Author Archives: Mark Pegram

President Declares National Emergency for Vitamin D Deficiency

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During the White House transition in January 2009, one of President Barack Obama’s medical advisors found a letter from the Co-Founder of the Life Extension Foundation, William Faloon to President George Bush from September 2007.   This excerpt from the letter: “There is significant legal precedent for the federal government taking affirmative action when the preponderance of scientific evidence shows that correcting a widespread deficiency of a nutrient (such as adding iodine to salt and folic acid to cereals) would lead to significant reductions in human suffering and death. “   The letter asked that a National Emergency be declared for Vitamin D deficiency because of the several hundred thousands of deaths that are happening every year due to this dread deficiency.  After reviewing the thousands of medical peer review papers published on chronic disease and vitamin D the President immediately issues an order that citizens should take 5,000 IU of D3 per day with a maximum intake of 10,000 IU per day and children would take 35 IU per lb of body weight.  He had seven billion dollars appropriated for the government to provide the first year’s supply of vitamin D3 to show good faith that this action could be taken by all regardless of their means.

Here we are in December approximately 10 months after the first supply of supplements were distributed to the population.  There is extreme joy as there have been at least 400,000 less deaths during this period for a sixteen percent reduction in total death and elimination of any signs of colds or the flu.  Because of the better health of Americans doctor’s visits have decreased by 30 percent and hospitalization census has decreased by 25%.  There has also been a reduction of 600 billion dollars in the health care segment that normally comes in at 16 percent of the economy at around 2.25 trillion dollars.

This all but ensures that President Obama has kept his campaign promises of change that we could believe in as the just general amount of everyday pain and suffering has been significantly reduced.  This has resulted in a significant increase in the amount of productive days and helped to sling shot us from the verge of economic depression.  With the retraction of the mark to market rule in mid-April and the re-installation of rules to prevent everyday deposit accounts from being used for risky investment that stability of the economy is all but insured.

The changes to the health care insurance legislation became easy as most insurance companies decided to turn their business over to the government because of bankruptcy due to the improved health.  With the improvement in the economy, it has allowed the government to get out of the car and banking business and provide health insurance coverage to all Americans.  Also Health and Human Services decided to end commercials for prescription drugs because of the unnecessary stress on the government run health system.

The development of the swine flu in Mexico in April at first threw fear into the population with the thought that there may be need for a National Emergency to be declared in late August or possibly October as the swine flu was to begin to spike.  This was not necessary because the population’s level of innate immunity was raised to such a point through the implementation of vitamin D that the swine flu became the swine flew.

The government plans to continue the supply of vitamin D to Americans because it only takes $25 per individual for a year.  This $25 per capita has been the most significant stimulus to the economy ever.

Ah, living easy in the sun  – Pandemic Survivor

Sunday Morning Musings

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This week there on the ever present drugs ads (there were no people in bathtubs this time) was the story that bone density improvement drugs could reduce breast cancer.  How outrages is this claim when vitamin D and calcium is significantly more effective in treating bone density issues than any drug on the market.  To try to pick up a new market for some drug that should not even be used is just criminal.  Billions of dollars in fines is just not sending the drug industry an adequate message.

This is to not even consider that Dr. Cedric Garland has shown that vitamin D could reduce breast cancer by a whopping 75%.  “Breast Cancer Going Rogue”

The first thing that should happen is that all commercials for prescription meds should be removed from modern media.  Of course I am sure that the US is the only country in the world that has this made readily available because the drug companies are buying their way into government policy by campaign contributions and other ways that we do not even want to think about.

If we cannot get the hands of our policy and lawmakers out of the pockets of the drug and medical insurance companies long enough to stop drug commercials, then it should be law that if a nutritional change gives the same or more significant impact that the drug cannot be advertized.  This would mean there would be no bone density drugs on the market.  Vitamin D and calcium have been shown to give an improvement in bone density of 3 to 28 percent in one year where bone density drugs are about 2-3 percent per year if you take your calcium and vitamin D with them.  This is not to mention the impact on breast cancer of vitamin D.

On another front that I was reminded of in my last post is the comment that all medicine and test that have been done in the last fifty years or more in the US have been done on a vitamin D deficient population.  Considering the metabolic effect of vitamin D on the body’s processes, this is a very scary issue.  I would suspect that the majority of drugs that we use to treat chronic disease could be eliminated or reduced significantly.  How would this affect the medical economy?  It is obviously to a very large extent considering former HHS Secretary Levitt’s number-four principle of ‘markets before mandates’.  We would not want to do anything that would kill the cash cow even at the deaths of millions of Americans.  Last on his list of nine principles was to ‘value life’.  Don’t make me take my hand out of that pocket or I will kill you!

And on the swine flew it is bye-bye birdie.  According to the CDC Update the percentage of medical visits for influenza like illness has dropped to about 2-1/2 percent or about normal for this time of year down from over 8 percent.  This is just like the experience of the southern hemisphere countries that are currently just entering their summer.  So are we just trying to sell vaccine?  Let’s hope that we continue to mirror these southern hemisphere countries and there is no second spike.

I am pleased to report another survivor story of a lady that started to take 5000 IU of vitamin D3 per day almost two years ago.  She told me that all of her aches and pains are gone.  She is about 70.  This seems to be a regular comment on pain from people that become replete in vitamin D. You just get well. –Pandemic Survivor

Deficiency Disease

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It originally started in our understanding that disease was caused by something that was ‘wrong’ with our bodies and not because of something that we withheld from our bodies.  It was then found that if we did not get vitamin C that scurvy would develop.  Later it was found that we could go blind if we did not get enough vitamin A, beriberi from lack of thiamin (B1) and so on.

If we think about deficiencies and what is the order of importance then I would think that we would consider air or oxygen first in the hierarchy.  It only takes minutes to be without oxygen that our bodies start to die.  Next would be water.  It usually takes about 3 to 4 days without water to die.  With food, depending on how much stores the person has, we typically can go from 12 to 40 days.

So given that we get most of our required nutrients in our diet; it is difficult to tell which vitamin or mineral would cause us death if withheld in this hierarchy of nutrient need.  I suspect that it would be minerals and most likely either calcium or magnesium or potassium or salt.  Of course not getting enough vitamin D would be slow painful suffering.  Imagine people in solitary confinement how painful it would be for them if they were never allowed to be exposed to the sun or other UV source and only were given bread and water.  They would either go crazy or die from some deficiency disease or both.

So what are the things that we unknowingly deprive ourselves from that leads to disease and death.  In general if we eat our vegetables and meats and fats we should get enough of most things so that we do not have to take any supplements.  But let’s examine for a moment things that medical research is saying that we do not get enough.

Certainly items that are required for fortification by law are vitamin D and iodine.  We have talked extensively about vitamin D in the blog and will continue to do so.  Iodine will need more review as I have only mentioned it in passing a couple of times.  The others are magnesium which results in suddenly death even in young people and one estimate puts these sudden deaths due to magnesium deficiency at 8 million in the US from 1940 through 1994 or about forty thousand per year.  http://www.mgwater.com/calcs.shtml This is a small number compared to the estimated deaths of 350,000 per year cause by vitamin D deficiency and this may be a conservative number.  http://www.sunarc.org/GrantGrassrootsHealth.pdf

Thinking about all of the people on thyroid meds, I will stop here and tell you a short ‘survivor story’ about a lady that was iodine deficient as related by Joyce Meyers on one of her ministry programs.  It seems that a lady had a baby and was having a difficult time in recovering her emotional control.  Several different doctors had diagnosed her with postpartum depression.  She was treated accordingly without any success.  She went to a doctor that was also trained in nutritional arts and during the challenge test for iodine her problems immediately went away.  I can imagine that cases of postpartum depression are related to nutritional deficiencies caused by the stress of pregnancy on depletion of nutrient stores.

Our salts are inversed as we typically get about 7 to 10 grams of sodium salt and about 1.5 grams of potassium salt.  These should be reversed for good health.  We need about 3 to 4 times as much potassium as we do sodium.

The other thing that we do not get enough of is vitamin C.  Primates and guinea pigs are the only animals that do not make their own vitamin C.  If we take goats or dogs and consider the amount of vitamin C that they make each day then the average human (whatever that is) would need to have about 8 to 16 grams per day to have a similar amount for body processes.

So what we will do is look at each one of these and try to help you determine what the needs are.  Certainly one of the things that has confounded scientific understanding over the years as recent research has shown is that all test and practice of modern medicine has been on a population of vitamin D deficient people.  This has been particularly true of all medical and drug studies done in a sun deprived US population in the last fifty years.  Was this by design for profit our just ignoring the facts as some have suggested.

Iodine, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin C are the main characters in the modern American diet that does not provide an adequate supply for our needs.  And of course vitamin D and I will continue to rant about this until everyone is free of the burden of this extreme failure of our ‘medical system’.

In the mean time, live easy in the sun!  –  Pandemic Survivor

Breast Cancer Going Rogue

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Sara Palin does not have a corner on the market for going rogue.  Rogue is an interesting word as my Dad always used it when he was talking about someone that he considered a thief and a scoundrel.  Now it is used to indicate someone that is not holding the ‘party line’.  A better way to state it is someone is telling the truth and to think you have to be outside of the ‘norm’ to tell the truth bodes dread for a society that has gone rogue.

Dr. Cedric Garland and his brother Dr. Frank Garland were telling the truth back in 1980 when they proposed that breast cancer was a result of lack of sun exposure.  This was right at the height of the dermatologist telling us that we would die from cancer if we were exposed to the sun.  Here is one article from December 1990 in the NY Times; ‘Sunlight and Breast Cancer: Danger in Darkness’ Here is an update on the same theme from 2002 in the NY Times: ‘Sunlight, a Cancer Protector in the Guise of a Villain’ This article talks about how the brothers first presented this understanding in 1980.

Here we are with 2009 almost over and 29 years from when the Garland brothers first proposed that lack of sunlight was killing us and our government is still not acting toward the science and much less with compassion toward people that are dying from chronic disease.  How could this happen.  Has specialization so become a bastion of science that we allow evil to flourish.  Who holds the moral compass in our large institutions.  Is it the special interest groups that are just about making profit regardless of what happens to the people that they serve.

Dr. Garland is still singing the same tune but no one seems to be listening.  Such a tragic disease like breast cancer that destroys women’s self image and destroys them with death when the solution is there in the sun is heart wrenching.  Here is a letter to the editor of the NY Times by Dr. Garland saying that the mammogram testing is fine but the real solution lies in getting women vitamin D replete which would eliminate breast cancer.  Here is his open letter:  Mammography or Primary Prevention; An open letter to the NY Times.

In Toronto at a recent symposium on vitamin D, Dr. Garland was so brave as to say that breast cancer could be virtually eradicated with vitamin D.   Eradicate Breast Cancer with Vitamin D? Here we have a doctor that has been studying vitamin D for over 30 years and offers a solution.  What if he is only half right?  Would we still not like to have a 50% reduction in breast cancer?

There is no reason that doctors should let people die when they are vitamin D deficient when there is no harm in having enough vitamin D in your system to be healthy.  In fact it Is difficult to understand when the research on cancer and vitamin D goes back all the way to 1940 and it still has not found its way into general practice.  This has to be more than just ignoring the science.  It is ignoring the science for profit and what would you call that?  Going rogue indeed!

Do not die vitamin D deficient!!     – Pandemic Survivor

Dr. Cedric Garland is a:

Professor
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of California San Diego
Participating Member
Moores UCSD Cancer Center
La Jolla, California

Why Suffer Vitamin D Deficiency?

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During a recent interview Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council kept making the same point over and over.  Here is the approximately one hour audio interview on vitamin D in health and disease.  You may also find the link to this interview on the home page of the Vitamin D Council.

The point:  Why suffer vitamin D deficiency in particular if you have any form of disease when it is perfectly safe to have the serum level of a sunny country?

Now the serum level for vitamin D in a sunny country is 54 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml per Grant and Holick.  To achieve this level takes a different amount of sun exposure and supplementation for everyone as each person’s rate of use of vitamin D is different.  There is no need to wait for some study to come out and say with certainty that vitamin D will treat or prevent this disease or that disease when it is safe at an extremely beneficial level.

Scientist will take many years to make treatment studies show the benefits of vitamin D for a multiple of reasons.  No one wants to fund the studies when there is no profit to be made and government funding for treatment studies can be extremely slow.  However, through anecdotal experiences that are communicated this paradigm shift can move very quickly.

Do not die vitamin D deficient! – Pandemic Survivor

Hepatitis C Cured?

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And another virus bites the dust.  Hepatitis C is a serious virus that infects the liver and can cause scarring, cirrhosis, and even cancer of the liver.  It is a serious disease with only about a 50% cure rate.  Liver failures that result in a liver transplant will typically still have the disease.

Before I jump right into the news story let’s consider an old salty warrior that I know that spent 25 years in the military.  He had multiple tours in Vietnam and spent his career in locations all over the world.  He has suffered many diseases including tuberculosis that in combination of the drugs that were used to cure the TB had a serious negative impact on his liver and his lung capacity.  After being on vitamin D3 at about 6000 IU per day for two years his liver markers are now completely normal.  His lung capacity has also returned to normal.  So what are we to make of this?  I know that my own liver markers were way out of normal and returned to normal after the first year on vitamin D.

Evidently vitamin D is really good for your liver!

This story was reported in Empowher which is a women’s health online site.  In the test that was discuss patients were given vitamin D in a test that was to show the difference in interferon treatments.  At the 12th week of treatment the vitamin D group was 96% HCV RNA negative as compared to the control group which was 48% HCV RNA negative.  “Vitamin D Boost Treatment of Chronic Hepatitis C”

This is really good news for people that are suffering from liver disease as it may be that vitamin D has a significant impact on recovery of the liver both from disease and abuse by drugs and alcohol.  Who knows maybe it could even help those people that have taken too much acetaminophen.  In any case there is no reason for people to die that are not vitamin D replete.  Why take the chance of not taking vitamin D when the benefits could be so great and there is no down side.

Here is the research from the Vitamin D Council on liver function and vitamin D. Also on liver cancer.

Get REPLETE!  There are no negative side effects to having enough vitamin D  – Pandemic Survivor

Sunday Morning Musings

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Sunday Morning Musing – November 29, 2009

Targeted for completion and release of a new report on Vitamin D and Calcium requirements the IOM will continue to have closed meetings.  A report is scheduled to be released May 2010.  I can imagine that the pressure is high for this independent organization that is to provide unbiased and authoritative information to the public and decision makers.  I found it interesting when this committee was formed about 12 months ago with no one that was to have bias but I am not sure if that is true.  No one was selected for the committee that has done a significant amount of vitamin D research which I find unusual.  I would hope that these persons after review of the data would come to the conclusion that vitamin D plays an extremely significant role in our health and taking anything less than or equal to 10,000 IU of D3 per day is perfectly safe.  There is no record of any toxicity at less than 30,000 IU per day so this is a safety factor of three.  By the way, have you ever heard of anyone dying from vitamin D toxicity?

There really seems to be more than an adequate sufficiency of data so that we will not read a report that says there is not enough research to support raising the safe upper limit from the current 2000 IU per day to 10,000 IU per day.  Considering the huge number of diseases that vitamin D affects to do less would be a total disregard for the science and empathy for the ill.  I just cannot imagine another 10 years of people suffering the severe consequences of vitamin D deficiency while we wait on research to determine mechanisms.  My own personal journey of 25 years of suffering pain brings their decisions close to home.  By the way, the 2000 IU per day upper limit was based on what is safe for a one year old child from research in the 1960’s.  I still do not understand how this could be translated to an adult that could weigh 5 times or more what the one year old would weigh.

There is a lot to be gained and a lot to be lost.  Imagine being a medical insurer or a healthcare provider and discover that the increased amount of vitamin D could cause a drop of 25 to 50 % in your business.  What would you do with all of those employees and facilities that you have invested?  On the other hand if you have cancer, heart disease, diabetes, a viral infection, degenerative disc disease, or just want to perform at your best at athletics then changing the guidelines on vitamin D would be hugely significant.  Also what could it mean if there was significant reduction in lost work days because of fewer colds and less back pains?  This shifting of the centers of commerce will have significant positive or significant negative effects depending on what is your view.

Suppose you are the CEO of a large health insurer and you have several chronic diseases.  What would your position be?      – Pandemic Survivor

Eliminate the Common Cold!

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The common cold has long been one of the ailments of man that is most times more of a nuisance than anything else.  Of course the remedy manufacturers love it because ‘modern medicine’ has convinced us that there is no cure.  I am sure that many billions of dollars are spent every year in trying to obtain relief from the aches and stuffed-up noses and general lack of the feeling of well being.  It is also responsible for many lost days of work and in general can stop the person from performing normal task for days.  We take aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen for aches and pains and any of many different remedies to help clear the nasal passages.  And yet when winter comes we get a cold and most times two to four colds per year and children as many as six or more.

I would like to stop here with a note of warning for those of you that like to take acetaminophen for your aches.  It is generally recognized that over use of acetaminophen and in particular with alcohol is now responsible for about one third of liver failures.

Have you stopped to think about the name that we have given to the ‘cold’?  I would suppose we have given it this name because we get the ‘cold’ when it is cold.  We just believe that when cold weather comes we will get a cold.  What if this were not true?  How would it be if we could go for many decades without getting a cold?

It is generally reported in medical discussions of colds that there is really no correlation between cold temperatures in causing us to get colds.  It is more about us crowding together in the winter time to pass the viruses to each other.  I say that this is completely upside down thinking.  With modern air conditioning we crowd together just as much in the summer as we do in the winter.  There are two things that happen in the winter time that is different than summer.  First it gets cold and second we do not have as much exposure to the sun’s UVB.

First on the cold:  Airways temperatures do drop during the inhalation of cold air.  For ambient air temperature of 73 F (23 C) we find that the pharynx temperature to be about 96 .8 (35.8 C).  When we inhale cold air at 0 F (-17.5 C) we find the pharynx temperature to be about 93 F (33.5 C).  In general the lower bronchi temperatures stay in the 98.7 F (37 C) to 99.8 F (37.7 C) temperature range.  It is shown that the common cold replicates best at temperatures of 33 C (91.4 F) to 35 C (95 F).  So when the air is room temperature then our upper airway passage temperatures are above the best temperature for replication.  When we inhale cold air our upper airway passages fall to the range of temperature that is best for the cold virus to grow.  It only makes sense that colds will most likely happen when it gets cold outside and hence its name.  It is interesting that the lower airway passages typically stay above 98.6 which is a good thing as it is above the temperature that colds like.

References for the above info:  http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/174/12/1284 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine – 2006  ‘Rhinovirus Infections More Than a Common Cold’,  Marc B. Hershenson, M.D. , University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan and Sebastian L. Johnston, M.D., Ph.D. , National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

November 1988 Farley and Patel  Journal Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing http://www.springerlink.com/content/014gn23616354312/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10223554 ‘Rhinoviruses replicate effectively at lower airway temperatures.’  Papadopolous, et. Al. J. Med. Virol. May 1999

So from the above discussion you can see that one of our main defenses against the cold is body temperature or more important temperature of the airways.  You know when I was growing up one of my brothers used to call it ‘sweating out a cold’ when he would put on about four quilts and spend enough time there until his cold left.  I do not suggest this but it does seem to help the common cold when I spend time in a dry sauna which is at a temperature of about 120 F.  It is also apparent that when we start to ‘run a fever’ this is our body trying to fight off the infection.  It really makes you wonder about the wisdom of trying so hard to keep the body temperature down using aspirin or acetaminophen. We certainly do not want it to get above 105 F as our brains start to ‘fry’ but there is nothing wrong with 101 F as our body is just trying to fight off the infection and is certainly a signal that we are infected.

So from this discussion it is best to stay warm during the winter to help fight off the common cold.  Of course in the summer we are not exposed to cold air temperatures that are conducive for the cold virus to flourish.  Also do not be so quick with remedies to reduce body temperature when you have a cold.  Of course if it starts to get too high then act quickly to get it down.

Now here is the exciting part the SUN!  This is the second method of our body’s natural response to fight off the common cold.  First the temperatures that prevent the cold from forming and second our innate immunity that is significantly improved when we have enough vitamin D3 in our bodies are our body’s major defenses.  Isn’t it interesting how over the last fifty years we have gotten so good about getting our body’s temperature down and scared out of the sun so that we do not get enough vitamin D.  These things are just wrong for good health.

When I first started taking vitamin D for my back pain I had no idea that there were all of these other benefits.  My thought was that since I had degenerative disc disease and that was so close to rickets then maybe the vitamin D would help to heal my back.  Boy did I hit the jackpot in health.  My back healed but so did the rest of my body.  I have not had a viral infection since 2004 when I started to take vitamin D3.  Before I started taking vitamin C on a regular basis I typically had two to five colds per year.  After vitamin C I would have one to two colds a year and really dreaded it as these colds would be really hard to shake.  And since I have added vitamin D at 10,000 IU per day I have not had a cold or any other viral infection including the flu.

Another ‘survivor story’ is that of a 20 year old college student that had a severe cold that had hung around from Thanksgiving until the week of Christmas.  After being advised that she might be able to help the cold with vitamin D she decided to supplement.  She took a 50,000 IU D3 for three days in a row and the cold just simply went away.  She has not had a cold since and that was three years ago as she has kept her vitamin D level up by supplementing.

I had another friend whose twenty something son had a cold that had been around for three months.  After reading about the vitamin D he decided to supplement and his cold just went away.  My friend also started to supplement and now she tells me it is the first time that she has gone for more than a year without a cold.

Is there science to support this understanding that vitamin D3 formed in our bodies from the sun is a super viral infection fighter.  Yes consider this story released last year in February about how vitamin D reduced the common cold CNN.  Also this article from Dr. Mercola – ‘Can Vitamin D Cure the Common Cold’.

Also these items from Dr. John Cannell at the Vitamin D Council:

Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D Newsletter.

Research on Vitamin D and Influenza

Research on Tuberculosis and Vitamin D

You know we try so hard to show how vitamin D helps to rid our bodies of the real killers like tuberculosis and the flu that sometimes we just forget about a nuisance like the common cold.  However, when you add things like asthma and COPD in combination with a cold then it becomes a killer also.

Can the common cold be eliminated?  Based on the ‘survivor stories’ from myself and people that I know then absolutely yes.  It appears that vitamin D3’s major gift to us is its ability fight virus infections in addition to other pathogens.  However, it particularly seems to really destroy viruses in the human body.  In fact a near future post will be about how vitamin D can fight the virus hepatitis C from a new study that was just released.

Eliminate the common cold by:

  1. Keeping your serum 25(OH)D3 above 60 ng/ml by UVB exposure or by supplementing.
  2. Stay warm!

Don’t you know the cold remedy manufacturers really hate to hear this!

Ah, warm and in the sun what could better!!!!     – Pandemic Survivor

You may want to check out this comment by John at a recent post.

Happy Thanksgiving

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It is always good to be with family and fiends and enjoy a life wrap in the abundance of joy.

Gratitude of the Moment

Children and their games always bring hope
As they play at who they are as they are
For it is not play to children as it is life
And this should be a lesson to us

As small children we perceive life
In what is happening in the moment
And do not let the future or the past
Destroy the always shinning sun

Only in the present do we know that we are
And that other people are there for us
To share their love and life freely with intent
And in this moment gratitude resolves me

Original Verse by – Mark Pegram

May blessings come to as you bask in the sun.  – Pandemic Survivor