Great Information about the Benefits of Vitamin D

The following is from an interview on News-leader.com, which features a discussion of vitamin D with Lance Luria, an internal medicine physician and the associate medical director of St. John's Health Plans.

Q. Over the past few years, vitamin D has been making headlines. Why is that?

A. Vitamin D was discovered in the early part of the 20th century when it was found that adding a fat-soluble factor "D" to the diet prevented rickets, a disease that results in defective bone growth and bowed legs. More recently, numerous large studies have raised questions as to whether the standard recommendations assure optimal vitamin D levels. These questions come on the heels of mounting evidence pointing to the important role vitamin D plays in promoting bone health, in addition to preventing osteoarthritis, diabetes and cancer, as well as mental, cardiovascular and neuromuscular diseases.

Q. Where does vitamin D come from?

A. Since our bodies have the ability to make vitamin D, it is not technically a vitamin, but falls more in the category of a steroid-like hormone that just needs a jumpstart from sunshine. The problem is that most of us aren't getting enough UVB rays to generate sufficient vitamin D. Here are some interesting points:

• During the summer, 10 minutes of exposure of your hands and face (without sunscreen) provides about 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D3. A young person whose entire body is exposed to simulated sunlight produces the equivalent of 10,000-25,000 IU of vitamin D taken orally.
• Don't worry about getting too much vitamin D from sunlight. The same UVB rays that help make vitamin D will also destroy what is not absorbed quickly enough.
• Wearing sunscreen blocks your body's ability to make vitamin D.
• People living north of the 37th degree-latitude line don't get enough UVB rays in winter. A good rule of thumb is that you don't get enough during the seasons when your shadow at noon is taller than you are.
• Your ability to make vitamin D decreases as you reach old age.
• Darker-pigmented people have more melanin in their skin, and since melanin acts like sunblock, less vitamin D is made. In fact, a black person with very dark skin pigmentation will require about a tenfold longer exposure to make the same amount of vitamin D as a light-skinned white person.
• Vitamin D is stored in fat cells, which can act as a reservoir for the winter months. Paradoxically, obese people have about one-half the levels of circulating vitamin D levels as people of normal weight. It is thought that large fat deposits act as a sort of sinkhole for vitamin D.

Q. How much vitamin D is needed?

A. Current recommendations call for 200 IU for children and adults up to age 50, 400 IU from age 51 to 70 and 600 IU for adults 71 and older. However, based on more recent studies, most authorities are now recommending at least 800 IU of vitamin D3 daily for children and adults if you're not getting enough UVB exposure and at least 1,000 IU daily for those that do not get any UVB exposure. A safe upper limit is 2,000 IU daily. Although a number of studies have shown that higher daily intakes do not result in toxic effects, these higher doses are not routinely recommended. If you're not sure that your intake is adequate, taking a daily supplement of 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 is currently recommended by a number of authorities. Tests to show vitamin D blood levels are available but costly, but they can resolve those situations where there remains a question as to whether you are getting enough.

Q. Why is vitamin D needed?

A. Maintaining adequate blood levels of vitamin D is important not only for bone health but also in the prevention of a number of chronic diseases, including osteoporosis, hypertension and prostate, breast and colon cancers.

Q. Are there food sources of vitamin D?

A. Naturally occurring vitamin D is relatively rare in foods. Oily fish and egg yolks contain significant amounts, as do mushrooms.

Q. What's the difference between vitamin D2 and D3?

A. Supplemental vitamin D comes in two forms: D2 (ergocalciferol) or D3 (cholecalciferol). Vitamin D2 comes from UVB-irradiated yeast and plants; vitamin D3 comes from UVB-irradiated lanolin from animal sources. It was originally thought that vitamins D2 and D3 were pretty much the same, but now we know that the D2 form is only about 20 percent to 40 percent as effective as D3. Vitamin D2 also doesn't last as long in our circulation and may even cause premature breakdown of circulating D3. Fortified foods can contain either vitamin D2 or D3, but recent studies in the United States and western Canada noted that up to 80 percent of milk did not contain the advertised amount of vitamin D and half the milk tested contained less than 50 percent of the advertised amount. Remarkably, 15 percent of the skim milk samples contained no detectable vitamin D at all.

Q. How common is vitamin D deficiency?

A. It is estimated that 1 billion people worldwide don't get enough vitamin D. That includes vitamin D deficiency among 40 percent to 100 percent of independently living elderly Americans and Europeans. Further, in the United States, half of women receiving treatment for osteoporosis, 73 percent of pregnant women (and 80 percent of their infants at birth) and between 48 and 52 percent of adolescent girls in the Northeast show vitamin D deficiency. This is a problem because, without vitamin D, only 10 percent to 15 percent of dietary calcium is absorbed, and bone mineral density is directly correlated with vitamin D levels.

Q. How can you get enough vitamin D?

A. If you believe you need to increase your vitamin D levels, here are some tips:

• During the spring, summer and fall, 5 to 15 minutes of sunshine between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., two or three times weekly, should do the trick. (Note: If your skin becomes slightly pink, you've gotten too much sun.)
• Tanning beds, when used in moderation, provide ample vitamin D and may be particularly helpful in the winter months.
• Milk, cereals and bread products that contain vitamin D may be highly variable in their vitamin D content and should not be depended upon as a reliable source.
• Don't forget that vitamin D2 (from yeast and plants) is probably only one-third as effective as vitamin D3 (from animals). So when you go shopping for supplements, remember that 1,000 IU of D3 is comparable to 3,000 IU of D2.

Source: http://www.lookingfit.com/hotnews/vitamin-d-medical-expert-doctor-tanning,p2.html

Don't fall for media scare tactics.

The Indoor Tanning Association will not stand by and allow some members of the media to unfairly malign our product and the thousands of small business owners who are our members, by grossly exaggerating the risks associated with tanning beds. Because tanning beds produce the same UV light as the sun, OVEREXPOSURE and abuse of our product—just like OVEREXPOSURE to sunlight—is associated with an increased risk for some types of skin cancer. Other items in this category are red wine and salted fish. According to IARC’s report on alcohol, drinking red wine or other alcoholic beverages carries a greater cancer risk than tanning. It is completely irresponsible to compare indoor tanning with mustard gas or arsenic as so many media reports today have done.


· Tanning beds have been categorized as “Group 1” by a group of scientists in France. “Group 1” means there is evidence that the use of tanning beds can increase the risk of skin cancer.



· The information is not very new: sunlight is in the same category as tanning beds, and has been in that category since 1992. Just like sunlight, the light from tanning beds has UV rays that cause your skin to produce melanin.



· Since 1992, thousands of doctors have recommended moderate exposure to sunlight for a variety of health benefits. Oprah guest Dr. Oz Mehmet and Dr. Andrew Weil are two prominent examples.



· Being in the “Group 1” category does not say anything about the size of the risk, just that there is any risk at all. Some things in the category are very dangerous, like arsenic and mustard gas. Other substances only carry a very small risk, like red wine, beer, and salted fish.



· News stories that say things like “tanning is as dangerous as arsenic” are flat-out wrong. The scientists have not made that kind of comparison at all, only reporters looking for a scary headline.



· The report itself has not been made available. All the news stories are working off of a press release, and no reporters have actually read the report.



· The IARC is a group of scientists that works with the United Nations. Their report is not a new study; it is a review of a paper from 2006, which itself was a review of 23 studies, some dating to the early 1980s. Those studies had a wide range of findings.



· Of the 23 studies:

- 5 were excluded for unusable data

- 6 had results suggesting that tanning beds actually reduce the risk of skin cancer

- 16 had results within the margin of error – In an election, experts will say that you shouldn’t trust a poll that shows one candidate ahead by 1%, with a margin of error of 5%.



· Some news stories are including a misleading statistic: that tanning beds increase the risk of melanoma by 75%. This number comes from a study with questionable methods. The study’s authors admit that they did not adjust for factors like outside sun exposure and sun sensitivity. Even if the study is accurate, it does not mean that 75% of tanning bed users will get melanoma, it means that their relative risk is higher. Because the issue is relative risk, when the original risk is very small, a percentage increase that looks big actually translates into a very small added risk.


· To use another example, your annual risk of a fatal car accident is about 0.013%. If that risk were increased by 75%, it would be 0.023%, or about 1 in 4,500. To put that number in perspective, the increase is 10 times smaller than the OSHA guideline for “acceptable risk.”

Vitamin D Helps With Weight Loss

People whose vitamin D levels test high before they go on a diet experience significantly better results on that diet than people with low levels of vitamin D, according to a new study, suggesting that vitamin D plays a part in weight loss and that increasing your intake of this incredibly important nutrient just might help you drop additional pounds.

We already know that vitamin D deficiency is associated with obesity, but it's not clear which comes first -- are people obese because of inadequate vitamin D or does obesity cause vitamin D levels in the body to somehow drop?

In the current study, presented at the Endocrine Society's 91st annual meeting in Washington DC, researchers measured blood levels of vitamin D in 38 overweight men and women before putting them on a calorie-restricted diet for 11 weeks. Here's what they found: Higher levels of vitamin D predicted greater success on the weight-loss diet.

In general, most of the subjects had insufficient levels of vitamin D in the first place. But for each 1-ng/mL increase in the active form of vitamin D, subjects lost nearly one-fourth pound more weight. Baseline levels of vitamin D -- the levels measured before the subjects went on a diet -- actually predicted how much weight they would lose on the diet itself, with those with the least vitamin D losing the least amount of weight on the diet, and those with the most vitamin D losing the most.

In addition, the researchers measured body fat distribution on all the subjects using a DXA (bone densitometry) scan. Higher baseline levels of vitamin D also predicted greater loss in troublesome (and more dangerous) abdominal fat.

"Our results suggest the possibility that the addition of vitamin D to a reduced-calorie diet will lead to better weight loss," said Shalamar Sibley, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.

Source: http://www.thatsfit.com/2009/07/20/vitamin-d-helps-with-weight-loss/