Tag Archives: vitamin D

Nano Policosanol Study Shows Increased Vitamin D

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Recently a clinical trial was started with 32 patients with many medical issues. P. R. Raghavan, Ph.D. has provided me with some of the initial results of the trail after thirty days.  There are sixty markers for health being used in the study.  The patients are being given 5 mg of per day of Metadichol (nano policosanol) and the markers being tested periodically.

The very interesting thing is that the vitamin D levels (25(OH)D) of the patients have improved by 38.2%.  The baseline for the trial was an average of 12.75 ng/ml.  After thirty days, the average of the group increased to 17.77 ng/ml.  The following graph shows the results of 31 patients with one of the patients left out as there was no change in vitamin D. This gives the result of an increase for 31 patients at 39.4%.  There was no supplementation of vitamin D or increased exposure to sunshine to account for this increase.

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In Dr. Raghavan’s findings for Metadichol, he has shown through nuclear receptor studies that Metadichol can act as an agonist, antagonist, and as an inverse agonist for the vitamin D receptor.  In conversations with Dr. Raghavan, he believes that Metadichol acts in place of vitamin D or as a helper to make the action of vitamin D more effective.  He states that the vitamin D receptor is like the conductor of an orchestra to allow other nuclear receptors to properly react for health. I asked him how the nano policosanol knows how to control the receptors.  He states that he believes it is through the communication of the genes in food with the human genome. 

The details of the complexity of nano policosanol interaction with the human genome is yet to be completely determined.  However, many thousands have taken Metadichol as a supplement in Asia for over a year with only positive results of health being reported.  Policosanol is the waxy aliphatic alcohol that is found on the sun exposed portion of many plants.  The Cubans have found in studies that policosanol is very effective in reducing total cholesterol and triglycerides and increasing HDL, the more desirable form of cholesterol for health.  In addition, Dr. Raghavan has shown that Metadichol affects many of the markers for health which include blood sugar and insulin response.  We will know more when the trial is completed.  The Chinese have allowed the product to be marketed as boosting the immune system. It is particularly effective for wound healing and Dr. Raghavan also plans to show how Metadichol affects metabolic age. 

Race Baiting in the Controversy of the MMR Vaccine and the CDC

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There has recently been news related to the admittance by the CDC of omitting data about the MMR vaccine and the African-American population. It seems that there is data from as early as 2001 that the MMR vaccine is responsible for a 240% increase in autism in that population. Words such as “murder” and “black babies condemned to medical violence” have been used.   I do not think that this is appropriate language. The greater question is why does dark skin cause a higher incidence of autism? Is there a key factor that allows a higher incidence of autism with the MMR vaccine? Here is Mike Adams article on the media cover up and his explanation. Mike is great in finding out the facts.  Also, here is a fifteen minute You Tube video of an interview about how the information came to light from independent journalist Gary Franchi.  Also, Dr. David Brownstein’s comments.

I believe there are two primary factors associated with the higher increase in autism in the dark skin population. First, I believe it is directly related to the well-established fact that people with darker skin have lower levels of vitamin D. The greater question should then be does lower vitamin D levels in children lead to a higher incidence of autism? Second, I do believe there are nutritional issues where children do not get enough sulfur proteins and vegetables and not enough folates, a B vitamin, (please note, not folic acid another health issue) to allow the body’s natural elimination process for toxins to occur.

Until scientist start using proper statistical methods to allow for a better understanding of multivariate causes, we will continue to have issues with clearly understanding the data. All studies should use nutritional testing in addition to testing for specific effects. There are methods that have been used in manufacturing that could readily be adapted to medical studies that have been in place since the 1970’s. These graphical methods not only allows the novice to see the effects, it also allows the reviewer to see which variant caused the effect and clearly shows interactions. Dr. John Cannell, Vitamin D Council,  has stated in the past that all of our medical studies may be invalid because of not testing nutritional factors specifically vitamin D.

To protect your child against the toxicity of the MMR vaccine, there should first be assurance that the child is getting enough sunshine for exposure to UVB or supplementation of vitamin D. Also the child should be getting enough of the sulfur proteins and vegetables to allow the natural detox functions. A colorful array of fruits and vegetables should also allow for enough B vitamins and minerals to allow the function of the protein sulfur processes to generate glutathione, a natural waste remover in the body. Here is a list of high sulfur foods from Livestrong.com.

It is not just the dark skin population that we should have concern, but all of the population. Political dalliances along with the understanding by our government that the economic strength of the nation through our health sector is more important than the health of the individual; we have created a very unhealthy population. Our children’s life expectancy is now less than their parents. With the election of a person with dark skin to President, we have caused more racial unrest through his actions. Race baiting in not the proper approach. God loves all his children – seek first love, joy, and peace. – Pandemic Survivor

How Much Vitamin D? How Much is Safe?

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This question keeps coming up for good reason.  It is so convoluted how the medical profession has treated vitamin D over the last hundred years because all types were called the same thing.  First was finding the marker for vitamin D that told the story about how it affects chronic disease or the storage form 25(OH)D, twenty-five hydroxyvitaminD, or calcidiol.  Typically and historically the industry has tried to use the steroid form or 1,25(OH)2D or one, twenty-five dihydroxyvitaminD or cacitriol to treat and the body’s mechanisms do not handle this real will.  Second there was the problem with toxicity because they were using too much of the steroid and with the issue of over irradiation when the pharmaceutical industry processes D2.  Typically the type that your body makes naturally, D3, when processed from lamb’s wool and fat does not require radiation.  Here is the blog where I talk about the serum level of the storage form and testing.

So as not to confuse you further, please consider only taking D3 or cholecalciferol as a supplement as this is what the body makes naturally.  If your doctor prescribes D2, ask him if it would be okay to take an equivalent amount of D3.  D2, unfortunately, is the only type that you can get prescription.  However, you can buy equivalent amount of 50,000 IU of D3 in a capsule thanks to the efforts of the Vitamin D Council.  Thank you Dr. John Cannell!!!  Just search the web for 50,000 IU of D3 and you will find several sources.

Now everybody cannot take the same amount and expect the same results.  I always thought this was just wrong for other pharmaceuticals.  Two aspirin for example for a 250 lb person will give a different effect than for a 100 lb person.

Everybody processes vitamin D differently so the only way that you can tell if you are getting enough is to have a serum test done.  On the serum test you will only be concerned with your 25(OH)D.

So where should this level be? Let’s look at three practicing doctors because this is the best method for understanding what they have discovered in their practices.  This is really how the art of medicine is practice anyway through trial and error in practice.

Dr. Elizabeth Vaughan from Greensboro, NC has a practice in integrated medicine.  She has been a practicing physician since 1979.  She also writes articles for one of the local health magazines, Natural Triad.  She is board certified and is a fourth generation physicians on both sides of the family.  I will not bore you with all of her credentials but if you want to read them they are here:

In her article for Natural Triad, “Lumpy, Bumpy, Painful Breast”, she stated that a serum 25(OH)D of 40 ng/ml is a minimum and that 70 ng/ml is the best protection.

Dr. William Davis is a practicing cardiologist in Milwaukee and writes the Heart Scan Blog.  If you have concerns about your heart this is a must read.  Here is what he has to say about vitamin D in his blog ‘A Healthy Level of Vitamin D’.   He agrees with Dr. Vaughn that 60 to 70 ng/ml is the right level of 25(OH)D.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council is a practicing psychiatrist and here is what he has to say after studying  papers and in discussion with other doctors about cancer.  In his January 2008 newsletter about the possibility of treating cancer he says that your serum 25(OH)D should be above 60 ng/ml.

So there you have it with three practicing physicians all saying to get the best benefit that you really should be above 60 ng/ml with 25(OH)D.  The amount of D3 that will you need to take to reach this level will be different for everyone and the only way that you know you have achieved this level is to test.  Start with about 1000 IU of D3 per 25 lbs of body weight per day and then have your serum tested after three months.  Your supplementation will by necessity be different in the summer and winter.  Before taking anything be sure to consult with your doctor about any preexisting conditions and treatment protocols that you have.  Most likely he will say that there will be no effect.  If he tells you that you will turn your organ to stones show him the NIH material Vitamin D Fact Sheet that says that a serum level of 25(OH)D (Table 1) of 200 ng/ml or less on a consistent basis is safe.  So there is a safety factor of three and if you consider animal studies from the NIH info at less than or equal to 400 ng/ml as safe then you have a safety factor of 6+.

In love, life and the pursuit of wellness always go into the sun!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

Vitamin D – Testing Serum Levels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D3 Test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D2 Test If you have taken D2.

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

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

Heart Disease and Vitamin D3

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

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

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

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

– Pandemic Survivor

Thinking about Cholesterol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vitamin D3 Good, Vitamin D2 Good for Rats

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This post was originally written three years ago, July 19, 2009.  Since we have been discussing D3 and D2, I thought that would be a good idea to revisit my thoughts at that time.

Well it seems like almost since the start of understanding vitamin D in the 1930’s that vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, is equal to vitamin D2, ergocalciferol. This thought continues on today even by some of the best researchers on vitamin D.

Now before we dive right into this discussion let’s just say that vitamin D3 is better than D2 for humans because of the impact on genes and it is less toxic. In other words, take D3 and not D2 as D3 is better. If your doctor prescribes D2, ask him if it is okay for you to take an equal amount of D3 as it will be more effective to your health. Vitamin D3 is readily available even in 50,000 IU quantities (since this post was written, the FDA has approved 50,000 IU of D3 from Bio Tech Pharmacal to fill scripts). If your doctor says no,  then get a second opinion or at least have him read from the journals listed below.

I would like to say thank you to the journals and to the authors who have made their papers open access to help in the understanding of treating chronic disease.

Consider this article that was written in 2008: “D2 as Effective as D3 in Maintaining Circulating 25(OH)D Levels” Holick et al, : J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2008 Mar;93(3):677-81. Epub 2007 Dec 18 Now this article was written in part by Dr. Michael Holick and I consider him to be one of the best researchers of vitamin D. After all he did get fired from his job after writing the book the “UV Advantage.” But the above paper really puzzles me and you have to read the abstract carefully to understand what Dr. Holick is saying.

First, he is talking about levels of serum 25(OH)D that are necessary to heal rickets. That is that 99% of all rickets is healed at 25(OH)D level of 20 ng/ml or less. So here is where the problem begins. Also read this statement carefully from the Conclusion: “A 1000 IU dose of vitamin D2 daily was as effective as 1000 IU vitamin D3 in maintaining serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and did not negatively influence serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels. Therefore, vitamin D2 is equally as effective as vitamin D3 in maintaining 25-hydroxyvitamin D status.”

Note very carefully in this statement how 25(OH)D, 25(OH)D2, and 25(OH)D3 are used. This is the language of confusion that has always been used in vitamin D research where everything that even closely resembles a D compound is called vitamin D. The sum of 25-hydroxyvitamin D2 plus 25-hydroxyvitamin D equals the total value of 25-hydroxyvitamin D. In the future, you should be very careful at the higher serum levels above 50 ng/ml because most of the work with vitamin D is now being done with D3. When you go to the higher levels,  then the above conclusion no longer holds.

At higher levels, the effect of serum 25(OH)D is better understood from this paper:

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 89, No. 11 5387-5391 Copyright © 2004 by The Endocrine Society, Vitamin D2 Is Much Less Effective than Vitamin D3 in Humans, Laura A. G. Armas, Bruce W. Hollis and Robert P. Heaney

Consider this statement from the abstract: “Vitamin D2 potency is less than one third that of vitamin D3. Physicians resorting to use of vitamin D2 should be aware of its markedly lower potency and shorter duration of action relative to vitamin D3.”

As you read the two papers you see that they are talking about two different ranges of 25(OH)D. The efficacy of disease prevention and treatment only begins’ at the higher ranges. And many researchers think that to get the best benefit, the 25(OH)D level should be above 60 ng/ml and that it should be 25(OH)D3. Now the normal of a sunny country according to a paper, Benefits and Requirements of Vitamin D for Optimal Health: A Review   by Dr. William Grant of SUNARC,  is a level of 25(OH)D3 of 54 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml. This sounds like a target for a normal range and is much more predictive of preventing disease than the range that the medical professions currently use of 20 to 100 ng/ml. It’s just that the minimum level needs to be raised.

I may have used the word efficacy above and should not have. Equal potentcy does not mean equal efficacy. That is that they treat disease at the same level of quality or with the same outcome. So even at the lower levels of potency where D2 and D3 are equal at raising 25(OH)D levels, I suspect that 25(OH)D3 is more efficacious in treating disease. Ah, the language of misdirection and the medical profession should be a blog on its own.

Equal potent does not mean equal efficacy!

Efficacy is what opponents to the population taking enough vitamin D to have an effect on disease are screaming about. “There is not enough research on the efficacy of vitamin D they scream,” but they have much thinner research on the various drugs that they are touting. “Heal the population but do not heal the portion that I have targeted for my drug because I have spent millions in research and we would not want something like sunshine to keep me from making a profit.”  Boy, I believe I was a lot angrier three years ago than I am now.  Of course this practice of confusing the population for profit goes on as shown by the conflicts of interest allowed by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board in 2011.

Of course it is forgotten that the test on efficacy was run during the twentieth century when most of the population was taking two tablespoons full of cod liver oil per day or about 2600 IU of D3. Ever hear of anyone dying from vitamin D toxicity? The Vitamin D Council on toxicity.  Neither have I. How about have you ever heard of anyone dying from liver failure where consumption of acetaminophen is the number one cause?

I am not bitter from the 25 years of chronic pain I suffer, just using this energy of healing to try to help the rest of you folks. Sorry if sometimes it sounds like whining but I will repeat from a previous blog that standing in Germany and watching the holocaust without taking action does not sit well with me and neither does watching people suffer and needlessly die from chronic disease.

And second so what do rats have to do with vitamin D2 and D3. Well it seems like rats just love vitamin D2 as it works better for them than does vitamin D3. Rats are nocturnal animals and get their vitamin D primarily from eating plants and fungi that have made D2 after being irradiated with sunshine. Isn’t it interesting that we have used rats extensively in testing for vitamin D when vitamin D2 is more efficacious in rats than vitamin D3 and this is the opposite for humans?

In the following paper, Dr. Vieth, a real hero in vitamin D research from the University of Toronto, shows how in other species that D3 is more effective by a factor of 10 at potency and that D2 is more effective for rats.

Here is the open access paper: The case against ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) as a vitamin supplement Lisa A Houghton and Reinhold Vieth, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 84, No. 4, 694-697, October 2006

So why and when did we start to use D2 and not D3. JY Moon and Dr. CJ Reich considered this very problem from a 1975 paper entitled “The Vitamin D Problem” . This is a most read and explains how the cases of toxicity did not start until we started to use D2 and how D2 can lead to more disease. Now this is in 1975 just prior to the time that I begin to start suffering pain and there was not one doctor good enough to ask about my serum vitamin D level – D2 or D3!  Don’t go into the sun and if you do wear sunscreen as it will prevent skin cancer, but what about the disc disease in my spine that is very similar to rickets?

Where are the government agencies that are supposed to protect us from the misadventure of profiteers? Oh yeah, they are protecting the profits and the economy for Wall Street.

Go into the sun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When you cannot, supplement with D3 only!!!!!!!!!!!!!!                                         – Pandemic Survivor  Well, it does not look like much has changed over the last three years in the clinical practice of treating vitamin D2 and D3 as equals!  I suspect there will be a lot of papers become unless when the effects of 25(OH)D2 versus 25(OH)D3 are finally determined.

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

A Tale of Two Women

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In February of 2008 we got some bad news.  Our friend’s daughter had cancer.  This was very devastating to us because we had two daughters so we knew how much our friends were hurting.  She was only 19 years old and the threat of cancer hanging over her was certainly frightening.  She was a heady smart intelligent young woman who loved to spend time reading and working on her computer.  She did not spend a lot of time outside and she had the loveliest white complexion that a lot of people would say was most pleasing.

We told our friends about the vitamin d thing and how it could help prevent and maybe even help the healing process.  Vitamin D3, it seems works, along several pathways to help heal disease.  Number one it helps at a genetic level to tell immature tumor cells that they are just that and to stop growing or cellular apoptosis. The D3 also helps the blood supply network that is feeding the tumor to stop growing from a genetic level because this is not the normal design of the body or angiogenesis.  Also it raises the level of innate immunity so the body develops appropriate defensins such as cathelicidin antimicrobial peptides, phagocytes, and neutrofil granulocites that help destroy and adsorb ‘bad cells’ and ‘foreign bodies’ in the blood system.  There is also an aid to T-cell regulation in this complex system of immunity.  And if you are taking chemo one of the problems is thrombosis and vitamin D3 helps to control this issue as well.

It would seem that if any of this were true that you would want to get your serum level of 25(OH)D up to that of a sunny country or about 54 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml to allow the body to heal itself.  However our friends, one of them a medical professional, thought that if there was anything to this understanding of vitamin D that the cancer ‘experts’ or oncologist would have long ago begin this practice of maintaining a ‘sunny country’ level of vitamin D3 in cancer patients.  This seemed like a reasonable decision at the time.  I just can’t imagine the advice and what type that you would get if a family member had cancer.

The treatment protocols for our friend seemed to progress well through the year and they thought that with the combination of radiation and chemo that they had the cancer under control.  On the Friday before thanksgiving they decided to take their daughter back to the hospital for evaluation because she was having a lot of problems with headaches.  It turns out hat she had more tumors that had come back so they decided to begin treatment again on the following Monday.  Their daughter died on Saturday before they had a chance to begin treatment.  We are grieving.

In February of 2008 we got some more bad news.  My brother called to say that he had a girl friend that was in a serious way with cancer.  It turns out that she had ovarian cancer that was discovered two years prior.  She had surgery and had the tumors removed as well as her uterus.  She was told at the time that the cancer had metastasized to so many places in her body that she would have only two years to live.  She had a great job in New York City but decided that life should be lived to its fullest and she would come back home and take a walk on the wild side.  Who could blame her for this action?

My brother said that she had internal bleeding as she was passing blood and that all of her lymph nodes were swollen all over her body and that she had other lumps.  It seems that her medical insurance had expired and that she ‘had enough’ of the medical system.  With not any energy left she decided to just go to bed to die.  My brother wanted to help but did not know what to do.  He called to ask if there was anything to this vitamin D.  I told him that I did not think that it would help anyone who was this far along with developed cancer and that the best thing he could do was to call the woman’s oncologist expert that we have in our family to see if he had any suggestions and to get this woman to a doctor.

My brother decided that he would just tell her about the vitamin D and see what she wanted to do.  She agreed that if it could even give her any relief that she was willing to try it.  She decided to take 50,000 IU of D3 per day or 1.25 milligrams for three months.  She took other supplements as well like calcium, vitamin A from fish liver oil, chelated magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, and a vitamin B complex.  I told my brother that it sounded like the alphabet of nutrition.  She had also read that it would help balance the body’s system to drink bicarbonate of soda every day so she did that.

In late October I got a call from the woman.  She wanted to call to say thank you for helping them find out about the information on vitamin D3.  She said that all of her symptoms were gone and that she had the most energy that she had in twenty five years.  She was out looking for work.  I asked her about the vitamin D3 and how she had taken it and she said that she took a 50,000 IU per day until the bottle was gone or 100 days (at this level of use you could expect toxicity to begin at about six months or more) and then took a 50,000 IU once per week.  After she realized that she was not going to die she went to a doctor that advised her to keep taking the vitamin D3 at one 50,000IU per week as it would certainly do no harm.

I just did not know what to think at this point.  Had my brother exaggerated the symptoms of her cancer?  Was there some kind of spontaneous remission of the cancer?  She had reunited with her mother and they had the church praying for her so maybe it was a miracle of God and whatever the path it certainly is a miracle of God.  Anyway I could not wrap my mind around this.  Maybe the researchers are correct but just did not know how correct they are.  I understand that there are ongoing trials for the prevention of cancer with vitamin D3 but has anyone thought about trials for the treatment of cancer.  Are we so tied into a system that only responds to profit that we can not just help heal people and consider their health a profit?

I checked just a couple of weeks ago and my brother said, ‘yeah she is doing just fine’.  I still do not know what to think!?

If you think you have any symptoms of cancer go to a doctor!  You may also want to think about using D3 to get your serum level to that of sunny country as it will not do any harm and may help you significantly.  Also, please consider you diet to determine if you are getting the correct foods for essential nutrition.

The Vitamin D Council’s comment on Cancer.

” The light shines in the darkness but the darkness has not understood.”  – John 1:5 NIV

The Change of the Medical Landscape in the Next Ten Years

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I submitted the below solution to an Innocentive challenge over a year ago that was sponsored primarily by medical insurance institutions as a way to immediately control cost.  I got a nice thank you from Innocentive and of course I did not win the challenge. I imagine that it was frightening to them to think that the medical economy could be reduced by at least 30%.

If you are a medical insurer, health provider, government, or a pharmaceutical manufacturer you will should have great concern when you read this message.

Note, I am neither a doctor nor a nutritionist.  I am just someone that discovered a 99% correlation between obesity and central air condition in the US over the last 20 years.  When I started looking for cause and effect I found sunshine.  I was healed of degenerative disc disease, severe sleep apnea, and after having two back surgeries I avoided three more. All of this healing and reduced medical cost in just four years. My physician tells me that I now have the health of a 25 year old and that is not too bad for a 57 year old man.  This was accomplished by simply supplementing with 4000 IU per day during the summer and 10.000 IU per day during the winter (body weight 230 lbs – 38 degrees North Latitude).  Without this understanding I would be either incapacitated or dead.

For 70 years now we have been ignoring the advantages of the sun or being replete in Vitamin D.  It is even longer if you consider that Niels Ryberg Finsen was given the Nobel Prize in 1903 for curing a form of TB (lupus vulgaris) using UV light.  It is amazing that we started to implement the understanding during the first part of the 20th Century by having the medical profession encourage everyone to take cod liver oil everyday.  We then discovered synthetic steroids in the fifties and the desire for profit and allopathic medicine outweighed our desire for individual health and preventative medicine.  We then entered the years of sun phobia and the entire population became less healthy and is kept alive with modern medicine.  This is great for the medical economy but poor for the individual health.  Our institutional ignoring of the facts has lead to the second ‘Holocaust’.  Sorry to use this word, but I just do not know what else to call it after personally suffering 25 years of torturous pain and loss of income.

The simple solution to improve health care is to heal the population.  The majority of chronic disease can be significantly reduced by changing the health policy of supplementation of vitamin D and the medical guidelines for treatment.  That is to encourage the population to get at minimum 3000 IU (adults) of D3 per day either through supplementation or exposure to the sun or other UVB light source with an upper limit of 10,000 IU per day.  The medical guidelines should be changed to assure that deficiency begins below 40 ng/ml of serum 25(OH)D3 and insufficiency below 60 ng/ml.  Normal range should be changed to 60 to 100 ng/ml for 25(OH)D3 instead of the current 20 to 100 ng/ml.

The present resistance is that there is not enough research to support such a change.  I say that this is just wrong as we have already had a public policy that was close to this when the medical profession suggested that everyone take two tablespoons of cod liver oil per day or approximately 2600 IU of D3.  It is interesting to note that in 25 years in suffering back pain and other disease that not one single doctor suggested that I might vitamin D deficient when we have a national health policy of supplementing milk for bone disease.  How easy is it to ignore the facts when there is no profit motive?

Given the antiviral, antibiotic, antifungal, cellular differentiation, other genetic signaling, autoimmune disease, hypertension, muscle strength, stimulation of the entire endocrine system, and cancer treatment and prevention, the medical industry will most likely shrink by 25 to 50 percent over the next ten years.  As the centers of cash flow change there would be a huge shift in the centers of economy.  The medical economic segment would shrink from first to about somewhere in the middle of the pack.  This would cause great economic concern over a 10 to 20 year period but would significantly improve the productivity and economy of the individual as the population became healthier and in general and an improvement of the economy of the whole.

I know that your goal is to significantly improve medical cost while not impacting medical income.  The question that you have to ask yourself is the health of the individual more important than the medical economy.  So far lobbying efforts have held government policy in check as is readily confessed by HHS Secretary Levitt in his number four principle of “Markets before Mandates”.  It is interesting to note that to “Value Life” is number nine.

You will not be able to stop the growing health benefit of this understanding.  Given that the medical publications are already making their way through the general population anything that you do to slow it down will make you look like perpetuators of the second ‘Holocaust’.  If you take only cancer and consider Lappe, et. al. study from Creighton University June 2006 that showed a reduction in total cancer of 60% when supplementing with only 1100 IU per day of D3, it becomes clear the ramifications of taking policy action.  If policy action is not taken soon the courts will become jammed with tort liability cases against the institutions of health and lead to economic failure in that manner.

Conclusion: Policy Change and Implementation by the US Government on Vitamin D

I will not list resources in this summary as it would take at least 10 pages.  However, please consider the Expert Opinion Diagnosis and Treatment of Vitamin D Deficiency by J. Cannell, B. W. Hollis, M. Zasloff, and R. P. Heaney.

Go into the Sun as I see a bright future in your life!