• Join The Vitamin D Revolution Now:

    Posted March 25, 2011: by Bill Sardi

    “We’ve Only Got A Year Left”

    Those are the words of John Cannell MD, founder of The Vitamin D Council. What Dr. Cannell is talking about is the anticipated FDA approval of a multitude of vitamin D-like drugs (called analogs) in the next year.

    Big Pharma, moving in concert with the pro-drug agency, the Food & Drug Administration, that gives Rx pills false credibility, and the Institute of Medicine that recently cemented levels of preventable disease in the American population by raising vitamin D requirements by an insignificant amount (400 IU to 600 IU), are attempting to delay multitudes of Americans from taking vitamin D pills till they become drugs. Then American medicine will embrace the idea whole heartedly at ten times the price and with myriads of side effects from man-made vitamin D-like molecules that the human body is not designed to metabolize.

    How do we know this? Human clinical trials of vitamin D analogs, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, can be found online here.

    Here are excerpts from recent vitamin D studies. Look for the word analog, which means “drug.” They reveal the drug-oriented mind-set of researchers.

    Studies examining the benefit of vitamin D supplementation are now beginning, but future studies considering calcitriol (already an approved vitamin D drug) and analog therapy also seem warranted. – Current Hypertension Reports 2011 Feb. 8.

    In view of the substantial preclinical and epidemiologic data supporting the potential role of vitamin D in cancer, careful studies to evaluate the impact of vitamin D replacement on the frequency of cancer and the impact of an appropriate dose and schedule of activated vitamin D (calcitriol) or other active vitamin D analog on the treatment of established cancer are indicated. – Cancer Journal 2010 Jan-Feb; 16(1):1-9

    Promising preclinical evaluations of calcitriol and analogs have appeared in prostate cancer animal models. – Journal of Cancer Research And Therapeutics 2007 Oct-Dec; 3(4):225-30.

    In one study researchers correctly claimed calcitriol (not natural vitamin D), the active form of vitamin D in the bloodstream, when administered as a drug, may result in side effects, namely over-calcification. So they suggest a synthetic vitamin D substitute which is theoretically 5-to-15 times greater at inhibiting cancer, but of course the price will be high and the side effects unknown.

    Earlier this year (2011), a slanted report published in Nature Medicine stated that “vitamin D supplements have yet to prove their worth, while new research is increasingly showing that active analogs of the molecule can help fight a number of diseases.”

    The article goes on to say “over the past two decades, various labs have synthesized thousands of such analogs…. that have been tweaked at every possible intersection.” Will these synthetic forms of vitamin D prevail? One such synthetic vitamin D made it all the way to Phase 3 human clinical trials, when it was abruptly halted because it failed to produce a beneficial result.

    The pharmaceutical industry keeps trying and trying to develop a better form of vitamin D, with repeated failure. It looks like some of these vitamin-like drugs may be prematurely forced upon the public like Vioxx and other drugs were. Even with all the failed attempts to beat nature, the pharmaceutical companies keep banging their heads against the wall. One pharmaceutical executive said: “We think we can get it right this time.”

    Dr. Michael Holick, a leading vitamin D researcher, says there is no downside to taking vitamin D supplements and says “If you believe the current Recommended Daily Allowance, you will be vitamin D insufficient.”

    What is keeping the public from rushing towards vitamin D pills is multifactorial. Some people (a) presume they are getting enough vitamin D from fortified milk and from sunlight. Others incorrectly believe (b) their multivitamin serves to prevent vitamin D deficiency.

    Yet many others (c) are mistakenly fearful of vitamin D toxicity when this is practically impossible without intentional overdose. Modern medicine has played upon this unfounded fear by claiming there is the danger of hyper-calcification with mega-dose vitamin D. But actually it takes about a million units of vitamin D for this to occur in healthy adults. Intake of forty 1000-unit vitamin D pills a day would be required to produce toxicity.

    One of the problems with reported side effects from vitamin D pills is that researchers lump calcitriol (the active form of vitamin D in the blood stream), which is a drug, into the side effect data. Even the Institute of Medicine report concedes up to 10,000 IU of vitamin D is harmless.

    Another problem is (d) that the public often mistakenly believes they are vitamin D sufficient when the only Americans who consistently exhibit adequate vitamin D levels are lifeguards. The blood level of vitamin D needed to optimally prevent cancer requires about ~4000IU of supplemental vitamin D3, which is equivalent to receiving around 30-60 minutes of midday sun every day.

    Yet another problem (e) is lack of awareness that dark skin coloration inhibits natural sun-produced vitamin D synthesis and demands higher-dose vitamin D supplementation compared to light-skinned individuals.

    One glitch in the Vitamin D Revolution is that an estimated one-third of adults may not benefit from supplementation because of metabolic issues. These include obesity, where vitamin D is stored in fatty tissue rather than making its way to needed organs and tissues in the body, and fatty liver, where liver metabolism is inhibited, and poor bile flow, which is needed to transport vitamin D.

    There are newly designed vitamin D formulas that include co-factors designed to overcome some of these drawbacks.

    To join the vitamin D revolution, start supplementing your diet with 2000IU to 4000IU of vitamin D3 daily (1000-2000IU for kids). Another way is to support the work of The Vitamin D Council which has taken up this cause. Subscribe to their newsletter and support this revolution ( www.vitamindcouncil.org )

    © 2011 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc., Permission to duplicate this information for personal health reasons is granted, but not for commercial gain. Not for posting on other websites. Bill Sardi has a commercial interest in vitamin D pills.

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