As I have not written in many months, I would like to apologize for my absence. I had an injury in the spring that has taken many months to recover. I am now nine weeks since surgery and three weeks into rehab. In any case, I have recovered from my incapacitation enough to write. I would like to say that the American medical institutions have the best diagnostic capability in the world.
The attack on vitamins and minerals continues. The mere suggestion that a vitamin or mineral might help with a chronic disease will bring outrage from the “medical community.” Typically, it is not from your doctor, although he may have fallen into the allure of medical propaganda. Also, your doc must follow medical guidelines as defined by AHRQ. Obfuscation is more likely from research that is less than adequate—manipulated—or from a news outlet that gets a large portion of its advertising from the medical industry.
Just recently there was an article in the New York Times suggesting that people are unnecessarily taking more vitamin D. Dr. JoAnn E. Manson is quoted in the article as saying, “A lot of clinicians are acting like there is a pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency. There is a pandemic, as in the US alone, Dr. William Grant has shown there are 400 thousand premature deaths just from cancer, diabetes, and heart disease that could be eliminated if serum vitamin D was raised to 45 ng/ml. Grant has done similar studies for other countries with similar results. The article goes on to say that it is about the money that the vitamin D promoters are getting. Wow, I haven’t received any money for writing this blog. The amount that I have received does not even cover the cost of the domain.
This leads us to many studies done to show that vitamin D has no effect in the treatment of the same diseases stated above. It should be interesting to note that in these studies, they always talk about dose and not what the serum vitamin D is. One study suggested that “large doses” of vitamin D had no effect on cancer. It turns out that their large dose was 100,000 IU (2.5 mg) given once per month. This works out to an average 3,300 IU per day. The body operates better with a daily dose instead of one large dose in a month. This amount is not near enough to get the population to a serum level above 40 ng/ml. It would take a daily dose of well over 10,000 IU per day to get ninety-five percent of the population above 40 ng/ml. Also, taken one time a month instead of once per day is not the same affect. Here is a story of one cancer survivor.
So, what does go on about vitamin D and other minerals for that matter? It is about the money. The money that the medical industry makes from a chronically ill population. Researchers have hidden the benefits of vitamin D so that they could make vitamin D analogs for large incomes from the sale of these drugs. At the 2010 Food and Nutrition Board on vitamin D and calcium, there was a consultant and a member of the board that owned patents on vitamin D analogs and were promoting the manufacture of such drugs. (Links from this post are now broken as that was eight years ago.) This conflict of interest is in strict violation of the National Academy of Science policy for ethics.
The holding out of benefits, of vitamins and minerals in adequate amounts, by the medical industry is a slap to the face of the Americans that have paid for the research. One of my pet peeves are biologic drugs or biosimilar drugs. Biologics are made by taking a known cell line, adding large amounts of vitamins and minerals in a reactor, and extracting the desired protein or amino acid. This then becomes a patented drug that is sold for large amounts of money. The drug my have serious side effects. Why not just give the patient the vitamins and minerals and let the body make its own repair compounds? “it’s the economy stupid.” –Pandemic Survivor
