Testing It Up

We have heard it one too often – too much of a good thing is not good. According to a feature on The New York Times, the same holds true for calcium and vitamin D.

The Institute of Medicine issued the new daily recommendations for calcium and vitamin D in November, and an expert committee has concluded that most people are not in need to calcium and vitamin D supplements.

This expert committee included bone specialists, and issued a warning that there are serious health risks that may be associated with taking supplements of these nutrients at high doses; these risks include kidney stones and heart disease, as well as, interestingly enough, fractures – which vitamin D is supposed to protect people from.

Vitamin D needs to be present so that calcium is absorbed by the digestive tract, so the two nutrients usually go hand in hand for healthy bones. In order to find out whether you need supplements or can get enough of them from your diet, the food and beverages that one consumes on a regular basis, one’s personal and family history of broken bones, and the habits that may influence bone health, will need to be considered.

The recommended daily calcium intake is 1,000 milligrams for children 4 to 8, women and men 19 to 50, and men 51 to 70; 1,300 milligrams for children 9 to 18; and 1,200 milligrams for women 51 and older and men 71 and older. For vitamin D, it is 600 units a day for everyone, aged 1 to 70, and 800 units for men and women 71 and older.

New York Health Screening

A study published in the August 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology associates Vitamin D levels in the blood to the prevention of breast cancer recurrence, and eventual death from the disease, among early stage breast cancer patients. This was shared in a feature on FoodConsumer.org.

Researchers from the Mount Sinai Hospital in Ontario, Canada, determined that women who had a deficiency in vitamin D levels were 94 percent more likely to experience a recurrence of the disease, and 73 percent more likely to eventually succumb to it.

A vitamin D deficiency was defined as having less than 50nmol/Li, while insufficiency was defined as having 50 to 72 nmol/Li. A patient with sufficient vitamin D levels is defined as one with more than 72 nmol/Li.

The study analyzed information gathered from 512 patients who were diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, from 1989 to 1996. Levels of vitamin D were measured in stored blood; 24 percent of the patients were found to have sufficient levels of vitamin D, while 37.5 percent were deemed deficient, and 38.5 percent were deemed insufficient. An average follow-up of 11.6 years revealed that 116 patients suffered from distant recurrences, and 106 died.

Many other studies suggest that vitamin D may help prevent breast cancer, and efforts are already under way towards coming up with vitamin D analogs that may be used as breast cancer drugs. Only high doses of vitamin D, though, may result in a “protective effect” against breast cancer, the feature clarified.