Power Vitamin D3

Older Adults With Higher Vitamin D Levels Have Improved Mobility, Study Finds
By Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Health News

April 26, 2010 (Anaheim, Calif.) — Vitamin D, already considered a way to help fight colds, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other ills, may also keep people mobile in their golden years, according to a new study.

Older adults who had higher blood levels of vitamin D had better physical functioning, says Denise Houston, PhD, RD, assistant professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. She presented the findings Sunday at the Experimental Biology 2010 meeting.

“Those with better vitamin D levels started out better and ended up better on physical performance tests,” she tells WebMD.

We offer two easy ways to obtain your daily Vitamin D:

Liquid Power Vitamin D – and -  Power Vitamin D3 (soft gels)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a study of Japanese school children, vitamin D supplements taken during the winter and early spring helped prevent seasonal flu and asthma attacks.

The idea for the study, study chief Dr. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, told Reuters Health, came from an earlier study looking at whether vitamin D could help prevent the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis. The researchers in that study noticed that people taking vitamin D were three times less likely to report cold and flu symptoms.

This led Urashima, of Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, and colleagues to randomly assign a group of 6 to 15 year-old children to take vitamin D3 supplements (1,200 international units daily) or inactive placebo during a cold and flu season.

Vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol, is more readily absorbed by the body and more potent than vitamin D2, or ergocalciferol, the form often found in multivitamins.

During the study, conducted between December 2008 and March 2009, 31 of 167 children taking placebo caught influenza A, the most common form of the virus, compared with only 18 of 167 taking vitamin D.

The vitamin D group was 58 percent less likely to catch influenza A, the researchers report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Vitamin D also appeared to suppress asthma attacks in children with a history of asthma. Two children taking vitamin D had asthma attacks during the study, compared to 12 children taking placebo. Urashima admitted to being a bit surprised by this finding and hopes to confirm it in a randomized trial targeting children with asthma.

Dr. Adit Ginde, of University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters Health: “This is the first time a study has been done that rigorously shows that vitamin D supplementation can reduce a type of influenza in a dedicated clinical trial.” Ginde and colleagues published a study a year ago showing that asthmatics with lower vitamin D levels were at five times the risk for colds and flu.

In the Japanese study, vitamin D supplementation did not prevent influenza type B, which tends to appear later in the flu season than the “A” flu variety.

Ginde said there is no solid explanation for why vitamin D prevented influenza A and not influenza B. “The immune system fights different viruses in different ways. This finding needs to be explored in more detail,” Ginde said.

Based on the current study, giving kids vitamin D supplements during the winter may help reduce cases of influenza A, the researchers conclude. Urashima suggests that children could take 1,200 IU per day starting in September to prevent flu and asthma attacks during the flu season, but best for parents to check with their pediatrician first.

SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online March 10, 2010.

Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) Softgels

Q: Hi,

Does the Vitamin D3 Softgels need to be refrigerated after opening?

Thanks

Julie

A: Julie,

That’s not needed and if you take it daily there will be do chance of it ever losing potency.

Sincerely,

Marcus Ettinger DC, BSc

Vitamin D deficiency linked directly to heart disease!

Researchers from Utah presented fresh evidence this week linking vitamin D deficiency to heart disease at the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Scientific Conference in Orlando, Florida. Vitamin D has a good reputation even in the worthy company of other vitamins, having been associated variously with cardiovascular health, strong bones, cognitive health, cancer protection and immune health.

Scientists from the Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City now claim to have dug up stronger evidence supporting the cardiovascular benefits of vitamin D. They also claim to have more firmly established the link between a lack of the vitamin in the diet and heart disease.

Observational Research:

For more than a year, the Intermountain Medical Center research team followed 27,686 people who were 50 years of age or older with no prior history of cardiovascular disease.

The participants had their blood vitamin D levels tested during routine clinical care. They were divided into three groups based on their vitamin D levels – normal (over 30 nanograms per milliliter), low (15-30 ng/ml), or very low (less than 15 ng/ml). The scientist then followed them to see if they developed some form of heart disease.

Researchers found that people with very low levels of vitamin D were 77 percent more likely to die, 45 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease, and 78 percent more likely to have a stroke than those with normal levels. They also found that participants with very low levels of vitamin D were twice as likely to suffer heart failure.

Commenting on the significance of the results, Brent Muhlestein, director of cardiovascular research at the Intermountain Medical Centre, said: “This was a unique study because the association between Vitamin D deficiency and cardiovascular disease has not been well-established.”

Muhlestein went on to say the previous studies have demonstrated links between vitamin D deficiency and risk factors related to heart disease like blood pressure, glucose control, and inflammation.

This latest research is distinct from these studies because it tackles the link between vitamin D and heart disease directly. And although the study is only observational, Muhlestein said it is based on a population pool in Utah that is well suited to the task in hand.

“For example, because of Utah’s low use of tobacco and alcohol, we were able to narrow the focus of the study to the effects of Vitamin D on the cardiovascular system,” said Muhlestein.

In any case, he said the conclusions create an impetus for further study.

“We believe the findings are important enough to now justify randomized treatment trials of supplementation in patients with Vitamin D deficiency to determine for sure whether it can reduce the risk of heart disease,” added the researcher.