Wednesday, August 26, 2015

IN THE ABSENCE OF VITAMIN D, NONE OF OUR BODY SYSTEMS WORKS WELL

"In the absence of Vitamin D none of our body systems works well.”
“In all of these actions, Vitamin D is not causative; rather, it is enabling—necessary for cell action—but not its cause.”  
"Low Vitamin D status impairs [our] protective and reparative activity."

Show Notes:
The presenter is Robert P. Heaney, Creighton University.


“In the absence of Vitamin D, none of our body systems works well.”  Vitamin D is necessary in order to absorb enough calcium from the food we eat.  
“In all of these actions, Vitamin D is not causative; rather, it is enabling—necessary for cell action—but not its cause.”

Some vitamin D but not enough?  The size of the response shrinks.  Still get the response but if you’re severely depleted, you get none at all.
Vitamin D exists in two chemically distinct forms:
Vitamin D2: ergocalciferol
Vitamin D3: cholecalciferol.

D3 is the natural form in animals.
Our skin makes D3 on exposure to UV-B light.

10:19 He explains that we need 4000 to 6000 IU/daily.

VITAMIN D3 DEFICIENCY & CHRONIC DISEASE
Chronic disease is the breakdown of the structure and/or of a body system.
Its origin is usually multifactorial:  Genes, Environment, Nutrition, Infection, 
Toxins, and Injury.  

The body has mechanisms to repair this damage or to fight it at its origin.
And vitamin D is an essential component of many of these mechanisms.
Low Vitamin D status impairs this protective/reparative activity.
The higher the amount of Vitamin D in your system, the better you do when encountering causes.

WORKING DEFINITIONS
1.   A deficiency is a condition in which an inadequate intake of a nutrient results in significant dysfunction or disease.
2.  Nutrient adequacy is the situation in which further increases in intake produce no further reduction in dysfunction or disease.  Nutrient adequacy is not the same as optimal health, as non-nutrient factors also affect the function of body systems.

“All studies, in virtually all nations, irrespective of latitude, show that the majority of the world’s population has inadequate Vitamin D status.”
What are the consequences?

VITAMIN D IMPROVES THESE CONDITIONS
1.  Bone diseases, falls, & fractures.
2.  Hypertension.
3.  Increased risk of cardiac disease & death.
4.  Prematurity, low birth weight, & Caesareans.
5.  Diabetes & metabolic syndrome
6.  Periodontal disease.
7.  Decreased resistance to infection.
8.  Various cancers.
9.  Increased risk of multiple sclerosis.
10.  Increased risk of schizophrenia.
Vitamin D is necessary for all of these tissues to function optimally.
Vitamin D is an integral component of the mechanism whereby cells control gene transcription in response to a variety of extracellular stimuli.
Adequate Vitamin D status enables optimal response to a broad variety of signals.
A deficiency will manifest itself differently, depending upon the tissue being stressed, thus explaining the diversity of responses.
ON FRACTURES: 65 to 85-year-old Brits on adequate Vitamin D showed a 30% reduction in fracture risk.  Not bad.

ON FALLS: 63 to 99-year-olds on falling.  Calcium alone had no effect on falling.  Vitamin D plus Calcium showed a 50% reduction in falling risks. 

BREAST CANCER:  Cites a study that showed Vitamin D provides a 70% reduction in breast cancer. 

CANCER RISK:  77% reduction in cancer risk.

Outdoor summer workers commonly have Vitamin D values of 60-80 ng/ml of vitamin blood serum.

Age, 51-70, says you need more vitamin D3.  Tolerable upper intake levels: 10,000.  He states that vitamin D3 needs to be taken with magnesium, but also take it with vitamin K2.  

WHAT ABOUT ADVERSE EFFECTS?  
Adverse effects begin to occur . . . when?  Adverse effects from vitamin D3 can occur after daily 50,000IU for several months, anywhere between 8 to 11 months.  The adverse effect is hypercalcemia, which is excess calcium in the blood where it can harden blood vessels.  You don't want excess calcium in your blood, you want the calcium in your tissue . . . but you don't want excess.  So if you're taking megadoses of vitamin D3 for 8 to 11 months, then back off the vitamin D and incorporate Quercetine into your supplement regime, that or apples or onions.  

PHYSIOLOGY:  Health is more than the absence of disease.


Disease
Dysfunction
Health

Deficiency includes dysfunction.


PHYSIOLOGICAL APPROACH vs. DISEASE AVOIDANCE APPROACH
The physiological approach must inevitably produce a higher estimate of the requirement than the disease avoidance approach: The questions are different.  The goals are different.  The endpoints are different.


Two Frameworks:
 

NUTRITIONAL REQUIREMENT

Risk Assessment: concerned with prevention of disease

Physiology: concerned with functional support

For a nutrient study to be informative:

Micro-nutrients function as a component of physiology.

1. Have to determine the basal nutrient status as it is used as an inclusion criterion.

2. Change in intake must be large enough to change nutrient status meaningfully.

3.  Change in nutrient status, not change in intake, must be the independent variable in the hypothesis.

4.  Change in status must be quantified.

5.  Co-nutrient status must be optimized.

Confers an evolutionary advantage – functional optimization.

29:57

Minimizing the need for compensation:

Low Calcium

Matching ancestral intake.  Greater sun exposure.  

Support of a critical physiological function.

    Mother’s milk is capable of providing all the Vitamin D an infant needs.

    But only the mother has native vitamin D in her blood.

    Vitamin D crosses from the blood into the milk, but 25(OH) D does not, at

    Vitamin D has a half-time in the blood of < 24 hours.

    So the mother needs either daily input of Vitamin D or a large reserve (in fat)



This is a pretty good brand of Vitamin D3:

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