Vitamin D

Why am I interested? This article from Canwest News Service states:
"The Journal of the American College of Cardiology says people with low levels of the vitamin, which comes from sunshine and pills but not much else, are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke..."

Here is a larger exerpt from the article

Another study has emerged that says vitamin D is good for you - this time, for your heart.
...
This adds to evidence that people lacking vitamin D have a higher risk of various cancers and diabetes as well. ...
"Vitamin D deficiency is an unrecognized, emerging cardiovascular risk factor, which should be screened for and treated," said the study's main author, cardiologist James O'Keefe of the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. "Vitamin D is easy to assess, and supplementation (with pills) is simple, safe and inexpensive."
The new evidence comes from the Framingham Heart Study. This is a famous study in a suburb of Boston that has followed thousands of ordinary people, beginning in the 1950s, to find links between their lifestyle and their cardiovascular health."

Read the full article here.

The Vitamin D Council is an excellent source of information on the research and news about vitamin D. Be sure to check out their web site.

I just received the December 2008 newsletter from the council with information on vitamin D blood tests which is produced in full below.


The Vitamin D Newsletter
December 28, 2008

The Vitamin D Council is happy to announce that we have partnered with ZRT Laboratory to provide an inexpensive, $65.00, in-home, accurate, vitamin D [25(OH)D] test. The usual cost for this test is between $100.00 and $200.00.

If you read this newsletter, you know about our interest in accurate vitamin D testing. In the next few weeks, you may read about the Vitamin D Council's quest for accurate vitamin D blood tests in the national media. Before we partnered with ZRT, we verified, repeatedly, that ZRT provides accurate and reliable vitamin D tests and that their method corresponds very well to the gold standard of vitamin D blood tests, the DiaSorin RIA.

Our ZRT service is not just inexpensive, it means no more worrying about your doctor ordering the right test or interpreting it correctly. You buy the test kit on the internet or by phone, a few days later the kit comes in the mail, you or a nurse friend do a finger stick, collect a few drops of blood, and send the blotter paper back to ZRT in the postage paid envelope provided with the kit. A week later you get results back in the mail and know accurate 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels of you and your family.

For every test you order, ZRT will donate $10.00 to the Vitamin D Council. Please read the new page hyperlinked below on our website as it both explains the procedure and how to order the test.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/deficiency/am-i-vitamin-d-deficient.shtml

Executive summary: keep your family's 25-hydroxy-vitamin D blood test above 50 ng/ml, year around. Most adults need at least 5,000 IU per day, especially this time of year. Most children need at least 1,000 IU per day per every 25 pounds of body weight. Bio Tech Pharmacal provides high quality and inexpensive vitamin D. Currently Bio Tech Pharmacal is providing vitamin D for numerous scientific studies. To see their prices and for ordering, click the hyperlink below.

http://www.bio-tech-pharm.com/catalog.aspx?cat_id=2

As a gift to our readers for the New Year, Thorne publications have provided a free download to a basic paper about vitamin D. I wrote it earlier this year for educated lay people as well as health care practitioners. Please read this paper carefully, your family's well-being, even lives, may depend on you understanding it.

http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fulltext/13/1/6.pdf

Seasons Greetings
John Cannell, MD
vitamindcouncil.org

Thank you for subscribing to the Vitamin D Newsletter from the Vitamin D Council. The Vitamin D Council is a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Please reproduce this newsletter and post it on Internet sites. Remember, we are a non-profit and rely on donations to publish our newsletter and maintain our website. Send your tax-deductible contributions to:

The Vitamin D Council
9100 San Gregorio Road
Atascadero, CA 93422

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Be sure to read the article by John J. Cannell, MD and Bruce W. Hollis, PhD titled "Use of Vitamin D in Clinical Practice" at the link provided in the newsletter.

See also "Vitamin D may be essential for heart health" in this article at CNN.com