Well, via a nice Google alert for vitamin D, I stumbled upon a treasure trove, yesterday. At first, it was just one of the more common news articles I cite. In this case, however, there was this bit towards the end.
Carole Baggerly started a group called GrassrootsHealth last year in California, which focuses solely on promoting information about vitamin D. She started it after a bout with breast cancer that was followed by a diagnosis of osteoporosis. She learned she was vitamin D deficient.
This led to a whole list of discoveries about vitamin D. She read research that suggested raising vitamin D levels may prevent up to half of all breast cancer and two-thirds of colorectal cancer cases in the United States. She read a study showing women with the lowest levels of vitamin D had nearly double the risk of their breast cancer progressing, and a 73 percent greater risk of death compared to women with adequate vitamin D. She found out that the first study linking colorectal cancer and vitamin D was published in 1941.
You know, I'm seeing this more and more, and I don't blog or link even a 10th of the stuff I read. Increasingly, I'm seeing references to associations discovered in the early 1900s that should have been paid attention to, weren't, and we're suffering the consequences. It's rotten fruit, vegetable and eggs time (to be tossed at some of these "experts" and "authorities").
Moving on, I quickly located GrasstootsHealth and then this page. which just happens to be the pot of gold. Those links are to various presentations by doctors and other researchers that are chock full of associative revelations I find riveting, mind-blowing, shocking, you name it.
Let's begin with vitamin D deficiency in association with type 1 diabetes, by Frank Garland, PhD.
Now, you're certainly welcome to go through these yourself, but they are not for the faint of heart and do assume some basic knowledge of statistical evaluation. Here's a few graphs.
You'll note the association between latitude, i.e., vitamin D producing sunshine, and increased incidence of type 1 diabetes. Here's one closer to home; rates of type 1 comparing San Diego and Rochester.
Here's one tracking new diagnoses in the U.S. Department of Defense by month and year since 2000.
And finally, the trend of increasing rates of type 1 in Finland for children less than 14 years old, along with the points in time recommended levels of daily intake for infants went from 4,500 IU to 2,000 IU to 1,000 IU to 400IU. Read it and weep at the astounding level of modern ignorance.
Can you believe it? As they say, fact is often far stranger than fiction. This would never make it as a film proposal for want of credibility.
It's truly incredible.
I will look at the links, but did they say why the dose recommendations were reduced?
Nope. I suppose it's because it only takes 20-30 to get 99% of people out of risk for rickets. Huge blind spot. "Experts" have never — until now — realized that vitamin D was anything more then about rickets.
Guys, I haven't confirmed this information, so until I do it's just hearsay — but I have read in the comments line to one of Eades' posts that Ancel Keys also had a major role in determining the RDA for vitamins in the United States… as an outgrowth of WII rationing policies (the K ration, or Keyes ration).
If that's true, it would explain a helluva lot.
Oh, oh. Perhaps there's some grave pissing that needs doing (again).
I am now wondering what the Lithuanians, Latvians and Poles are doing, that the North Americans on close parallels are not, to have lower incidence rates of cancer.
In the middle of the 80th my sister married a Pole who lived in a town not far from Gdansk, at the Baltic Sea. I was invited at their marriage, and spent there one week. I can tell you from this experience that this people ate a lot of sea fish. In the fall, they went for fishing eel, and they smoked it; European eel is a fish rich in fats with quite a lot of omega3 acids, and it was much appreciated, mainly with vodka. Also herring was served even for breakfast, together with eggs and cod liver kept in pasteurized jars. They ate also “Leberwurst”, a sausage made with pork liver and pork fat, many other sorts of sausages, and ham. This sort of food is very rich in vitamins, comprising the B complex, and vitamins A, D and K2. During my staying there we had quite a lot of all this sort of food.
1 in Finland for children less than 14 years old, along with the points in time recommended levels of daily intake for infants went from 4,500 IU to 2,000 IU to 1,000 IU to 400IU. Read it and weep at the astounding level of modern ignorance.