Vitamin Information Center

Body Mass Index (BMI)
Definition
Body mass index is defined as the individual’s body
weight divided by the square of the individual’s height
(kg/m2). The BMI is used for classifying underweight,
overweight and obesity in adults. The BMI is a simple
metric that relates weight and height. If an adult
for example weighs 75kg and its height is 1.80m, the
BMI will be 23.1. The cut-off points as defined by the
WHO are <18.50 for underweight, 18.50–24.99 for normal
range, 25.00–29.99 for overweight and ≥30 for
obese. Those BMI values are age- and sex-independent
in general, yet the BMI might not correspond to a similar
degree of fatness in different populations. There are
different health risks related with an increasing BMI,
e. g. type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

By Jean Carper
Anti-Aging Expert, Best-Selling Author and USA Weekend Columnist
Vitamin D is the hottest nutrient in medical circles now. It has been credited with fighting everything from cancer to chronic pain. The latest news:

Cuts heart attacks. Men with low levels of vitamin D are about two times more apt to suffer a heart attack than men with sufficient D, Harvard researchers say. Their theory: Vitamin D lessens inflammation, high blood pressure and vascular calcification, all factors in cardiovascular disease.

Curbs cancer. A research team at the University of California-San Diego says that 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily could reduce breast cancer rates by half and slash the risk of colon cancer by two-thirds.

Prevents diabetes. Men with blood richest in vitamin D were 72% less apt to develop type 2 diabetes after age 40 than men with the least vitamin D, says a new Finnish study.

Boosts brain. Older people with depression or dementia may benefit from extra vitamin D, Dutch researchers say. Men and women over 65 with major or minor depression had 14% lower vitamin D levels than their non-depressed peers. And among Alzheimer’s patients, those with higher vitamin D levels scored better on tests of cognitive function.

RELATED PRODUCTS: Our Multi Nutrient Formula contain 1,000 IU of vitamin D. In 2007, we increased the amount in our formulas from 600 IU to 1,000 IU, in response to research indicating that the RDA for vitamin D is far too low for most adults.

Abundant dietary vitamin C may lower the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, say researchers from the Institute of Metabolic Science at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, England.

Scientists there followed 21,831 men and women aged 40 to 75 over a 12-year period, during which they tracked diet, exercise, and blood content. By the end of the study, 423 men and 312 women-3.2 percent of the study group-had developed type 2.

The researchers concluded that the subjects with the highest levels of vitamin C in their blood were 62 percent less likely to develop type 2 than the subjects with lower levels.

Fruit and vegetables were the subjects’ main sources of vitamin C. The researchers said that other factors commonly associated with a risk for diabetes, such as age, sex, smoking, family history, weight, and alcohol consumption, did not significantly alter the beneficial effects of vitamin C.

Is Gum Disease a Precursor to Diabetes?

If you have gum disease, your chances of developing type 2 diabetes are nearly double those of people who don’t have gum disease, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City.

That was their conclusion after a 20-year study that tracked 9,000 people without diabetes.

The presence of periodontal disease has often been noted as an accompaniment to diabetes, but nobody is sure whether it is a precursor to the disease or possibly even a contributing factor.

Because gum disease, like diabetes, involves tissue inflammation, there is some speculation that it is an indicator of susceptibility to inflammatory disease.

Thirty-five percent of adults have some form of gum disease, and one third of those experience a troubling level of infection.

Researchers don’t know what causes periodontal disease. Theories include genetics, smoking, and dry mouth caused by medications. Treatments include antibiotics, topical gels, extremely deep tooth cleaning, and even surgery to graft tissue from the roof of the mouth onto affected spots to encourage new gum growth.

The hope is that lowering the level of inflammation in the mouth may decrease the likelihood of inflammation developing elsewhere in the body.

Source: Diabetes Care, July 2008

Oily fish: Mackerel is a good source of vitamin D

Vitamin D may offer protection against the most common form of diabetes.

New research shows that, in particular, men with the highest blood level of the vitamin were 72 per cent less likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

There was a reduced effect among women.

Scientists in Finland monitored several thousand people, aged 40 to 74, for 22 years, during which time 412 developed the disease.

Results showed that those with higher levels of vitamin D had the lower risk of diabetes.

It is thought that low levels of vitamin D affect the body’s ability to produce insulin.

Diabetes type 2 is a growing health problem.

There are 1.9 million adults in the UK with diagnosed diabetes, and it is estimated there are another 589,000 unidentified sufferers.

Risk increases with age - less than one per cent of people under 34 have diagnosed diabetes compared with 10 per cent aged 75 and over.

A lack of vitamin D has been found in some studies to play an unrecognized role in death among people suffering from a variety of medical problems, including heart disease and cancer.

Now researchers say they have evidence that even in the general population, having too little of the vitamin appears to be associated with a higher risk of death.

Writing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers say they looked at the vitamin D levels and death rates of more than 13,000 people during a period of more than six years.

Those who fell in the lowest quarter of vitamin D levels had a 26 percent higher risk of death from all causes than those in the top quarter, according to the study, which was led by Michal L. Melamed of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

About 41 percent of men and 53 percent of women in the U.S. have levels of the vitamin that are considered too low.

Breakthrough likely to help people with Type 2 diabetes

Two groups of researchers in Japan have identified a gene that is directly linked to the occurrence of diabetes, a discovery likely to help in the early identification of people who may be susceptible to the disease.

A group of researchers from the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research and another from the International Medical Center of Japan separately studied individual diabetic cases involving Japanese patients.

Their findings were published in the online edition of the U.S. medical journal Nature Genetics. The researchers found a link between a gene known as KCNQ1 and the onset of Type 2 diabetes — the variant affecting 90 percent of Japan’s 8.2 million diabetic patients.

The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is attributed to a lack of physical exercise, excessive eating and genetics.

Last week, we reported that high consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks seems to increase the risk for type 2 diabetes among African-American women. In the most recent issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, investigators from England reported that high levels of vitamin C in the blood are associated with a substantially decreased risk of diabetes.

The researchers studied a population of people, ranging from age 40 to age 75, who completed food questionnaires. The study population was followed for 12 years - in that time, 735 cases of diabetes were identified among 21,831 health individuals. After analyzing the information from the food questionnaires, the researchers found that individuals with high vitamin C levels in the blood were substantially less likely to develop diabetes. They found that higher fruit and vegetable intake was also associated with a significantly decreased risk of diabetes.

These findings highlight a potentially important public health message - promoting a diet rich in fruits and vegetables could help in the prevention of diabetes.

An abundance of vitamin C in the diet may help lower a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.

In a study of middle-aged and older men and women, those with the highest blood levels of vitamin C were significantly less likely to develop diabetes over 12 years than those with the lowest levels, researchers found.

Fruits and vegetables are the main source of vitamin C in Western diets, and blood levels of vitamin C are good markers of fruit and vegetable intake, Dr. Nita G. Forouhi, at the Institute of Metabolic Science at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, England, and colleagues note.

The current findings “re-endorse the public health message of the beneficial effect of increasing total fruit and vegetable intake,” the investigators wrote in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Forouhi’s team followed 21,831 healthy men and women who were 40 to 75 years old for the development of type 2 diabetes. At study entry, all participants provided detailed health and lifestyle information, as well as blood samples, which investigators used to determine vitamin C levels.

Over the course of the study, 423 men and 312 women developed type 2 diabetes, an overall rate of 3.2 percent.

According to the investigators, the likelihood of developing diabetes was 62 percent lower in men and women with the highest circulating vitamin C levels, relative to men and women with the lowest vitamin C levels.

Factoring out other characteristics associated with diabetes risk, such as older age, gender, family history, alcohol intake, physical activity, smoking status and body weight did not significantly alter these associations.

These data offer “persuasive evidence of a beneficial effect of vitamin C and fruit and vegetable intake on diabetes risk,” Forouhi and colleagues conclude.

a drug used for treating type 2 diabetes

A simple change in your diet can now lower your cholesterol level and protect you against cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and breast and colon cancer.

Doctors, nutritionists and dieticians are now increasingly recommending brown rice as an excellent source of all-round nutrition. Experts say the difference between brown rice and the more popular white rice is not just the colour. White rice actually lacks the necessary quantities of over a dozen important nutrients, including vitamin E, thiamin, niacin, vitamin B1, B3, B6, folacin, potassium, magnesium and iron.
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Although diabetes is far from a new age phenomenon, modern-day lifestyles and flawed food habits have had a large part to play in influencing the onset of diabetes in the vulnerable, while making management a lot more difficult for those who have already fallen prey to this disease. Until recent times, diabetes treatment was largely limited to medication and insulin injections, which have drawn themselves equal numbers of detractors as they have attracted followers.  Continue Reading…