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 eggs, as well as in liver and beef. Many products like orange juice, milk and cereal are fortified with vitamin D, making it easier to ingest the recommended amount. Young women should receive at least 5 mcg (200 IU) of vitamin D per day.

Read more about vitamin D at the Office of Dietary Supplements.

(Image via stock.xchng)

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Importance of Vitamin D in Young Women

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 pillows on the couch and wormed himself into my lap, here in my office. He doesn’t have his usual energy, which makes catching up on work a little easier for me. But he is bored to tears. Literally. I decided it was time for us to get out of the house and enjoy some of that healing fresh air.

Romping around outdoors when sick goes against conventional wisdom. My MIL, for one, frowns on the practice, but there are good arguments touting benefits of getting outdoors. First, there is Sick Building Syndrome, often associated with workplaces, where people cooped up in a building together begin to suffer from “acute health and comfort effects,” according to The Daily Green. The cause is poor indoor air quality that allows the building’s occupants to suck up each other’s germs floating in the air, chemicals from cleaning products used in the building, ozone from photocopiers, pesticides from the exterminator, fumes from new carpets, and secondhand cigarette smoke drifting in from outdoors. The thought alone makes me want to run outside.

The great outdoors also exposes you to generous amounts of sunlight, which produces vitamin D in the body. Vitamin D is found in few foods but is essential for promoting calcium absorption which aides in bone growth and strengthening. Without sufficient vitamin D, bones can become thin, brittle or misshapen. A vitamin D deficiency could lead to liver or kidney disorders, bone softening diseases such as rickets in children, osteomalacia in adults, and osteoperosis in older adults.

So, come and join us. Get outside, take a deep breath, and enjoy the healing powers of fresh air.

Photos, JWJourney

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Got Sick Kids? Send Them Outdoors!

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 such an easy and convenient source of this essential nutrient. Now more than ever we’re learning about the health risks linked to vitamin D deficiency.”

During March is even easier–and cheaper–to get your vitamin D. One of the CVS Extra Care specials for March is on a bottle of 100, 400IU vitamin D tablets. The bottle is $2.99, but you get a coupon for $2.99 off your next purchase when you check out with your Extra Care Card.

(photo credit: muffet/cc license)

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Got Vitamin D?

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 head as a sort of ambrosia for cancers,” says Dr. Louise Parker, an epidemiologist and a world expert in the environmental exposures that can lead to cancer. Or, in the case of Vitamin D, the lack of exposure.

“One of the most important sources of Vitamin D is from the sun and through your skin,” says Dr. Parker.

Wow, that is really promising and worth watching out for if that is really the case.

While it is true that the most important source of Vitamin D is exposure to the sun, the harmful UV rays of the sun predisposes us to skin cancer.

Will the Vitamin D in pill form circumvents that problem?

Find more details from Dalhousie University.

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Vitamin D: The New Aspirin Against 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 in a woman’s blood-stream, the greater the risk of her developing breast cancer at post-menopausal stage.

“Our findings of decreased all-cancer risk with improved vitamin D status are consistent with a large and still growing body of epidemiologic and observational data showing that cancer risk, cancer mortality, or both are inversely associated with solar exposure, vitamin D status, or both.”

Sunshine is the major source of Vitamin D (where Vitamin D is manufactured in the skin by exposure to sunlight), but it is also present in foods such as milk, eggs, oily fish, green vegetables and fortified margarines.

I remember what one commenter her said…something like you really cannot win: one thing may be bad for something but good for another.

Sunlight is the perfect example. Expose yourself to it, you get skin cancer but not breast cancer -according to this study’s findings.

But I guess you can think of ways to benefit from both. Like if you are brown like me, I should already have a built-in protection from the harmful rays of the sun. Or maybe live in the tropics… or something.

Source: Times Online

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Sunlight Against Breast Cancer

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 of taxotere for three weeks out of every four.

If the ongoing Phase III trial turned out successful, the drug is expected in the market in 2009.

Find more details from the full report at the Society of Chemical Industry.

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Vitamin D Pill For Prostate Cancer, Under Development

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:

According to Dr. Halcyon Skinner:

“Vitamin D has shown strong potential for preventing and treating prostate cancer, and areas with greater sunlight exposure have lower incidence and mortality for prostate, breast, and colon cancers, leading us to investigate a role for Vitamin D in pancreatic cancer risk.

Few studies have examined this association, and we did observe a reduced risk for pancreatic cancer with higher intake of Vitamin D.”

Pancreatic cancer, a rapidly fatal disease, is the fourth-leading cause of death from cancer in the United States alone. Currently, it has no known cure, and surgical treatments are not often effective.

Except for cigarette smoking, no environmental factors or dietary practices have been linked to this disease.

Results of this new study appear in the September issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.

Read more details from the American Association for Cancer Research.

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Vitamin D Has Potential to Prevent Pancreatic Cancer