The authors, MS Sandhu and TB Casele, point out that evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency is associated with lung airway over-responsiveness, worse asthma control, and possibly resistance of asthma patients being able to respond to steroid treatment.

They point out that the cells in the lung show high amounts of the enzyme necessary to convert vitamin D to the activated vitamin D within the lung.

This activated vitamin D has been shown to inhibit the manufacture of certain molecules that promote inflammation in the lung. Therefore having sufficient vitamin D would contribute to less lung inflammation, which is the cause of asthma.

They also point out that vitamin D in the lung helps manufacture several natural anti-infective molecules that can help prevent infections, like bronchitis.
The authors made the hypothesis that vitamin D supplementation may lead to improved asthma control, and indeed that is exactly what I see in my practice. All of my patients with asthma have their vitamin D levels optimized.

If you or your family has problems with asthma, including childhood asthma please be sure your vitamin D levels are optimized.

Please let me know if you found vitamin D to be helpful with asthma in you or your family? Do you take it on a regular basis? Do you get your blood levels checked occasionally?

I look forward to hearing from you.

REFERENCE

What I basically said is that the medical literature supports the possibility that vitamin D deficiency is connected with depression but more studies need to be done to prove the connection.

Now in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology a new article has been published,entitled "Vitamin D, light, and mental health". The author is MB Humble.

In this article the author reviews the medical literature for relationship between vitamin D and mental health. He points out that both vitamin D receptors and vitamin D enzymes are present in the brain. He also points out that active vitamin D affects neurotransmitters and other molecules that are relevant to mental disorders.

He points out that considerable evidence supports a role of less than optimal vitamin D levels being associated with depression. However he quickly points out that further double-blind crossover placebo controlled prospective studies must be done to prove this connection.

He goes on to point out that specifically two diagnoses, schizophrenia and autism has been linked to prenatal vitamin D deficiency.as my readers know I've discussed this previously.

The author also goes on to present two cases of psychiatric improvement coinciding with treatment of their vitamin D deficiency, leading to the question of whether their vitamin D deficiency was the cause of their psychiatric disorder.

We increasingly see articles like this in the medical literature.

Please let me know if you have seen any improvement in your or your families mental health as a result of optimizing your vitamin D levels. Have you had your levels checked? Have your friends with depression or other mental disorders had their levels checked?

I look forward to hearing back from you.

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The exact details on the why and why not this vitamin D optimization of patients with these diseases is not discussed in detail in the medical literature.

Now a new study has come out that shows that vitamin D actually appears to HELP patients with two specific types of lymphoma.

In a significant paper published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that was just published online, Matthew Drake, MD and his colleagues from the Mayo Clinic and 2 other schools  tested the theory that vitamin D levels might be predictive of "event free survival" (EFS), and "overall survival" (OS) in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHL). An "event" would be getting so sick the patient would need intervention most likely in a hospital. Otherwise, these terms are self-explanatory.
In the study they looked at over 900 newly diagnosed patients with NHL. 44% of the patients had an insufficient vitamin D level- that was less than 25 ng/ml, measured  within 120 days of their diagnosis. The average patient was followed for almost 3 years, some longer and others shorter.

After adjusting for other factors and treatment, the vitamin D insufficient patients who had defuse large B-cell lymphoma had a 41% lower chance of having event free survival. In addition, this group had a 50% lower likelihood of overall survival in the time they were followed.

Similarly patients with T cell lymphomas also had a significantly shorter event free survival time and a significantly shorter overall survival.

The authors went on to state that it was not clear if normalizing the vitamin D levels in these patients would improve outcome and suggest that more studies of this sort need to be done to find that out.

In my own practice of medicine if I see a patient with one of these types of lymphomas now, I will certainly optimize their vitamin D levels as soon as I start working with them.

The authors were quoted as saying "At this time, there is no definitive evidence for a causative relationship between lower vitamin D levels and poorer outcomes in lymphoma, and our study did not answer the question of whether normalizing vitamin D levels in these patients improves outcome."

This is just one more example where higher vitamin D levels were associated with patients doing better. I look forward to more and more of these studies as vitamin D is not on the researchers map!

Do you have friends or family with one of these types of lymphoma? Have they had their vitamin D levels checked? Let me know what you are doing to help spread the word about vitamin D.

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Preeclampsia is a condition which usually occurs at the end of pregnancy that is characterized by high blood pressure as well as protein in urine. Without treatment it can become very serious and can affect the delivery of the baby.

Early onset preeclampsia is not very common. It occurs in only about 2 or 3% of pregnancies. Nevertheless it is responsible for about 15% of premature births yearly. The definition of "early onset" is when it occurs before the 34th week of pregnancy.
In this new study that was published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a mere 10 ng/ml increase in vitamin D blood level, resulted in a 63% reduction in the incidence of early onset preeclampsia.

Christopher Robinson, MD, MSCR, the principal author on the paper was quoted as saying " It is biologically plausible that the vitamin could affect preeclampsia risk. Vitamin D acts as a hormone, and lab research has found that it may affect the regulation and function of proteins in the placenta; problems in the development of the placenta are believed to be at the roots of preeclampsia."

The authors of the study were quick to point out that further study is needed to understand the role of vitamin D deficiency in pregnancy. The study, although it had very strong statistics, had only 100 patients.

Once again we now see another aspect of the importance of vitamin D during pregnancy. It is my recommendation in my practice of medicine that pregnant women take 4000 IU of vitamin D every day, and this amount is adjusted according to blood tests that we do every trimester.

Have you had your blood tested for vitamin D? Do your family and friends who are pregnant take enough vitamin D? The amount of vitamin D in a normal prenatal vitamin is only 400 IU, and no vitamin D researchers that I know consider this to be nearly sufficient for pregnancy.

I look forward to hearing your comments.

Reference
 

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Now, for the first time, a study on the economic burden of vitamin D deficiency in Canada has been published. It is especially important for Canada to pay attention to their population's vitamin D levels because most of the Canadian population lives north of the 43rd parallel. Because of this, making vitamin D from sun UVB radiation is impossible for at least 4 to 5 months of the year. ("Vitamin D Winter")The Canadian diet provides about 200 IU of D from food every day, which is not enough to maintain normal blood levels. Therefore the people of Canada should all be taking supplementary Vitamin D for at least those winter months.

This article was written by William B. Grant and others. The authors carefully searched the medical literature for articles that showed the dose-response relationships for vitamin D and disease outcomes. For example they reviewed one study which I discussed in my book that showed increasing vitamin D levels could reduce the risk for death from cardiovascular disease by 25% or more. They looked at many other diseases including cancer, diabetes, influenza, falls and fractures, multiple sclerosis and even pregnancy outcomes.

They then obtained data from Health Canada, on mortality rates for 2005.

The authors then estimated the benefit in reducing disease based on increasing the average person's vitamin D level from 27 ng/ml to 42 ng/ml.
The results were astounding. It was estimated that the death rate in Canada would fall by 37,000 deaths per year, which represented over 16% of annual deaths and that the economic burden of disease could be reduced by 6.9% which is equal to over $14 billion per year.

Their conclusion was that they recommended that "Canadian health policy leaders consider measures to increase serum vitamin D levels for all Canadians". Of course I would certainly agree with this!

I would ask all of my readers who live in Canada or anyplace that far north to check their vitamin D levels at least once a year. My book has been translated into the Estonia language and I would remind my Estonia readers that the latitude of Estonia is 58 degrees. Even more north than Canada! And all of Scandinavia is north of Estonia ! They need vitamin D even more!

So if you have family or friends in these northern countries, call or email them to remind them to take their D at least during the winter.

Let me know what you think of all this information? Have you notified your friends even in the north of the United States about taking vitamin D?

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The researchers tested overall cognition which includes thinking, learning, and memory. They also tested attention and executive function. Executive function is the ability to plan, organize and prioritize.

The results of the study showed that those patients who were deficient in vitamin D were 60% more likely to have a significant decline in overall cognition and 31% more likely to have declines in executive function, than those who had sufficient vitamin D levels. A significant aspect of this study is that none of the elderly patients had any signs of dementia at the beginning of the study.

In an e-mail to WebMD Dr Llewellyn said that "This raises the possibility that vitamin D supplements may have therapeutic potential for the prevention of dementia and clinical trials are now urgently needed. We do not yet know the optimal intake of vitamin D to protect the brain as we need the results of clinical trials to confirm this."

This study is of major importance. I don't know how you and your families are but my patients and friends are  more afraid of getting Alzheimer's disease than almost any other condition including cancer. This study was the first of its type to look retrospectively over a significant number of years to watch cognitive decline occur in those who are vitamin D deficient.

As my conventional colleagues always advise, of course prospective double-blind studies must be conducted. But these take years, and there is no reason for you not to now take vitamin D and optimize the levels of you and your family.

You can check your blood level with your doctor or my at-home blood test kit and replace your vitamin D with inexpensive pills. From my previous post, be careful what brand of vitamin D you take so you know you are getting the amount of vitamin D that  is on the label.

Reference

He also stated that "There is the emerging view that the relative daily intake of vitamin D should be increased from the currently recommended 200 IU, 400 IU, 600 IU per day to a significantly higher level of 2000 IU to 4000 IU per day. He further stated "Already, several studies have reported substantial reductions in incidence of breast cancer, colon cancer and type 1 diabetes in association with adequate intake of vitamin D, the positive effect generally occurring within five years of initiation of adequate vitamin D intake."

Dr Norman is one of the major researchers of Vitamin D, and often speaks about the importance of vitamin D for all of us. I am so pleased he has mentioned in the inadequacy of diet for vitamin D, as many doctors still patients to get their D from diet! 
I am delighted to see this kind of interview coming out on the orthodox medical websites, as that is the only way we can get doctors to pay attention and correct vitamin D levels in all Americans.

Have you had your blood level checked? Are you or your family one of the 50% of Americans with a Vitamin D deficiency? How much Vitamin D are you taking? Please start now if you have not already started taking vitamin D !
 

From 1995 to 1999 the average number of papers with the term "vitamin D" in the title or abstract was about 700 to 900 annually. In 2009 alone over 2400 papers were published on vitamin D.

Prominent vitamin D researcher Anthony W. Norman M.D., who is a distinguished professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at the University of California, Riverside was quoted as saying "There has literally been an explosion of new data on vitamin D".
In his Endocrine Today blog Michael Kleerekpoer, MD, estimated that there are over 30,000 blood tests drawn for vitamin D done by laboratories every month in America.

This is the type of "tidal wave" that I was hoping for when I wrote my book The Vitamin D Revolution. I am delighted to see that a revolution is really starting to happen with awareness about vitamin D.

In spite of all these studies on vitamin D, only one prospective interventional trial is large enough to look at the benefits and risks of vitamin D from multiple chronic diseases. This study is called the VITAL study. VITAL stands for "Vitamin D and Omega-3Trial " This trial will test the benefits of giving patients 2000 IU of vitamin D per day in 20,000 American men and women over the following five years.
As I've said many times before, in my opinion there is no reason to wait five more years to start taking vitamin D. We know that there is absolutely no harm and most likely a lot of benefit from optimizing your vitamin D level.

Have you had a vitamin D blood test? Are you taking vitamin D? Are you giving it your family? Let me know! I'm happy to answer any questions here on my blog or in the forum. I am happy to make available an at-home Vitamin D blood test kit.