Posted by Tina
You won’t need a prescription to benefit from vitamin D but you should consult with your doctor anyway to determine the proper dosage for you. This vitamin will save both your health and your wallet. Widespread use of this one supplement could reduce the cost of healthcare significantly.
Once the requisite low-cost vitamin D therapies are fully adopted, Americans could save $50 billion annually in direct and indirect costs of disease. This, in turn, would have a real impact on our total health care spending.
Whoa! If you think that’s a bunch of hooey you need to read the full article to see what the scientific community is now beginning to understand about this important vitamin…which isn’t a vitamin at all but a “prohormone” that “acts to regulate multiple important biological functions.”
Dr. Michael Holick describes widespread vitamin D deficiency as a “silent epidemic” and suggests that many of the diseases and conditions that we now experience can be avoided completely or diminished greatly in their severity.
In fact, Dr. Holick and others have demonstrated that osteomalacia is preventable and treatable using vitamin D. Osteoporosis, another bone disease, is also related to lack of vitamin D.
That discovery alone is legitimately worthy of a Nobel prize. In Holick’s words, though, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Though Holick began documenting the connection between vitamin D insufficiencies or deficiencies thirty years ago, the scientific floodgates have opened in the last year or two. Word of this massive body of evidence has only really begun to permeate the scientific community in the last few months.
Optimal vitamin D serum blood levels, attained through sunlight or supplementation, dramatically reduce the risk of many diseases other than bone maladies. Many of the most serious are ameliorated by an astonishing 50 to 85 percent. These diseases include cancers, from breast and colon to deadly melanoma skin cancers…. This is not the end of the list, though. The big killers and most expensive diseases respond similarly to adequate D. I’m talking about hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. So do type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes (to a lesser extent), rheumatoid arthritis, peripheral vascular disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia, autoimmune diseases, and apparently even viral diseases such as H1N1 and AIDS.
I predict that other diseases will also be linked to vitamin D insufficiencies as more studies are performed. Even conditions such as autism and schizophrenia may be directly related to prenatal or infantile vitamin D deficiency…. Many of the benefits of D, incidentally, appear rapidly. Holick and others who prescribe D in clinical situations report that patients often experience dramatic improvements in quality of life within months. Not only do hypertension and bone density respond quickly, the neuromuscular impact of D is such that many of those who experience body pains and muscular weakness are relieved quickly when their serum blood levels are adjusted. Depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and various other maladies can respond extremely quickly to the sunshine vitamin.
Ask your doctor about testing for this important vitamin…your health may depend on it!
My vitamin D level was a little low so my doc suggested I take supplement. He explained a lot of what is noted in this story, so I think its right on. I’ve noticed a difference in energy level since taking it.
What is my vitamin D level supposed to be? Will it help with insomnia?
Joseph, I always say check with your doctor before taking anything because in some cases taking vitamin supplements does more harm than good. The Mayo clinic warns patients that too much of a good thing can be risky. Your doctor will probably say take a multiple once a day…good enough.
As we age past 50 sleep loss is a common malady. Here’s whats worked for me: Try to induce a good nights sleep by eating dinner early, at least several hours before bedtime. Try a warm milk beverage (absent cafeine) just before hitting the sack. Melatonin is a supplement than can help induce sleep. Be careful of the over the counter sleep aids.
Anyone else have any helpful suggestions for inducing sleep?
Misc info. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in very few foods, added to others, and available as a dietary supplement. It is also produced endogenously when ultraviolet rays from sunlight strike the skin and trigger vitamin D synthesis. Vitamin D obtained from sun exposure, food, and supplements is biologically inert and must undergo two hydroxylations in the body for activation. The first occurs in the liver and converts vitamin D to 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], also known as calcidiol. The second occurs primarily in the kidney and forms the physiologically active 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D [1,25(OH)2D], also known as calcitriol [1].
Vitamin D promotes calcium absorption in the gut and maintains adequate serum calcium and phosphate concentrations to enable normal mineralization of bone and to prevent hypocalcemic tetany. It is also needed for bone growth and bone remodeling by osteoblasts and osteoclasts [1,2]. Without sufficient vitamin D, bones can become thin, brittle, or misshapen. Vitamin D sufficiency prevents rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults [1]. Together with calcium, vitamin D also helps protect older adults from osteoporosis.
Vitamin D has other roles in the body, including modulation of cell growth, neuromuscular and immune function, and reduction of inflammation [1,3,4]. Many genes encoding proteins that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis are modulated in part by vitamin D [1]. Many cells have vitamin D receptors, and some convert 25(OH)D to 1,25(OH)2D.