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How much vitamin D3 do the elderly need? Viljakainen HT, Palssa A, Kärkkäinen M, Jakobsen J, Lamberg-Allardt C. J Am Coll Nutr. 2006 Oct;25(5):429-35. PMID: 17031013 Conclusions: A clear dose response was noted in S-25-OHD to different doses of vitamin D3. The recommended dietary intake of 15 µg is adequate to maintain the S-25-OHD concentration around 40-55 nmol/L during winter, but if the optimal S-25-OHD is higher than that even higher vitamin D intakes are needed. Interestingly, subjects with lower vitamin D status at baseline responded more efficiently to supplementation than those with more adequate status

Why would vitamin D be prescribed when vitamin D3 is available over-the-counter? Let's review the known differences between vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol): --D3 is the human form; D2 is the non-human form found in plants. --Dose for dose, D3 is more effective at raising blood levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D than D2. It requires roughly twice to 250% of the dose of D2 to match that of D3 (Trang H et al 1998). --D2 blood levels don't yield long-term sustained levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D as does D3. When examined as a 28-day area under the curve (AUC--a superior measure of biologic exposure), D3 yields better than a 300% increased potency compared to D2. This means that it requires around 50,000 units D2 to match the effects of 15,000 units D3 (Armas LA et al 2004). --D2 has lower binding affinity for vitamin D-binding protein, compared to D3 --Mitochondrial vitamin D 25-hydroxylase converts D3 to the 25-hydroxylated form five times more rapidly than D2. --As we age, the ability to metabolize D2 is dramatically reduced, while D3 is not subject to this phenomenon

Incidence of reported cold/influenza symptoms according to season. The 104 subjects in the placebo group (light shade) reported cold and flu symptoms year around with the most symptoms in the winter. While on 800 IU per day (intermediate shade) the 104 test subjects were as likely to get sick in the summer as the winter. Only one of the 104 test subjects had cold/influenza symptoms during the final year of the trial, when they took 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day (dark shading). Adapted from: Aloia JF, Li-Ng M: Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiol Infect 2007; 135: 1095-1096

Stevia comes from an herb in the chrysanthemum family called Stevia rebaudiana. It is native to Paraguay, also grows in Brazil and Argentina, and is cultivated in China. The leaves have been used for centuries by native peoples to make sweet teas, or to sweeten other foods, with no evidence of harm. It is available in the United States, and the European Union as a dietary supplement and is sold here in whole-leaf form or as stevioside, the extracted sweet principle, sold as a granular white powder. The powder has very few calories but is so sweet that to use it, you must dissolve it in water, then dispense the solution by drops. A teaspoon of the liquid is equivalent in sweetness of a whole cup of sugar. Stevia is safe for diabetics and is widely used as a nonnutritive sweetener around the world.

The European Food Safety Authority's Panel on contaminants in the food chain has set a reduced tolerable weekly intake (TWI)[1] for cadmium of 2.5 micrograms per kilogram of body weight (µg/kg bw), based on an analysis of new data. The TWI is the level at which adverse effects are not expected. Average dietary exposure to cadmium for adults across Europe is around this level. Some population groups - vegetarians, children, smokers and people living in highly contaminated areas - can have a higher level of exposure up to twice the TWI. However, the Panel concluded that even for these groups the risk of adverse effects would be very low. The Panel concluded that current exposure to cadmium at the level of the population should be reduced.

A popular vitamin supplement is being advertised with claims that are demonstrably untrue, as revealed by research published in the open access journal BMC Pharmacology. Benfotiamine is a synthetic derivative of thiamine (vitamin B1). It is marketed heavily as a dietary supplement using a selection of unsubstantiated, 'not-quite-medical' claims that tend to characterize this field. A large part of this campaign has been built around the belief that benfotiamine is lipid-soluble and, therefore, more physiologically active. Scientific research led by Dr Lucien Bettendorff of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Liège, Belgium, has entirely disproved these claims.

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) May 25, 2009 -- Coming on the heels of the publishing in the Annals of Epidemiology of a new study led by Dr. Cedric Garland, on the preventive measures of vitamin D, GrassrootsHealth D*action Project is calling on physicians, health clinics and groups throughout the country to recognize the need for determining vitamin D levels and to ensure the public have their blood levels of vitamin D tested. According to research from the newly published study by Cedric F. Garland, Dr. P.H., FACE, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine and Moores Cancer Center of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), "It is projected that raising the minimum year-around serum 25(OH)D level to 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L) would prevent approximately 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer each year, and three quarters of deaths from these diseases, in the US and Canada."

Mainstream medical treatment of cancer revolves around surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, used either alone or in combination (Isobe T et al 2005; Ostoros G et al 2005). Chemotherapy and radiation therapy cannot discriminate between cancer cells and healthy cells; thus, they damage both types of cells and cause serious and often debilitating side effects, frequently forcing patients to abandon treatment (Ettinger DS 2005; Giraud P et al 2004; Munden RF et al 2005). Therefore, it is not surprising that many cancer patients now opt to complement conventional treatments with alternative therapies that may not only temper the adverse side effects of conventional cancer therapy, but also improve its effectiveness via independent anti-cancer effects.

The following list of 100 open courseware projects are designed to offer readers access to supplementary materials for education. They are free (hence "open") and available to anyone who has access to the Internet. The downside to these courseware projects is that you cannot earn credits; however, a few colleges do offer tuition-paying students a chance to earn credits by completing some projects online. The list, which also includes a few open source libraries (for textbooks) and some directories (for open source courses only) to expand your tool base, is alphabetized, as each resource offers more than one category; however, a few resources do specialize in one genre. Therefore, we did not break the resources down into what they offered as we wanted to provide as many different resources as possible. This alphabetical method of organization also shows that we do not value open courseware project over another.

The American diet circa 2007 is a disaster - but positive change has begun. Those were the twin themes of the "Fourth Annual Nutrition and Health Conference" held in San Diego, Calif., May 14-16, 2007. The conference was sponsored by the University of Arizona's College of Medicine in conjunction with the Program in Integrative Medicine (PIM); PIM was founded and is co-directed by Dr. Weil. \n\nThe three-day event brought together leading nutrition researchers from around the world, bearing plenty of both bad and good news. Some highlights:

The British Nutrition Foundation is a registered charity. It promotes the wellbeing of society through the impartial interpretation and effective dissemination of scientifically based knowledge and advice on the relationship between diet, physical activity and health\n\nThis site provides healthy eating information, resources for schools, news items, recipes and details of the work we undertake around the UK/EU.\n

Thyroid gland which weights less than an ounce play significant role in body metabolism. Thyroid gland situated in the neck in and around trachea. The thyroid hormones, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3), are tyrosine-based hormones, has astonishing effects. When this gland is less active then it secretes fewer hormones, hypothyroidism, which in tern slows down the process of metabolism.

"So why is Dr Vieth so frustrated? You might think he'd have cause for celebration. But for him and other vitamin D researchers around the world, the good news comes with a bitter aftertaste. They believe they can prove vitamin D could help millions live longer and be healthier and yet they have not been able to convince their own governments. In the US and Canada, official vitamin D policy is set by the Institute of Medicine. And in the opinion of Vieth, the current recommendations - 200 International Units per day for people under 50, 400 for people aged 51-70, and 600 for those 71 and older - are outrageously low. Bruce Hollis, professor of paediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, calls 400 IU a day "a joke". That's because the best research suggests that to achieve the higher vitamin D blood levels associated with disease prevention, most adults in the US would need to take 1,000-2,000 IU a day: five to 10 times more than the current official recommendation for adult In 1999, Reinhold Vieth (pictured right) published a review of vitamin D research in response to the IOM conclusions. In it, he argued that there was no evidence that amounts lower than 20,000 IU a day could be toxic. "Throughout my preparation of this review, I was amazed at the lack of evidence supporting statements about the toxicity of moderate doses of vitamin D," Vieth wrote. Studies have since shown 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D to be safe. While any substance will become toxic in excess, vitamin D researchers today accept that the current vitamin D recommendations could be more than quadrupled with no fear of toxicity.!

Diagnosis and treatment of vitamin D deficiency. Cannell JJ, Hollis BW, Zasloff M, Heaney RP. Expert Opin Pharmacother. 2008 Jan;9(1):107-18. PMID: 18076342 The recent discovery - in a randomised, controlled trial - that daily ingestion of 1100 IU of colecalciferol (vitamin D) over a 4-year period dramatically reduced the incidence of non-skin cancers makes it difficult to overstate the potential medical, social and economic implications of treating vitamin D deficiency. Not only are such deficiencies common, probably the rule, vitamin D deficiency stands implicated in a host of diseases other than cancer. The metabolic product of vitamin D is a potent, pleiotropic, repair and maintenance, secosteroid hormone that targets > 200 human genes in a wide variety of tissues, meaning it has as many mechanisms of action as genes it targets. A common misconception is that government agencies designed present intake recommendations to prevent or treat vitamin D deficiency. They did not. Instead, they are guidelines to prevent particular metabolic bone diseases. Official recommendations were never designed and are not effective in preventing or treating vitamin D deficiency and in no way limit the freedom of the physician - or responsibility - to do so. At this time, assessing serum 25-hydroxy-vitamin D is the only way to make the diagnosis and to assure that treatment is adequate and safe. The authors believe that treatment should be sufficient to maintain levels found in humans living naturally in a sun-rich environment, that is, > 40 ng/ml, year around. Three treatment modalities exist: sunlight, artificial ultraviolet B radiation or supplementation. All treatment modalities have their potential risks and benefits. Benefits of all treatment modalities outweigh potential risks and greatly outweigh the risk of no treatment. As a prolonged 'vitamin D winter', centred on the winter solstice, occurs at many temperate latitudes, ≤ 5000 IU (125 μg) of vitamin D/d

"Ann Arbor, MI - New laboratory research suggests that the COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib (Celebrex, Pfizer), might impede the action of "baby" aspirin [1]. Dr Gilad Rimon (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) and colleagues found evidence that this was the case in a dog model and say that "it will be important to determine" whether the same is true in humans. The report was published online December 1, 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Medicine. Celecoxib is the only COX-2 inhibitor to have remained on the market in the US, and doctors who recommend this painkiller often coprescribe a daily low dose of 81 mg of aspirin (known as a "baby" dose) to counteract any possible prothrombotic effects of the coxib, while minimizing potential gastrointestinal toxicity of the aspirin. Senior author of the new work, Dr William L Smith (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), explained to heartwire that previous studies in humans have shown that celecoxib does not interfere with the effect of a standard dose of aspirin (325 mg), but any potential interaction of celecoxib with the lower dose has not been examined. Stagger dosing to avoid any potential problems First, Smith explained that he and his colleagues looked in vitro at celecoxib and found that it binds to one of two available sites on the COX-1 enzyme. "This surprised us," he commented. "It appears to interfere with the ability of some other drugs to affect COX-1, most notably aspirin." Second, in beagles, they administered the dog-equivalent of a baby dose of aspirin in humans and then gave some of the animals the equivalent of 100 mg of celecoxib twice daily in addition. "Celecoxib plus aspirin interfered with the normal effect of low-dose aspirin on platelets," he notes. Smith says this observation obviously requires confirmation in humans, but in the meantime he suggests "getting around the problem" by patients taking the low-dose aspirin at least 15 to 30 minutes before the celecoxib is taken, "because

No one can dispute that mother's milk is the ideal nutrition, as far as the biochemical composition is concerned. It contains 3 to 11 grams of fat per 1 gram of protein (0.4% unsaturated fat). The conclusion is obvious - if Nature included such a minute quantity of that constituent in such a wonderful food, then we should respect it. Meanwhile, people are being persuaded that plant-derived fats containing polyunsaturated fatty acids which do not exist in mother's milk, are healthy. Nothing is more misleading. The best are the fats which contain the highest percentage of energy contributing constituents, or in other words, such in which COOH group is attached to the longest fatty acid chain. Short fatty acid chains contain around 30-40% of energy-contributing constituents, the longest ones over 90%. Long-chain fatty acids fully saturated with hydrogen, yields approx. 10 cal/g when metabolised, the same as petrol. Fat's value as a "fuel" for our body increases with the increase in the amount of hydrogen per gram of carbon in its molecule, with the increase in the energy-contributing constituents. Chemically, the best are long-chain fully saturated fatty acids, that is to say, solid fats of animal origin. Only fats with the length of the chain above 10 carbon atoms are suitable to be utilised by our cells and tissues without conversion. These fats are directed straight to the blood stream via the lymphatic system, and they do not have to be converted and made suitable by the liver, as is the case with inferior fats (with shorter chains), or all other constituents of consumed and digested foods

Obesity has reached what some feel is epidemic proportions in this country as well as around the world. Today nearly two thirds of American adults are considered overweight or obese.

On an ordinary UK diet, iron is derived about one-third from animal foods, onethird from fortified breakfast cereals and one-third from the rest of the diet. The iron content of common foods is given in Table 40 and the daily iron needs in Table 41. On average, 10-15 mg are consumed each day and the efficiency of absorption is around 10 per cent

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Choosing good health has never been so easy. Or as easy on your budget. For individuals and families, we offer more than just health insurance and/or health coverage. We offer health care that centers around you-from refilling most prescriptions online to e-mailing your doctor's office anytime. Enjoy affordable coverage and a connected group of doctors, services, and online tools. We care for your total health-mind, body, and spirit.