Jan 1, 2009

Make 2009 the Turnaround year..

No, not another blog about Larry Summers. Instead, today I'm offering a New Year present by sharing what I've learned about a key ingredient of your health.
You (yes, I mean YOU!) are probably deficient in Vitamin D, especially right now at the winter solstice, unless you live in Florida and go out in the sun regularly. (Congratulations on that, despite the decline in your home values. Your life expectancy, controlling for the things that can be controlled for, is a year or two longer than the rest of us.)
Some of you know that I had a not-so-good recovery from a hip replacement, which after much travel to the medical watering spots of the world (Johns Hopkins, Mayo) was found by our guys right here at Georgetown U Hospital to be due to mushy bone growth around the implant into my thigh. Not until about a year after the surgery did I have my vitamin D (25(OH)D) blood level tested, and sure enough, I was deficient enough to be counted as one of Oliver Twist's little workhouse friends. I was put on Rx megadoses of D, with great effect, enough to keep my cane in the back seat of my car, for use only when the ice gets bad..
Here I will not digress about the semi-scandal that is a medical care system which can allow a person's hip to be sawed off (sorry, it's that gruesome) without first checking his or her vitamin D status to see whether good bone re-growth can occur. Barak Obama will surely fix that, as soon as he returns from his Hawaiian sunbath. (Could that be why he's so smart? His mother bathed in the Hawaiian sun during her pregnancy?)
Back to giving you the tools for managing your health in 2009! The list of diseases in which vitamin D deficiency is implicated continues to grow, most of it published in high-quality journals, such as NEJM and JAMA
New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association:

If that list of diseases isn't enough for you, you can read a great review on Vitamin D -- semi understandable for us laymen -- by John Cannell and Bruce Hollis, "Use of Vitamin D in Clinical Practice" , which lays out current knowledge about how Vitamin D works, what's a good level, what kinds of actions can raise your Vitamin D levels, etc.

And, now for the best news! The Vitamin D Council (headed by Dr. Cannell) has announced the availability of an accurate mail-order test, so you don't have to lobby your internist to give you a Vitamin D test. They cost about $65, much cheaper than in doctor's office. Check into How to Find out your Vitamin D status.

Finally, if you want to hear it from a mainstream MD, this You-Tube Video by Joseph Prendergast, M.D. (UCSF) should do it!

And have a happy new year.