Women who have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) often have metabolic disturbances including what is called"Metabolic Syndrome". Metabolic Syndrome as defined by the American Heart Association includes abdominal obesity, disorders of the blood fat specifically elevated triglycerides and low HDL. It also can include high blood pressure, as well as insulin resistance which leads to problems with blood sugar including prediabetes and diabetes. Metabolic syndrome is also a pro-inflammatory state meaning that it encourages inflammation in the body.
I try to put cutting-edge medical information about vitamin D on my blog. Because medical knowledge is expanding at such a fast pace, sometimes articles only appear in the online form of the medical literature, before they even show up in the paper publication, or in some cases even before they show up in the journal’s online publication.
In these situations, the article abstract is only available on a website called "PUBMED". PUBMED stands for public medicine. This is the online version which is now freely available to all of us, of what used to be called "INDEX MEDICUS." Now all the medical information that used to be only available to physicians, is available to the whole world instantly. This is in keeping with the speed of our Internet age.
A new article was just published in the medical journal called HEADACHE.
The study reported on eight patients with chronic tension type headaches and who also had vitamin D deficiency to the point of osteomalacia. As you will remember from my book, osteomalacia is adult rickets. All of the patients in the study did not respond well to the conventional therapy for tension headaches.
I am delighted to see that at the recent American Medical Association’s annual meeting a report was presented that reviewed more than 1500 articles, including 300 studies that were published in 2008 alone.
I am very pleased to see the American Medical Association recognizing the overwhelming evidence supporting the importance of vitamin D in the prevention of cancer, infection, cognitive decline, diabetes and several autoimmune diseases.
Two recent studies are showing a link between vitamin D deficiency and depression.
In a study done in Norway and recently published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, researchers found a relation between blood levels of vitamin D and symptoms of depression. In addition, giving high doses of vitamin D in the study seemed to help the symptoms of depression. The authors conclude that this represents a possible causal relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression.
National Government Services(NGS) which is one of our country’s largest Medicare contractors has made a proposal to stop paying for routine testing of vitamin D! They have announced that if this proposal passes, they will only cover vitamin D testing for patients with chronic kidney disease, osteomalacia, hypercalcemia, and rickets. All other vitamin D testing, specifically routine testing, would be denied.
Medicare has the stated purpose of supporting early detection and prevention of medicine. This proposal seems in direct contradiction to their stated goal.
I am happy to be able to announce to my readers that the National Institutes of Health are finally paying attention to vitamin D!.
The National Institutes of Health is funding a $20 million study which will be done through Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr JoAnne Manson and Dr Julie Buring, are the principal investigators. They will enroll 20,000 healthy older people in this study. Women over 65 in men over age 60 without a history of cancer or heart disease will be randomly assigned to four groups. Some of the groups will be taking vitamin D while others will not be taking vitamin D. I am very encouraged to see that the dose that they are giving the groups that will be taking vitamin D is 2000 international units. This is a high enough dose to be able to see some positive results.
A study that was just presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, from the Cancer Treatment Centers of America has found that vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in cancer patients regardless of their nutritional status.
In the study, 737 consecutive cancer patients, who were seen at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America between January and June of 2008, were evaluated for their nutritional status. This status was categorized as either well-nourished or moderately malnourished or severely malnourished.
The average patient was 55 years old and the most common types of cancer scene were lung and breast and colon.
A new study by Shalamar Sibley MD and colleagues from the University of Minnesota is linking an increased intake of vitamin D with the possibility of improving weight loss.
This new research was just announced at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society. In this study, the researchers followed 38 obese women and men. It was an 11 week program in which the dieters reduced their daily diet by 750 calories. The researchers found that those with a higher original level of vitamin D lost more weight in the abdomen. In addition, they found that for every incremental increase in vitamin D, subjects lost almost an additional half pound while on their diets.
Dr. Sibley has been quoted in a press release as saying "Vitamin D deficiency is associated with obesity, but it is not clear if inadequate vitamin D causes obesity or the other way around". Dr. Sibley anticipates more clinical trials need to be done to see if vitamin D has a significant role in weight loss.
Dr Cedric Garland was kind enough to write a beautiful paragraph about my book, for its opening pages.
Now Dr. Garland and his colleagues atthe Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego have just proposed a new theory of cancer development that is based on the loss of cancer cells ability to stick together.
They have called this new model "DINOMIT". Each of the letters in the name stands for a different phase in the development of cancer.This model differs from previous models of cancer which have been based on genetic mutations as the cause of cancer.
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