My patients and my readers know how passionate I am about normalizing everybody’s vitamin D levels. That is why I wrote my book some years ago. It is also one of the reasons I went on to the Dr. Oz show to spread the word about the importance of everybody taking a sufficient dose of vitamin D.
Even after doing many years of “preaching” about vitamin D to my colleagues I still have obstetricians unnecessarily scaring my patients when I give them the recommended daily dose of vitamin D for pregnancy which is 4000 units per day. Please do note that for all my pregnant patients I do draw the vitamin D blood test in each trimester to check their levels.
Now in research published online in Epidemiology, researchers found that pregnant women with vitamin D levels higher than 50 nmol per liter (20 ng/mL) had a 40% reduction in relative risk for severe preeclampsia compared to those was women whose levels were under 50.
I strive to keep my pregnant patients vitamin D levels above 40 ng/mL. This is not only for the mother’s health but also the health of her fetus.
In addition to this article another article has recently been published that shows very impressive evidence that vitamin D protects against major diseases.
Specifically in adults with lower levels of vitamin D in their body, there was a 35% increased risk of death from heart disease and a 14% greater likelihood of death from cancer. In addition there was an overall greater mortality risk in those with low D compared with those with higher levels.
It is springtime now across our country and I encourage all of my readers and patients to get a vitamin D level measured with your physician, now that winter is over. ‘Normal” levels are from 34 ng/mL to 100 ng/mL I recommend for my patients to keep their levels between 40 and 70 ng/mL.
In yet a third article on vitamin D the researchers reviewed many articles and performed what is called a “meta–analysis”. A meta-analysis is not original research but rather a research project that reviews many other articles that have been written. The authors concluded that there was “suggestive evidence” that high vitamin D levels protected against diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and a host of other illnesses. Duffy MacKay, a spokesman for the Council For Responsible Nutrition stated that “there is enough positive research currently to indicate that people should be supplementing with vitamin D for a variety of positive health outcomes.”
You can also see recent articles on Vitamin D from the New York Times about this research. HERE and HERE
How much Vitamin D are you taking everyday? How much Vitamin D is your doctor recommending to you? What is your recent Vitamin D blood level?
About Dr. Soram Khalsa
As an MD, Dr Soram specializes in Integrative Medicine combining diet, nutrition, acupuncture, herbs and nutrition. Visit Dr Soram’s Healthy Living Store where you’ll find high-quality nutritional supplements:
