Monthly Archive for September, 2009

The American Academy of Dermatology Releases A Position Statement on Vitamin D-Finally!

 I am delighted to see that the American Academy of Dermatology has released a new position paper on vitamin D. In my opinion,  releasing this paper is an acknowledgment that their recommendation for all of us to avoid sun completely for these last decades has contributed to the current vitamin D deficiency epidemic.

They are still only recommending RDA level-recommendations of replacement. However, I am delighted that they have come out with this statement.

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70% of American Children (over 50 million kids) have Insufficient levels of Vitamin D !

A new study has just been recently published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics. The study looked at the prevalence and associations of vitamin D deficiency in United States children from 2001 to 2004.

Like so much epidemiological research in the United States, this study was based on the NHANES studies, that I have mentioned many times.

  The purpose of this study was to determine how prevalent vitamin D deficiency as well as associations between vitamin D deficiency and heart disease risk factors were in children and adolescents, in our country.

  In this case they evaluated over 6000 children and adolescents. The authors defined deficiency of vitamin D as being less than 15 ng/ml.. They defined insufficiency of vitamin D to be 15 to 29 ng/ml. They also measured traditional cardiovascular risk factors in the blood.

 

Continue reading ‘70% of American Children (over 50 million kids) have Insufficient levels of Vitamin D !’