Here’s a few health benefit observations patients at our clinic have made regarding their taking vitamin D:

1. Most like it and don’t want to stop taking it. They report an improvement in their overall well-being. We’ve even had some folks not want to lower their dose when they’re told to do so based on their re-checked blood testing.

2. Several people have said they think that they’re getting fewer colds and flus since getting their D levels into the normal range. Here’s a recent study that supports this observation:

An article published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection reports on a three-year study of 208 African-American postmenopausal women (who are at great risk of vitamin D deficiency) who were supplemented with vitamin D or placebo. For the first two years the active group received 800 IU daily, which was increased to 2,000 IU daily in the last year of the study. In the three years of the study 34 patients reported cold and flu symptoms, eight in the supplemented group and 26 in the placebo group (p<0.002). This showed that participants who got a placebo had a 300-percent greater risk of having a cold or flu, and that vitamin D supplementation provided a highly significant protective effect.

Aloia JF. Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiol Infect 2007;135:1095-1096.

3. Numerous patients have reported disappearance of muscle aches and pains. Several folks have also mentioned that if they miss a few doses they start to feel the aches and pains again.

4. For those with psoriasis and weak/brittle finger nails the D seems to substantially help. On a personal note, over the past several years I developed a dry/cracking skin problem on my hands. It had gotten to the point that I could barely do any manual labor without pretty severe cracking, bleeding and soreness, this problem is now 95% better since I’ve maintained good vitamin D levels.

5. Still others report feeling that they have more energy and less depression.

6. We’ve also seen some objective improvements with several patients fasting blood sugar tests.

This gives you the general idea about the type of feedback we’ve been getting from the patients at our clinic.

Have you noticed any benefits from taking vitamin D?

Disclaimer
VitaminDblog.com is provided for informational purposes only. No doctor/patient relationship is established by your use of this site. No diagnosis or treatment is being provided. No guarantees or warranties are made regarding any of the information contained within this web site. This web site is not intended to offer specific medical advice to anyone. The information provided is not medical advice, not intended as medical advice, and should not be used as medical advice. Under no circumstances should you change your treatment based on the information provided here without the knowledge of you personal physician.
External Links
VitaminDblog.com contains many links to external sites. VitaminDblog.com is not responsible for the content of sites linked to. Links provided to external sites, reading material, or products and services should not be considered an endorsement by VitaminDblog.com.

At our clinic Dr. Elliott (my wife) always runs baseline vitamin D testing on her patients prior to starting any sort of vitamin D supplementation. The test is called Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy. If someone tests low (about 95% do around here) they are given 10,000 IU’s of vitamin D (cholecalciferol D3) everyday for 30 days. Please note that this is a strong/therapeutic dose of vitamin D for people who are verified as being vitamin deficient. That being said (and as others have reported as well) we’ve not seen anyone experience vitamin D toxicity on this 4 week loading dose. The RDA (albeit many would argue is too low depending on where you live) for infants under 1 year are 400-800 i.u. daily, and for children and adolescents up to 20 years – 400 i.u. In the latter half of pregnancy and throughout lactating period, the dose should be 400-800 i.u.) Her preference is to see people get into the middle to upper middle end of the normal range. So if the normal range is 32-100 ng/mL she likes to get her patients into the 50 to 65 ng/mL part of that range.

After the 30 day “loading dose” they re-check their D blood test to see how they’ve responded to treatment. This is where it gets very interesting. We’ve seen a wide variety of responses to this initial loading dose. Some patients’ levels barely improve at all (and still stay below normal) with the initial dose. Others respond moderately well and reach the low end of normal on the first go-round, and still others respond well and get to that target zone with the initially treatment. Depending on how the patient responds, they’ll either lower the D to a maintenance dose between 3,000 - 5,000 IU’s everyday, or they’ll stay with the 10,000 IU daily dose again and repeat testing in another 4 weeks. Some need to increase to 15-20,000 IU daily and re-check the level 4 weeks later. A rare few have needed to go to tanning beds twice per week (more about tanning later) because of an apparent problem with absorbing the oral form of D in order to get their level into that mid-range target zone. So as you can see, the treatment is definitely not “one size fits all” and this process of running the lab test and adjusting the treatment continues until that person gets to that mid-range target.

In summary, for patients at our clinic, the baseline level and re-checking of the vitamin D blood test has become a key (and eye-opening) part of their treatments!

Disclaimer
VitaminDblog.com is provided for informational purposes only. No doctor/patient relationship is established by your use of this site. No diagnosis or treatment is being provided. No guarantees or warranties are made regarding any of the information contained within this web site. This web site is not intended to offer specific medical advice to anyone. The information provided is not medical advice, not intended as medical advice, and should not be used as medical advice. Under no circumstances should you change your treatment based on the information provided here without the knowledge of you personal physician.
External Links
VitaminDblog.com contains many links to external sites. VitaminDblog.com is not responsible for the content of sites linked to. Links provided to external sites, reading material, or products and services should not be considered an endorsement by VitaminDblog.com.

2/3/2008
Vitamin D deficiency tied to higher blood pressure - NEW YORK (Reuters Health)
“The investigators found that white participants with sufficient vitamin D levels had a 20-percent lower rise in age-associated systolic blood pressure compared with those with insufficient vitamin D levels. This relationship was not statistically significant in blacks.”

2/2/2008
Higher vitamin D needed for diabetes benefits?
I found this article published over on nutraingredients.com. The question that arose for me when I read this study was how many of the women were vitamin D deficient throughout the duration of the study? I didn’t see anything about vitamin D baseline testing prior to the study. Maybe they did do baseline tests, but they didn’t mention it in what I read. The reason I ask this is that based on what we’ve seen at our clinic 400 IU’s of D wouldn’t seem like enough to take someone from deficiency into the normal range. Therefore, if someone was deficient for the entire study how would you know if D helped or not?

I’ve decided to do a bit of a “2007 year in review” summary of the news articles I found interesting. Most of these are just what I’ve found in the news and not necessarily the scientific studies themselves. I’ve also added the news from early 2008.

2007

June
Sweeping cancer edict: take vitamin D daily (Canada)

July
Low vitamin D levels tied to higher blood pressure

August
Study Says Sunlight May Decrease Breast Cancer Risk

One dose of vitamin D boosts TB immunity

More vitamin D could cut cancer by 600,000

September
Vitamin D and Health in the 21st Century

Vitamin D and Moms-to-be

Low vitamin D during pregnancy linked to preeclampsia

Vitamin D Supplements May Lengthen Life

Low Vitamin D Linked to Higher Risk of Hip Fracture

October
Low Vitamin D Levels May Worsen Osteoarthritis of the Knee

Vitamin D Inadequacy May Exacerbate Chronic Pain

Exposure To Sunlight May Reduce Risk of Breast Cancer

Cancer society calls for major vitamin D trial

November
Vitamin D may curb type 2 diabetes risk

Vitamin D Deficiency Drains $9 billion From Canadian Health Care System

Vitamin D Chemoprevention Role Now Seen for Endometrial Cancer

An Antarctic winter test for Vitamin D

Aging process may be slowed by vitamin D, say scientists

Slip, slop, slap too successful, says doctor (Australia)

December
Vitamin D May Lower Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Up to Forty Percent

Vitamin D deficiency accelerates aging in the elderly

Sunlight Linked to Lower Endometrial Cancer Rates

Australians not getting enough sunligh (what? I thought Australia got a lot of sun?)

Epilepsy: Half of all victims are deficient in vitamin D

Joint pain ebbs with vitamin D

Non-whites lack vitamin D due to dark skins

More Vitamin D May Lower Lung Cancer Rates

Vitamin D Important for Brain Function

January 2008

Vitamin D deficiency doubles heart disease risk

Mums urged to take in vitamin D

Is Sunbathing Actually a Good Thing?

Vitamin D may help prevent falls in older women

$600,000 Grant for Vitamin D Study

Study warns over high incidence of vitamin D deficiency A study covering Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran (they get sun there don’t they?)

Vitamin D may help fight tuberculosis, study finds

February Is Vitamin D Deficiency Month (as declared by the Indoor Tanning Association)

Disclaimer
VitaminDblog.com is provided for informational purposes only. No doctor/patient relationship is established by your use of this site. No diagnosis or treatment is being provided. No guarantees or warranties are made regarding any of the information contained within this web site. This web site is not intended to offer specific medical advice to anyone. The information provided is not medical advice, not intended as medical advice, and should not be used as medical advice. Under no circumstances should you change your treatment based on the information provided here without the knowledge of you personal physician who is currently directing your care.

External Links
VitaminDblog.com contains many links to external sites. VitaminDblog.com is not responsible for the content of sites linked to. Links provided to external sites, reading material, or products and services should not be considered an endorsement by VitaminDblog.com.

My name is Darcy Elliott and I’m excited to finally get this blog going! I’ve built and maintained several web sites over the past 10 years. I’ve run a successful on line sports card trading community for the past 9 years and very much enjoy the interaction that type of community forum provides. For the past 2 years I’ve been eagerly studying and dabbling with all of the new communication tools that the “Web 2.0″ has to offer, tools such as this blog, facebook, digg, stumbleupon, etc. I also manage my wife’s health care clinic. Her name is Patricia Elliott ND. In addition, I have a Masters Degree in acupuncture and specialize in treating sports injuries. Truth be told, I spend so much time helping run my wife’s practice, operating my Internet business, and homeschooling our kids, that I do very little acupuncture at this time. That being said, I’ve always had a keen interest in health and fitness so I anticipate this blog being an interesting and rewarding thing to add to my weekly workload. I also spend about 3/4 of the year outside in the sunshine coaching baseball - yet still my own vitamin D levels were low!

So, why a vitamin D blog?

One of the things my wife started doing in early 2007 was encouraging her patients to check their vitamin D levels, the results were eye-opening to say the least. I’d estimate that over 95% of her patients had abnormally low levels of vitamin D! This shocking revelation inspired me to start tracking the news headlines about this problem. As a way to share what I was finding with her patients I started printing out my findings and posting them on the bulletin board in our waiting area. Within a very short time I had to add a second bulletin board (which is now also full), hence the creation of this blog. My objective with this blog is to post news headlines and information about what certainly seems like an epidemic problem, vitamin D deficiency. This blog will help free up some space on our waiting room bulletin board since all of the news articles I find will now be posted here instead. I also plan to post some of the clinical observations my wife is seeing with the vitamin D testing she’s continuing to do in her medical practice at our clinic.

I hope you enjoy this blog!

Disclaimer
VitaminDblog.com is provided for informational purposes only. No doctor/patient relationship is established by your use of this site. No diagnosis or treatment is being provided. No guarantees or warranties are made regarding any of the information contained within this web site. This web site is not intended to offer specific medical advice to anyone. The information provided is not medical advice, not intended as medical advice, and should not be used as medical advice. Under no circumstances should you change your treatment based on the information provided here without the knowledge of you personal physician.
External Links
VitaminDblog.com contains many links to external sites. VitaminDblog.com is not responsible for the content of sites linked to. Links provided to external sites, reading material, or products and services should not be considered an endorsement by VitaminDblog.com.