Vitamin D - time to take action!
I final got round to visiting Oliver Gillie's campaigning website "Health Research Forum" yesterday. It's well worth having a look at. At first glance I thought he might just be a bit of a cranky campaigner using the internet to have a louder shout about his pet subject. Not so. He knows more about vitamin D than the vast majority of doctors and scientists. His points are well made and extremely well informed. They build on the increasing concern as new research shows how common vitamin D deficiency is and how widespread the subsequent detrimental effects are on so many aspects of our health (Vieth, Bischoff-Ferrari et al. 2007). Gillie's freely downloadable information booklets are quite shocking in what they say ... and probably largely correct. I and my close family have been taking 1,000 i.u. of vitamin D per day as a supplement for a year or two now. It looks as though we may be underdosing rather than overdosing.
Health Research Forum (2008). http://www.healthresearchforum.org.uk/aboutus.html Accessed September 30.
Vieth, R., H. Bischoff-Ferrari, et al. (2007). "The urgent need to recommend an intake of vitamin D that is effective." Am J Clin Nutr 85(3): 649-50. [Free Full Text]