Author Archives: Mark Pegram

Vitamin D – Testing Serum Levels

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Vitamin D is an extremely vital substance that is formed in your body when ultra violet B radiation, UVB, converts cholesterol in your skin to cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3).  The Vitamin D3 then forms a prehormone,  25(OH)D that converts to a ‘steroid’, calcidiol.  The importance of calcidiol is that it targets over 2000 genes in the human body.  That is about 10  percent of genome or the total amount of genes that directs our biological functions.  It is also implicated in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune disease, hypertension, bone diseases, cavities and periodontal disease, pain, muscle strength, birth defects, immune function, and mental health in depression and schizophrenia.  The seriousness of these diseases and the fact that everyone uses vitamin D at a different rate is why you should test and not just guess at what you ‘think’ may be an adequate amount.

The old understanding was that all of the calcitriol was made in the kidney and circulated to all other places in the body where it was used.  The new understanding is that every cell in the body uses the ubiquitous storage form of 25(OH)D to make the calcitriol as it is needed.  This is exciting as genes get turned off and on and cells communicate with each other through the aid of vitamin D.  Please read the physiology at the Vitamin D Council.

As you would imagine it is very important to keep your storage of form vitamin D level high enough so that all of these really good things can happen within your biological functions.  This has been part of the problem as scientists tried to correlate the active form of vitamin D or calcitriol to disease states in your body.  There was no correlation.  However, in the 1970’s the correlation between disease and the storage form of vitamin D, 25(OH)D,  was discovered to be significant.  So what was happening with the active form in your blood was not what was happening with the active form in the rest of your body.

So it is the storage form of the vitamin D that we are most interested in maintaining at a correct level for health.  The amount of the storage form, 25(OH)D, has been found in typical sunny countries to be in the range of 54 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml.  (Benefits and Requirements for Vitamin D for Optimal Health, Grant and Holick at Sunarc.org )  So is this the correct range for health?  It would seem that this is most likely the case.  The researchers are saying that a significant number of chronic diseases could be eliminated by keeping it within this range.  See chart by Dr. Garland and Carrole Baggerly at GrassrootsHealth disease prevention chart.  (pdf)

When the level of 25(OH)D increases, it appears from the extrapolation of many different studies that disease rates are significantly reduced.  If you look at breast cancer for example from the above chart you see that the incidence rate decreases by 80 percent in the low 50 ng/ml range.  I suspect as more research is done that we can find significant treatment and not just prevention at higher levels.  To think that when you reach the level of a sunny country that rates of breast cancer become extremely low is exciting considering what is happening with this serious disease in the northern latitudes.  Does this bear out in the studies of breast cancer by latitude?  In other words as you get closer to the equator does the breast cancer rate go down.  The answer is yes as you can see from SUNARC Breast Cancer Studies the mortality rate is about half in south Texas of what it is in New England.

So does everyone’s serum level of vitamin D reach the same amount with the same intake of vitamin D3?   The answer is a definite no and much research is needed to better understand why this is the case.  About sixty percent of the variation is due to difference in weight which makes it easier to determine how much to take.  If you are a 150 lb person you could expect your serum 25(OH)D to increase by 1 ng/ml for 100 IU of vitamin D that you take.  If you found that your serum level was 20 ng/ml,  then to get to 60 ng/ml or an increase of 40 ng/ml you would need to take about 4000 IU per day.  This information was obtained from Dr. Heaney’s work at Creighton University and his video presentation through GrassrootsHealth and UCSD public TV is well worth watching even if it is 50 minutes long.  It will answer many of your questions about vitamin D deficiency and how much we need and the levels of safety.

So the thrust of this is that if you weigh more,  then you need to take more to reach the desired level of vitamin D.  Another good method to achieve the desire level is that suggested by Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council home page.  That is you start out by taking 5000 IU of D3 per day and then have your serum level tested after three months.

For children Dr. Cannell suggest that 1000 IU per 25 lbs of body weight per day will get you to a reasonable level.  If your child has any significant disease state such as asthma or autism then you should have your child tested regularly initially to be sure that you are given them enough for health.  Here is Dr. Cannell’s newsletter on pediatrics.

D3 Test

There are several methods for having your vitamin D tested.  I think that it is best to have a doctor do it so that you can discuss the validity of the data and how it relates to health.  Not only that, if you doctor is not up to speed on the research you may help get him there.  However, if you have read my two most recent posts then you know that not all doctors are on board.  I have taken on the quest of finding the places online that you can use:

Vitamin D Council:  http://www.zrtlab.com/vitamindcouncil/  $65 per test

GrassrootsHealth:  www.grassrootshealth.net here you join the national survey and fill out a short form about your current health at $40 per test.

In the above test you get a test kit in the mail.  You prick your finger and do a blood smear and send the kit back in the mail and receive the test results some time later.

Life Extension: http://www.lef.org/Vitamins-Supplements/ItemLC081950/Vitamin-D-25-Hydroxy-Blood-Test.html This test is $63 and you get your serum drawn at a testing facility in your town or the one closest to you.

At your doctor’s office.  The prices vary significantly depending on how much the doctor wants to add to the test for drawing the blood and interpreting the results and advising you.  I have typically seen the number between $150 and $300.  If your insurance does not pay then you may want to use one of the methods above.

Understanding the meaning of the results: Sometimes the test will include both the steroid form or calcitriol and the storage form or calcidiol or 25 hydroxy-vitamin D or 25(OH)D.  It is only the 25(OH)D level that you are interested about.

The typical reference range or some may think ‘normal’ range is 20 ng/ml to 100 ng/ml.  Some people who spend large amounts of time in the sun with their clothes off may have values of 125 ng/ml or higher such as life guards in the summertime.  There is not any case of extremely high values of 25(OH)D with sun exposure.  The NIH fact sheet that says that anything sustained below 200 ng/ml is safe.  See table 1.  NIH Vitamin D Fact Sheet

You know that you are getting enough when your test comes in above 50 ng/ml.  If you are consistently above 80 ng/ml then you may want to consider reducing the amount of vitamin D that you are getting.

D2 Test If you have taken D2.

When you get your 25(OH)D test result it will most likely show only the total of 25(OH)D2 and 25(OH)D3.  If you have not had any vitamin D2, then your result will show the total of 25(OH)D3.  In some cases where the patient is being aggressively treated with the 50,000 IU D2 then it may show both D2 and D3 results.

Keep healthy serum levels between 50 ng/ml to 80 ng/ml or just be a ‘sunny country’.   – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D and the Doctor II

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Digging deeper into the perception that doctors bring on an emerging treatment that could reduce the size of their practice by 25 to 50 percent is an enigma.  After all doctors were given the task to ‘do no harm’.  This is where  the metal meets the road.  What is doing harm?  This is a cultural question, a question among friends, a question among enemies, a medical question, and a legal question.  In what ever form we chosen to engage this question it for sure leads to a quest.

Does withholding information from a patient constitute harm.  It has long been the practice of medicine that harm is done when we introduce a substance to the body that causes disease or we do a procedure that causes harm.  It has often thought to be wise to hold critical information about the suspected course of a disease from the patient to prevent them from getting discouraged and bringing increase to the negative impact of the placebo effect.  So what happens when we withhold information and more importantly withhold a substance that can have a beneficial outcome for the patient.

I am sure that there have been many cases where the air has been withheld from a person and this has lead to a negative outcome.  So how is it that the medical profession has been able to withhold sunshine from people without being convicted of committing harm to entire generations.  We go after parents that do not feed their children properly and call it child abuse and yet there for 50 years or more are the warnings to stay out of the sun as it will cause you harm.

Going to the doctor and telling them that you want to have a test done to see how much time you have spent in the sun will most likely bring ridicule as we discussed in the previous post with a doctor treating a doctor.  And yet there are doctors that know it is their responsibility to bring you the best treatment possible and have kept up with the science.  It may be in your best interest to seek another doctor if your present physician ridicules you.  This of course is not just about vitamin D as much as it is about doctor patient relationships and how the doctor perceives your own understanding of your body and your ability to read and understand simple medical suggestions.

There is so much ‘junk science’ out there and a lot of it is pushed as modern medical practice simply for the sake of making money.  Our medical system is sick and needs to be sent to the doctor for a check up and most likely a surgical procedure for a ‘corruptectomy’.   Our government health organization have been bought off and are run by people with too many associations with the companies that they are trying to keep in check.  It just blows my mind to think that we can let companies get so far down the road in misadventure that we are able to fine them over a billion dollars like what just happened to Pfizer.  Think of the suffering that most have resulted from the need for such a large fine.  I believe that some modern medicine has truly fallen into the current day ‘snake oil for healing’ lies.

So what do we do with doctors that just simply follow the modern guidelines for treating patients without keeping up with a more modern understanding.  Nothing!  If they are following guidelines which is what you want through your government then there is nothing that you can do.  In the meantime another patient dies from lack of ‘air’.

The only way that you can tell if your doctor is giving you the best treatment is his willingness to talk with you without treating you like you are an idiot.  To take the time to explain what his thinking is about your disease and what he believes is the best course of treatment for you.  However, when new emerging technologies come through what do you do.  If the technology is believed to cause no harm then what is the point in your doctor not allowing you to proceed.  If your doctor is not willing to discuss benefits and possible harms then find another because as far as your doctor is concerned you are just a means of income for him.

This is the case with vitamin D.  Populations that live in sunny countries have 25(OH)D levels that typically range from 54 to 90 ng/ml of this storage form of vitamin D and this does no harm.  So what is wrong with you taking enough of this natural substance, D3?  In particular if it causes a positive outcome for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and hundreds of other types of chronic disease.

Doctors were told in medical school that vitamin D was a bad thing because it could cause your serum calcium to spike and this would cause as my doctor suggested ‘your organs to turn to stone’.  It seems now that after much reading that the toxicity problem is primarily with D2 and not D3 because D2 is made from yeast and other fungus by radiating it with UVB.  The problem comes from over irradiation which causes isomers to from that are called toxisterols.  D3 is typically made by using solvent to extract it from lamb’s fat and wool so it is not likely to have toxisterols.

So your doctor is a really good guy that does keep up with the research and understands the importance of vitamin D but has not yet reached the understanding that D3 is much better for you than D2.  He writes you a prescription for you to take 50,000 D2 once per week.  D2 is presently the only thing that your pharmacist can give you unless he is a compounding pharmacist.  At this point it would be wise to ask you doctor if you can take D3 and not D2.  Then just go buy the D3 from a company like BioTech Pharmacal in the 50,000 IU capsules.

There is more complexity here than just going into the sun for a while to get our vitamin D although this is most likely the best way to become replete.  It would be great if we all lived below 30 degrees latitude.  However, with modern testing techniques we can be sure that we are within a serum range of D that could possibly give us health and do us no harm.

But above all else — Go into the Sun!    – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D and the Doctor

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“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”–Arthur Schopenhauer.

This nineteenth century German philosopher had it right.  I believe that we are still in the ridicule stage and that the violent opposition stage will be played out in the courts as awareness becomes more public about the negative impact of vitamin D deficiency.  The politicians will allow the court cases because of the masses of people that start become aware of their own disease and the dying and suffering of their friends and family from vitamin D deficiency.

I apologize for not writing more because I had become bitter and downcast.  This has not been a more pleasant side of my recovery.  Even though I have been through the trials and hard times of serious disease I am now grateful for how it has strengthen my faith and now better understand my responsibility to you to bring you education and understanding.  I do praise the spirit of hope, love, and acceptance.  I have been trying to write about the emotional recovery side of the disease and it has brought back a lot of ‘emotional’ pain.

So how are doctors reacting to the publicity about vitamin D and its impact on general health.  It is a very ‘mixed’ bag.  Many have recognized the research and are starting to treat their patients with testing and supplementation of vitamin D.  Others are just sure that their patients are all ‘idiots’ after the fashion of the TV character Dr. House.  The attitude is, “I have been trained and know much better than you ever will and this stuff in the press is just ‘junk science’.”

I have really been alarmed as we have moved into ‘vitamin D winter’ in the northern latitudes and there has not been a large national discussion about the benefits of vitamin D and its affect on the immune system in particular with the seasonal outbreaks of the flu.  See what Dr. John Cannell has to say at the Vitamin D Council. Vitamin D and the Flu. Here you can plainly see an example of a doctor that has reacted and one in the same family practice that has not in Georgia.

Also please read Dr. Cannell’s May newsletter about the flu and vitamin D:  I know that I have repeated this many times but it breaks my heart to think about the needless death of children and pregnant women.

I will relay this story of a pregnant woman that I know that is a medical professional.  She has been one of the few that has not had flu like symptoms in the large hospital where she works and she has been taking enough vitamin D to be replete.

During one of her regular visits to her doctor, she decided that she should have her vitamin D level tested.  She was chastised by her physician for falling into the ‘trap of something not in the medical guideline’.  Remember now we are talking about two doctors talking to each other and the person in responsible charge for the health of her patient tells the other doctor that she just does not know what she is talking about.  My friend had read the many research papers on vitamin D in particular those by Dr. Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina.  This is a professor of pediatrics and has done extensive research on pregnant women and vitamin D.  Here is some of his work at Google Scholar:   Also she is familiar with this newsletter from the Vitamin D Council on pregnancy and gestation.   She decided not to engage and just left the office visit steaming mad.  She has decided to have another doctor order her vitamin D test.

So here we have two doctors that just results in ridicule of current research.  How is this suppose to work with just plain everyday folk that put their trust in the medical profession.  You know it makes me think of two things.  First consider how long we struggled with the understanding of tobacco and how it affected health.  It was ridicule and then finally submission under the weight of government court battles with that industry.  With vitamin D there have been large cohort studies and many more epidemiological studies. With tobacco to my knowledge there have not been cohort studies and just a few epidemiological studies.  The government acted because of the rich reward that they saw in tax and penalty income from the tobacco companies.  Also here there was a substance being put into our bodies and not just the withholding of knowledge by our professionals on research that dates to early part of the twentieth century.  If we had been a vitamin D replete population I wonder how the tobacco trials would have played out.

Second it is like an episode of House being played out in real life.  I am sure that we will never see an episode of House where the patient is found to have vitamin D deficiency and that is the cause of the failure of their immune systems and endocrine system.  Modern medicine has been practiced on a population deficient in vitamin D and this includes all testing, research, and practice guidelines.  If this ever plays out on House then we will know as a society that we have overcome this certain tragedy.  Also the government will definitely be slow to act because as some researchers have stated that a vitamin-D-replete population would cause a reduction of twenty five to fifty percent of our medical economy. What would happen to all that tax income and how would we pay for all of the older folks that did not die when ‘they were suppose to’.

Hold onto your chairs folks because if this change starts to play out in the courts then it will be just like the tobacco trials except there will many more people affected as in everyone.  Just think you can tune into the TV every night and watch your favorite news channel as the court battles are engaged.  I am sure the lawyers are just licking their chops, but they are also slow to act because there have not been any trials of significance where a substance was withheld that caused the death and suffering of millions.

More likely the large institutions will control the media and it will be bloggers and face to face conversations with friends that result in a replete population over many decades.  However, medical professionals that I know say that this is now moving through the systems faster than any change they have seen previously.

With great hope I look forward to that stage of great health for everyone when we begin to accept the truth of sunshine and vitamin D as being ‘self-evident’.

We are in ‘vitamin D winter’ in the northern hemisphere so take care to be sure that you are replete.  Follow the instructions on the home page of the Vitamin D Council.

– Be sure to supplement!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

H1N1 and Vitamin D

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H1N1 and Vitamin D

It seems to be medical fact that we get more cases of the flu in the winter than in the summer.  I have never had the flu in the summer or personally know anyone that has had the flu in the summer.  However, everyone that I know has had the flu in the winter.  It only seems logical that there is a seasonal occurrence that is driving this real phenomenon.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council has designated a complete newsletter to the understanding back May, 2009, H1N1 Flu and Vitamin D.  I referred to this newsletter in my first article on the flu and vitamin D, Another Pandemic, H1N1, Protect Yourself. Now Dr. Cannell gives us an update about children in his September 2009 Newsletter and how it is that children that are deficient with vitamin D are most likely at risk of getting the flu.  Vitamin D Studies of Interest

I am totally with Dr.  Cannell.  How can we simply just stand by and watch children suffer from this disease when we know that more than fifty to seventy percent of children are deficient depending  on which study you chose to read.  If you have children, be sure to keep them replete in vitamin D by following Dr. Cannell directions in this October 2008 newsletter Vitamin D in Pediatrics. Under vitamin D and dosage he states that in general that children need about 1000 IU of D3 for every 25 lbs of body weight per day.  I found this amount to be effective in adults as well.  I weigh 235 lbs and take 10,000 IU each day that I do not go into the sun and every day between the end of September and the end of March when we are in ‘vitamin D winter’.

So what are our country and the health organizations doing about this vitamin D deficiency and the relation to the flu?  Not much!  There is hope however as the Public Health Agency of Canada has decided to take the vitamin D level of people having the H1N1 virus.  This is really encouraging as Canada takes its lead for supplementations levels from the Institute of Medicine, IOM, here in the US.  If Canada confirms this finding that low levels of vitamin D are significant in relation to the flu then maybe the US will take action.  But here again, I am with Dr. Cannell, how many children have to die before we stop depending on just acquired immunity through flu shots and build our innate immunity through doing what is natural to us.  We must remember that the US is slow to act as the Canadian Cancer Institute requested all Canadians take a minimum of 1000 IU of D3 per day and the US did not follow.

You may read the story on the website of the Vitamin D Society of Canada:  http://www.vitamindsociety.org/

Story from the Globe and Mail.  http://www.vitamindsociety.org/news_article.php?id=26

The story broke here in the US by Nutraingrediants-usa.com and emaxhealth.com:  http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/Canada-examines-vitamin-D-for-swine-flu-protection

http://www.emaxhealth.com/1275/83/33165/vitamin-d-might-protect-against-h1n1-flu.html

And then there is this article in how the US should follow Canada’s lead from the Health Sciences Institute in Baltimore:  http://hsibaltimore.com/2009/08/24/h1n1-prevention/

You know the thing that is most interesting is one of the references that is driving the Canadian study is a report from 1946 that shows evidence that persons with low vitamin D levels were more likely to have the flu.  Why have we waited so long to investigate!!??

On the heels of this comes the study from Oregon State University that states that primates have kept the vitamin D innate immunity system in place for 60 million years!  Here is the story, “Key feature of immune system survived in humans, other primates for 60 million years”, from Eurek Alert.  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/osu-kfo081809.php

Now what pops into my mind as I read this is Linus Pauling’s writings on vitamin C.  It was very clear that only primates and guinea pigs do not make their own vitamin C.  So why is it that the vitamin D immune system has survived in primates and not other mammals?  Maybe this is the system that has taken the place of the vitamin C system in primates.  So what do we do about it?  We tell people for the last fifty years to get out of the sun!!!!  I know that this may be somewhat of a leap, but I do not think it is much of one considering the research on vitamin D immunity.

You should read again this paragraph about vitamin D immunity from my post, A Tale of Two Women:  “Vitamin D3, it seems works, along several pathways to help heal disease.  Number one it helps at a genetic level to tell immature tumor cells that they are just that and to stop growing or cellular apoptosis. The D3 also helps the blood supply network that is feeding the tumor to stop growing from a genetic level because this is not the normal design of the body or angiogenesis.  Also it raises the level of innate immunity so the body develops appropriate defensins such as cathelicidin antimicrobial peptides, phagocytes, and neutrofil granulocites that help destroy and adsorb ‘bad cells’ and ‘foreign bodies’ in the blood system.  There is also an aid to T-cell regulation in this complex system of immunity.  And if you are taking chemo one of the problems is thrombosis and vitamin D3 helps to control this issue as well.”  What this paragraph says is that vitamin D raises the innate immune system to fight all pathogens including viruses.  This reminds me that I need to do a post on the immune system and vitamin D.  There is really some fascinating research out there – coming soon.

So maybe the true magic in healing comes from a balance of giving the body what it needs.  I believe that Dr. Cannell and Dr. Pauling are both correct and that in primates that vitamin D is a greater fighter of viruses than vitamin C.  This may be just the opposite for non-primate mammals where vitamin C immune system is more important than the vitamin D system. Non-primates make their own vitamin C and primates and guinea pigs do not make vitamin C.  This article from WebMD seems to support my understanding:  http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20090223/low-vitamin-d-levels-linked-to-colds You know Dr. Pauling was reported to have taken between 12 grams to 20 grams of vitamin C per day.  His contention was that the less colds and other infections that you have the longer you live.  He lived to be 93.  Imagine how long he may have lived if he had taken 5 to 10 thousand IU’s of D3 as well.  What a headache that we may cause for government to solve in a population of healthy ‘really’ old people!!!  I am sure that as soon as the government makes a proclamation to take more vitamin D that the retirement age will be raised at least 10 years.

Anyway, what should we do for ourselves and our children.  Be sure that they get enough of vitamin C and vitamin D this winter and I suspect if you do this we will have many happy endings.

Go into the sun this winter through supplementation!!!!!!!!!!!   Pandemic Survivor

Heart Disease, Cholesterol, and Vitamin D3

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I have written several post of vitamin D and heart disease and there is so much more.  There is an exciting article about heart disease and the effect of vitamin D at WebMD.

By Dr. Michael Richman, MD, FACS on Cardiovascular Disease and Vitamin D.  Part 1 and Part 2.

As we begin our plunge into vitamin D winter then heart disease that has been arrested by getting an adequate amount from the sun will become more active.  As you can see from this Harvard news article, it is important to start supplementing with vitamin D.  However, here again we find that mainstream medicine is too conservative in the amount of vitamin D.  It is better to follow the directions from the home page of the Vitamin D Council to assure that your level of 25(OH)D3 is above 50 ng/ml to have the best effect on heart disease and the upcoming expectation of a serious flu season from the H1N1 virus.

As we have discussed in other post, vitamin D is made from cholesterol.  So the marketing of statin drugs and their use in lowering cholesterol may not be beneficial to your health.  The article, “Vitamin D is Synthesized From Cholesterol and Found in Cholesterol-Rich Foods” by Chris Masterjohn from May 2006 will give you a better understanding of how this works.  His comments on vitamin A are also important to the understanding of how A and D work together in your body.  Here is the research page from the Vitamin D Council on heart disease.

Going into the sun is not enough if you live above about 35 degrees North latitude after September.  Start supplementing to the directions of the Vitamin D Council.    – Pandemic Survivor

Heart Disease and Diabetes

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As you may already know, the insulin surges that occur when you are diabetic cause a significant amount of plaque to build up in the arteries.  It seems that insulin surges for whatever reason are the cause of this unfortunate course of the disease.  There is hope however that this does not have to be the course of the disease.

You can read the paper, “Human serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol response to extended oral dosing with cholecalciferol” by Heaney et. Al with an explanation of how blood sugar and insulin is blunted once your serum 25(OH)D is above 32 ng/ml.  It is an open source paper and I would suggest that you read the full paper if you are diabetic or at least have your doctor read it. From PubMed

Also ‘The Vitamin D requirement in health and disease’ by Dr. Heaney.

Dr. Joe Prendergast of California has a long time practice of endocrinology.  He has treated many diabetics and has had great success in reducing the amount of heart disease in his practice.  Dr. Prendergast discovered in the early nineties that he had a significant amount of heart disease.  His father had died at an early age of this disease.  He decided that he was going to do all that he could not to follow the same course.

He contacted Dr. Victor Zhu who is was head of research at that time at Stanford University to see what he was doing about heart disease.  Dr. Zhu set him up with one of his research fellows that was testing mice with arterial plaque.  Dr. Prendergast decided that he was going to try the same course of treatment that had proved to clear the arteries of the mice.  After a number of years he was imaged again for another purpose and it happened to be the same radiologist.  The radiologist discovered that Dr. Prendergast arteries were clear.  They checked to be sure that the patient file had not been substituted that indeed it was Dr. Prendergast that showed no arterial blockage.

Dr. Prendergast who was at one time head of the board of endocrinology for California decided that he was going to treat the diabetics in his practice.  He has treated over 4000 patients.  The heart disease had reduced to such a low rate in the small city between San Jose and San Francisco that the three man cardiologist practice closed and move to another town.

It seems that he treated his patients with a combination of vitamin D3 and l-arginine.  As you may know there was a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine 1998 awarded for the understanding of the communication pathways for nitric oxide, NO, and how through its signaling pathways it affects the function of the arterial wall cells.  This is what happens when heart patients take nitroglycerin.  However the NO is released in a lower amount when using l-arginine.

It would seem that with such success that this practice would have been adopted by all the doctors treating diabetes.  The vitamin D3 does it thing with the genetics, insulin control, blood sugar control, and the all the other good benefits.  Dr. Prendergast has even written a book about his success in using nutrition with his patients, “The Uncommon Doctor.”

But you know, you do not have to take my word for it.  The owner of Apple Health, David Stouder, was so fascinated by the number of people that were coming to his store to buy vitamin D and the success that they were having in the course of their disease that he decided to interview Dr. Prendergast.  You can go hear the interview at the website set up specifically for that purpose.  www.nutriphobia.com (writers note October 17, 2009 – Unfortunenately this interview has been taken down and I was unable to find it on the new website.  Here is his video comment at youtube )  The first six audios are simply about overcoming the fear of vitamin D and the button ‘click to hear Dr. Joe Prendergast’ is the audio interview with Dr. Prendergast and the above story.  I know that if I were diabetic, I would have my doctor get in contact with Dr. Prendergast for a consult at his practice Endocrine Metabolic.

If you have heart disease or diabetes I would certainly hope that you would spend some time in reviewing this understanding and get your doctor involved.  It is not only your life but it is the life of each patient that your doctor chooses to treat.

In the main time – GO INTO THE SUN!  – Pandemic Survivor

Heart Disease and Vitamin D3

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I will spend some time in talking about vitamin D3 and heart disease.  In the maintime you should just go read Dr. William Davis at the Heart Scan Blog.  He is a cardiologist from Milwaukee that has this vitamin D thing and heart disease figured out and is treating his patients with diet and nutrition.

Dr. Davis most recent post is about D2 and D3 and how D3 is so much more efficaious than D2.

Here are all of his post on vitamin D.  He has 67 post of vitamin D so I will not be able to compete with that but will try to provide you with a summary.  In the maintain just go read and it will be a real education for you.

If you have heart disease then you definitely need to spend time with Dr. Davis.  GREAT job Dr. Davis!  I know that you have saved many lives.

– Pandemic Survivor

Thinking about Cholesterol

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Let’s just stop for a while and do some critical thinking about cholesterol.  I am not bound by having a medical degree or much education in the biological sciences.   This frees me from boundaries that are typically imposed when trying to come up with a new theory or hypothesis.  There are just about always these preconceived notions about how a process works that stops researchers from considering other pathways or avenues or even superhighways though they are clearly marked.  Of course this is really good for the keepers of the cash cow.  With that out of the way this makes it possible to allow my imagination to run free without restraint.

Okay so researchers, maybe you should pay attention to what I am about to say because some day it may make you a super star if you pursue my line of thinking.  However, if you work for one of the companies that make statin drugs and start talking about what I am proposing then you better put your things in a box and start looking for a new job.

So what is cholesterol?  It has the word sterol in it so that most likely makes it a fat.  So what do we know about fats?  They are necessary for life because I remember the story about the arctic explorers that had this canned food that was primarily carbohydrates and protein and they started to get sick and bloat.  It was later discovered that you have to have fat to survive.  It has also been discovered that we do not need carbohydrates to survive but this battle still rages on.  We do know that low fat foods that have the fats replaced with sugars or other carbohydrates just make us fatter.   I have proved this over and over by the amount of weight that I gain when I eat low fat foods.  And on top of that, the low fat foods just make me want to eat more.

Now there have been all of these stories about how cholesterol in the blood causes your arteries to clog up with plaque and this stops the blood flow.  When your blood does not flow for more than about five minutes you die and this is not good to a long life.  I have read studies that say that too much cholesterol causes this plaque problem and heart disease.  I have read studies that say there is no correlation between cholesterol and heart disease in more recent literature.  It was suggested that since a high amount of cholesterol would cause heart disease and that since cholesterol is fat that we eat too much fat and this causes us to have heart disease.  This seems so counter intuitive to the understanding about the explorers that did not get enough fat.

We can just put all of that aside and say that cholesterol is a marker and not necessarily a cause and effect for heart disease.  Now what does being a marker mean?  Well it means that a certain thing is an indication that something will happen.  It is like the speed indicator in your car.  If it says that you are going 70 mph that the car is going very fast and all the physical things that you can expect to happen at this speed will happen.  The speed indicator is not the cause of the car moving at this speed.  The indicator only says that the car is going at this speed.

Now, when I had severe back pain and my vertebral disc were failing and I had sleep apnea, I had very high cholesterol readings.  I had one test that indicated that my cholesterol was over 240.  The test also said that my fasting triglycerides were 680 or extremely high.  I also had problems with my heart because I was having pre-ventricular contractions and one time even a sudden fast heart rate.  My heart rate went over 200 bpm and stayed there for over 15 minutes.  I was in so much pain from the pressure on my spinal cord that I just thought that maybe this was it and I would just die and get rid of the pain.  However, my heart slowed down and I was just fine except for the severe continuous ever hurting downright destroying evil pain – pain – pain.

Then I started taking vitamin D3.  My spine healed.  My sleep apnea went away because the nerves for the lungs and throat were free to do what they were supposed to do.  My heart started working just fine.  My energy returned.  My brain healed.  My mind cleared. And guess what else happened.  That’s right on my last blood test, my cholesterol was 175 and my fasting triglycerides were 72.  Now how could this be because since I have been out of pain I eat the worst diet ever.  I am still overweight (BMI 130) even though recently my metabolism seems to be speeding up and I have lost 10 lbs in the last month. I eat now because I can because there is no pain when my gut gets big unlike before when my spine was shot.  So why would eating cheeseburgers and french fries and milk shakes cause my lipid profile to improve?

Thinking about arterial plaque, I have recently read that this plaque is a very small percentage of the gooey stuff that holds it together from cholesterol.  It is mostly calcium dross.  I like the word dross because that is what forms when you get too much oxygen over molten metal and so this is what happens in the arteries and not the veins where the oxygen is low.  Too much oxygen in the arteries causes the calcium in the blood to form dross.  This makes about as much sense as what we have been told about how the fat causes our arteries to plug.  If it was just fat, then the veins would clog as well.

So following the logic of the ‘eat low fat’ people, we should just stop breathing as this would not allow oxygen into the arteries and cause dross to plug them.  Now you guys that majored in the biological sciences still with me or have I sucked all of the air from your systems?  I know this is way out, but what fun!!!!!!!!!

When reading about how our body makes vitamin D, I discovered that the ultraviolent B radiation on cholesterol in the skin causes it to turn into vitamin D.  This vitamin D along with some isomers and other products like metabolites that it forms makes up our vitamin D physiology.  Now not being hampered by a biological religious cult, I would just think that as our bodies get enough vitamin D to where systems get satisfied that we stop making cholesterol.  When we do not go out into the sun and our vitamin D level gets low, our liver and skin spits out lots of cholesterol and our body starts screaming at us, ‘GO INTO THE SUN’.  We go into the sun and if there is enough UVB then our body makes D3.  We are happy as our pineal gland starts spitting out the commands for all of these happiness squads of hormones that can now act because we have enough vitamin D.

Process of vitamin D being made from cholesterol, University of California Riverside.

This also makes sense from understanding that the plaque in our arteries is a calcium plaque and the primary system for controlling calcium absorption is vitamin D.  If we do not have enough vitamin D then calcium serum regulation falls to the parathyroid hormones like a failsafe system.  We survive and do not thrive.

And while I am thinking about it, I do not believe there is a single case of secondary hyperparathyroidism when the serum 25(OH)D level is above 40 ng/ml in the medical literature.  At least that is what a bunch of guys from Spain have said in 2003.  You would think that knowing how PTH and 25(OH)D work together that we would increase the level of 25(OH)D before we started chopping out peoples parathyroids.  This happened to a friend of mined and he simply increased his 25(OH)D, his serum calcium normalized and he did have to get his parathyroids chopped.

So then, cholesterol is just a marker for low vitamin D levels in the body which means that we need to take action to get the level of vitamin D up so that over 2000 genes can turn off when they are supposed to be off and on when they are suppose to be on.

Changing the cholesterol level to try to prevent heart disease then would be like making the speed indicator on the car read 35 mph when we are really going 70.  We are just looking for an accident to happen because we do not know that we are going so fast because of the artificial indication.  I suspect this is what happens when we take statin drugs which I understand are just bad mimics of the vitamin D feedback system that tells us to stop making cholesterol.  This is really bad because when we do go into the sun we do not have adequate amounts of cholesterol to make vitamin D.  Okay, biological geeks, did you get it?  This is the reason for all the confounded data in your studies because your theories just – well- truly suck!

I say to you, the manufacturers of statin drugs, that I do not believe that you are so bad at logic and biological science that you could get this so wrong.  I think that you had dollars signs in your eyes because you could not figure out a way to profit from healthy people replete in vitamin D.  So it is obvious that you love money more than people even though it is the people, your customers, that is providing you this money.

I suspect that there is enough data out there from other studies that an energetic researcher could crunch around to show that when peoples serum 25(OH)D levels are less than 32 ng/ml that they have a problem with high cholesterol.  Get the levels up to above 50 ng/ml for a couple of months and I would suspect that you would see a significant drop in cholesterol.  It happened to me and others that I know.  Are our bodies just freaks of nature?

It seems that doctors that have tried this on patients with heart disease have had great success.  Why don’t you go visit with Dr. William Davis at the Heart Scan Blog and see for yourself.

Even better –GO INTO THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!   – Pandemic Survivor