Tag Archives: surviving

Expectation of Medicine

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Meeting expectations has always been the meaning of quality.  The understanding of quality has long been what drives business.  Give the customers what they expect and they will knock down your door down for you to serve them and will reward you for your efforts.  Medicine has lost its way in this understanding.

I am not one to really knock allopathic medicine when I am ill or injured.  I expect them to offer the best solution that science and art has available.  When I do not get this them I really get excited.  Doctors worry more about getting paid than meeting the expectations of their clients.  When a patient wonders off on his own into the study of his illness and finds his doctor has not delivered for him, he either confronts the doctor or just walks away.

Our expectation as consumers of medicine is that now we not only expect our doctors to provide us with the best immediate care that they can but also that they tell us how to prevent disease.  This is an expectation that is not ready to be met by modern medicine.  This has long been the argument inside of medicine that if you practice treatment is it necessary to practice prevention.  What happens with chronic disease is that it falls into the category of prevention and doctors do not know how to deal with it.  If they knew how to treat chronic disease it would not be a chronic disease because you would be healed of the disease.

Anything that truly treats a long developing disease falls into the category of prevention and most that are educated in the field of medicine just believe that if you tell people how to prevent disease that they would not do it anyway.  If the medical profession told everyone that coffee was extremely bad for them would it reduce consumption?  Coffee is the most addictive drug that is on the unregulated market and can significantly impact your health if consumed in too large of quantities.  I found in particular that I drink more than one small cup that it causes a mid morning down turn that is disastrous to my production.  It also causes me to not sleep at night.  I am particular sensitive to coffee and just maybe everyone else is too, but they really like the rush it provides.  It recently took me a whole month to detox from coffee or a full two weeks longer than it took to detox from opiate pain meds.  The withdrawal symptoms were not the same, but were equally negative to my health.

Now that I am off of coffee I have been sleeping much better and do not even need that morning burst as I did when I was drinking coffee.  I am extremely more productive.  Coffee houses are nothing more than addictive drug deliver sites that bring people back to continue in their addictive habit.

Doctors will tell you that if you do not sleep that it causes all kinds of bad things to happen to your body.  They will just casually mention that it may be the coffee that is really affecting your well being.  A typical comment by a doctor is, “they would not stop drinking the coffee anyway if I told them.”  All of the above applies in particular to the current problem with obesity.  We have been lied to over the years about our diet and high fructose corn syrup is nothing more than a liver toxin that does not affect our brains so it is ‘generally consider safe’ or meets the standards of the FDA. Would you just as willingly give your 6 year old a can of beer as you would a soft drink loaded with high fructose corn syrup?  Both are equally toxic to the liver.  Is there any doctor that is going to tell you this?  Most likely not!

This is all that we expect from our doctors.  That is that they tell us the truth about how substances will affect our long term health.  This is our expectation and we are not having our expectations met.  The quality of our medical system is a failure for chronic disease.  It is great for immediate needs like having your broken bones cast or that thing that you need to have cut from your body or the latest antibiotic delivered to knock out the most recent infection.

This is not so much a problem with the doctors as it is with our medical institutions in general.  Poor health feeds a large economic sector and herein lays the rub.  How do I know this?  Name one single study that has been sponsored by an insurance company for disease prevention and you win the prize.  Disease prevention and especially chronic disease prevention would take huge profits away from the insurance companies because of a decrease in sales.  Every CEO that is worth a damn does not want decreased sales, then no studies sponsor by insurance companies.

If you, you are the government because our constitution says so, then if you really want health care reform then pass a law that says the insurance companies are going to be required to pay for all of the large scale chronic diseases studies with vitamin D.  After all if there were only well people it would significantly reduce their cost.  They would get of the business so fast you would not even believe it.

Lies or simply ignoring the truth of science and art is not what we expect from our medical providers.  We should be told the truth by our government agencies and then we can decide if we want to keep killing ourselves with high fructose corn syrup, alcohol, tobacco, and coffee.

What a great day it is to go into the sun and get a tan even though my doctor says it will give me skin cancer.  Oh yeah, she forgot to mention that it would prevent fifty other more deadly diseases.

–          Pandemic Survivor

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Tell Me Your Story

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It was my intent in writing this blog that we could get the message out by having everyday folk talk about their experiences with vitamin D and whether it helped or not.  I realize that I have spent much time in talking about the various diseases and how vitamin D may impact them.  But you know it is the stories that happen to just everyday people that others most understand as they may recognize it as a story similar to their own.

Here is my email address:  vitamindmark@gmail.com

We learn nothing except what other people witness to us.  This is true whether it is some scientist reporting on his latest research, a witness in a trial, or a neighbor telling us about his experience with his child and how that worked.  It is these anecdotal stories that most convince us and send us into our perspective on the ‘truth’.  There may be an exception to this understanding like when you put your finger into a candle flame and you know not to do that again.  However, most do not have the means to do critical research and interpret it, so listening to the stories of others is important.

Your story does not have to be long.  Just a few words telling us what happened and what your belief is about how it happened.  Since Dr. Cannell has given us permission to use his newsletters I particularly like this one from the April 2008 Newsletter by Dr. John Cannell at the Vitamin D Council.

Dear Dr. Cannell: I have been taking 10,000 IU vitamin D per day for over three years and my arthritis and prostate cancer are gone (at least my PSA returned to normal) and I am paddling my canoe and starting to run again and feel much stronger now. I had my 80 birthday this July. Thank you for your website and newsletter. I think I’d literally be dead without it.

I was startled to learn as I read this story that he turned 80.  What a great story on the healing power of a single nutrient.

Your story does not have to be this drastic.  Just something simple like the one that I had from a reader recently in how statin drugs had caused him much problems:

WOW!  I am impressed with your discussion on Vitamin D and health in general.  My pet peeve is statin drugs (it almost killed me)  and the damage they cause.  I ponder the relationship between cholosterol, neuropathy, obesity, and diabetes. William (not his real name) I certainly hope that he read my article on ‘Thinking About Cholesterol’. More importantly I hope that he read the Heart Scan Blog that I sent people to in that post.  Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist in Milwaukee, is having great success in treating heart disease with diet.

I will protect your identity and location.  If the location is important because of latitude then I will simply use that latitude or a similar city on that latitude.  What I am saying is that you can remain completely anonymous if you choose.

You see if Dr. Cannell and Dr. Davis had not told us their stories about their work and the success then where would we be.  Be brave and tell others: vitamindmark@gmail.com

So anyway, tell me your story and we will try to help others understand what your beliefs are and how that may help them.  My email address is: vitamindmark@gmail.com .

Be Healthy and tell your story  – Pandemic Survivor

 

Another Pandemic – H1N1 – Protect Yourself

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And the swine flew.  I had a friend that every time something unusual was uttered he would let out the phrase, ‘and pigs will fly out of my butt too’.  I guess that he meant that it was a total impossibility.  So now we have the swine flu and the ‘pigs are flying out of my friends butt’.

It truly seems strange to me that this virus is made up of two different versions of ‘bird flu’ that I believe are from two different continents and two different versions of the swine flu from two different continents and a version of the human flu.  WHOOO!  ‘Pigs are flying out of my butt’ as well.  When I think of a bird that flew his flu from North America and infected an Asian bird that infected an Asian swine that infected a European swine and ended up as the H1N1 in North America humans of a California variety, it makes me believe that pigs truly can fly.  Here is a summary of the WHO teleconference on the apparent origins of the various strains as a pdf. Note: All the links are set to open in another window.

Now there is another story that is floating around the alternative health blogs like Dr. Mercola and Mike Adams.  It seems that an investigative journalist from Austria has evidence that some sort of intentional release of this virus was made and she has filed criminal charges with the FBI against a host of people.  Here is the index page from Mike Adams, Natural News for the H1N1 virus. Also, here is Natural News pandemic page for the H1N1. Here is the article on charges being filed by author Barbara Minton:  It also is interesting that Jane Burgermeister has a blog on word press that is http://birdflu666.wordpress.com .  Cute url!?  Jane, for your sake, I truly hope that you have the ‘goods’ on all of these people because these are some really serious charges.  For the world’s sake, I hope not.

The other thing that is really concerning is that this version of the virus is mutating regularly so the vaccine, if you chose to take it, may not be effective on the mutated version.  This means you will have to take multiple boasters.  Also this virus has more activity in the lungs that the just ‘plain vanilla’ version of the seasonal flu.  What this means is that as the virus attacks you that pneumonia bacteria will take over in an opportunistic fashion and will result in a serious course for the combination of diseases.  It is the bacterial pneumonia that kills you and not the flu.  Here is an explanation from Dr. Donald W. Miller on LewRockwell.com on how he believes that it would be better not take the shot for multiple reasons.  Well, he agrees with Jane that you should not take the shot, but for medical reasons.  He says to take vitamin D!  What!?  Vitamin D not only affects chronic diseases, but infectious diseases as well.  Wow, it is no wonder that Oliver Gillie of the UK’s Health Research Forum in Sunlight Robbery says that vitamin D3 is a ‘magic shotgun’.

I like Dr. Miller because he writes well researched articles and his information is very clear.  I have used many of his articles to change my supplementation regimen.   Here is his index page for recent articles: http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller-arch.html His article on iodine has benefited me greatly: http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller20.html

So can we find more on taking vitamin D and how it affects the flu?  Yes, Dr. John Cannell, Director Vitamin D Council, has written two papers on vitamin D and the flu and how vitamin D controls the flu in a seasonal manner.  That is that you typically get the flu in the colder months and closer to the equator during the rainy season when there is less sun.  Here is how to protect yourself from Dr. Cannell at the Vitamin D Council Newsletter for H1N1.

I know this is a lot of information, but you know since I have kept my serum 25(OH)D above 50 ng/ml starting January 2005 I have not even had a cold.  I am just one anecdotal story but if you multiply that by all of those people that have taken Dr. Cannell’s advice then what a major study!!

Have a sunny day with lots of vitamin D year round!!!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

The Tragedy of Deficiency Disease

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I was at the gym this morning on the treadmill when a woman that was a friend of my friend that was on the treadmill next to me came in.  She had a cane and I discovered that she had just had a knee implant.  It seems that she had a minor injury some 15 years ago and her knee continued to get worse until there was apparently no cartilage left.

I did not ask her age, but she appeared to be about 40 years old.  She had dark skin which is a real problem for vitamin D deficiency.  From the material that I have read it appears that about 80 percent of the population with light colored skin are deficient and 99 percent of people with dark skin are deficient.  Here is an article today from the Visit Bulgaria website.  It is a worldwide problem.

Of course the problem with dark skin is that the melanin content of the skin slows the rate of production of vitamin D3.  This means that to get the same amount of vitamin D a dark skin person may need to stay in the sun 2 to 10 longer than a person with light skin depending on skin pigmentation amount.

If this lady had been treated with vitamin D when she first had the injury and educated in how much she needed to heal her knee, she would not have to had the replacement.  It is difficult to imagine the amount of pain and the pain that she continues to have.

This first came to my attention with my neighbor that was an athlete and played baseball for a local college.  He would have made it in the pros but it seems that he had a problem in hitting the curve ball.  He had to have knee surgery when he was in his twenties.  His doctor told him that he should not run.  He loved the sun and spent as much time as he could in the sun with his shirt off.  He ignored his doctor and continued to run.  Later he had his knee imaged and discovered that the cartilage had regenerated.  Sun and exercise seem to be the magic formula for him as the sun gave him vitamin D and the exercise allowed the flow of fluids to his knee.

Think about the list of diseases that you have read from a prior post and we see this ever day with friends and acquaintances that we meet.  Pain from diseases are debilitating and life destroying.  It truly grieves my heart.

To think that there truly is a relative simple solution of keeping the vitamin D level up is tragic.

GO INTO THE SUN AND SUPPLEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D, Disease, and Research

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In 2006, I went to PubMed, the government clearing house for medical publications, and just entered vitamin D in the search engine and limited the search to that year.  There were over 2,100 papers.  I just did this for 2008 and there were over 2,300 papers.  If you limit it to the last ten years it comes up with over 17,000 papers.  The published recent work on vitamin D is voluminous.

The Vitamin D Council has provided a wonderful list of diseases that have been associated with vitamin D deficiency on their research page.  You go there, pick the disease and it sends you to PubMed right to the abstract of the article.  If you do not have a subscription to the particular journal you can purchase the article from the publisher online.

In reading this list, it makes me wonder why there are so many diseases and so much research and yet the medical profession is not treating with vitamin D.  There are so many diseases that are a result of or have a component related to D deficiency, you would think the news organizations would be all over this, but I digress.

If you are a doctor or a researcher and you are trying to just get a feel for the research that is out there then Dr. John Cannell has organized the research by disease.  It is a starting place as there are still many diseases that he has not listed.  For example, I had degenerative disc disease that is really a form of osteoarthritis.  This disease caused severe chronic pain, muscle wasting in my legs, central sleep apnea, memory loss from brain shrinkage with the pain, and other symptoms from oxygen deprivation from the sleep apnea.  If we took sleep apnea we find that it is not in the list because no one has done any research on it and vitamin D even though it has an obesity and stenosis vector which both can be tied directly to vitamin D deficiency.  There is a lot of work that is left to be done and a lot of miss-education of doctors, researchers, and the public in general that needs to be corrected.

Another disease that is not listed is psoriasis and I know that it can be treated with vitamin D according to Dr. Michael Holick of Boston University.  Dr. John Cannell has done a great job and we are grateful for his work, but the tentacles of vitamin D reach far and long in the course of human health and disease.

If you do not find the disease that you have interest with, then just go to PubMed and search on the disease itself and components of vitamin D.  Also I am sure that if you can identify research and that has not been listed then the Vitamin D Council would be interested.  Send that along to them.

Let’s just make a copy of the list without comment to see how long it is:

Vitamin D Council Research Links by Disease

Addison’s Disease
Allergic Hypersensitivity
Alzheimer’s Disease
Ankylosing Spondylitis
Asthma
Autism
Autoimmune Illness
Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
Bladder Cancer
Brain Cancer
Breast Cancer
Cancer
Celiac Disease
Cerebral Palsy
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
Chronic Pain
Cognitive Function
Colon and Rectal Cancer
Cystic Fibrosis
Depression and Seasonal Affective Disorder
Diabetes
Endometrial Cancer
Epilepsy
Ethnicity and Vitamin D
Eye Cancer
GastrointestinalFunction
Gaucher’s and Fabry’s Disease
Vitamin D and Genetics
Graves’ Disease
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Heart Disease
HIV and AIDS
Hypertension
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Influenza
Innate and Adaptive Immunity
Liver Cancer
Liver Function
Lung Cancer
Lymphoid Cancer
Melanoma
Mental Illness
Mineral Metabolism
Multiple Sclerosis
Muscular Weakness and Falls
Obesity
Osteoarthritis
Osteomalacia
Osteopenia
Ovarian Cancer
Pancreatic Cancer
Parathyroid Function
Parkinson’s Disease
Pediatrics
Post menopause
Pregnancy and Lactation
Premenstrual Syndrome
Prostate Cancer
Renal Function
Rickets
Sarcoidosis
Sickle Cell Disease
Skin Cancer
Stroke
Toxicity
Toxin and Radiation Exposure
Tuberculosis
Turner’s Syndrome
Vitamin D Deficiency

Other items of interest for Vitamin D with links to the research:
Best Science
Commentaries and Editorials
Genetics
Requirements
Reviews
Treatment
UV Exposure
Veterinary and Animal Studies
Worst Studies

Vitamin D Council Research Links by Disease

Well, I hope that you find this useful and that you do not think that just because your disease of interest is not in this list that it does not have a vitamin D vector.  This seccosteroid is the most important steroid of the human body – Vitamin D3.

There is a lot of pain and death listed above.  Shine the light on this research!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

The Legal on Vitamin D

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You would think with as much solid research as there is on vitamin D that the attorney’s would be ‘jumping right in’ there.  What is up with this.  It is about the money.  As soon as someone with money figures out that companies and institutions need to pay up for their misadventures, the courts will be ‘slammed’ with cases on vitamin D.  I mean just think about the tobacco issues.  It only really involved cancer and perhaps heart disease.  It did not involve all chronic disease.  When this starts to happen there will have to be congressional action to save the medical profession.  Of course now congress will not take action to save you from some really serious diseases.

So what has happen with the legal.  What I know to date:
In 2001 the FDA and FTC got together and took on the sunscreen and sunblock industry to get them to change the rules of marketing after combining 9 lawsuits.  It seems with the INCREASE in skin cancer by about a factor of X4 since the 1960’s that the sunscreen industry was participating in false advertising.  The marketing changes would have been to assure that the consumers understood that there was really no science to support the industry claims of preventing cancer.  This really seems odd that we would let a judge decide something scientific instead of just letting the facts be the facts – oh yeah, there is money involved.

So the sunscreen industry formed a powerful lobby group and hired a powerful attorney and sucessfully defected the FDA and FTC.  This attorney was so good that he was later made Chief Justice of the Surpreme Court.  Yes, that’s right Chief Justice John Roberts.  Wall Street Jounral Law Blog comment.
Now if I were an attorney and wanted to start a large class action lawsuit that would most likely end up in the supreme court and may take as much as a decade to litigate would I want the final decision maker to have been on the payroll of the group that I was fighting against?  Sounds like ‘trouble in river city’.

Now there is a new suit that was filed in the spring of 2006 agaisnt this same bunch of snake oil producers.  “Sunscreen is the snake oil of the 21st century” says Samuel Rudman filing attorney for the plaintiffs.  That is really some strong language which I think is justified when we are just causing death with many diseases by chasing people out of the sun.

You know what I really think is interesting is that you can go to the store and get a bottle of sunscreen today that has no warning label at all and says that it will prevent cancer if you use it.  The warning label should at least say something like: 

WARNING: THIS PRODUCT PREVENTS THE FORMATION OF THE MOST ESSENTIAL SECCOSTEROID OF THE BODY AND WITHOUT THIS VITAL STERIOD YOU WILL DIE FROM ONE OR MORE OF ALL THE CHRONIC DISEASES THAT INCLUDE THE BIG THREE KILLERS – HEART DISEASE, CANCER, AND DIABETES.

This would better describe the reality of what the product does to you.  In all seriousness, even if the science is confounded which it is not, the label should read that the sunscreen product will prevent the production of vitamin D.  This would at least allow the consumer to make his own decision.

You know it is really interesting that there were not any cohort studies on the tobacco issues.  It was just ‘good men’ doing what was right for you.  Oh yeah, and government stepping in and taking a piece of those large margins made from selling tobacco products.  There have been a large number of cohort studies completed in the last decade on vitamin D and chronic diseases and the research continues to come in at multiple of thousands of new studies every year.  It is a mountain of evidence.

Lawyers are really just waiting for prior case law to be complete so that they will not have to battle.  They will simply walk in and take the spoils from your dying friend or family or from your death.  What a great land of scavengers for profit that we live in.  It is no wonder that people yell that captilism is not the right form of government when the real issue is that our institutions are being corrupted for money that is just like a third world country with a flair for class.

I have the will but not the money.  Is there someone out there that would like to start a legal fund to take on the largest institutions in the land for their misadventure of ignoring the science for profit?

GO INTO THE SUN!!!   – Pandemic Survivor

Healthcare Institutions and the Struggle

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“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmond Burke; British Statesman, Philosopher 1729-1797

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.  – Proverbs 14:12 NIV

A comment on the frustration of people needlessly dying.

It has really troubled me since I have been healed from the vitamin D pandemic that our institutions are not reacting in a way that would mean significant improvement to health. How is it that since the 1970’s there has been an extreme campaign for people to stay out of the sun and yet skin cancer rates have increased four fold. Where are the doctors in this and why have our organizations that we have set up through government not taken action more vigorously?

It is not only in the healthcare field that this is happening. It is also in the other major segment of our economy – energy. I have commented before that I have pretty much ignored the governments unwillingness to bring about significant change to the energy economy because it was just about the money. But with healthcare it is about the life. When I think that the number four priority that was listed for the secretary of HHS was ‘Markets before Mandates’ and ‘To Value Life’ was last sends chills down my spine, my newly healed spine.

It seems that we can take on any institutions that appear to be poisoning us and destroy them if necessary. We have done things like take on the tobacco industry and just recently to remove BPA or the plasticizer in plastic bottles that was causing an issue. Both of these were done on much ‘thinner science’ that what is now available on Vitamin D. There was no cohort study ever done on tobacco. Another one is DDT that was causing an issue with the environment. Also think about the fact that we dumped about 50 million tons of lead beside the highways until the mid ’70’s in a form that could readily be adsorbed by the body under the guise that it would increase gasoline mileage. Lead is an extemely dangerous carcinogen and neurotoxin. I do know a ‘little bit’ about lead as I worked in lead-acid industry for twelve years. Asbestos, red dye number 5, cocaine in cola, lithium in Pepsi, and PCB’s just to name a few.

If you put a toxin into our bodies because you may profit from it, eventually we will take action to eliminate your misadventure. However, can you name one substance that has been withheld and we have taken action to stop this misadventure? The only things that I can think of are types of fat and eggs. It seems that we were told that eating eggs was bad for us but now that has been changed. It was not ever proven that eating eggs was bad, it was just assumed that because there was a significant portion of cholesterol that they were bad for us(see note 1 below). And the fats have been all over the map. It seems that margarine was tauted to be extremely healthy for us and now it turns out that is not the case. I believe that one was just about the money but I do not think that anyone was significantly penalized.

And now all you hear from the agencies and doctors is that there is not enough “science” to recommend that everyone take enough vitamin D to prevent the majority of chronic disease. What these proclaiments are really saying is that he herd is not headed ‘our’ way. In M. Scott Peck’s book “People of the Lie” he describes the two poles of evil as being conforming to a group without empathy and malignant self-love or narcissism ( see note 2). I belive that the practice of allopathic medicine or the practice of treatment and not prevention has led us down a road of conforming to the herd without empathy and created a very evil state of death. The group acts as perceived protection for the group as believed by the leader of the group – the economy. In the case of our sick care system protection of the group means “Markets before Mandates” or in the immortal words of James Carville – ‘its about he economy stupid.”

That may be okay if we are talking about the energy economy where it truly is about the money, but it is another matter when we, with intent by ignoring the facts, kill people. Al Gore just made the statement yesterday about his battle on global warming that it was like fighting the Nazis in the 1930’s. I would like to say to Al that my frustration of seeing people die from vitamin D defficiency is like observing the Holocaust without the ability to take action to stop it. There is the blood of hundreds of thousands of people every year because we have not acted.

Al, there is only three percent of the carbon dioxide that goes into the air every year created by man. Is that really going to do all that you say? The Nation Academy of Sciences in 2006 said that if you take all of the matter that we know in space including star systems, black holes, and hydrogen distributed in space that it only represents a total of 4 percent of the energy of the universe. We cannot see or detect the rest (hence dark energy at 73% and dark matter at 23%) but know that it exists because the universe is expanding at an increasing rate of speed as shown by the Hubble light telescope and confirmed by the Chandra x-ray telescope. Knowing this, how can we say that we are creating global warming our ‘science’ can only identify 4% of the total energy in the universe. Now there is the science. Where are you Al? Is it about the money?  Nothing personal Al, but please do not distort the facts for profit.

The really exciting thing about this dark energy is that it appears that we can ‘tap’ it for our energy needs. There are a multiple patents that already exist for this purpose including one by NASA for space craft boosters.

Good men need to take action. The only real action that you as an individual need to take is to convince two people that vitamin D will prevent disease and save lives and have them each convince two more people. This geometric progression will move around institutions that are all about the money. We have personal word of mouth and the experts on the internet and I encourage you to go for it. I am writing this blog because of this understanding that our institutions have been ignoring the facts for about 100 years.

Go into the sun and take two people with you and wear only enough clothes to keep from getting locked up.

– Pandemic Survivor

1. Vitamin D3 is made in the skin when cholesterol in the skin is radiated with UVB light. The skin and the liver make cholesterol screaming at you to go into the sun and then your levels of cholesterol will get to where they need to be. This is my belief.

2. Narcissism is when there is love for only the self without empathy. Obviously loving yourself is important just as institutions are important. In all cases there should always be empathy for others or it is just evil. I know this one ear, nose, throat doctor really well and when I told him that by getting replete with vitamin D that I do not have to clean the wax out my ears but twice a year instead of every month his comment was – do not tell anyone about it as that is half of my business. At first I thought he was just trying to be funny, but later I considered that maybe he was somewhat lacking in empathy.

Brigham and Woman’s Study on Vitamin D

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Well it looks like the NIH is finally taking this vitamin D thing seriously.  Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Woman’s Hospital are to enroll 20,000 people in a study taking vitamin D3 at 2,000 IU per day and fish oil for omega three fats.  Twenty five percent of the people in the study are to be black.  You can read the AP article here.

I believe the level of supplementation is less than half of where it should be, but this is enough to start to see the effect on chronic disease.  The real issue is that it will take several years into the study to start to see that the nation as a whole should be supplementing.  The question for you is that if it does no harm why wait until the study is complete to get your serum level high enough to where it will do some good.

The serum level should definitely be above 40 ng/ml of 25(OH)D and to get the best effect in the body it should be above 70 ng/ml.  The NIH fact sheet (Table 1) says that harm does not start to occur until it is above 200 ng/ml and animal studies show that below 400 ng/ml is safe.  This gives you a safety factor of at least 3 which is much better than most any prescription drug.

The thing that is really troubling to me is that many of the participants will be given placebos with no vitamin D.  I will pray for these people that they do no die from this continued deficiency of this vital steroid.  Hopefully as positive results are shown that the placebo group will also be given vitamin D.

If you decide not to wait because you already have one of the many chronic diseases from vitamin D deficiency then do what it says on the Vitamin D Council home page.  The volume of research is already HUGE and why we need another study is beyond me.  We have already done this the first part of the 20th Century when everyone was taking 2 tablespoons of cod liver oil, about 2600 IU of D3, per day without harm.  The only issue was that the vitamin A level may have been too high in the cod liver oil.  Look at the volume of research by disease at this Vitamin D Council Research Page.

I have been reading extensively on roles of vitamin A and how it interacts with vitamin D.  How these two act in synergy is still not complete science, but I do feel much better when I eat liver or take about 4000 IU of vitamin A from fish liver oil.  I will blog about this in the near future.

Here are the many diseases:  17 varieties of cancer as well as heart disease, stroke, hypertension, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, muscle weakness, muscle wasting, birth defects, periodontal disease, and more.

Why wait!?  It is your health and your life – be healthy!   The encouraging thing about this pandemic is that the news of vitamin D is moving very fast through word of mouth and blogs like this one.  We should start to see things like the overall rate of cancer start to reduce significantly as more people take it on themselves to supplement.

Go into the sun!!!  The best time is between 11AM and 2PM when the UVB radiation is at it highest.  Wear the least amount of clothes possible so that you do not get locked up and if you start to turn pink it is time to get out of the sun and wait until the next day.  As you start to tan it will take longer and only about 15 to 20 minutes to start depending on skin color will be long enough.  – Pandemic Survivor

The Balance of Getting Sun

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You know as I have read the literature about the amount of disease that could be prevented by getting enough sunshine, I have wondered about the balance of decision making in the medical industry.  I know that the argument about treatment versus prevention has gone on for a long time, especially since the medical insurance industry has arisen to be such a giant in the economy.

It seems like the warnings were coming on two fronts:

  • That is if we spent too much time in the sun we would get skin cancer and die.
  • The other front was less understandable by the average person that was that if we got too much vitamin D that we would die because of absorbing too much calcium.  Let’s see that warning that I got when I told my physician that I was going to take 5,000 IU of D3 a day:  “I learned in medical school that if you get too much vitamin D that your organs will turn into calcium rocks and you will die”.

What was this fear and where was it coming from.  Certainly skin cancer rates had gone up significantly since the 1960’s.  Let us see what else happened in the ‘60’s, oh yes that is when sun screen started to be promoted with extreme vigor. Maybe we can make some sense of this decision making by drawing a sketch of the weight of disease.

balance

Wow that does not seem to make too much sense does it.  Where is the balance?  What could be going on to make some sense of the decision making.  What about the medical economy that is generated from the treatment of all those chronic diseases so that there will be lots of jobs and extra cars and houses for people in the medical insurance industry:

balance1There now that seems to be a better balance.  But what do we do with this box?

balance2 – Pandemic Survivor