Vitamin D3 Misdirection

Posted on October 16, 2018 by Mark Pegram

“Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another.” -Wikipedia

Misdirection is a phrase normally used to describe magic and pick pocketing. Over the decades, since the discover of vitamin D for the use in medicine and health, misdirection of vitamin D has been the order of the day. Certainly, a lot of the misdirection is a poor understanding of all the benefits that vitamin D3 provides in very small quantities.

Also, the lack of understanding of how toxic higher levels of some sterols can be, like vitamin D2. When ergosterol is irradiated with UV light it is almost impossible to not form a toxic substance called toxisterol. Ergosterol was first isolated from ergot fungus. If you recall, ergotism or St. Antony’s Fire is the burning pain in limbs and manic behavior, sometimes with hallucinations. The ergot is found on mushrooms and fungus on grains like rye and corn when harvested after long periods of rain.

I believe the warnings about vitamin D that were identified during the last IOM study for vitamin D and calcium were all related to studies that were performed with vitamin D2. Vitamin D2 is not safe with a serum 25(OH)D2 higher than 50 ng/ml, and the IOM board said as much. However, they did not distinguish between D3 and D2 which is a huge mistake. There does not appear to be any toxicity with vitamin D3 under 200 ng/ml of 25(OH)D3. So, staying under the upper range of 100 ng/ml of 25(OH)D3 for treating chronic disease should be reasonably safe. During the first attempt of using vitamin D, there were no toxicity incidents reported until vitamin D2 started to be substituted for vitamin D3.

In the early 1900s, it was assumed that ergosterol occurred naturally in humans. From Moon and Reich in 1975, The Vitamin D Problem An Important Lesson.. “We know today that this interpretation is not correct. It is specifically 7-dehydro-cholesterol which is activated by ultraviolet radiation to have antirachitic properties, and the plant steroid, ergosterol, does not occur naturally in humans or other animals. By the time this mistake was discovered in the mid-30’s, it was too late to turn the tide and rather than recognize the nonidentity of irradiated ergosterol and the natural antirachitic factor, it was proposed that “vitamin D” is represented by a large number of activated sterols which constitute the ‘vitamin D-group.’” “Prior to the advent of irradiated ergosterol there is a paucity of information regarding possible toxicity of cod liver oil vitamin D.” “Within months after the introduction of Vigantol—one of the first commercial preparations of irradiated ergosterol —reports of toxicity began to appear.” “From that time to now, these reports on the toxicity of the “vitamin D group” have literally flowed from laboratories and clinics throughout the world at a phenomenal rate of more than one per month.”

With this understanding about the difference in vitamin D2 and D3 from the 1930s, why have we continued to use vitamin D2. If intentional to not correct the problem, then it is simply about the money in health. This type of error goes on even today with the use of folic acid as equal to methyl folate. At least half the population cannot covert folic acid, a manmade molecule. Last year, it was suggested by the FDA that the word folate not be allowed on vitamins. Many mothers continue to have babies with neural tube defects. This is to say nothing of the harm done to the general population by using folic acid as a nutritional additive in processed grains. The science is clear, it is the “money lords” that are the problem with health.

This type of error of either using natural compounds that are foreign to humans or synthetic compounds causes side effects. In either case, the side effects can be very serious to health. The fear in following the science is that the population could become extremely healthy. People would live longer. Very few over the county remedies, especially for colds and the flu, would no longer be necessary. The number of doctor visits could be reduced by as much as seventy-five percent as one medical practice discovered when adding necessary vitamins and minerals to their routine treatments. If you were a congressman in the US, what would you decide. A Social Security system that would fail because people live ten years longer, and the medical segment of the economy being reduced by fifty percent (medical industry is now twenty percent of GDP, approximately, which would cause a ten percent reduction in the total economy) or a large ill population to maintain the status quo? Would there be more deaths and hunger as the economy failed? A true dilemma. I do believe that acting to sustain an institution without regard to the wellbeing of the people it serves is pure evil. If the science had been allowed to come forward as it was discovered, we would not be in this situation of poor health and declining life span. –Pandemic Survivor

Clarification of Vitamin D Studies

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Mark Pegram

There has been much concern recently by the champions of vitamin D because of the cautionary peer reviewed publications about the dangers of vitamin D. Described have been J shaped curves and U shaped curves that say the effect of vitamin D improves health and then as the level gets higher causes worse conditions of disease. I believe that this is solely because of not distinguishing between the effects of vitamin D3 and vitamin D2.

The publication listed that has been of most concern is a study that was done in Norway. Norway has long used only D2 as a supplement. I am not fully sure of the reason, but have found that to be the case in my thousands of hours of reading. As an example, please find below a study (1) that was done on children to determine if supplementation of vitamin D would improve the serum level in children. This study was done in Norway in 2008. As you read through the paper, you will find the reason that they used vitamin D2 and not vitamin D3 for supplementation was vitamin D3 was not available in Norway. At least this paper distinguished between D2 and D3 in serum testing.

The huge mistake that has been made in medicine is that vitamin D2 is equal to vitamin D3. This was okay as long as you’re simply trying to prevent rickets of serum 25(OH)D at 20ng/ml or lower. I have written about this many times. Vitamin D2 at the levels within serum normal is significantly more toxic to the human body than vitamin D3. The problem was brought to light by Moon and Reich in their 1975 paper “The Vitamin D Problem.” I wrote about this many times and you can find a link below to describe this concern. The Vitamin D Debacle. (5)

I do believe that the concerned expressed by the IOM in their 2010 publication is correct when considering D2. They stated that serums levels should not go above 50 ng/ml 25(OH)D. I do believe that this is because they did not separate data and published papers that they used for vitamin D3 versus vitamin D2. Many times the published papers do not show the difference between vitamin D2 and vitamin D3. They simply state the serum level is 25(OH)D. This study was exceptionally muddled as they seem to have gotten the amount of vitamin D required to bring the population above 20 ng/ml 25(OH)D wrong according to Canadian researchers (9).

All of this confusion has been about slowing down the use of vitamin D as a supplement. The stated concern is about toxicity. This is founded in the way science has been practiced. Not as science, but as an economic advantage to keeping you using vitamin D3 in an amount less than beneficial to health. Please note that the recent publication (4) describing a concern for health at higher levels of vitamin D was done in Norway and is a republication of a study that was originally published (3, 2) in 2012. Add to this the weight that the American press has not published any articles about the findings of Dr. Paul Veugelers (9), Canadian researcher, that the IOM was wrong. This has been hotly debated in the Canadian press (6, 7) in addition to advertisements discussing the issue placed by a wealthy Canadian, Allan Markin (8). We were cosponsors of the IOM study with Canada. What is going on with the American press? Could it be about at least twenty percent of their advertising revenue comes from the healthcare industry? And a better question, where is our Department of HHS on this issue. Are they caught up in their principle of “markets before mandates” or the economy is more important to your health?

Your take away from all of this confusion should be simple. Get an adequate amount of vitamin D from all sources so that you achieve a serum level above 50 ng/ml 25(OH)D. If you are sick, then try to maintain your serum level above 80 ng/ml. All of these serum levels are within the normal expected ranges of 30 to 100 ng/ml. Minimize the amount of vitamin D2 that you are getting. Sources may be in your multiple vitamin/mineral and may be through the amount of sun (UV light) exposed fungus like mushrooms. As you know, mushrooms are grown in the dark or low light. Also if you are taking the prescription form of vitamin D, it is most likely D2 in 50.000 IU dose taken once per week. Talk to your doctor about this. Vitamin D3 is readily available as a prescription form and over the counter as 50,000 IU capsules produced by BioTech Pharmacol. Live long and be healthy. – Pandemic Survivor

References

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2009) 63, 478–484; doi:10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602982 http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v63/n4/full/1602982a.html
Perpetuating the myth. https://pandemicsurvivor.com/2012/05/30/too-much-too-little-negative-studies-for-vitamin-d-keep-coming/
Original Publication J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Aug;97(8):2644-52. doi: 10.1210/jc.2012-1176. Epub 2012 May 9 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22573406
Republication doi: 10.1210/jc.2014-4551 J Clin Endocrinol Metab http://press.endocrine.org/doi/pdf/10.1210/jc.2014-4551?utm_source=No+U+Shaped+Curve&utm_campaign=March+18+2015+Newsletter&utm_medium=email
https://pandemicsurvivor.com/2012/03/13/the-vitamin-d2-debacle/
Glove and Mail March 29 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-vitamin-d-dilemma-how-much-should-we-be-taking/article23672033/
Globe and Mail March 12 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/vitamin-d-supplements-arent-all-sunshine-and-lollipops/article23482364/
Advocacy Letter Allen Markin, http://www.purenorth.ca/?page_id=1356
IOM Recommendations Wrong https://pandemicsurvivor.com/2015/01/22/vitamin-d-recommendations-by-the-institute-of-medicine-are-wrong/

Letters to the Vitamin D Council

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Mark Pegram

Here are more letters to Dr. John Cannell. Topics include a person that became toxic which is really unusual. Others include: depression, reduction of c reactive protein, sleep disorders and the D2 imposter, 2 letters on asthma, resistance to sunburn, severe anxiety and depression, dermatitis in Finland, magnesium deficiency, ethnic minorities and autism in northern latitudes. Subscribe to his newsletter and consider donating to the cause of having every patient tested for serum 25(OH)D at the Vitamin D Council. http://www.vitamindcouncil.com

I hope that you enjoy reading Dr. Cannell’s newsletter. It is another good day in the land of vitamin D when we hear that people are being healed and relay their stories. This helps other begin to understand the action of what Oliver Gillie describes as a ‘magic shot gun’.

More letters‏

From:	John Cannell, M.D. (vitamindcouncil@vitamindcouncil.org)
Sent:	Wed 4/21/10 2:08 AM

The Vitamin D Newsletter

April 21, 2010

More letters

This is a periodic newsletter from the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. If you are not subscribed, you can do so on the Vitamin D Council’s website.

This newsletter is now copyrighted but you may reproduce it for non-economic reasons without prior permission as long as you properly attribute its source.

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I was taking a vitamin D3 liquid oil supplement 60,000 IUs/day regularly and 180,000 IUs/day fairly occasionally for about 8 months in ’09 in an attempt to get over a chronic sinus infection and prevent cold/flu. Last November ’09, I started having symptoms for irregular heartbeats, nervousness, insomnia, weight loss, difficulty concentrating, and muscle weakness. I met with my physician and had blood work done. My vitamin D3 level was 406 ng/mL and my calcium elevated and probably had been that high for several months. I stopped taking the supplement immediately. But my physician didn’t recommend anything else at the time except to recheck the blood levels in a few months. I am 46 and have been in excellent health all my life with no previous medical issues.

The symptoms have not gone away entirely. I was not aware of the potential toxic effects of D until a few weeks ago. I recently found out that vitamin D toxicity can cause hypercalcemia.

Is there anything more I can do now to reverse the effects of vitamin D toxicity and possible hypercalcemia that may have been present for several months last summer/fall? Should I have my kidney function and heart function checked? What can I do to reverse effects on my nervous system and brain now? What tests can I do to keep checking the levels or know if I did any permanent damage to these soft tissues?

Finally, my daughter (5 yrs. old at the time) was also taking about 20,000 IUs/day fairly regularly over the same period of time. She didn’t appear to have had any adverse symptoms but now I’m really concerned and scared she may have been toxic too. What tests should I ask to be done to check her for Vitamin D toxicity and hypercalcemia?

Please respond and help if you can, I’m having a hard time finding good sources of information for my questions! Any information or help would be greatly-greatly appreciated!

Thank you,

David, Utah

Dear David:

Congratulations, you have indeed made yourself toxic by knowingly taking too much supplemental vitamin D, one of the first such cases I am aware of in the modern literature. Have your daughter’s 25(OH)D and serum calcium checked; she was also taking potentially toxic doses.

The treatment for you and your daughter to not take any vitamin D and both of you should stay out of the sun until your 25(OH)D levels return to normal. Drink 8 eight-ounce glasses of water a day and have your daughter drink four. You both should have a chemistry panel periodically to see if kidney function is normal and to check serum calcium although I doubt that your calcium is still elevated. I doubt you have permanently damaged any internal organs as most cases of toxicity, with 25(OH)D levels higher than yours, did not result in permanent damage to the kidneys or other internal organs.

Also, readers should be aware, if they are not already, that vitamin D does not prevent all viral respiratory infections. As we noted in correspondence to our first influenza paper, rhinoviruses, the most common cause of the common cold, are not seasonal; that is, they are just as common in the summer as in the winter, and they do not have a lipoprotein coat for antimicrobial peptides to destroy. Also, in a recent Japanese paper, influenza B was not prevented by vitamin D, only influenza A. Although many people get influenza symptoms and are worried enough to go to their doctors, and their doctors worried enough to get an influenza A test, only about 3% of the specimens submitted to CDC surveillance centers are positive for influenza A.

If you are already taking 5,000 IU a day and you get a cold, chances are that more vitamin D will not help much. No one should take large doses for more than a few days and then only if the infection is severe. Certainly the doses you took were toxic and it sounds as if you still suffered from viral respiratory infections.

Dear Dr. Cannell:

Thanks for taking time for my e-mail. I heard Dr. Cannell on the radio about a month ago talking about his vitamin D formula and as someone who has been involved in holistic nutrition and natural health most of my life as a layperson, I really appreciate what you do for people, and have upped my D on your recommendation. I absolutely have noticed more of an attitude of wanting to participate in life and less a feeling of “why bother,” after a month of increased dosage. I will get my levels tested sometime this year.

Currently I do homecare and my present client/friend doesn’t get outdoors at all. She was taking 2000 iu of D per day for general purposes until I spoke with her about Dr. Cannell’s radio spot. She upped it to 5000 iu with your formula and said she felt a difference in her mood within a week! Bear in mind this is someone who was on antidepressants for decades and has struggled with depression all that time, despite the meds. She wants to wean herself off her meds and for her to say something has helped her mood is anywhere from extraordinary to miraculous!

Keep up the good work!

Jesse, Pendleton, OR

Dear Jesse:

Tell your friend to keep taking her meds. As much as I like to hear what you said, it is more likely that this improvement in your friend’s mood will not be permanent. If she does decide to go off her meds, do it very slowly with the help of her doctor. Vitamin D deficiency is but one cause of major depression; there are lots of others. However, I now recommend that anyone struggling with depression should take at least 10,000 IU /day with frequent 25(OH)D blood tests to assure levels of at least 100 ng/ml and to monitor for toxicity.

Depression is a serious illness with a known morbidity and mortality and thus it warrants more aggressive treatment than someone in good health. Some readers have written that they require 50,000 IU/day to alleviate depressive symptoms but that should only be done under the care of a knowledgeable physician, with frequent 25(OH)D levels, as such doses may cause toxicity.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I just wanted to share. I take 20,000 unites per day for 2 years now. I have experienced only positive results. My levels are currently 91 ng/ml. My high sensitive CRP decreased from 25 to .01. All the people I provide health coaching to (as an occupational therapist) are deficient or have absolutely none at all as a blood level.

Mary, Long Island, NY

Dear Mary:

Great but keep checking your 25(OH)D levels. Several studies are confirming that vitamin D lowers CRP. I’m so glad you are doing this on your own for patients, as an occupational therapist, but are you putting all your patients on 20,000 IU/day? I hope not. The proper dose for healthy adults is 5,000 IU/day.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I am a neurologist in Oklahoma. I wrote to you a few months ago about the observation that all of my patients with sleep disorders had low vitamin D and that when I was able to replace D, and get the level above 50, their sleep and secondarily several of their neurologic problems, improved, especially their headaches.

I have since stumbled into a few unexpected holes and have learned a lot but now have some questions regarding the D2 imposter. My medical colleagues that are using D2 (Drisdol) for bone health have no symptoms to follow in response to supplementing and think that they have accomplished what they want when they get the 25(OH)D2 above 50. The problem is that I am using D3 supplement for other things and have learned that the sleep and headaches improve with the right dose of D3 but that the same dose of D2 does not work at all.

On several patients even though the 25(OH)D2 level is up, their sleep and headaches are no better. For example, today I saw a woman who has all the same symptoms as all my other patients; poor sleep, indigestion, daily headache, all worsening after her second pregnancy 4 years ago. Her 25(OH)D2 was 52 and she was not supplementing, so I did not ask her to take D3. After receiving several calls from her about her headaches not getting any better I decided to try supplementing D3 the way I am in all the other patients at 20,000 IU for one month. Since starting D3 supplement her sleep is better and her headaches are gone.

Why is D2 used at in a prescription when it is not natural to our body? What has been the motivation for using it? Why is it used in milk instead of D3? I am about to look into the literature about whether it has some exclusive effect on bone health but I’m noticing that most of the literature is sloppy about which D they’re talking about in terms of the 25OH. Why are they sloppy about this? Has there been literature that supports the fact that D2 and D3 are actually identical?

The sleep effect ties to many of the neurologic disorders that get better with D3, improved sleep, seizures, headaches, vertigo, tremor, gait, Parkinson’s, depression, psychosis, hypertension. I’m interested in anyone else watching similar effects on their patients?

Thanks for your comments, explanations, and exclamations.

Gormon Servasta M.D., Oklahoma

Dear Dr. Servasta:

That is great news for millions of headache sufferers, as well as those suffering from other neurological disorders. I always recommend D3 and see no reason for anyone to take D2, it is not human vitamin D. It is a vitamin D analogue that happened to be discovered before D3 by the University of Wisconsin, which patented it and it was then sold, and still is, as the only available prescription vitamin D, Drisdol.

Currently, most scientists are specifying whether they use D2 or D3 in their studies but that was not always the case in the past. All studies done with D2 will need to be repeated with D3; if the studies were negative, they need to be repeated to see if they are also negative with D3; if they were positive, they need to be repeated with D3 to see if the effect size is the same or not. Most milk now contains D3. If your patient had a 25(OH)D2 of 52 and had not been on D2 supplements or eating large amounts of irradiated Shitake mushrooms, the result was a lab error.

D2 or ergocalciferol does not exist in detectable quantities in the human body, only in tiny quantities in some plants and, as such, is “unnatural” when in the human body. You cannot get any appreciable D2 by eating vegetables except for some irradiated mushrooms. D2 is metabolized to various substances in the body, many of which are not normally present in humans, although these metabolites have never been shown to be dangerous.

There is also some evidence that D2 is more toxic in overdose, which is curious as it is only about half as potent as the naturally occurring vitamin D3, cholecalciferol. I have seen evidence that humans prefer D3 over D2, in that, if both 25(OH)D2 and 25(OH)D3 are present in serum, over time the 25(OH)D3 falls faster than the 25(OH)D2, suggesting the body preferentially uses 25(OH)D3, if it is available. For any scientist readers, this would be an easy and important study to do.

Your experience that D3, but not D2, helps neurological symptoms is interesting. Such comparisons of the efficacy of D3 versus D2 on neurological symptoms do not exist in the medical literature, another important study to do . Since I have never given anyone D2, I cannot comment further.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

This is a letter of gratitude to you! Ever since I read what you wrote about asthma several years ago, I have taken first 5,000 then 10,000 IU daily of Vitamin D3 from Bio Tech my energy has improved DRAMATICALLY and my asthma is completely gone! It has taken over a year, but it worked!

I have thrown away all of my allergy medicines and all of my asthma medicines and have never gone back!

I am forever grateful to you Dr. John Cannell.

Harry, Pennsylvania

Dear Harry:

You’re welcome. The same Japanese randomized controlled trial just published that showed vitamin D prevent influenza A, also showed that the placebo group was six times more likely to get an asthma attack then the vitamin D group and that was with only 1,200 IU per day in ten-year-olds.

There is a growing literature suggesting that vitamin D may not just help asthma, but may cure it. In my experience, how long it takes to help asthma depends on how long you have had asthma. Adults with asthma should take 10,000 IU per day and shoot for a 25(OH)D of around 100 ng/ml. Children with asthma should take at least 2,000 IU for every 25 pounds of body weight, also shooting for a 25(OH)D of around 100 ng/ml. Like depression, asthma is a disease with a serious morbidity and mortality, thus more aggressive dosing is indicated.

After the asthma disappears, slowly reduce your asthma meds under the supervision of your doctor, then slowly reduce the dose of vitamin D to standard doses of 5,000 IU/day for adults, and 1,000 IU/day for every 25 pounds of body weight in children, keeping 25(OH)D levels between 50 and 80 ng/ml.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I had asthma for 20 years with allergies and severe breathing issues. After it was too much to bear any longer, I went with very high doses of Vitamin D3 and was able to quit the prednisone. I took about 30,000 IU per day for I think a few weeks then 10,000 IU/day for the last year and have not had ANY asthma again this spring! I threw out all my inhalers and I stay at 10,000 IU per day now! Life is good! I love my vitamin D3!

Thanks for everything.

Trish, California

Dear Trish:

You are welcome. The “Stoss” or short-term high daily dose for a few weeks is a good idea to get your levels up quickly if you have a serious illness. It would have been better to put your asthma meds in a drawer rather than throw them out as asthma is an episodic disease and it is too early to know for sure that it will not come back.

Also, when on 10,000 IU/day get periodic 25(OH)D levels; to date, no one has published literature on long-term safety, years, of 10,000 IU/day.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I just came back from a vacation in the Caribbean and you are right about what you wrote a few years ago about vitamin D and sun sensitivity. Before, I always burned easily as I am fair-skinned. But, before this vacation I had been taking 5,000 IU per day for about 9 months. My skin was much more resistant to the sun; sometimes it would get red and I thought I was burned but the next morning it was gone.

Thank you, it is so great not having to always worry so much about getting burned.

Justine, New Jersey

Dear Justine:

You’re welcome but don’t throw away your sunblock. If you remember from my past newsletters, my daughter Eliza discovered vitamin D’s ability to prevent sunburn and my fair-skinned river-rafting friend confirmed it. My daughter had been taking 5,000 IU per day for ten months and decided she wanted to tan in a suntan parlor. Instead of burning the first few times, she quickly developed a rich tan.

My friend took high doses of vitamin D for a few weeks before rafting and, for the first time in his life, did not burn when rafting the Snake River. In fact a businessman is now selling a product at sun-tanning parlors to prevent burning; the product’s active ingredient is simply 30 tablets of 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3, to be taken daily for one month before tanning.

This is the time of year many people sunburn. I have thought a lot about the whole issue of sunburning and would like to propose a theory. I do not think sunburning is entirely without an evolutionary benefit. The final conversion of vitamin D in the skin requires heat and the heat of sunburn will increase the amount of vitamin D made by any one sun-exposure. Thus, sunburns evolved for a reason. Nature cares less if you damage your skin with sunburn; Nature cares more that vitamin D deficient people maximize any one sun-exposure. That is, people with low 25(OH)D levels have a reason to burn, they make more vitamin D. Easy sunburning and sun sensitivity may simply be a symptom of vitamin D deficiency. This is also a good study for some young vitamin D scientist to do.

Vitamin D sufficient people do not need any extra vitamin D from the sun, so the extra heat in the skin generated by sunburn is not needed. (As an aside, I also predict that 25(OH)D exerts negative feedback on 7-dihydro-cholesterol, vitamin D’s precursor molecule.) Vitamin D sufficient readers will see, when they go into the sun this spring, that it takes longer to burn, that their skin is less sun-sensitive, and that when redness does occur, it is often gone the next day. However, beware: vitamin D sufficient people can still sunburn, it just takes longer. Sunburns increase your risk of melanoma and other skin cancers.

Also, some fair-skinned people have a genetic variation that prevents their skin from making melanin pigment. Theoretically, vitamin D should not help them from sunburning. But don’t confuse fact with theory. The fact is that some skin type 1 people cannot make much melanin; the theory is that vitamin D will not protect their skin from sunburn. However, I know of some very fair-skinned, blond-headed, blue eyed, skin type 1 people whose skin became less sensitive to the sun after taking 5,000 IU/day.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

Thank-you for all of your hard work! I read what you wrote on your website and my son (at age 15) was diagnosed with D deficiency (his levels were 7 ng/ml), after many long years with severe anxiety and depression and psychiatric meds that didn’t work. Vitamin D3 10,000 IU/day was a miracle for his recovery as he is now a freshman in college!

Sincerely,

Connie, St. Paul, MN

Dear Connie:

You are welcome. Again, vitamin D deficiency is but one cause of depression. How much of it is caused by vitamin D deficiency, how it will respond to adequate doses of D3, and what dose to use is simply not known. Err on the side of higher doses with frequent 25(OH)D blood tests when treating depression. Documented vitamin D toxicity has never been described with 25(OH)D levels below 200 ng/ml. Again, 10,000 IU per day requires periodic 25(OH)D levels.

Dear Dr. Cannell:

I appreciate greatly Dr. Cannell`s good work for this fundamentally important issue of getting the knowledge about the importance of vitamin D for health and prevention of disease, through to the consumers.

I am testing every patient of mine for vitamin D. Not surprisingly, all of us Finns or anybody living here in Finland is vitamin D deficient, the average winter-time blood value being only 18ng/l ( equals 45 nmol/l.) for my patients.

Case: A 30 yr old lady had her first blood test done only 4 months ago. It gave 10ng/l. She has suffered of severe atopic dermatitis since early childhood with a lot of itching and even bleeding of skin after scratching the skin during the night. Additionally, she has obtained severe migraine headaches, leading to vomiting in the end, since the age of 14 onwards. She has got pollen allergies and during the last few years she has developed severe food allergies as well. She has not been able to sunbathe, because it has caused intolerable burning and itching sensation in her skin. The atopic dermatitis has been getting worse by exercise and sweating and sauna. The latter points have come to the picture 5 years ago and have gotten worse by time.

Four months ago, I gave her a detailed supplementation program, in which D3 plays a major role (5,000 IU/day). I have included calcium and the cofactors you have in your formula as well in the treatment, such as magnesium, zinc, boron and K2.

She has made an amazing recovery of almost all of her symptoms. Skin problem is completely cured, no itching, no scaly dead skin, no redness, no inflammation any more. Migraine headaches, which used to be 1-2 times a week, have dramatically diminished. She has had only 1 migraine attack for the last 4 months, compared to average 16-32 attacks previously during the same time period.

She is slowly increasing the number of previously intolerable foods into her diet. She can now exercise with full energy and sweating is not a problem anymore, as it does not cause any burning or itching sensation either. She has had only minor pollen symptoms now, which is also completely new for her. She has not been using any antihistamines so far this spring. Earlier she was forced to use prescription allergy-medications every year.

She looks better, because the skin of her face has become clear and beautiful, with a healthy-looking, shiny complexion. She is so happy of this progress that she cannot stop smiling. She is going to re-test now her vitamin D-value and we will take care of the right dosages accordingly.

This case is just one example of what the right supplementation may do for a severely suffering patient, with no side-effects. This lady had never heard of you but she does now.

Regards from Finland

Jerkko Mause, MD, Finland

Dear Dr. Mause:

That is great news; I wish all patients would experience the same miraculous recovery. I’m glad you used the cofactors, magnesium, zinc, boron, and K2, as deficiencies in these four are probably as common as vitamin D deficiency. That is why I added them to my formula, which Purity Products markets via telemarketing. Beware: my family gets a buck for every bottle sold.

http://www.purityproducts.com/purityEcommerce/control/productDetail?productId=dr-cannells-advanced-vitamin-d

Also, I doubt anyone can get toxic on my formula. For example, if you decide to take 50,000 IU per day of my formula, it would require 20 tablets a day and you will be getting 1,250 mg of magnesium per day and, after a few weeks, you will have so much diarrhea that you will not have time to get to the medicine cabinet.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr. Cannell:

Curing magnesium deficiency with seeds and nuts is like curing vitamin D deficiency with egg yolks.

Barry, New York

Dear Barry:

Well said. Eating a handful of seeds and nuts every day and changing to whole grains may add another 100 mg/day of magnesium to total magnesium intake but at least 500 mg/day extra is needed to correct a magnesium deficiency.

As I have written, magnesium has similarities to calcium. Both are stored in the bones and bones need both to be healthy. Deficiencies of neither can be detected by a simple blood test. Total body deficiencies of both are the rule not the exception. Finally, vitamin D is involved in the absorption of both calcium and magnesium.

If the reader is like most Americans, you are deficient in magnesium. I recommend a product made by Trace Minerals (no financial relationship to the Council or my family), in Roy, Utah: (801) 731-6051.

One comes with a 1:1 calcium: magnesium ratio:

http://www.traceminerals.com/products/bone-joint/complete-calcium-magnesium-1-1-bone-joint

It also comes with a 2:1 calcium: magnesium ratio:

http://www.traceminerals.com/products/bone-joint/complete-calcium-magnesium-2-1-bone-joint

What I especially like is the trace minerals it contains from sea salt with the sodium removed. Bones need many of these trace minerals to be healthy. The 500 mg of magnesium will treat a magnesium deficiency but it will take a year or two to replenish your bone stores of magnesium. The amount of calcium that you choose depends on your dietary calcium. If you do not eat dairy products choose the 2:1 Ca:Mg ratio, if you eat dairy at least twice a day, choose the 1:1 ratio.

John Cannell, MD

Dear Dr Cannell:

It was interesting to read your recent newsletter regarding poor vitamin D status of Somali women and risk of autism and I was glad to see that scientists are confirming your autism theory. I am a registered dietitian from the UK and have a very strong interest in Vitamin D research.

I have a particular interest in ethnic minorities, especially Somali women whom I have treated several for vitamin D deficiency. Two of the Somali ladies I have treated are sisters, and both have multiple lists of health complaints from rare autoimmune skin conditions to the obvious aching bones and muscle weakness.

One of the sisters has an autistic son who is 3 years of age now. I am sure this is of no surprise to you the fact that she has an autistic child but her first vitamin D test came back at a staggering 0.5 ng/ml! Which I believe would be an accurate reading as it was carried out via the NHS and all local tests are sent to labs which are DiaSorin compatible.

I have not heard of vitamin D levels that low but I would be interested to hear if you have heard of similar experiences.

I really appreciate the valuable work you undertake in order to get the message out there about such an important autism issue.

Kind Regards

Elliott, UK

Dear Elliott:

Always trust low 25(OH)D levels and always repeat high 25(OH)D levels. Such low levels are not uncommon and indicate the person is at risk for sudden death from hypocalcemic seizures, should their calcium intake falter

As regards the three-year-old Somali child with autism, remember that vitamin D, at 2,000-5,000 IU/day for every 25 pounds of body weight, may have a treatment effect in autism. The sooner it is started, the better.

In Minnesota, the Somali immigrants call autism the Minnesota disease, in Sweden the Somali immigrants call autism the Swedish Disease, but in Somalia, autism has no name.

John Cannell, MD

Executive Director

Vitamin D Council

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Vitamin D – Testing Serum Levels

Posted on October 26, 2009 by Mark Pegram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D3 Test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D2 Test If you have taken D2.

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

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

Vitamin D and the Doctor II

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Mark Pegram

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vitamin D3 Good, Vitamin D2 Good for Rats

Posted on July 19, 2009 by Mark Pegram

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.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Vitamin D

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Mark Pegram

Where did we go so wrong with sunshine and vitamin D? Were these just people in the medical professions ignoring the facts as they concentrated each day on how to heal chronic disease? If they were truly concentrating on chronic disease, why wasn’t the pharmacology of vitamin D studied more for determining how it could possibly help to heal disease?

This is a lot of questions considering the millions of people who have died of these diseases in the twentieth century. How can we make sense of this without considering that just maybe some misdirection was happening? In the early forties, one researcher made the statement that the amount of skin cancer that was prevented by staying out of the sun was minor compared to all the other cancers that could be prevented by going into the sun. What happened to him and why wasn’t this line of research pursued?

Well it seems that there was some fear going on by those who held intellectual property rights to vitamin D and how it could be used to treat disease. Supplements that you could buy over the counter had been made with extremely small amounts of vitamin D to the point that it was not beneficial for use. It seems that the manufacturers thought that these supplements would interfere with their sales of prescription drugs. I suspect there was also the thought that there were other applications like cancer that could be treated and prevented with higher amounts and the dollar signs were going off in their eyes.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation held the rights to the vitamin D patents and licensed them to anyone who wanted to make vitamin D products. It seems that they were trying to manage the license to maximize profits without concern of what they were doing to the health of the community.

The government brought suit against WARF and 17 other entities for trust violations on vitamin D in 1944. It appears that there was ‘arbitrary and unreasonable prices’ and limited the potency of preparations so that it would not compete with their pharmaceutical products. Now since this was when WWII was raging, I doubt that anyone in the press was paying too much attention. What were a few kids with rickets not being able to get the vitamin D they needed as opposed to all that was going on with the war?

The settlement in the case happened when WARF turned over the patents for public use. Here is the headline from the NY Times in 1946:

VITAMIN D PATENTS GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC; U.S. Court Decree Ends Civil Anti-Trust Suit Against Wisconsin Foundation PROHIBITIVE COST CITED Asst. Dist. Attorney Says Persons Who Most Needed Rickets Cure Were Unable to Get It

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 15, 1946, Tuesday
Page 16

CHICAGO, Jan. 14–Patents controlling Vitamin D, the so called “Sunshine Vitamin,” which prevents and cures rickets, became public property today when Federal Judge John P. Barnes signed a consent judgment terminating a civil anti-trust suit filed last October against the Wisconsin Alumni Foundation and seventeen other defendants.

You can purchase the article from the NEW YORK TIMES archives.

It seems that this brought an end to the misadventure with vitamin D as far as rickets was concerned. The patents had become public property so that anyone could make D3 and the market place would make the vitamin readily available to those who needed it. But then THE LIE began to be perpetuated about how D3 and D2 were equal in the human body in the 1930’s. This was great news for WARF because they continued to control the rights for many D analogs and perhaps D2 as well. D2 is not a natural substance in the body as it is made from irradiating fungus.

But of great concern is that the beneficial findings on vitamin D and its effect on chronic disease were not published because WARF wanted to protect its intellectual property. It appears that letting people die was okay as long as WARF protected its property. You can hear a recent presentation at youtube where Hector De Luca, professor of biochemistry UWM, describes this very thing. You can hear how wonderful the drug has been to Wisconsin in funding research but says nothing about how many people died because they did not publish the beneficial findings. Vitamin D, the New Old Wonder Drug: Listen to the introduction about how many vitamin D analogs have made life wonderful for millions of people and profited WARF. It just makes me angry as this protection of an institution for profit brought much disease that led to pain and death to others in not telling how just plain vitamin D3 would get the job done. All very legal and deadly! It looks like the thing that they were sued for in 1944 is still going on in a different format.

If you really wanted to protect your patents on vitamin D analogs and improve your market size, how would you do it? You certainly would not want to report how good a job just plain old vitamin D3 would do as this is the least expensive of the supplements on the market. If people got replete with D and 75% of chronic disease disappeared what would happen to the medical industry? After all, it has a right to protect itself and its growth.

You know what would really be great for the growth of this industry would be to figure out some way to keep people out of the sun. If we can’t keep them out of the sun at least figure out a way to prevent the skin from making vitamin D. Remember that cute little girl with her ‘hiney’ showing bright white as the dog pulled her paints down from the 1960’s? And here is Plough, Inc. finding a great new market for selling a consumer product that would be really beneficial to millions to reduce burns and prevent skin cancer – sunscreen – the DAMN LIE.

It did prevent sun burns and this was great for the entertainment industry and all the ‘fun parks’ that were being developed because people could stay out in the sun longer and spend more money. However, since sunscreen was presented in the sixties, the rate of skin cancer has gone up about two fold or more.(See Note 1.) There is a great article in To You Health called, “ The Sunscreen Dilemma”, by Jacob Schor, ND. For further reading you may also consider this as well hypothesis about melanoma from 1993: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8287144 . The increase of many other chronic diseases has been documented during the same period. The vector of vitamin D3 in so many chronic diseases is amazing and I suspect the number one cause of the increase in chronic disease. The second being exposure to so many industrial chemicals that in some cases are put into our foods and call ‘food’.

So Plough did really well in the sixties selling Coppertone and its Dr Scholl’s line of foot products. So what if you created a market by keeping people out of the sun and increasing chronic disease – how could you profit from it? By developing and selling drugs for treating chronic disease. So Schering a company that specialized in drugs to treat chronic disease merged with Plough in 1971 to form Schering-Plough, Inc. In a recent review of SP’s annual report it was interesting to note that 20 percent of their income was from their sunscreen products and 80 percent was from statins, hypertensive, chemotherapy, and other drugs for treating chronic disease. It was the ‘70’s when the push for really using sunscreen products truly began and it was a great marketing campaign to sell pharmaceuticals for treating chronic disease. What—?

Now with a pending class action suit that was filed against SP and others in California in 2006 and at least one study coming back to show that sunscreen may actually make the incidence of skin cancer worse, Schering-Plough sells out to Merck. Now I suspect depending on how the common stock was handled that the liability exposure was significantly reduced by this acquisition.

Ah, lies, damn lies, and the conforming to the institution for protection of the institution truly is evil as described by M. Scott Peck in ‘People of the Lie” when empathy is not taken into consideration. Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council simply says that we have ignored the facts over the years. I say that we have ignored the facts as negligent misadventure with intent to profit from death and disease.

GO INTO THE SUN AND DO NOT WEAR SUNSCREEN. STAY ONLY LONG ENOUGH UNTIL YOU JUST START TO TURN PINK. WEAR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CLOTHES POSSIBLE DURING THE MIDDAY SUN. IN THE WINTER USE TANNING BEDS OR SUPPLEMENT WITH VITAMIN D3. – Pandemic Survivor

Note 1: Skin cancer rates from 1975 to 1995 annual percentage rate increase was 5.1 percent. Given that the natural logarithm of 2 times 100 is about 70. 70/5.1 = 13.7 years to double. So at 28 years we would have a factor of times 4. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/othskin.html SEER fact sheet on skin cancer.

Vitamin D, Disease, and Research

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Mark Pegram

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

Posted on June 28, 2009 by Mark Pegram

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

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Mark Pegram

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 20^th 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!

Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor

Changing the Face of Health with Vitamin D

Tag Archives: vitamin D2

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Clarification of Vitamin D Studies

Vitamin D – Testing Serum Levels

Vitamin D and the Doctor II

Vitamin D3 Good, Vitamin D2 Good for Rats

Lies, Damn Lies, and Vitamin D

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Vitamin D, Disease, and Research

A Tale of Two Women

The Change of the Medical Landscape in the Next Ten Years