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Over years lots of vitamins have been proposed as the best thing and something everybody should have more of. In the 60′s and 70′s vitamin C was the “in” vitamin. Anybody that had the temerity to have have slight sniffle or cough would be assailed from several directions with “You should take some vitamin C”. As both a sailor and a Limey I can see the benefit of taking some vitamin C, and as a doctor over the years I have seen a couple of patients with early scurvy -often elderly patients surviving on white bread and dripping in the good old days in the UK, but also the occasional patient in nursing homes or long stay in hospital.
Its not difficult to get vitamin C deficiency as it is not stored in the body if you don’t have any fruit or vegetables for a few days the levels drop fast as it is excreted in the urine. The connection with colds and flu is as yet unproven in any randomised control trial, perhaps I suppose as most of us are healthy and have plenty of vitamin C. I am sure that if you have relatives or friends that are not in that condition then some additional vitamin C is unlikely to do any harm.
The vitamin of the 90′s was probably vitamin E. Vitamin E was shown in a small trial to reduce coronary deaths in a study in the esteemed UK journal The Lancet, and after that everybody was taking it. It was also taken in order to prevent cancer. A number of studies in animals looked very promising. Unfortunately some very good human studies did not confirm those promising findings and even suggested that additional vitmain E might cause additional cases of cancer. A number of studies trying to repoduce the cardiovascular advantage of extra vitamin E also failed and although I still see the odd article in the internet – often next to adverts selling vitamin E – trying to prove that actually vitamin E in large amount is useful there really is no evidence for its use in humans and the pretty good studies showing it makes things worse is enough for me to actually encourage patient to stop taking additional supplements of vitamin E.
The 2000′s was the vitamin folic acid. Preventing folic acid deficiency in pregnant women is important at preventing spina bifida and so we still like folic acid. At one point when it was shown that too much homocysteine predisposes to coronary disease and that homocysteine is reduced by taking folic acid a lot of us started encouraging folic acid use. It seems logical that would mean that folic acid would reduce coronary disease. You would think so, but no — recent studies have shown that taking folic acid does not prevent coronary disease. Folic acid is not bad and there are still moves to increase the amount of it in white flour and hence in bread etc.
The next decade has to be the decade of vitamin D. Two years ago when I was testing for it and discussing with my patients about it I was thought a lunatic as everybody knew that vitamin D was just about bones. Now everybody knows that it is more than that.
A low level of vitamin D predisposes to several cancers, immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and vascular disease and of course bone disease. This last week its looks like you could add renal disease into the mix as well. Of course nobody has yet proved that taking more vitamin D helps any of these conditions they have only shown that if you have low levels you are more likely to have them then not. But I think vitamin D is more likely to have a real beneficial effect than some of the others and if so the potential is huge.
There are vitamin D receptors on vascular tissue and immune cells but the are only switched on when the level of vitamin D is higher than in most people. It seems likely that when humans were running around just in a loin cloths that they were more likely to get to get a lot more sun than they do running from house to car to work and back again totally clothed. Oh yes and being told by all the cancer experts and dermatologists that sun was very bad for you meant that even when we went out in the sun we covered up our bodies. This meant that our vitamin D levels are too low in most of us to get the cardiovascular and anti-cancer benefits. Well that’s the theory – I am convinced but until we get some intervention studies proving that more is better we won’t know for sure. Hopefully some governments are doing these studies because it would have to be the cheapest health treatment out there and is universally available at no cost . If it does come through as promised expect to see dramatic drops in the amounts of chronic diseases across the world.
Tomorrow night especially just remember that although you should not get burned by the sun you are not the undead and unlike most Halloween characters some sunshine several times a week will improve you and your families health at no cost and little risk.
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Excellent information! Thank you for sending it to me. I appreciate it and can use it. Keep up the good work!
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