Vitamin Information Center

A flurry of recent reports trumpeting the health benefits of vitamin D have vaulted the supplement to a starring role on the merchandise shelves at Burns Drugs in La Jolla.

Pharmacist Wayne Woods, who owns the store, said he’s seeing a growing number of customers asking for bottles of high-dosage vitamin D.

“We barely carried it before, but physicians are recommending it as a normal supplement on a daily basis in addition to taking your multivitamin,” Woods said.

Vitamin D’s role in bone health has long been known – think rickets in malnourished children and osteoporosis in older people. But research tying vitamin D deficiency to cancers, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses has transformed the nutrient into a potential miracle cure. A global network of influential scientists said daily intake should be up to 10 times higher than the U.S. government’s current recommendations.

Yesterday, more than 100 physicians, nutritionists, acupuncturists, massage therapists and others gathered at the University of California San Diego for a daylong conference extolling vitamin D.

But not everyone is as enthusiastic, especially after a succession of reports dimmed the spotlight on vitamin supplements. Last month, two major clinical trials debunked vitamin B as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and vitamins E and C as protectors against cancer.

The scientific uncertainty has generated debate over the virtues and dangers of vitamin D. One big reason for the researchers’ disagreements: The most promising studies suggest a relationship between low vitamin D intake and many diseases, but they have failed to show a direct cause and effect.

Skeptics of dramatically boosting vitamin D supplements point to the lack of large-scale, random and “double blind” clinical studies comparing the nutrient to placebos. Dermatologists also have bristled at suggestions that people spend more time in the sun to increase the natural production of vitamin D.

Those concerns didn’t deter several longtime advocates of vitamin D supplements at yesterday’s meeting, including Dr. Robert Heaney, a professor at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.

Heaney said studies conducted in North America and Europe found low vitamin D levels in as many as 95 percent of participants. “I think we can take it as a given that the vast majority of patients in the U.S. are vitamin D deficient,” he said.

People get most of their vitamin D from exposure to sunlight, according to the National Institutes of Health. Spending 10 to 15 minutes outdoors two to three times each week is typically enough.

The best food sources of the nutrient are oil-rich fish such as salmon, tuna and mackerel. Milk and some cereals also are fortified with the vitamin.

Another speaker at the conference, Dr. Cedric Garland, said vitamin D might prevent certain cancers partly because it helps to form the glue that binds cells to each other. Without that glue, cells can become malignant and spread to other parts of the body.

Despite the academic nature of the presentations, the gathering at times felt more like a pep rally for campaign partisans.

Carole Baggerly of Encinitas opened the conference by leading the crowd in singing “You Are My Sunshine.”

She is a former computer sales and marketing executive who founded the conference’s sponsor organization, GrassrootsHealth, after surviving breast cancer.

Baggerly called on conference attendees to become part of her organization’s D*action campaign, a “grand mission” to promote testing for vitamin D deficiency.

“There is no need for a vitamin deficiency epidemic to go on and on and on,” she said.

GrassrootsHealth and some of the conference speakers want federal health officials to increase the daily recommended intake of vitamin D to as much as 2,000 international units.

Current U.S. nutritional guidelines call for 200 international units per day for children and adults up to age 50, 400 international units for people up to 70, and 600 international units for those 71 and older.

The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics also have called on the government to raise its vitamin D benchmarks.

But the effort is opposed by the American Academy of Dermatology, which last month advised against too much sun exposure because of the heightened risk of developing skin cancer.

While there is a growing body of “exciting” discoveries pointing to the benefits of vitamin D, more research is needed before health officials adjust supplement standards, said Patsy Brannon, a professor of nutritional science at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

“The evidence on safety and efficacy is not as strong as what we would like it to be,” she said.

At least two studies meeting the rigorous criteria of large-scale clinical trials have offered reasons for caution.

The federal Women’s Health Initiative found that women taking 400 international units of vitamin D plus 1,000 milligrams of calcium daily had a 17 percent higher risk of developing kidney stones over seven years. Their risk of developing colorectal cancers was no different than that of women who took a placebo.

In Finland, male smokers who took high doses of vitamin D supplements had a significantly greater risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

Last week, an international group of cancer researchers warned that changes to vitamin D recommendations could end up harming people if higher doses are eventually found to elevate the risk for some diseases.

“There is insufficient evidence (to prove) a lack of harm due to long-term, higher levels of vitamin D,” the scientists wrote in a report prepared for the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

The bottom line is “controversy and conflicting evidence,” Brannon said, “so there is no consensus.”

For now, people concerned about their vitamin D levels should make sure they are following the government’s guidelines by tracking their daily intake through food and supplement labels, she said.

Elderly people at risk of developing brittle bones should consult their physicians before taking supplements.

Keith Darce: (619) 293-1020; keith.darce@uniontrib.com

Long-term supplementation with vitamin E and vitamin C may not prevent cancer, according to data from the Physician’s Health Study II that was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Seventh Annual International Conference in Washington, D.C. on November 16, 2008.[1]

The role of diet in cancer incidence remains a major focus among researchers, as it is becoming more evident that diet may reduce the risk of developing certain types of cancers. For example, vitamin D appears to have a protective effect against pancreatic cancer and also colorectal adenomas.[2][3] In addition, several studies have linked vitamin E, selenium, and lycopene with a reduction in prostate cancer. However, it has also been discovered that supplementation with specific vitamins and minerals often does not have the same protective role as obtaining the nutrients from foods. In other words, there is still much to be learned about the role of nutrients in the prevention of cancer.

The Physician’s Health Study II is a large-scale, long-term, randomized clinical trial involving over 14,000 physicians over the age of 50. The physicians were given either a) 400 IU of vitamin E every other day or placebo or b) 500 mg of vitamin C daily or placebo and were then followed for up to 10 years. The primary endpoint of the vitamin C group was the development of cancer. The primary endpoint of the vitamin E group was the development of prostate cancer, with a secondary endpoint being the development of any type of cancer.

After nearly 10 years of supplementation, there was no evidence that vitamin E or vitamin C played a protective role against cancer. Thus far, there have been 1,929 cancer cases in the group, including 1,013 cases of prostate cancer. The researchers concluded that neither vitamin E nor vitamin C offers any beneficial effect against cancer.

Research in this field is ongoing; however, the results from this study indicate that vitamin supplements may not provide the same benefits as vitamins included as part of a healthy, balanced diet.

References:

[1] Buring JE, Sesso HD, Gaziano JM, et al. A randomized factorial trial of vitamins E and C in the prevention of cancer in men: the Physicians’ Health Study II. Proceedings from American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting. Abstract #PR-1.

[2] Skinner HG, Michaud DS, Giovannucci E, Willett WC, Colditz GA, Fuchs CS. Vitamin D Intake and the Risk for Pancreatic Cancer in Two Cohort Studies. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention. 2006;15:1688-95.

[3] Wei MY, Garland CF, Gorham ED. Vitamin D and prevention of colorectal adenoma: A meta-analysis. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. 2008;17(11):2958-2969.

Next time you visit your local chemist, pause in the aisle containing vitamin supplements, and take in the quantities and varieties of pills and potions on offer. Tiny boxes and bottles stretch as far as the eye can see, affirming that even in these cash-strapped times, the gorging of such “miracle cures” continues to be big business.

But as the UK population continues to shell out millions annually on vitamin supplements, the scientific evidence supporting their efficacy is waning. Earlier this month, US scientists discovered that taking vitamins A and E does not lower your risk of cancer, one of the supposed major benefits of taking them.

“There have been a number of previous studies that have suggested that vitamin E and vitamin C might be important in the prevention of cancer,” says Dr Howard Sesso, one of those involved in the recent research. “The lack of an effect that we observe for vitamin E or C on cancer does convince us that these particular doses that we tested really have no role for recommendation for cancer prevention,” continues the academic. The clinical trials he oversaw involved nearly 15,000 American men.

Another recent study, part-funded by German chemicals firm BASF, whose products include vitamins, working in association with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, discovered that there were no significant effects on rates of heart disease after taking vitamins E and C. Two months ago, a major trial studying whether vitamin E and selenium (which, among other things, helps regulate hormone metabolism in the thyroid) could lower a man’s risk of prostate cancer ended amid worries that such treatments may do more harm than good. As if that were not enough, doctors at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre have warned that vitamin C seems to protect not only healthy cells, but cancer cells, too.

So should we be taking vitamin supplements at all? “We say that people don’t need to take vitamin supplements to have a healthy balanced diet. The only situation in which you should have to take vitamin supplements is if you are elderly or suffering from a long-term illness. People should address whether they have a healthy diet rather than seeing vitamins as a complete solution,” says Heather Caswell, nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation.

“People get a lot of vitamins from food,” adds health expert and author Oliver Gillie. “The exception is, of course, if you have too many things in your diet that are vitamin-depleted because they are totally refined. This includes cake and biscuits, which have large amounts of refined starches in them. On the other hand, if you are eating brown bread and you are consuming lots of vegetables, and a certain amount of meat and eggs, you will be OK.”

If the evidence against supplements is rapidly becoming insurmountable, why do people keep taking them? Well, some supplements still have proven advantages for people’s health. Vitamins such as B12 – that are good for facilitating normal functioning of the brain and nervous system – are still believed by some to have benefits for women of child-bearing age and the elderly. Furthermore, calcium and vitamin D in women over 65 appear to protect the health of the bones of those taking them.

People seem to experience the placebo effect more than ever with vitamins – thinking that the more they spend, the more they are able to stave off the worst effects of disease and age. The general belief is that they boost the body’s ability to mop up cancer-and-heart-disease-causing free radicals.

In some cases, in the UK at least, there is increasing evidence that some vitamins do have benefits. “Vitamin D is different,” adds Gillie. “A healthy person normally gets 90 per cent of the vitamin D they need from the sun. Unless you are an Eskimo or a Scottish fisherman living 100 years ago where you ate fish every day, then you can’t get enough from your diet.” A lack of vitamin D has been linked to increased rates of cancer, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, depression and schizophrenia.

Today, top Scottish doctors are meeting to discuss how to deal with the fact that, due to the country’s northerly location and consequent lack of sunlight, large swathes of its population are not getting enough of the vitamin, which is believed to support the healthy operation of organs.

“I am going to a conference in Edinburgh called by Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr Harry Burns, who is concerned with the low levels of vitamin D in the Scottish population. It is an extreme case in the industrial world. In places like Glasgow there is so little ultraviolet light that people are in drastic need of vitamins. They are in an extreme situation because of their maritime climate. Scotland has got more cases of multiple sclerosis [which is believed to be naturally inhibited by vitamin D] than any other country in the world.”

But there’s now increasing evidence that taking too much of some vitamins can cause harm to people’s health. Recent studies – one by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine – have shown that taking large amounts of vitamin E with other vitamins results in a 6 per cent higher risk of premature death. Another study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, of 540 patients showed that cancer recurrence rates were higher among vitamin users than among non-users. There seems to be increasing evidence that the death knell for certain vitamin supplements has now well and truly been sounded. Could it be time to step out of the chemist’s and back into the kitchen?

Complete meals: How to get your daily dose

Vitamin A

Liver, full-fat dairy products, spinach, broccoli, tomato juice, peppers and watercress. Orange things, such as mango, dried apricots, butternut squash, carrots, sweet potatoes and pumpkin tend to be good sources of this vitamin.

Vitamin D

Oily fish (salmon, sardines, pilchards, tuna, mackerel, trout or herring), dairy products and eggs. Also exposure to sunlight.

Vitamin E

Broccoli, nuts, soya beans, brussels sprouts, spinach and eggs. Some believe vitamin E is destroyed by heat, so try to eat your vegetables raw or lightly cooked.

Vitamin C

Citrus fruits and juices, kiwi fruit, strawberries, blueberries, tomatoes and peppers.

Vitamin B

Vitamin B1 is found in whole grains, flour and bread and green leafy vegetables; Vitamin B2 is found in eggs, liver, milk, and cheese; B3 is in protein-rich foods like meat, liver and peanuts; B5 is in chicken, eggs, beef and broccoli;

B6 is in fish, chicken and wholegrain cereals; B9 is in raw fruit as well as yeast and liver and B12 is in fish, dairy produce, meat and yeast extract.

Anyone who takes vitamin supplements and looks at its bottles or boxes is familiar with the vitamins that are contained in each tablet.

But what do those vitamins really do? Do you really need to take them? Below is a list of the most common vitamins found in supplements as well as a description of what they do.

Vitamin A

- commonly found in leafy vegetables and in other products like carrots, broccoli, papaya, eggs and liver, this vitamin helps keep the eyes healthy. A deficiency of this vitamin can cause permanent loss of eyesight.

Vitamin B1

- thiamine is the other name for this vitamin. It keeps the heart and the digestive and nervous systems functioning normally. Aside from that, thiamine is also important in a person’s physical growth and development.

Good sources of this vitamin include beef, pork, nuts and legumes, among other foods.

Vitamin B2

- otherwise known as riboflavin, this vitamin is important in metabolizing energy as well as fats, carbohydrates and proteins. Common sources of this vitamin include milk, cheese and leafy vegetables. A deficiency of this vitamin is signaled by cracked lips, mouth ulcers and sore throat, among other symptoms.

Vitamin C

- also known as ascorbic acid, this vitamin has a lot of benefits attributed to it. Some of them include boosting the immune system and minimizing the symptoms of illnesses.

It is also a well-known antioxidant. Lack of this vitamin can cause scurvy that leads to loss of teeth and eventually, death.

Bausch & Lomb, the eye health company dedicated to perfecting vision and enhancing life, has unveiled a groundbreaking range of vitamin and mineral supplements developed to help preserve eye health.

PreserVision Soft Gels by Bausch & Lomb are high potency antioxidant supplements developed from the only formulation tested in a 10-year eye health study. Conducted by the US National Eye Institute, the study monitored health in over 4,000 50-80 year-old participants, and found that the supplements could be effective in preserving eye health in those susceptible to age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

AMD is a disease of the macular – the central part of the eye which allows a person to see fine detail, and gradually destroys the sharp, central vision which is needed to see objects clearly. The most prevalent cause of vision loss in the western world, AMD is thought to affect over three million people in the UK alone – more than five per cent of the population.

Recommended by leading ophthalmologists in the UK, PreserVision Soft Gels provide antioxidant vitamins and minerals at levels not normally achievable through diet alone.

Andrew Lotery, Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Southampton, said: “Oral treatment of AMD through supplementation is a proven and cost effective method of reducing progression of the disease.

“However, not all vitamin supplements are the same. Low doses of minerals such as vitamins C and E, zinc and beta-carotene have a negligible effect when compared to the high dose AREDS formulation. Vitamin therapy should be seen as a high priority when assessing patients in the early stages of AMD.”

The two-a-day PreserVision Soft Gels are available in two easy-to-swallow formulations – Original and Lutein. PreserVision Original provides high levels of the antioxidants beta-carotene3, vitamins C and E and zinc.

PreserVision Lutein is an advanced formulation containing the same combination of vitamins C, E and zinc, but with lutein as a replacement for beta-carotene. Lutein, which occurs naturally in the retina, is believed to function both as an antioxidant and a filter of harmful blue light. PreserVision Lutein can be recommended to all users, including smokers.

The PreserVision Soft Gels range complements the established PreserVision Tablets supplement, which contains the same quantity of the antioxidants vitamins and minerals as the Original Soft Gels formulation, but in a four-a-day tablet form.

For further information about Bausch & Lomb’s PreserVision, log on to Preservision.co.uk.

PreserVision Original and Lutein Soft Gels and PreserVision tablets are available over the counter at most Boots stores, and pharmacies, priced at £14.95 (RRP) for 60 Soft Gels.

DALLAS, TX — The Aidmatrix Foundation Inc. today announced its partnership and achievements with Vitamin Angels in expanding the supply chain for humanitarian relief. This partnership helps streamline Vitamin Angels’ distribution processes which, in turn, helps serve more people in need. Since the program was launched more than 28 million vitamins have been processed using this new system.

Vitamin Angels supports many nonprofits who address malnutrition in children and adults around the world. Aidmatrix builds powerful supply-chain technology solutions to accelerate humanitarian relief through its partnering nonprofits. This partnership enhances both missions.

“Aidmatrix is providing an essential link in allowing Vitamin Angels to reach children and pregnant women who are chronically malnourished in the United States and around the world. Our partnership will help tens of thousands of children to have a healthier life,” said Howard Schiffer, President and Founder of Vitamin Angels.

There are now more than 37 nonprofit organizations registered as recipients on the Vitamin Angels’ Portal on the Aidmatrix Network®. To date, 38 donations from 12 donors are in the system. One of the first organizations to benefit from the Vitamin Angels’ Portal was Orphan Outreach in Honduras, where more than 1,700 children received a year’s supply of multi-vitamin supplements. Another organization to benefit was the San Diego Food Bank, which received more than 800,000 vitamins. In total, more than 28 million tablets have been processed since the program began.

Vitamin Angels is a nonprofit organization based in Santa Barbara, California, that is dedicated to providing vital nutrition in the form of supplements, to developing countries, communities and individuals in need. The Aidmatrix Network® technology and members will help accelerate the distribution of the vitamins in two key ways: first, donors that make product donations to Vitamin Angels will now be able to make their donations online through this integrated system; second, Vitamin Angels will be able to allocate those donation offers electronically to their community of recipients. Previously, both processes were done manually, requiring much time and resources to coordinate. In addition, Aidmatrix brings more potential recipients to the community through its partnerships with other leading medical- and hunger-relief organizations.

“Our solutions help others to get the right aid to the right people,” commented Governor Scott McCallum, President and CEO, Aidmatrix Foundation. “We’re proud to partner with Vitamin Angels in their mission of supplying medical relief to those in need.”

About Vitamin Angels
In the last 3 years, Vitamin Angels has distributed over 300 million vitamins and other supplements in over 80 countries worldwide. Last year, Vitamin Angels connected vitamins and other supplements with over 7 million children, lactating mothers and babies in 40 countries worldwide. To learn more about Vitamin Angels please visit www.VitaminAngels.org.

About The Aidmatrix Foundation
The Aidmatrix Foundation, Inc. builds and operates powerful technology hubs that support diverse stakeholder groups in their efforts to work together to solve the world’s most challenging humanitarian crises. Our solutions enhance participation, amplify contributions, and accelerate results for humanitarian relief. More than 35,000 leading corporate, nonprofit and government partners leverage our solutions to mobilize more than $1.5 billion in aid annually, worldwide. The donated goods, money and services impact the lives of more than 65 million people. Aidmatrix is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit headquartered in Dallas, Texas, USA, with offices in Germany and India.
www.aidmatrix.org

Despite great advances in medicine, cancer is still a very common disease. At current rates, more than a third of us will suffer from cancer during our lifetime and about one in four of us will die from it. According to the American Cancer Society, 7.6 million people worldwide died from cancer in 2007.

Research statistics report that 30 to 40% of cancers are directly linked to nutrition, which shows the importance of a healthy diet in cancer prevention. Meanwhile, scientists continue to investigate foods known to be anti-carcinogenic in order to develop strategies for both cancer prevention (chemoprevention) and treatment (chemotherapy). As Hippocrates said over 2000 years ago, “Let food be thy medicine.”

The problem with current chemotherapeutic treatments is that most are not completely selective for carcinogenic cells—they harm normal cells too—and decrease the quality of life for cancer patients. Scientists are hoping that by developing chemopreventive or chemotherapeutic agents based on natural micronutrients, they will be able to develop drugs that target cancer cells with less or no harm to normal cells.

Vitamin E is an important antioxidant micronutrient. Research shows that vitamin E not only improves skin health, boosts the immune system, protects against heart disease, aging and Alzheimer’s, but also has a role in protection against some types of cancer. Unlike some vitamins, which consist of a single compound, vitamin E consists of eight different compounds, four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Our food contains all eight compounds. Tocopherols are most commonly found in nuts and vegetable oils, whereas tocotrienols are primarily derived from palm oil, oat, rye, wheat germ, barley and rice bran.

Even though the vitamin E family consists of 8 members, most research has traditionally focused on alpha-tocopherol. Alpha-tocopherol is the most abundant form of vitamin E in the plasma and tissue of humans as well as in vitamin supplements, while the seven other types of vitamin E were greatly ignored for many years. Recent research over the last few years has led to the conclusion that the eight vitamin E compounds have different anti-carcinogenic potencies which need to be considered.

The cancer preventive properties of vitamin E were first suspected when studies showed that people in the Mediterranean area who consume diets rich in vitamin E have a lower risk of colon cancer than people in Northern Europe and the U.S. (Eur J Clin Nutr. 1989; 43:49-55, Cancer Causes Control. 1995; 6:525-31.) More recently, the Melbourne Colorectal Cancer Study showed that dietary vitamins E and C were protective for both colon and rectal cancer, and that for both vitamins there was a dose-response effect of increasing protection. (Nutr Cancer. 2006; 56:11-21.)

Another clinical study supported a preventive effect of vitamin E in the development of prostate cancer. This study included over 29,000 elderly male smokers and showed that those taking vitamin E for six years had 32% fewer diagnoses of prostate cancer and 41% fewer prostate cancer deaths than men who did not take vitamin E. (J Natl Cancer Inst. 1998; 90:440-446.) The ongoing NIH sponsored Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) is investigating selenium and vitamin E for prostate cancer prevention based on the encouraging results of earlier studies.

In the past few years most of the research has focused on structural variations of the natural forms of vitamin E with the aim of developing the anti-carcinogenic potency of these agents. The scientific community is hoping to take some of the synthetic derivatives to clinical trials, so it will be interesting to see if any of these compounds will be eventually developed into chemopreventive or chemotherapeutic agents.

But you should be aware that all vitamin E supplements are NOT created equal. Many contain synthetic vitamin E, and many do not contain all of the various types of natural vitamin E that the body requires. Make certain that your supplement contains both natural tocopherols and tocotrienols in their natural forms if you want to get the most out of what vitamin E has to offer. Only products that contain the complete vitamin E family—tocopherols plus tocotrienols—provide the full spectrum of benefits of vitamim E.

The Anti-Aging Bottom Line: A careful examination of the research performed so far on vitamin E and cancer leads me to conclude that vitamin E possesses strong anti-carcinogenic properties. While food is by far the preferred source of vitamin E, it is practically impossible to get protective amounts of vitamin E from food alone. Therefore, I feel that taking supplemental vitamin E is absolutely essential to achieving vibrant health and longevity.

Increased intake of calcium and vitamin D can help prevent or slow bone loss in men, according to a pair of studies conducted by researchers from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

An estimated 75 million women and men in the United States, Europe and Japan suffer from osteoporosis, a disease in which bones become thin and brittle.

Prior research has demonstrated that both calcium and vitamin D are important for the bone health of women, who are four times more likely to develop osteoporosis than men. In a 2006 study published in the journal Bone, scientists also found that older men who drank fortified milk daily experienced a 1.8 percent increase in the bone mineral density of their hip bones and a 1.5 percent increase in the density of their wrist bones.

The fortified milk contained 500 milligrams of calcium and 400 IU of vitamin D3, as well as other vitamins and minerals. The researchers noted that because the participants were given fortified milk instead of individual vitamin supplements, it was not possible to determine whether the bone density increase came from the calcium, the vitamin D, both, or some combination of those nutrients with others found in the milk.

The researchers also noted that while calcium intake was higher in participants who drank fortified milk than in control participants, this difference was not statistically significant.

In a more recent study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers followed up with 109 of the original study participants 18 months after that study’s conclusion. During that time, the participants had not been provided with fortified milk, but the bone-density improvements from the first study were still apparent.

The researchers suggested that supplementation of milk with calcium and vitamin D3, as is done in Canada, could lead to long-term bone health benefits for older men.

Everywhere you look this month, someone seems to be talking about Vitamin D. Good Morning America, Parenting Magazine, and numerous news organizations have focused on the possible benefits of the vitamin your body produces itself, yet most people seem to lack.

All this attention has led to some confusion. South Jersey Healthcare outpatient dietitian Deborah Stump helped shine some light on vitamin D last week by answering more than a dozen questions submitted to The Daily Journal’s Healthline.

“It’s a big topic right now,” said Stump. She added that recent studies have linked vitamin D to everything from diabetes to cancer prevention.
What is it?

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and form bone. It also strengthens the immune system.
How do I get it?

Getting vitamin D is as easy as going outside. Your skin turns UVB rays from sunlight into vitamin D. It also is found in most multi-vitamin supplements, stand-alone supplements, and in “fortified” foods such as milk and some fruit juices and cereals.

So, if it’s so easy to get, why are more than half of children and some 65 percent of adults not getting enough?

Turns out, according to Stump, some generally-accepted, healthy habits have had the unintended consequence of restricting vitamin D. The first: sunscreen.

“You need 10-20 minutes of sun exposure three times a week,” she said, adding that the exposure should come between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., when the sun is strongest. Sunscreen, of course, blocks those rays.

And yes, you have to go outside.

“One question asked if you can get sunlight through glass,” Stump said. “Glass lets about 78 percent of UVA rays through,” she said, “but it blocks all but about 5 percent of the important UVB rays. So, you have to get outside.”

Stump added that people should spend a little more time outside during the winter months, when the sun is not as strong.

Vitamin D took another hit as people moved away from eating saturated fats.

“As people started eating more poly and unsaturated fats, we saw a decrease in vitamin D,” she said.
How much do I need?

This was the most common Healthline question.

The Dietary Reference Intake for vitamin D is 200 International Units per day for kids and adults up to age 50, but that is being hotly debated. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 400 IU per day, and a quick check of a bottle of One-A-Day vitamins says that 400 IU covers 100 percent of my daily requirement.

Stump said even that may not be enough.

“There is a lot of research supporting 800-1,000 IU of Vitamin D per day,” she said.
What’s the use?

So why so much interest in vitamin D? Well, besides forming bone and helping the immune system, Stump said there is an association between vitamin D deficiency and Type 1 and 2 diabetes. Also, there is evidence that vitamin D can fight prostate, breast, and colon cancers as well as fight depression and improve cardio-vascular health.

Will supplements and vitamins for hair loss in women work? This is the question. There has been an ongoing debate on whether or not vitamins can help prevent or stop hair loss in women. What is the real score here? Is preventing hair loss as simple as eating a good diet and taking vitamins for hair loss in women?

Androgenetic Alopecia

Majority of both men and women who lose their hair have andorgenetic alopecia. In this condition, the hormone DHT binds itself to the hair follicles and damages them. The condition is especially marked in those who are genetically predisposed to hair loss. Since genes and hormones are the main factors in this form of hair loss, some individuals have stopped seeing vitamins as a factor that can prevent hair loss.

Contributing Factors

With androgenetic alopecia, vitamins for hair loss in women don’t really have much of an effect. They are however still necessary to address the contributory factors that can make hair loss worse in women. It is generally known that aside from genes and hormones, female hair loss can be made worse by stress, trauma, emotional distress and serious illness. The only way to fight these contributory factors is through vitamins for hair loss in women.

What Vitamins Can Do

Vitamins for hair loss in women are perfect for keeping your present hair healthy, strong and free from damage and dryness. Vitamins also keep the entire scalp and the follicles properly nourished to encourage new hair growth. Although vitamins for hair loss in women can be found in nutritious foods, it still makes a lot of sense to get some extra boost from vitamin supplements. These can help supply whatever we lack from food intake.

Vitamins for Hair Loss in Women

There are numerous vitamins for hair loss in women. Here are some of the most important ones.

- PABA or Para-Aminobenzoic Acid - This is a B-vitamin that has a crucial role in the metabolism of protein. It is also a known antioxidant that can help sweep the body clean of harmful free radicals. Its role in hair health seems to focus more on the restoration or maintenance of hair color. Along with some other vitamins for hair loss in women, this one helps prevent your hair from graying prematurely. PABA can be found in whole grain foods and liver.

- This Biotin- This is another member of the B-complex group of vitamins. It plays a role in fat, protein and carbohydrates metabolism. Just like PABA, it is also crucial for the maintenance of hair color. Moreover, it also promotes hair growth, strength and thickness. Various studies have shown that a deficiency in biotin can result in some hair loss. Vitamins for hair loss in women like biotin can be found in milk, whole grain, egg yolk and liver. This vitamin however can be destroyed by over heating and the process of canning so it is best to always eat fresh or take supplementation.

- B6 Vitamin - This powerhouse vitamin can work wonders on the immune, circulatory and nervous systems. Like other vitamins for hair loss in women belonging to the B-complex family, this one also helps maintain hair color and strength. This vitamin can be found in bananas, liver and avocados.
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Avoid hair loss with the best vitamins for hair loss. Check out the best vitamins for hair loss in women.