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Wintertime Fun: Top 5 Facts About Vitamin D
As some of you may know, my father Dr John Cannell is a big proponent of adequate levels of vitamin D for all. As we move into cold season this year and as winter sets in, it is a great time to get some Vitamin D supplements to protect yourself from diseases ranging from cancer to autoimmune illnesses. It is absolutely amazing how important this vitamin is for human body function and how few people really know its benefits.
So I decided to put together a top five list of reasons why to supplement with Vitamin D.
1- It decreases the risk of developing cancer by 50% in a recently released study. 50%! If you develop cancer after reading this, just remember you could probably (yea, probably because its %50) have avoided the entire illness with vitamin D. Read the press release from UCSD about the meta-study and learn about the powerful anti-cancerous effects of Vitamin D.
2- Vitamin D lowers mortality across the board by %7. While that doesn’t seem like much, that highlights the fact that Vitamin D really does fight off many different types of diseases. Don’t believe me? Go read the study, then get back to me.
3- Our modern environment has totally decimated our natural ability to produce Vitamin D. Working indoors, behind glass (glass blocks the spectrums of the sun’s rays that produce Vitamin D when they hit skin) and with clothing on, modern man gets little to no Vitamin D naturally. Even with fortified foods, we are woefully deficient because the foods are not nearly fortified enough, which brings me to my next bullet point.
4- If you walk into the sun with a significant portion of your skin exposed to summer sun, your body manufactures around 10,000 units maximum in 20 minutes if your fair skinned (it takes longer the darker your skin). That is before your burned. So with enough sun to not even burn you, your body will naturally make 10,000 units of the stuff which is so much that the FDA believes it to be toxic and it is 50X more than the Daily Recommended allowance for an adult of 200 units/day. Is the government wrong? Or did our bodies evolve to be toxic if they are exposed to natural sunlight? I will let you decide.
5- And finally- Its cheap as hell! Goodness people, it costs about 5 bucks for a bottle. Yes- FIVE BUCKS for bottle of 250 1,000 IU tabs from Swansons Vitamins Online. If you get it anywhere else, just make sure that it is cholecalciferol or Vitamin D3.
My dad has a complete website with great information at the Vitamin D Council. If you look on the bottom of the homepage you can see he recommends around 4,000 units a day. Most of those studies used less, around 1,000 units a day, but people please take your Vitamin D. And tell your relatives (especially older ones you know). Getting sick is not fun for anyone.
7 Comments so far ...
Great post by my incredible son.
Comment on November 20, 2007 12:12 pmCould you please tell me why:
If your father suggests 4,000 IU a day, as you state above, why is his name on an exclusive formulation by Purity Products at 5,000 IU a day?
Homefirst.com has two products, supposedly based on your father’s research, and one is at 5,000 IU and one is at 50,000 IU.
Is your father’s research being skewed by the product makers or is the quote above about 4,000 IU incorrect?
Comment on February 17, 2009 05:08 pmSincerely,
Thank you.
Gertrude
This is one of the worst sites I have ever been on. How old are you again? I was hoping to leave the site with some refreshing facts, and all I was left with was dissapiontment. There are several misspelled words, and uncouth sentences. At least your father is proud of it.
Comment on March 23, 2009 02:23 pmThank you very much for the info. You are correct for the most part, but I detected some inconsistensy as did my fellow visiters, Ellen, and Gertrude. Other than that, it was fairly well done.
I am an ederly lady (50 yrs.) and I haven’t gotten much vitamin D, even though I have done as you suggested and gone out in the sun for 20 minutes. Should I apply a lesser sunscreen when I make my outings?
Fondly, Sophie
Comment on March 23, 2009 02:30 pmI was happy to see the evident bond between father and son, but not pleased with the site.
Comment on March 23, 2009 02:32 pmThank you all for visiting my blog and giving me some constructive criticism!
Ellen: this is the worst site you have ever been on! Wow! Thanks, I’ll try and do better. I am 27 and haven’t updated this site for over a year and almost had forgotten about it. But if its that bad, perhaps I will leave it up as a warning on how NOT to build a site! It was kind of a personal site that only my friends would visit, but somehow this post is getting a lot of traffic. And with traffic, apparently there comes “haters”. But that is fine. Hate away. I am a master at uncouth sentences as well. You all remind me of my grade school English teacher trying to tell me to use “Jim and I” rather than “Me and Jim”. Comon! It is how we talk.
This site is meant to be humorous, but I broke away from that to make this post as I thought all my friends and their families should really get up to speed on Vitamin D. For real Vitamin D research please go to the Vitamin D Council’s Website. There you will find the best website full of Vitamin D research currently that is online. I cannot stress enough how you should all go there are read the relevant research. One of my favorite pages is our “Am I Deficient” page, which covers most of the questions you are all wondering- how much should I take, how can I get tested, what do the results mean, etc.
Comment on March 23, 2009 03:26 pmGrassrootshealth is another site where there are an excellent series of Videos by leading Vitamin D experts.
The video Skin Cancer/Sunscreen – the Dilemmaby Edward Gorham should answer Sophie’s question about sunscreen. It explains how sunscreens do not prevent skin cancer but promote it by shifting useful Vitamin d producing UVB into the UVA spectrum thus increasing skin damage by increasing UVA exposure.
It is better to lay naked in the sun for a short time (10~30minutes depending on skin colour and latitude) at noon and then cover up for the rest of the day.
How much supplement each individual needs depend on body size, age and lots of other factors. Travis’s dad suggest people take what they think is an effective amount for 3 months then get (The vitamin D Council easy cheap 25(OH)D postal finger prick test then adjust intake by 100iu/daily for each 1ng 2.5nmol/l needed, more or less, to end up around 60ng 150nmol/l. The level most of the reseachers are saying is associated with least chronic illness.
Comment on April 7, 2009 03:47 amBest to be on the safe side.