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A pharmacist's view of the world.
Confessions of a Drug Pusher
Value of Vitamin D

By Tom Braun, RPh.
Improving Health at The Grass Roots Level
I just returned this week end from a seminar at the Scripts Institute in La Jolla, California. It is the home of brilliant medical researchers who are on the cutting edge of medical science.
I attended a seminar on the “Treatment and Diagnosis of Vitamin D Deficiency”
I must share with all of you what I learned. The key points are as follows:
1. Ensuring that all infants receive sufficient Vitamin D in their first year of life will be the best preventative medicine available.
2. It is estimated that about 75% of all Americans are deficient in Vitamin D and the development of many disease states could be avoided if this deficiency did not exist. Smoking depletes Vitamin D levels.
3. There is a high correlation between cancer and a deficiency in Vitamin D
4. Maintaining the appropriate blood levels of Vitamin D would ensure a long productive life for all Americans.
5. Vitamin D deficiency is global and not confined to the US.
6. Sufficient scientific studies have been done for action to be taken by our medical leadership to reverse this problem but it will not happen.
7 If all Americans had sufficient Vitamin D levels, we would dramatically reduce healthcare costs in the US.
The seminar was the brain child of Carole Baggerly founder of www.grassrootshealth.net who discovered after her medical treatment for breast cancer in 2006 that the deficiency of Vitamin D plays a role in the development of many of the cancers (including breast cancer) that we acquire and that the medical profession in general is ignorant of this fact.
There were physicians from around the country attending the seminar who shared with the audience their success in treating and reversing various disease states. They were all endorsing the eradication of the Vitamin D deficiency in the US.
One of the presenters displayed a chart showing that life expectancy would be extended for 90% of the population into our 90’s, if we maintained an optimum blood level of Vitamin D. Currently, the medical profession believes that the normal range for Vitamin D level is between 30 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml. What is known is that about 75% of all Americans are below 30 ng/ml. The current consensus views of the researchers are that the range should be between 40 ng/ml to 60 ng/ml.
The occurrence of many cancers would be dramatically reduced but not eradicated because there are other factors that contribute to the development of many cancers.
One that would be almost totally eradicated is colon cancer, if the persons’ Vitamin D level was normal and they maintained a high fiber diet. On a personal note, I lost two brothers to colon cancer and my wife to lymphoma which has created my advocacy for
supporting the eradication of the Vitamin D deficiency that exists in the US and around the world. On a side note, the Canadian Cancer Association recommends that all cancer patients take 1,000 IU’s of Vitamin D daily. The American Cancer Society is silent on this matter and instead provides wigs to cancer patients who undergo chemo.
If you are interested in discovering your Vitamin D blood level, go to www.grassrootshealth.net and sign up for a “by mail” program which will provide you with a Vitamin D blood level reading every six months for a very reasonable cost.
The consensus at the meeting was that our medical institutions both public and private would not act to change the current status quo due to special interest influence that would no longer benefit from the current medical model.
To prove the point, it was determined in 1976 that folic acid was key to prevention of spinal bifida in babies and a regulation was written. All it would take is to increase the nutritional level of folic acid in basic food products. No action was taken until 1997 when a medical advocate threatened to picket the medical bureaucrats’ office by bringing 1,000 kids in wheel chairs who had spinal bifida because of the lack of action by our ossified medical bureaucracy. The next day the bureaucrat took action and implemented the regulation.
We’re not going to wait for a bureaucrat to act. Spread the word; take action for yourself, your loved ones and friends. Go to www.grassrootshealth.net to learn so much more about Vitamin D. We have to support Carole’s grass roots effort to eradicate this problem. It won’t be fixed in Washington.
Thomas A. Braun RPh
Retired but not senile yet.
Copyright © 2010 Thomas Braun
T. Braun, Pharmacist, Buyer, Marketing Executive for a Major Drug Chain. Active for over 45 years in Pharmacy. Tom would like to hear from you at tbran10@hotmail.com
Legal Stuff: Disclaimer - This document is informational in nature. Medical advice should be secured through your physician.
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