Total Health Magazine

Ah, it was so simple back in 1941. That’s when the first RDA’s (Recommended Daily Allowances) for vitamins came out. Clear little easy-to-understand numbers that let you know how much of a vitamin you needed to prevent a deficiency disease (like rickets or beri-beri). It was the vitamin equivalent of having three television stations to choose from. I like to call it the RDA’s “Minimum Wage Nutrition.”

Dear Pharmacist,
My friends daughter has rickets, I didn’t think that was possible in this day and age. How do I protect my kids?

EWG's 2012 Sunscreen Report now online.

What exactly does it mean when you see sunscreen or sunblock on a product label? The store shelves offer so many to choose from, no wonder it can get a bit frustrating. Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not updated their sunscreen safety standards since 1978. In June of 2011, FDA posted new rules for sunscreen products to help clear up some of the confusion. The new stricter guidelines mandate products to describe how well the product protects your skin.

On Wednesday, November 30, 2010, the Institute of Medicine's Food and Nutrition Board issued a report saying in essence that supplemental vitamin D over 800 IUs was unnecessary and could even be harmful (more on this in a minute).

Should you ignore this report? Yes. And I'll tell you why.

Farmed salmon seems less expensive than wild salmon—until you consider the enormous costs of salmon farming to our environment and to our health, and the impact of the aquaculture industry on wild salmon populations—one of the last natural foods available on our planet. We’re told regularly by many health authorities that we need to eat more fish in order to maintain good health. The American Heart Association, for example, recommends at least two 3.5 ounce servings of fish—preferably oily fish—per week as part of a heart-healthy diet. The American Medical Association suggests that adding just three ounces of salmon a week to your diet can reduce your risk of cardiac death by more than 30 percent.

Editor's Note:
This is the first in a series of articles drawn from The Sinatra Solution, Metabolic Cardiology by Stephen T Sinatra, M.D.

In his introduction to this landmark work, James C. Roberts, M.D., FACC states the following: "Nutritional science provides answers to many lingering questions in medicine. It's the difference between natural science and the man-made science of drug therapy.

Many medical organizations advise against routine supplementation of vitamins and minerals (citing “safety concerns,” lack of evidence of benefit,” or that they are simply “unnecessary”) and recommend a focus on acquiring nutrients from the diet. Which, for the most part, is a good suggestion: no combination of supplemental vitamins, minerals, or other nutrients could possibly emulate the diversity of known (and unknown) beneficial compounds found in the diet. However, general dismissals of dietary supplements often fail to acknowledge the significant portion of micronutrients in the average diet that may come from the fortification of foodstuffs. Food fortification (addition of nutrients to foodstuffs for commercial benefit or as a part of public health policy) has been credited for the eradication of several diseases of nutrient deficiency in the U.S.

Research released by the Women’s Health Initiative ( WHI ) that showed that 1,000 mg calcium and 400 IU vitamin D in healthy postmenopausal women (between the ages of 50 to 79 years) did not reduce the risk of bone fractures. The study did show that the supplementation of calcium and vitamin D, combined with the recommended amount of calcium from the diet, significantly improved hipbone density. This study was a bit discouraging for many women who bank their bone health on just a daily calcium supplement product. There is so much more to do for bone health, including eating a wholesome diet, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. In addition, there is a branded ingredient compound called Ostivone®, known in the research as ipriflavone, which when combined with calcium has been shown to significantly increase bone density.

Obesity has gone prime time. We Find evidence of its presence where ever we look: in every neighborhood, every mall, every school and every workplace. Hardly a day goes by without the news reporting on some aspect of the looming obesity crisis. However, the epidemic is not confined to just the wealthy developed world. Even desperately poor countries such as Nigeria and Uganda are wrestling with the dilemma of obesity. China, which was once one of the world’s leanest countries, is not immune. In fact, it has one of the fastest-growing obesity rates in the world and one quarter of its urban youth is presently overweight. It is projected that by 2015, 200 million Chinese will be not just obese, but morbidly obese. The looming obesity epidemic is sending chills through the global community. Worldwide, more than 1.3 billion people are overweight, whereas only 800 million are underweight—and these statistics are diverging rapidly.

There is a vitamin revolution brewing, and it is important to the health of young and old alike as researchers respond to what has been called the “vitamin D deficiency epidemic.” More than a dozen scientists at leading universities both in the United States and abroad have minced no words about it: many of us need more vitamin D. (See “Cod liver oil, vitamin A toxicity, frequent respiratory infections, and the vitamin D deficiency epidemic.”)¹ The issue of deficiency may be especially true of children, yet it is also applicable to adults. Quite surprisingly as far as vitamin D is concerned, the suggested intakes in recent decades have fallen rather wide of the mark. Not only are the recommendations of 400 IU/day as an adequate intake (100 percent of U.S. Daily Value) and 2,000 IU/day as an upper limit too low, but also recommendations may have been more realistic 70 years ago. As detailed below, in a tale of two vitamins, A and D, scientists initially bet on the wrong one.