Alaska Promotes Prevention with Vitamin D

Alaska's new resolution!

Why you don’t need to be ‘SAD’ to benefit from light exposure | Dr Briffa's Blog

Why you don’t need to be ‘SAD’ to benefit from light exposure: "While light therapy does appear to have potential in combating depression of a seasonal nature, there is some evidence that it might help combat non-seasonal depression too. In a study published recently in the Archives of General Psychiatry, blue light therapy was tested in a group of individuals aged 60 or over with ‘major depressive disorder’

Vitamin D and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention

Can vitamin D help prevent certain cancers and other diseases such as type 1 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain autoimmune and chronic diseases? To answer these questions and more, UCSD School of Medicine and GrassrootsHealth bring you this innovative series on vitamin D deficiency. Join nationally recognized experts as they discuss the latest research and its implications. In this program, David Sane, MD, discusses the prevention of cardiovascular disease through vitamin D.

Vitamin D Prevents Cancer: Is It True?

In a new study, researchers at the UCSD School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center used a complex computer prediction model to determine that intake of vitamin D3 and calcium would prevent 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer annually in the US and Canada. The researchers model also predicted that 75% of deaths from these cancers could be prevented with adequate intake of vitamin D3 and calcium. Join Carole Baggerly with GrassrootsHealth as she discusses this new research

Vitamin D crucial in pregnancy

Are you pregnant? Get a Vitamin D test!

“Tsunami of obesity” threatens all regions of world, researchers find

“Tsunami of obesity” threatens all regions of world, researchers find -- Wise 342 -- bmj.com: "The research, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, shows that systolic blood pressure is currently highest in low income and middle income countries. Between 1980 and 2008 mean systolic blood pressure declined markedly in high income countries by 7.3 mm Hg, whereas it increased in low income countries by 3.3 mm Hg. The greatest falls in systolic pressure were seen in Australasian women and North American men. Increases in systolic pressure happened in some middle income and low income countries, including parts of Oceania, East Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, and West Africa.

Total blood cholesterol concentrations were still highest in high income countries, but the greatest decreases occurred in Western high income countries. There were increases in cholesterol levels in East and South East Asia, particularly Japan, China, and Thailand."

The Problem With Medicine: We Don't Know If Most of It Works

The Problem With Medicine: We Don't Know If Most of It Works | Health Policy | DISCOVER Magazine: "A panel of experts convened in 2007 by the prestigious Institute of Medicine estimated that “well below half” of the procedures doctors perform and the decisions they make about surgeries, drugs, and tests have been adequately investigated and shown to be effective. The rest are based on a combination of guesswork, theory, and tradition, with a strong dose of marketing by drug and device companies..."

Bad medicine: cardiology -- Spence 342 -- bmj.com: "We are scientists. But the Big Book of Medical Facts is in fact just a pamphlet printed at home, with two paragraphs in a very large font. The only certainty of science is uncertainty. Medicine is often little more than an opinion, a faith system: we believe that what we do is right. This is despite history telling us that what we do now is almost certainly wrong. Our faith has invented words, rituals, elaborate costumes, and a culture of reverence and deference. And, with clinical signs so subtle that you might question their existence, cardiologists are the highest caste of all."

Social Life Begins in the Womb

#75: Social Life Begins in the Womb | Mind & Brain | DISCOVER Magazine: "When reaching toward the co-twin—especially around the eyes and mouth—their motion was relatively slow and delicate. When the fetuses touched themselves, on the other hand, they were less cautious (although they approached their own eyes and mouth more gingerly than other parts of their body)."

Science Explains Why Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

#97: Science Explains Why Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
 | Sex & the Brain | DISCOVER Magazine: "Rejected lovers also showed increased neural response in regions involved in assessing behavior and controlling emotions. “These people were working on the problem, thinking, what did I do, what should I do next, what did I learn from this,” Fisher says. And the longer ago the breakup was, the weaker the activity in the attachment-linked region. In other words: Love hurts, but time heals."

Vitamin D Induction of the Human Antimicrobial Peptide Cathelicidin in the Urinary Bladder

"The Swedish study found that vitamin D actually induces cathelicidin (an antimicrobial that the body produces) in the urinary bladder -- but only when a boost in the antimcrobial peptide is needed in the face of a threatening infection. The researchers found this out when they analyzed bladder tissue biopsied from postmenopausal women to check for expression of cathelicidin before and after the research volunteers took supplements of vitamin D (in the form of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3) for three months. When the bladder cells were infected with the UTI-causing germ E. coli, the scientists observed a significant increase in cathelicidin expression after vitamin D supplementation."

This means vitamin D has a huge advantage over mainstream medicine's widely prescribed antibiotics for urinary tract infections. That's because when UTIs are treated with antibiotics, the drugs can harm beneficial bacteria in the gut and wreak havoc in the body. But vitamin D only produces germ-killing peptides at the site of an infection when needed, leaving "friendly bacteria" totally unharmed."


PLoS ONE: Vitamin D Induction of the Human Antimicrobial Peptide Cathelicidin in the Urinary Bladder: "Urinary tract infection (UTI) remains an important disease and becomes more frequent in women after menopause. Due to the proximity of the highly colonized perineum, the urinary tract epithelium must be able to sense pathogens and elicit a fast innate immune response in order to keep its integrity [1], [2]. Previously we demonstrated that the human antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin was up-regulated upon E. coli infection and that it significantly contributes to the protection of the urinary tract in humans and in mice [3]. Here, we investigate vitamin D-induced boosting of cathelicidin in the urinary bladder."