Category Archives: Deficiency Disease

Medicine…Money…Economics…Ethics

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Health or WealthWhich of the above is more important to you? Are great economics with poor health your desire. Is it okay for the most elite scholars to avoid ethics so that they and the institution they work for have a better opportunity for wealth? We, as Americans, have paid for the research on vitamins and minerals and food (VMF). Yet, the value of VMF is hidden from us for the sake of a robust economy.

All the above are inexorably intertwined. There cannot be a large medical economy without a large sick population. Many have coined the word “sick care” for the present state of healthcare in the US. Drugs and cutting are the typical treatments for chronic disease. Disease that could be treated with VMF. If you had proper VMF before you age, then most likely, you would never reach the state of chronic disease. You would simply age and then with a few months of illness, you would pass. Please read Looking Good, Feeling Better for a better understanding.

Many researchers have not published the benefits of VMF in the hopes of being able to make an analog (prescription drug with side effects because it is not natural to the body) of the VMF for profit. We cannot point our finger at any one institution and say that they are at fault. We are all at fault. Government for allowing institutions to profit from illness while cures in VMF exist. Americans for allowing our government to get away with it in a democratic republic. In our Declaration of independence are the words— “life, liberty, and happiness.” Where is the happiness when you are in so much pain from chronic disease that life is miserable? Are you really going to turn to opiates for relief?

We hold doctors up as being the final decision makers for health. This is not the case. Let me state that again. Doctors are not responsible for the interpretation of the science of medicine. They must follow the medical guidelines as set up by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. AHRQ takes its lead from the Secretary of Health and Human Services and ultimately the President and Congress. Do you think that HHS has your best interest in mind for life, liberty, and happiness? They operate by the principle of “markets before mandates” as clearly stated by Secretary Michael Leavitt in 2008. Note that to value life is the very last. The economy is more important than your health and consequently your happiness.

The archived site that stated these principles has been taken down. Here are government’s nine principles for taking care of your health:

  1. National standards, neighborhood solutions
    2.      Collaborations, not polarization
    3.      Solutions transcend political boundaries
    4.      Markets before mandates
    5.      Protect privacy
    6.      Science for facts, processes for priorities
    7.      Reward result not programs
    8.      Change a heart, change a nation
    9.      Value life

Do you need to have a robust economy for happiness? The government believes so. Is this where the institution of government is more important than the individual it serves. Isn’t this the very definition of evil? M. Scott Peck in his book, “People of the Lie,” uses the Me Li massacre in Vietnam to explain this very point. The squad was given the command that it must survive at all cost because of the importance of the mission that lay ahead. They went into a village with this understanding and proceeded to kill anyone that posed a treat including defenseless women and children.

Instead of bullets that kill you instantly, the institutions that profit use a disinformation playbook that has been around for years or least since WWII when the government sued seventeen multinationals for conspiracy for manipulation of vitamin D pricing and amounts in over the counter supplements. Dr. William B. Grant has published his version of it at Orthomolecular.org.

(OMNS Oct 1, 2018) A “Disinformation Playbook” has been used for decades by corporations to delay government action on matters of public interest that would adversely affect their income and profit. Some well-known examples include the big tobacco companies, the coal and oil industries, the sugar industry, and the National Football League. The Union of Concerned Scientists has outlined five “pillars” of the Playbook [Disinformation Playbook], [Alvord 2017]. Big Pharma may be using the Playbook to slow the adoption of strong support for vitamin D. This article is the product of my further analysis.

The Disinformation Playbook
1. The Fake
Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research.
2. The Blitz
Harass scientists who speak out with results or views inconvenient for industry.
3. The Diversion
Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists.
4. The Screen
Buy credibility through alliances with academia or professional societies.
5. The Fix
Manipulate government officials or processes to influence policy inappropriately.

William B. Grant published a paper in 2009 called “In Defense of the Sun.” In the paper he shows that by just raising the level of serum vitamin D (25OHD) to 45 ng/ml, 400,000/yr. premature deaths could be stopped in the US. That is just vitamin D. What about the rest of the vitamins and minerals that we are deficient—vitamin C, magnesium, iodine, organic sulfate, zinc, vitamin B12, folate (not folic acid), and omega 3 fats. That is just the beginning of health. When is science going to admit that the placebo effect or the mind/body connection is just as powerful as most drugs that are on the market? Living longer and feeling better should be our goal. Otherwise, a strong economy is just that and cannot bring happiness because of illness. –Mark Pegram

Supplement with Vitamin D NOW!

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Several weeks ago, the local paper printed a story by the Associated Press that was entitled “Vitamin D deficiency widely overestimated, experts warn patients.”  This story was carried by most major news’ outlets at a time when supplementation for vitamin D is necessary in the northern latitudes.  The article was based on a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) by four scientists that were on the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) food and nutrition board for vitamin D and calcium.  The IOM reported in 2010 that you only needed 600 to 800 IU per day of vitamin D from all sources whether you were a ten-pound baby or a three-hundred-pound adult.  What the NJEM paper and the news article fail to mention is that there was a statistical error found in the study and confirmed by several universities.  The real value should have been reported at over 7,000 IU per day of vitamin D3. Follow link to read about the error.

One of the researchers, JoAnn Manson of Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston, is doing a study given 26,000 patients 2,000 IU per day.  She hopes to compare the study against statistics from the general population. The problem for Manson is that her study is extremely flawed because now most of the population knows that you need more than the 2,000 IU per day.  She wants to slow down the supplementation of the general population to validate her study.  The news article emphasizes “there’s an epidemic of needless testing and too many people taking too many pills for a deficiency that very few people truly have.”  If that is truly the case, then why is she doing the study at a higher level of supplementation?

It is amazing that the medical industry has been trying to keep the general population deficient of the vital hormone, vitamin D3, for a very long time.  The problem goes back to the 1940s when the US sued seventeen multinational corporations for conspiracy of price manipulation and not putting an adequate amount of vitamin D in over-the-counter supplements.  Why?  The original reason for this criminal act was about making money from discoveries that may not have been patentable. The withholding of the information has gone on so long now that the economy is at risk if everyone gets enough vitamin D to be healthy. Government action has now fallen in step with the medical industry because of the economy. Why has it been two years since the error was found and the public has not been notified?  How would an adequate amount of vitamin D affect the economy?  One medical practice gave their patients enough supplements to make the general population replete in critical nutrients.  Office visits went from four per patient per year to one visit per patient per year. Think how the patients’ health most have improved—think of the dollar loss to the medical practice.

So, what to believe?  People with light colored skin typically will make in twenty minutes, about 20,000 IU of vitamin D3, with mid-day sun exposure in the summertime with sixty percent of the skin exposed. People with dark skin may take 3 to 6 times longer.  Who are you going to believe, nature or the medical industry?  In the winter our immune systems become depressed because of reduction in the amount of vitamin D3 made from sun exposure. Colds and the flu increase and more people die from chronic disease. Let the researchers play their games while you protect your health with adequate vitamins and minerals.  It is time to have empathy for the health of the population based on science.

This winter you should supplement per twenty-five pounds of body weight per day with approximately: deficient-vits-and-mins

  • 1000 IU of vitamin D3
  • 100 mg of magnesium (not magnesium oxide as you do not absorb it)
  • 500 mg vitamin C
  • 5 mg zinc

If you weigh 175 pounds, the amount of supplementation of these nutrients in which we are deficient would be 7,000 IU of vitamin D3, 700 mg of magnesium, 3,500 mg of vitamin C, and 35 mg of zinc.  This of course is not the whole story of nutritional deficiency, but it would be a great start to get you through the winter.  –Pandemic Survivor

A Specialist in General Wellness?

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Where have all the generalist gone, long time passing.  When will they ever learn?  There are over two hundred specialties in the AMA master list of medical professionals. The question becomes, how can a specialist function with a chaotic physiology?  When the worldview of the medical specialist suggests that just one thing will heal a disease, has he considered the side effects of his remedy?  It does not matter if there is a drug, a vitamin, a mineral, or a medical procedure; they all must interact with human physiology in complex ways. 

This idea of promoting one thing for health or even just one thing for repairing a malady of the body is less than desirable. The vitamin D community that is promoting health through just one purposeful necessity is a huge error.  This has been the mistake in the understanding of vitamins and minerals for healing of disease. Think of the confusion brought about by Linus Pauling in promoting vitamin C, or the legal battles fought over magnesium deficiency. Now, we have the Vitamin D Revolution.  All are needed, none should be left out.  The interactions of vitamins and minerals is very important to wellness.

Don’t get me wrong. vitamin D3 is a master prohormone that is necessary for a healthy life. This necessity has developed through our relationship with the sun.  As we have moved indoors out of the sunshine, the argument has become not that we need vitamin D3, but how much and from what source.  If we raise the level of vitamin D in our body, the need for other vitamins and minerals will show itself in other side effects.  For example, if you don’t have an adequate amount of magnesium with increased vitamin D, you may have heart arrhythmias.  This problem becomes even worse when applying drugs to a disease.  In particular for drugs that are analogs of what the body expects.  Think about how many times the physician prescribes one drug and then many others for the side effects. The problem then becomes do we apply drugs or nutrition first for chronic disease?  The body normally is deficient in nutrition and not deficient in drugs.  The money–is in medical procedures, drugs, and medical insurance.

There is some hope as we have moved in the direction of nutrition for the treatment of chronic disease.  Consider the number of facilities that now offer integrative medicine. Integrative medicine is where conventional Western medicine is combined with nutrition, exercise, and other medical arts.  You cannot define the human body with one illness, thus separating its wholeness.  This reminds me of the movie where Jack Palance tells Billy Crystal that the secret of life is just one thing.  Jack then tells Billy he will need to figure it out.  Does Billy need to find a specialist? We have spent inexpressible amounts of money and effort to find this one thing for one disease.  It does not exist unless you point toward God, or whatever reality you wish to define in our superhuman existence.

It’s time for the world of medicine to accept the fact that complexity cannot be resolved through specialty.   It takes both specialist and generalist to reach healthy solutions for healing disease.  There should be more generalist than specialist.  M. Scott Peck wrote about how specialties lead to evil.  Think of an institution where the individuals it serves are not given any empathy and only the survival of the institution is the important thing.  Peck’s “People of the Lie” is an important read in understanding of how evil presents itself through specialization. 

hammerJust in the last two weeks, I’ve had three different people tell me how much better they have felt by replacing drugs with nutrition and exercise.  One lady who was taking twelve different drugs has replaced all but one. Now, she is looking for what is missing in her life experience to eliminate the last drug.  Why does an individual have to spend the effort of doing their own research when solutions could be delivered by the medical profession?  What has happened to the consultant who suggest a drug for a short term solution and nutrition required for a long term solution? We seem to have the drugs and surgery worked out.  A man with a hammer will always look for nails.  When will they ever learn?  –Pandemic Survivor 

Vitamin D–Conspiracy Theory or True Conspiracy

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In the current political campaigns, there is much rhetoric about the far left and the far right and how each is promoting conspiracy theories about the actions of government.  This is all to shame each candidate’s position and all about winning the election.  How do we separate truth from fiction?  I have been personally attacked purposely with ridicule, told to stop talking about vitamin D at my major source of social activity, and scorned with humor in my declaring that the practice of medicine has been taken over for the sake of the economy.

Conspiracy

In the words of James Carville to President Clinton, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  The history of vitamin D has been filled with cover-up for the benefits of vitamin D for profit. There were seventeen multinationals named in a lawsuit by the US Government for conspiracy for vitamin D at the height of WWII: Charles Bowman for General Mills Corporation, E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Quaker Oats, Standard Brands, Gelatin Products Corp., Borden Co., Carnation Co., Nestle Milk Products, Inc., Vitamins Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Meade Johnson & Co., William S. Merrill Co., Parke-Davis Co., R. Squibb & Sons, Winthrop Chemical Co.  “General Mills Corp. was named as a co-conspirator, but will not be a defendant in the action.”  This of course is when the government still had a conscious for individuals.  I am sure that you recognize many of these companies.

The medical profession corrected many of the errors by recommending the use of cod liver oil, CLO, to prevent and cure rickets and improve general health.  The use of CLO continued until a well-known pediatrician made the statement that Vitamin D could cause birth defects. The use of CLO was abandoned over this fear.  This was in the middle of the 60s when the thalidomide scare for birth defects was at its height. Then in the 70s, a well-known pharmaceutical took over a sun screen company and heavily promoted “sun fear” for the sake of profits of their chronic disease drugs, which accounted for over eighty percent of their sales.  The dermatologists were captured and used as agents to continue to promote sun fear because of skin cancer.  (45-minute video Skin Cancer/Sunscreen the Dilemma) This video was made in 2009 and there have been advances in sunscreen that blocks both UVA and UVB.

Sun fear continued well into the 2000s, even when thousands of peer reviewed papers were published about the benefits of vitamin D.  The FDA even tried to sue the sunscreen companies for inappropriate labels but were defeated in court, thus ignoring the science–there is no science that sunscreen prevents melanoma.  The court action was defeated by lawyers of the sunscreen industry led by John Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  I guess he was just doing his job as a great attorney.

I had thought that the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board would get it right based on the science.  Their findings were published in December of 2010.  The finding was that only 600 IU of vitamin D was required from all sources whether you were a ten-pound baby or a three-hundred-pound person.  They tried to cover themselves by stating that the study was only about bone health.  There were many problems with this board for ethics.  The studies they chose were provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality a division of US Health and Human Resources and not independently selected.  They treated studies with vitamin D2 as equal to vitamin D3. There were many conflicts of interest on the board; a direct violation of ethics policy for the National Academy of Science of which the IOM is a division.

But the real issue of the IOM’s finding came when a professor at the University of Alberta took the same data that the IOM used and found a statistical error.  The real finding should have been 10 plus times the recommended amount by the IOM.  This error was later confirmed by the scientist at Grassroots Health and two universities, Creighton University and the University of California San Diego.  The real amount of vitamin D from all sources should have been at least 7000 IU per day to achieve the goal of 99.5% of the population with a serum level at or above 20 ng/ml of 25(OH)D.

It has now been almost two years and no action has been taken by the US Government to correct the error.   Why has our Government ignored the error?  “It’s about the economy, stupid.”  There is much evidence to show that low vitamin D levels cause disease.  Think of the many deaths and more importantly the pain caused by this error in the general population.  By raising the serum level of vitamin D in the general population to over 45 ng/ml 25(OH)D, the medical economy could shrink by as much as fifty percent–ouch!  Watch this short video (at 4:30, Does Less Sun Mean More Disease) about vitamin D and the doctor’s practice that reduced office visits from four per patient per year to one visit per patient per year.  This was great for the patients, but what about the financial health of the doctor’s practice?

If we translate this effort of one practice to the general population, what would happen to a medical economy that represents almost twenty percent of GDP.   This practice not only used vitamin D; in addition, they gave their patients additional magnesium, vitamin C, B12, and zinc.  The correction of one vitamin is not all that is required to bring the population to a greater health.  If you were a Congressman or the President, which decision would you make–the health of the individuals in the population or the financial health of our institutions?  Which would cause more harm?  The government has chosen the general principle for Health and Human Services as “markets before mandates.”  (Secretary Michael Leavitt–Principles lower right) A general conspiracy or a policy that protects national economic security?

You just cannot make this stuff up out of whole cloth.  As an individual, you should follow the science as described by Grassroots Health.  I know it will take some time to read through this article and the links, but your health or your money? Beliefs change regularly as we have new experiences.  That happened to me when I discovered I was deficient in vitamin D (not D2), vitamin C, magnesium (in an absorbable form), zinc, correct proteins, iodine, vitamin A (not beta carotene), B12, and folate (not folic acid). I avoided more back surgery and healed from chronic pain and sleep apnea.  I arrived at my conclusions through faith in a being greater than us and by applying engineering principles to my health with an MS in engineering, forty years of engineering practice, and more than 9,000 hours of reading about vitamins and minerals.  –Pandemic Survivor

©2016 Mark Pegram

The State of Health in the US

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SMMIt has become apparent to me over the last several decades that manipulation of health and life expectancy for economic purposes is real. I have thought for most of the last ten years that it was just incompetence on the part of doctors, failure by our government to properly manage their role, and lack of education on the part of the populace. Yes it is still some of all of these combined, however, it has become apparent that there is a real conspiracy happening. It is being carried out simply for the gain of politicians and their ilk as lifelong employees of government who believe by controlling your life; they are giving you a better America. We come together as a people to form government to help protect the interests of the population as a whole, not for the few. If government believes they are presently protecting it for the many, then we have a serious problem on our hands as thousands suffer needlessly and die at the wish of our politicians.

We live in the greatest country in the world and I love America. I am not discussing here the heart-felt efforts of the many physicians who have worked sacrificially to save lives from many forms of disease or the tireless work of researchers to develop treatments. I am speaking primarily to the people at the top of decision making of our institutions who have intentionally allowed death and suffering through their policies. Health and Human Services was even brave enough to state this policy as part of their nine principles of operation in the 2000s. Of the nine principles, markets before mandates, was number four, and to value life was number nine, the last.

Politicians and large institutions, (health insurers are the worst of the worst as they profit from your suffering and the more you suffer the better their sales, and only fifty cents of every dollar you give them comes back as payment to providers–but, believe the politicians, that they are growing our economy through manipulation of health insurance) are using the complexity of life and medicine to simply manipulate outcomes. The main tool of this obfuscation is to promote the use of patent medicine over the use of nutrition to allow the body to heal. Patent medicines are used simply to treat symptoms with the hope that the body will heal on its own. The only real exceptions to this are antibiotics and some vaccines. But now, even the vaccine market is being manipulated for higher sales. We use screening to find cancer earlier in its state of development and chemo and cutting for treatment to make the claim that we are giving increased life when our death rate from cancer has not declined at all. It is plain to see that the ones benefitting from this misdirection are not the patients and the payers of expensive research and treatments — you. Of course, if you are receiving income from the health sector, as one in five of every American, then you too are benefitting from this treachery.

The importance of economics over life started in the nineteenth century and became magnified in the twentieth century as patent medicines were held up as more important than nutrition for healing. This is certainly true for emergency medicine, but very damaging for treating chronic disease and the hope of a long life. Now, you will see many ads state that nutrients are not for treatment, diagnosis, or cure of any disease to stay within the confines of our politician’s laws. I suspect if medical practice was changed to use patent medicine for emergencies and nutrition for chronic disease, life expectancy would increase to over ninety years old. A good life to a ripe old age, your period of suffering would be very brief.

If a visit to the doctor for a chronic concern started with tests and diagnosis evolved around which nutrients your were most deficient, there would not be the need of almost any patent medicines. “Well let’s see Mr. Patient, it looks like you are not getting enough protein and balance of protein and fats so that you will heal. Also, you need more greens for folate to help generate stem cells and you need to spend more time in the sun for vitamin D. Also I have found several mineral deficiencies which can be corrected by changing your eating habits to allow for more variety. If you don’t want to change your eating habits, then I can simply write you a script for this combination of vitamins and minerals based on my testing to improve your health.” Sound weird? It is only because your mindset has been manipulated toward patent drugs.

The state of medicine, interwoven with economics, is now so complex and complicated; it will take an extreme effort to make the change.   Currently the most egregious actions are the hiding of research outcomes for vaccines that increase the rate of autism (the CDC admitted to this over eighteen months ago) and the serious error that was made for vitamin D RDI by the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) in 2010. Just these two things are causing significant suffering, causing thousands of deaths each day, and significantly impacting healthcare cost. And yet, no action has been taken. The press is conflicted over the loss of revenue if they report on the errors. What are you going to do about? – Pandemic Survivor

Supplements are useless if you want to die!

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Don’t take vitamins and minerals as they are a waste of time and money. You get enough nutrients through the food that you eat. This is repeated over and over again by the powers that control our health. Food is much more important to your health than medicine and yet we spend almost 77% more on health than we do on food (1.264 trillion for food and 2.237 trillion for healthcare). When you are trying to determine the purpose and paths that are placed on us, often the statement, “follow the money,” arises.

We find that we are last in the twenty wealthiest countries of the world in life expectancy and spend much more than any other country on health. If the numbers for spending on healthcare and food were reversed, then we might have a chance for a much longer life expectancy.

I am often asked what I take to prevent illness. When I tell them, there is much concern about taking so many tablets. In the mind of the average American is the issue that this many ‘pills’ could have very serious side effects and might make them sick. This is what has been perpetrated on the American public. Vitamins and minerals are not good for you and like pharmaceuticals should be pharmaceuticals are not good for you like vitamins and minerals. However, vitamins and minerals do not have serious side effects like pharmaceuticals. But if it is in the form of a pharmaceutical then we make assumptions that are not correct about the side effects. Please note that I have said vitamins and minerals. When you start to take herbs then this is no different than taking a pharmaceutical. Most pharmaceuticals have some basis in herbal origins.

The issue is how we process foods and change the characteristics of the nutrients. In many cases nutrients are not only changed, they are completely stripped from the food through processing. The major forms of processes that destroy food are over-heating and mechanical shear like homogenization and size reduction. A change in the characteristics of enzymes, protein, and fat affects the ability of the body to absorb the proper nutrients. We have now arrived at the point that we must take supplements in addition to the food that we eat to be healthy. Of course this says nothing about the synthetic vitamins that are put into our foods or pesticide and herbicide toxins affect on health.

Here are the additional nutrients I take on a daily basis. Compliance by most in taking the additional nutrients is difficult because it is not a fast food burger or a bowel of ice cream. Also, the form looks like pharmaceuticals and we fear side effects.

daily1This looks like pharmaceuticals when in fact; it is just food that has to be made up from our loss in modern processes. Nutrient deficiency is the number one cause of poor health and reduced life expectancy in the US. There are not any harmful side effects. There is only health from food. For the powers to tell you otherwise is about the money made from your poor health. – Pandemic Survivor

Breast Cancer Survivor Takes on the Issues

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Carole Baggerly had her own experience with breast cancer. She then started to research the reason why. Her discovery; scientists have expressed the understanding that breast cancer is a deficiency disease. That is over her life time, her intake of vitamin D was not adequate. She was so upset and concerned about the issues that she started GrassrootsHealth. This is a consortium of more than forty scientists and doctors that are experts in vitamin D and nutrition. She discovered that it was not only breast cancer, but a host of chronic illness related to deficiencies. Take the time and watch her explain the issues in the first thirty minutes of this video presentation.  Carole Baggerly and Dr. Heaney, September, 2012  Presentation to Direct-MS Canada.

If you are concerned about the health of your children, yourself, your parents, the next hour is Dr. Heaney who has contributed significantly to the understanding of vitamin D. He talks about the longevity issues and decline with chronic disease because of nutritional deficiencies. There are many diseases that have now been linked to deficiencies that number into the hundreds. This is particularly pointed to vitamin D deficiency.

This discussion is fairly non-technical and is understandable by the average person. Dr. Heaney expresses the understanding that “things go better with vitamin D”. That is that vitamin D deficiency may not be the cause of a disease like TB, but not having enough vitamin D will prevent your body from properly healing. However, this understanding falls into the logic of the chicken versus the egg. In other words, if you had enough vitamin D would you have gotten TB in the first place? Dr. Heaney discusses everything from diabetes, heart disease, MS, pregnancy, and cancer to infectious diseases like TB. I give the video presentation six stars out of a five star rating system for understanding of chronic disease and the effect of vitamin D.  Presentation to Direct-MS Canada.

Your take away from this, is you, your friends, and your family should not suffer from vitamin D deficiency.   Standards within the medical industry have long been 20 ng/ml to 100 ng/ml.   There have not been any cases of toxicity below 200 ng/ml or 500 nmol/l.  There does not appear to be any downside at this level of vitamin D.  Some laboratories have decreased the upper number, 100 ng/ml, to whatever they are measuring the population. Best health for you can be reached with a vitamin D serum level, 25(OH)D between 40 ng/ml to 80 ng/ml; note this is still within the normal range as defined by medicine. It is not how much you take; it is where you maintain your serum level. Everyone responds differently to their intake from all sources of vitamin D. The only way to know is to test.  Dr. Heaney says to maintain a level above 40ng/ml will require an intake from all sources of 5000 IU or more of vitamin D3 per day.

Please note this presentation is in Canada. The measurements used are in nanamoles per liter or nmol/l. To convert ng/ml to nmol/l multiply ng/ml by 2.5. So the normal range of 20 to 100 ng/ml is 50 to 250 nmol/l. Get your serum level tested to give your body a chance to thrive. If you choose to do it through GrassrootsHealth, you become part of the study that will help to advance health in the population. – Pandemic Survivor

Test by GrassrootsHealth: banner_ad_long5company postingVideo of how to do the test:  bscvideothumbnailv3web

One Disease, One Cause, One Cure

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“Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” – Macbeth, Shakespeare

As I have read about diseases and medical cures, I have been fascinated by the approach to problem solving. I know that these are words you don’t normally hear in medical practice – ‘problem solving.’ It is typically about the disease, the cause, and the cure. It is also amazing to me to read research papers that will end with the statement about more needed research. I always ask the question; more research about what? Biological mechanisms for creating a new drug or the multiple factors that are the cause and cure of a disease?

Typically medicine has tried to identify a specific cause of malady with a specific cure. This makes it nice and neat for both patient and doctor. However, I do now believe after reading for several decades that there is no disease that has a single factor as a cause. The only exception to this is acute disease like infections or a broken leg. If the disease is chronic in nature or occurs over time, then multiple factors always come into play. Could it be possible that an acute disease has multiple factors? I do believe this the case with the common cold and other mild infections and perhaps that broken leg as well. This may also extend to significant infections where ninety percent of the victims die like the Ebola virus. The reason that I can say this is that ten percent of the infected lived, which means that other factors have come into play other than the Ebola virus. Has anyone really asked what these factors are? Could it just be that the survivors have better nutrition with stronger immune systems? What are the nutrients that have contributed to the better immune systems?

The claim in the last hundred years is that medicine has transformed into a science instead of an art. This is a flat out fabrication. Science has come into play in a limited fashion. Science has not been applied to medicine the way it has to say manufacturing or space travel. In both of these endeavors, all factors of significant importance are always considered. Unlike medicine, there are no laws preventing problem solving of significant factors. In medicine, the most significant factors of nutrition cannot be used to treat, cure, diagnose, or prevent a disease. I find this most fascinating in the limiting or hand tying of our doctors and researchers. Of course there are some limitations of factors in manufacturing like environmental laws to protect future generations. What is being protected in medicine by limiting significant nutritional factors? I was startled at California’s attempt to make it a felony for a doctor to use nutrition to treat a disease. I guess the answer is to follow the money without empathy for the ill and dying.

Also medicine has not used all of the tools that are available to them. A great example of this is the statistical methods that are used for problem solving or troubleshooting an illness. Techniques of identifying multiple factor statistical probabilistic predications were developed for the military in the 1950’s. The techniques were them applied to manufacturing in the 1960’s. The techniques then matured in the 1970’s and 80’s. For example, are there control charts in hospitals tracking cases of MRSA to be sure that prevention methods have remained stable in hospital operations?

If it is not one disease, one cause, and one cure it seems that the solutions are too difficult to communicated to all of the decision makers. Decision makers in medicine are you the patient, the doctor, the institutional managers, the medical education community, the medical research community, the insurance institutions, and government institutions. This much complexity, prevents the swift solutions for common causes and special causes or assignable causes of illness. I am sure that W. Edward Deming and Walter A. Shewart are ‘rolling in the grave.’ The last couple of decades have seen the development of chaos theory. How long before this new science is applied to medicine with its repetitive predicative perception of nature? Or, will chaos as an artistic pursuit in medical decision making continue? – Pandemic Survivor

FDA’s New Supplement Label Rules

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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!

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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