Mainstream medicine just can’t seem to take seriously the constant torrent of studies showing the health benefits of vitamin D.
Or the growing list of disorders and diseases associated with a lack of this crucial nutrient.
Not to mention the huge dimensions of the worldwide epidemic of vitamin D deficiency.
But you know I take all of this science seriously. In fact, the other day, I was looking back over the hundreds of articles I’ve written since I started this newsletter four years ago. I counted up over 40 different times I’ve revealed cutting-edge vitamin D research in Insiders’ Cures or a Daily Dispatch.
So it’s no surprise that I have a new, compelling study to tell you about today. But before I get into that, I have an announcement to make. After careful study of all of the new vitamin D research, I’m recommending that everyone increase their dose of this remarkable nutrient…to 10,000 IU of D3 a day.
Why you need to double your D
Studies are showing over and over again that 10,000 IU of D3 every day is key for general disease prevention and health promotion. It will also help lower your risk of a variety of health issues, including cancer, dementia, depression, high blood pressure and heart disease, infections, multiple sclerosis, skin conditions, and osteoporosis and other bone issues.
Some so-called public health “experts” might scoff at my new recommendation, thinking that even my original recommendation of 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day was too high. But they don’t read the studies like I do (or maybe they don’t understand them).
Based on reams of new research, I’ve concluded that while 5,000 IU of D3 still provides benefit, the total evidence now fully supports supplementing with a higher daily dose of 10,000 IU.
Perhaps the most compelling evidence is two new studies showing that the Institute of Medicine’s pitifully puny RDA of 600 IU of vitamin D a day for men and women under age 70 is off by 10-fold.
You read that right—the current vitamin D RDA is 10 times too low.
The researchers—one team at American universities and another at a Canadian university—found that men and women need 10 times more vitamin D than what the IOM recommends to reduce their risk of diseases related to vitamin D deficiency. (Check out my April 3, 2015 Daily Dispatch “Oops–government’s vitamin D calculations off by factor of 10!” for more details).
That means the IOM’s RDA for vitamin D should increase to 6,000 IU per day. But remember—the RDA is the amount you need just to avoid a deficiency. Not to actually prevent disease or achieve optimal health.
In fact, I wrote in a June 12 Daily Dispatch about a study in which people were given as much as 100,000 IU of vitamin D in a single dose. With no ill effects. That turns the tired old mainstream argument about vitamin D toxicity right on its head.
You see, these mainstream “experts” believe that because D is a fat-soluble vitamin, it can build up in your tissues and potentially achieve dangerous levels in your body.
But that’s not how our bodies work. They’re actually designed to hoard this crucial nutrient so we won’t run out. Like in the winter, when there’s not enough sunlight for most people to make vitamin D naturally. So we rely on the D our body has stored away.
Bottom line: It’s highly unlikely you’re going to overdose on D. But it’s highly likely you’re underdosing. And that’s why I’m doubling my recommendations to 10,000 IU of this key vitamin every day.
In fact, that amount is what researchers say is the minimum our own bodies make from just 15 minutes in the sun this time of year. That’s right—the scientists who administered the new vitamin D study I mentioned earlier say the human body can make 10,000 to 20,000 IU of D a day from sun exposure (and that’s only in the summer months for many people living in the U.S.).1
Let’s look more closely at this exciting new research.
Vitamin D can shrink or even reverse prostate tumors—without surgery, radiation, or chemo
The study was presented in March at the 249th annual meeting of the American Chemical Society—a group that fortunately knows how to recognize good science when they see it.
Researchers gathered 37 men who were undergoing elective prostatectomies. The men had Gleason Grading System tumor scores below 7—meaning their prostate tumor is not aggressive and may not even cause any symptoms or health problems during their lifetime.
As I’ve reported before, and as eloquently stated by my friend and colleague, Dr. George Lundberg (who edited the Journal of the American Medical Association for 20 years), if a tumor does not grow, does not invade, does not metastasize, and can never cause death, it should not really be classified as “cancer.” Nevertheless, the cancer industry encourages men with these types of tumors to have their prostate glands surgically removed anyway.
When a man does decide to have his prostate tumor removed, he must wait 60 days for the damage and inflammation caused by the prostate biopsy surgery to subside. So, dealing with today’s reality of cancer treatment, researchers used this waiting period to study the effects of vitamin D supplementation.
They gave half of the study participants 4,000 IU of vitamin D a day, while the other half got a placebo. After just two months, the majority of the men given vitamin D had an actual reversal in the growth of their prostate tumors.
The researchers also found dramatic changes in the levels of fats and proteins involved in inflammation—which is associated with cancer—in the vitamin D group’s prostate glands. And a protein called growth differentiation factor 15 was strongly induced by vitamin D supplementation. This protein reduces inflammation and has been shown in previous studies to influence tumor cells to reverse course and differentiate back to normal cells.
Longer-term vitamin D supplementation had equally impressive results. A prior study conducted by the same researchers showed that over 55 percent of men with low-grade prostate cancer who took vitamin D supplements for one year had a decrease in their Gleason grades. And some tumors even disappeared completely.2
In both studies, the researchers noted that they were treating prostate cancer patients with just normal body levels of vitamin D produced from the sun—without even moving on to the “high” doses used in other studies on D’s health benefits.
Since you often can’t count on getting enough sun exposure to make optimal levels of D in your body, I recommend you take supplements. And because 10,000 IU of D can be a lot of pills, I suggest getting your daily dose in an easy-to-use liquid form. Just a dropper-full added to a small amount of fruit juice or milk will give you your daily 10,000 IU of this crucial nutrient.
Sources:
1http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2015/march/vitamin-d-may-keep-low-grade-prostate-cancer-from-becoming-aggressive.html.
2“Vitamin D3 Supplementation at 4000 International Units Per Day for One Year Results in a Decrease of Positive Cores at Repeat Biopsy in Subjects with Low-Risk Prostate Cancer under Active Surveillance.” J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Jul;97(7):2315-24.