible for mineral balance in the body, in particular the sodium-sulfate co-transporter. Adequate sulfate is necessary for the formation of cerebroside sulfate that is necessary for proper neuron development. Also consider that iodine deficiency is considered by the World Health Organization as the number one cause of mental illness in the world. Sulfate also is the body’s best defense against toxins as it removes them through water soluble sulfate esters. Cities remove the sulfate minerals from the water because it is stinky and plugs the pipes. Iodine, D3, and sulfate deficiencies combine as a disaster for mental function.

Take away iodine, vitamin D3, sulfate and add neuro-toxins and iodine mimics and you have the perfect conditions necessary for cognitive impairment. Well the cause is idiopathic the experts claim. Is Dr. M. Scott Peck accurate in his description of group evil through specialization? One thing is certain, idiots and unintended consequences always seem to find each other. In the case of water disinfection and vitamin and mineral deficiencies, you might say that this meeting of idiots and unintended consequences has created epicentric waves of causation for cognitive impairment. For now, your cognizant commenter – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor

Changing the Face of Health with Vitamin D

Monthly Archives: March 2014