Category Archives: vitamin D and the Press

Vitamin D3 Obfuscation

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GraphicAs I have not written in many months, I would like to apologize for my absence. I had an injury in the spring that has taken many months to recover. I am now nine weeks since surgery and three weeks into rehab. In any case, I have recovered from my incapacitation enough to write. I would like to say that the American medical institutions have the best diagnostic capability in the world.

The attack on vitamins and minerals continues. The mere suggestion that a vitamin or mineral might help with a chronic disease will bring outrage from the “medical community.” Typically, it is not from your doctor, although he may have fallen into the allure of medical propaganda. Also, your doc must follow medical guidelines as defined by AHRQ. Obfuscation is more likely from research that is less than adequate­—manipulated—or from a news outlet that gets a large portion of its advertising from the medical industry.

Just recently there was an article in the New York Times suggesting that people are unnecessarily taking more vitamin D. Dr. JoAnn E. Manson is quoted in the article as saying, “A lot of clinicians are acting like there is a pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency. There is a pandemic, as in the US alone, Dr. William Grant has shown there are 400 thousand premature deaths just from cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that could be eliminated if serum vitamin D was raised to 45 ng/ml. Grant has done similar studies for other countries with similar results. The article goes on to say that it is about the money that the vitamin D promoters are getting. Wow, I haven’t received any money for writing this blog. The amount that I have received does not even cover the cost of the domain.

This leads us to many studies done to show that vitamin D has no effect in the treatment of the same diseases stated above. It should be interesting to note that in these studies, they always talk about dose and not what the serum vitamin D is. One study suggested that “large doses” of vitamin D had no effect on cancer. It turns out that their large dose was 100,000 IU (2.5 mg) given once per month. This works out to an average 3,300 IU per day. The body operates better with a daily dose instead of one large dose in a month. This amount is not near enough to get the population to a serum level above 40 ng/ml. It would take a daily dose of well over 10,000 IU per day to get ninety-five percent of the population above 40 ng/ml. Also, taken one time a month instead of once per day is not the same affect. Here is a story of one cancer survivor.

So, what does go on about vitamin D and other minerals for that matter? It is about the money. The money that the medical industry makes from a chronically ill population. Researchers have hidden the benefits of vitamin D so that they could make vitamin D analogs for large incomes from the sale of these drugs. At the 2010 Food and Nutrition Board on vitamin D and calcium, there was a consultant and a member of the board that owned patents on vitamin D analogs and were promoting the manufacture of such drugs. (Links from this post are now broken as that was eight years ago.) This conflict of interest is in strict violation of the National Academy of Science policy for ethics.

The holding out of benefits, of vitamins and minerals in adequate amounts, by the medical industry is a slap to the face of the Americans that have paid for the research. One of my pet peeves are biologic drugs or biosimilar drugs. Biologics are made by taking a known cell line, adding large amounts of vitamins and minerals in a reactor, and extracting the desired protein or amino acid. This then becomes a patented drug that is sold for large amounts of money. The drug my have serious side effects. Why not just give the patient the vitamins and minerals and let the body make its own repair compounds? “it’s the economy stupid.” –Pandemic Survivor

The Onslaught Against Nutrients for Bone Health

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BoneRecently there have been many articles about the ineffectiveness of vitamin D and calcium for bone health.  Major media outlets that published about the ineffectiveness of vitamin D and calcium for bone health include: ABC news, Reuters, WebMD, Newsweek, LA Times, and Washington Post. I am sure there are more. Why this onslaught on vitamins and minerals?

My personal experience has been significantly different. This includes the recent discovery that my right leg length returned to normal after many years of supplementing with vitamins and minerals. Article It is interesting to note that the IOM (name changed to National Academy of Medicine) reported that we only need 600 IUs of vitamin D3 for bone health in 2010. The IOM took the position that the amount was so small as it was only about bone health. The importance of calcium is that every cell starts biological action with calcium and vitamin D3 controls calcium. It was reported three years ago that an error in the statistics was made by the IOM. The actual amount should have been over 7,000 IUs per day of vitamin D3. The error for the wrong amount of vitamin D was heavily reported in the Canadian press, but not one single major US news outlet reported the error.

I believe we don’t only have a case for fake news. I believe that news about how vitamins and minerals are significantly important for health has been intentionally held from press. The reason is the number of health ads for pharmaceuticals and allopathic treatment are the major source of income for news outlets. Consider this recent post by Grassroots Health about how the cost of health is significantly reduced with higher levels of vitamin D. What if we had an adequate amount of all the right types of nutrients. I believe that healthcare cost would be reduced by fifty percent. This would effectively send us into a depressed economy as approximately twenty percent of GDP is from healthcare.  

What can we do about this? I have tried with congressmen and the response was tepid at best. Government does not want to take the chance that the economy would fail. I understand the need for robust economy and engineered failure. This occurs in everything from auto batteries to your iPhone that is slowed down when the new model is available. But to support the economy off the illness of the population may just be evil. How much lost production do we have from illness? I suffered back and joint pain for three decades to discover that modern medicine was not offering what was available in the science that we had paid for as tax payers.  The real science for nutrients is just being ignored, or worse, being manipulated for the economy. 

Bone health does not only require vitamin D3 and calcium. It also requires the combination of many nutrients that include vitamin D3, vitamin A, vitamin B, calcium, magnesium, boron, vitamin K, iodine, and proteins from animal bones and skin. Iodine is another nutrient in which seventy-five percent of the population is deficient based on present recommendations. If we consume the amount that is present in the Japanese diet, then we are off by a factor of one hundred. The modern paradigm for bone health is to just take a drug, bisphosphonate. This supports the economy but may not do much for your health.

The best solution for your chronic disease is to do your own research in nutrients. The institutions will not be much help as they want to maintain a strong economy. Thanks for reading. –Pandemic Survivor

Response to Attack on Evidenced Based Medicine for Vitamin D

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June 1, 2014

Dr. Phillip Autier
Research Director at IPRI
International Prevention Research Institute
Cours Lafayette 95
69006 Lyon, France
Dear Dr. Autier,

I keep stewing over your quote in the Daily Mail and am indeed insulted at your allegations. You were quoted by Jonathan Gornall “The ‘sunshine supplement’ is hyped as a miracle cure, but experts say don’t waste your money on vitamin D pills” Daily Mail, 24 March 2014 as saying: “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.’”

Sir, I suffered for almost three decades from what cannot be any other way categorized as other than vitamin D deficiency. I had back pain all during this period as well as much incapacitation. In addition to the suffering from the pain, I had sleep apnea as well as other health issues. After taking vitamin D and other supplements, I avoided more back surgery, after two failed surgeries, and am healed from severe sleep apnea. I no longer need pain meds and take no pharmaceuticals at the blessed age of sixty-three. To insult organizations like GrassRoots Health with its many dedicated life-long expert researchers of vitamin D is an atrocity as millions around the world suffer from the diseases created by vitamin D deficiency.

After reviewing the consortium of IPRI that includes, Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim International, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, and Eli Lilly, I can believe nothing else than your sponsors have confused the reasoning of your well educated scientific mind.  I can only state that you are nothing more than a shill for the pharmaceutical companies. I do expect a new paper soon, after your review of the more than forty controlled clinical trials, that refute your original findings. You sir, have shamed the scientific approach of evidence based medicine.

Sincerely,

Mark Pegram
Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor

Vitamin D3 Significantly Reduces Asthma Flare-Ups

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In recent news headlines, there is the story of a published research paper for vitamin D3 and a steroid inhaler.  The headlines read like this one from MedNews: “Vitamin D3 flops as asthma therapy booster.”  I was amazed at the conclusion of the writer for the paper: “Effect of Vitamin D3 on Asthma Treatment Failures in Adults with Symptomatic Asthma and Lower Vitamin D Levels” Castro, et. Al. JAMA May 18, 2014, Conclusion: “Vitamin D3 did not reduce the rate of first treatment failure or exacerbation in adults with persistent asthma and vitamin D insufficiency. These findings do not support a strategy of therapeutic vitamin D3 supplementation in patients with symptomatic asthma.”

I am not sure why he decided to use the rate to the first flare-up or exacerbation.  I suppose the aim of the steroid inhaler is to eliminate flare-ups.  The test was run by dividing the test participants into two groups.  One group was given vitamin D3 and the steroid.  The other group was given a placebo and the steroid.  The vitamin D group had serum levels above 40 ng/ml while the placebo group was 20 ng/ml or less.

It is interesting to look at the design of the experiment.  It was obviously about using the steroid as a treatment for asthma with vitamin D3 as an aid.   I do believe that the title of the trial should have been the same as the title of this post.  If you look at figure 3 in the paper, it shows that there was a significant reduction in the total number of exacerbations in the vitamin D3 group.   The paper states: “The adjusted hazard ratio for cumulative number of exacerbations that occurred over the course of the trial was 0.63 (95% CI, 0.39-1.01; P = .05).”  This represents a 37 percent reduction in total accumulated exacerbations in the vitamin D group.  To me, this is really exciting news, but then, the writer is working for the pharmaceutical industry.

It should also be noted how the delivery of the vitamin D3 was made.  I agree with the initial dose of 100,000 IU.  However, I do not believe the 4000 IU of D3 was adequate for treatment of asthma.  The mean BMI of the test subjects was 32 or borderline obese.  It would have been better if the participants were given 10,000 IU of D3 per day to try to get the serum levels of vitamin D > 60 ng/ml.  This is the level that most doctors agree is necessary for treating disease and within the clinical standards of 30-100 ng/ml.

Also, I would not have given the steroid inhaler to the vitamin D group.  I would have used a placebo inhaler.  The purpose of not using the steroid in the vitamin D group is the reduction of vitamin D receptors from steroid use.  Treatment of an overdose of vitamin D is to use steroids to reduce the effect of vitamin D.  I would also be sure the participants were given at least 5000 IU of vitamin A as fish liver oil with the control group getting placebo fish oil.  It is well known that vitamin D/vitamin A dimers are very significant in the expression pathways for DNA and immune system boosting. Don’t do this without talking to your doctor first.

To further assure the use of the best available vitamins, I would not allow any synthetics to be consumed during the trials.  That is in particular synthetic beta carotene or synthetic vitamin E, both known to have negative effects in the lungs.  I would also not allow any vitamin or the steroid for that matter to be processed using blue-green algae or cyanobacteria.  This is to assure that there is no contamination by microcytins or protein mimics.  I will write more about this cyanotoxin later.

I do believe the result of this trial would show significant reduction in exacerbations, if not elimination after many weeks.  Why the rate to first exacerbation was used should be self-evident after looking at the disclosure for conflicts of interest.  But then the press has no clue and would not want to lose pharmaceutical advertising.   – Pandemic Survivor.