If you have vitamin D deficiency in the years before menopause, you may suffer three times the increased risk of developing high blood pressure later on.

A new study, reported on at the American Heart Association, found that vitamin D deficiency among premenopausal women led to systolic hypertension 15 years later.
Vitamin D is also important for bone health. It can enter the body through the skin by means of exposure to ultraviolet B rays in sunlight. Dietary vitamin D is ingested.
Vitamin D is found in many fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel. Vitamin D is also found in the yolk of …read more

Benjamin Franklin once wrote to the French physician Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, “I rise early almost every morning and sit in my chamber, without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to season, either reading or writing.” Why? Franklin believed that daily baths of fresh air were good for one’s health. He must have known what he was doing because the old guy lived to the ripe old age of 84.
I’m calling it sage advice. Truman is still recovering from step throat and he has a bad case of cabin fever. He just left his cocoon of blankets and …read more

Vitamin D deficiency in the United States is being called a national epidemic, according to registered dietitian and Food Network host Ellie Krieger.

Even though we have the ability to make our own vitamin D when the ultraviolet rays of the sun hit our skin, many Americans fail to get enough vitamin D. In fact, vitamin D deficiency in this country is being called a silent epidemic. The prudent use of sunscreen, sun-blocking pollution and long, cold winters indoors are partially to blame.
Says Krieger, “It’s alarming to see so many people fail to get enough vitamin D, especially when milk is …read more

Vitamin D has the potential to become the “new aspirin“, the little inexpensive pill that may be able to block the development of some cancers, strengthen bones, prevent multiple sclerosis and alleviate winter depression.
Such were the findings of a new Canadian study:
But it’s not science fiction. The “new aspirin” could be Vitamin D. Just as we discovered that aspirin can guard against heart disease, Vitamin D could become a useful weapon in the fight against MS, osteoporosis, mild depression and one of the most devastating diseases of our time – cancer.
“As time has gone by, Vitamin D has raised its …read more

While avoiding too much sunshine will reduce one’s risk of skin cancer, it will on the other hand increase one’s risk of breast cancer.
The majority of vitamin D comes from exposure of the skin to sunlight but many women – exposed less in winter and reluctant to bare themselves in summer because of the dangers – are deficient.
There has been anecdotal evidence to suggest that breast cancer is less common among women who live closer to the Equator, where the sunshine is stronger.
But a new study conducted by Creighton University provided evidence that the lower the levels of vitamin D …read more

Under clinical stage development by drugmaker Novacea, is a drug based on vitamin D for patients in the advanced stages of prostate cancer along with chemotherapy drugs – Asentar (DN-101).
Drug makers came up with the idea because vitamin D from sunlight improves the prognosis of certain cancers. But taking natural levels of the vitamin has no effect.
Asentar is a novel formulation that reproduces the healing effect without the dangerous side-effects of a vitamin D overdose.
Asentar provides levels of vitamin D 50-100 times higher than normal. Patients would be expected to take one tablet once a week with their weekly regime …read more

According to a study led by Halcyon Skinner, Ph.D., of Northwestern University with colleagues from Harvard University, revealed that consumption of Vitamin D tablets cuts the risk of pancreatic cancer by nearly half.
One of the first known studies to use a large-scale epidemiological survey to examine the relationship between Vitamin D and pancreatic cancer, the results suggest that the nutrient has a potential in preventing the disease.
In the study, analysis and examination of data two large, long-term health surveys resulted to the following:
Taking the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of Vitamin D (400 IU/day) reduced the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43 …read more