Kegel exercises for men: Understand the technique and the benefits
---(Doctors will often recommend surgery when all you need to do is exercise your groin muscles. Plus, you may find 'its' harder and takes longer than it has in years. So you may be getting out of bed at night, but its for the right damn reasons!)
Kegel exercises for men can help improve bladder control and possibly improve sexual performance. Here's a guide to doing Kegel exercises correctly. By Mayo Clinic Staff
Think Kegel exercises are just for women? Think again.
Kegel exercises for men can strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, which support the bladder and bowel and affect sexual function. With practice, Kegel exercises for men can be done discreetly just about anytime — whether you're relaxing on the couch or driving your car.
Before you start doing Kegel exercises, find out how to locate the correct muscles and understand the proper technique.
Benefits of Kegel exercises for men
Many factors can weaken your pelvic floor muscles, including the surgical removal of the prostate (radical prostatectomy) and conditions such as diabetes and overactive bladder.
You might benefit from doing Kegel exercises if you:
Have urinary or fecal incontinenceDribble after urination — usually after you've left the bathroomSome studies suggest that Kegel exercises for men might also benefit some men who have erectile dysfunction. However, further research is needed.
How to do Kegel exercises for men
It takes diligence to identify your pelvic floor muscles and understand how to contract and relax them. Here are some pointers:
Find the right muscles. To identify your pelvic floor muscles, stop urination in midstream or tighten the muscles that keep you from passing gas. These are your pelvic floor muscles. If you contract your pelvic floor muscles while looking in the mirror, the base of your penis will move closer to your abdomen and your testicles will rise.Perfect your technique. Once you've identified your pelvic floor muscles, empty your bladder and lie on your back with your knees bent and apart. Tighten your pelvic floor muscles, hold the contraction for three seconds, and then relax for three seconds. Try it a few times in a row but don't overdo it. When your muscles get stronger, try doing Kegel exercises while sitting, standing or walking.Maintain your focus. For best results, focus on tightening only your pelvic floor muscles. Be careful not to flex the muscles in your abdomen, thighs or buttocks. Avoid holding your breath. Instead, breathe freely during the exercises.Repeat 3 times a day. Aim for at least three sets of 10 repetitions a day.
When to do your Kegels
Make Kegel exercises part of your daily routine. For example:
Fit in a set of Kegel exercises every time you do a routine task, such as brushing your teeth.Do another set after you urinate or have a bowel movement, to get rid of the last few drops of urine or to return any feces that haven't been voided to the rectum.Contract your pelvic floor muscles just before and during any activity that puts pressure on your abdomen, such as sneezing, coughing, laughing or heavy lifting.Tighten your pelvic floor muscles rhythmically during sexual activity to maintain an erection or delay ejaculation.
When you're having trouble
If you're having trouble doing Kegel exercises, don't be embarrassed to ask for help. Your doctor or other health care provider can give you important feedback so that you learn to isolate and strengthen the correct muscles.
In some cases, biofeedback training might help. In a biofeedback session, your doctor or other health care provider inserts a small probe into your rectum. As you relax and contract your pelvic floor muscles, a monitor will measure and display your pelvic floor activity.
When to expect results
If you do your Kegel exercises regularly, you can expect results — such as less frequent urine leakage — within three to six weeks. For continued benefits, make Kegel exercises a permanent part of your daily routine.
-----Keeping in shape is a great alternative to dropping the blue pill
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Vitamin D toxicity rare in people who take supplements, researchers report
Rochester, Minn. -- Over the last decade, numerous studies have shown that many Americans have low vitamin D levels and as a result, vitamin D supplement use has climbed in recent years. Vitamin D has been shown to boost bone health and it may play a role in preventing diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and other illnesses. In light of the increased use of vitamin D supplements, Mayo Clinic researchers set out to learn more about the health of those with high vitamin D levels. They found that toxic levels are actually rare.
Their study appears in the May issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
A vitamin D level greater than 50 nanograms per milliliter is considered high. Vitamin D levels are determined by a blood test called a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D blood test. A normal level is 20-50 ng/mL, and deficiency is considered anything less than 20 ng/mL, according the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
The researchers analyzed data collected between 2002 and 2011 from patients in the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a National Institutes of Health-funded medical records pool that makes Olmsted County, Minn., the home of Mayo Clinic, one of the few places worldwide where scientists can study virtually an entire geographic population to identify health trends.
Of 20,308 measurements, 8 percent of the people who had their vitamin D measured had levels greater than 50 ng/mL, and less than 1 percent had levels over 100 ng/mL.
"We found that even in those with high levels of vitamin D over 50 ng/mL, there was not an increased risk of hypercalcemia, or elevated serum calcium, with increasing levels of vitamin D," says study co-author Thomas D. Thacher, M.D., a family medicine expert at Mayo Clinic.
Hypercalcemia, or high blood calcium, can occur when there are very high levels of vitamin D in the blood. Too much calcium in the blood can cause weakness, lead to kidney stones, and interfere with the heart and brain, and even be life threatening.
The Mayo researchers also found that women over age 65 were at the highest risk of having vitamin D levels above 50 ng/mL. The result was not surprising because that's a group that often takes vitamin D supplements, Dr. Thacher says.
Another notable outcome: The occurrence of high vitamin D levels over 50 ng/mL increased during the 10-year period of the study, from nine per 100,000 people at the start of the study up to 233 per 100,000 by the end.
"We were surprised by that degree of dramatic increase in vitamin D levels," Dr. Thacher says.
Only one case over the 10-year study period was identified as true acute vitamin D toxicity; the person's vitamin D level was 364 ng/mL. The individual had been taking 50,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D supplements every day for more than three months, as well as calcium supplements. The IOM-recommended upper limit of vitamin D supplementation for people with low or deficient levels is 4,000 IU a day.
It's important for doctors to ask their patients about the doses of vitamin D supplements that they are using, Dr. Thacher says, because even capsules containing as much as 50,000 IU of vitamin D are available without prescription. If taken on a daily basis, that amount could lead to toxicity.
Some natural sources of vitamin D include oily fish such as mackerel and salmon, fortified milk, and sunlight.
"Our bodies will naturally produce vitamin D when our skin is exposed to sunlight, however, we don't recommend excessive exposure to sun due to the risk of skin cancer," Dr. Thacher added.
In an accompanying editorial in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Dr. Michael F. Hollick, Ph.D., M.D., describes vitamin D's dramatic medical history, the need for judicious dosing, but the importance of vitamin D supplementation in those with low or deficient levels.
"The evidence is clear that vitamin D toxicity is one of the rarest medical conditions and is typically due to intentional or inadvertent intake of extremely high doses," writes Hollick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Mayo Clinic. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Their study appears in the May issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
A vitamin D level greater than 50 nanograms per milliliter is considered high. Vitamin D levels are determined by a blood test called a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D blood test. A normal level is 20-50 ng/mL, and deficiency is considered anything less than 20 ng/mL, according the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
The researchers analyzed data collected between 2002 and 2011 from patients in the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a National Institutes of Health-funded medical records pool that makes Olmsted County, Minn., the home of Mayo Clinic, one of the few places worldwide where scientists can study virtually an entire geographic population to identify health trends.
Of 20,308 measurements, 8 percent of the people who had their vitamin D measured had levels greater than 50 ng/mL, and less than 1 percent had levels over 100 ng/mL.
"We found that even in those with high levels of vitamin D over 50 ng/mL, there was not an increased risk of hypercalcemia, or elevated serum calcium, with increasing levels of vitamin D," says study co-author Thomas D. Thacher, M.D., a family medicine expert at Mayo Clinic.
Hypercalcemia, or high blood calcium, can occur when there are very high levels of vitamin D in the blood. Too much calcium in the blood can cause weakness, lead to kidney stones, and interfere with the heart and brain, and even be life threatening.
The Mayo researchers also found that women over age 65 were at the highest risk of having vitamin D levels above 50 ng/mL. The result was not surprising because that's a group that often takes vitamin D supplements, Dr. Thacher says.
Another notable outcome: The occurrence of high vitamin D levels over 50 ng/mL increased during the 10-year period of the study, from nine per 100,000 people at the start of the study up to 233 per 100,000 by the end.
"We were surprised by that degree of dramatic increase in vitamin D levels," Dr. Thacher says.
Only one case over the 10-year study period was identified as true acute vitamin D toxicity; the person's vitamin D level was 364 ng/mL. The individual had been taking 50,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D supplements every day for more than three months, as well as calcium supplements. The IOM-recommended upper limit of vitamin D supplementation for people with low or deficient levels is 4,000 IU a day.
It's important for doctors to ask their patients about the doses of vitamin D supplements that they are using, Dr. Thacher says, because even capsules containing as much as 50,000 IU of vitamin D are available without prescription. If taken on a daily basis, that amount could lead to toxicity.
Some natural sources of vitamin D include oily fish such as mackerel and salmon, fortified milk, and sunlight.
"Our bodies will naturally produce vitamin D when our skin is exposed to sunlight, however, we don't recommend excessive exposure to sun due to the risk of skin cancer," Dr. Thacher added.
In an accompanying editorial in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Dr. Michael F. Hollick, Ph.D., M.D., describes vitamin D's dramatic medical history, the need for judicious dosing, but the importance of vitamin D supplementation in those with low or deficient levels.
"The evidence is clear that vitamin D toxicity is one of the rarest medical conditions and is typically due to intentional or inadvertent intake of extremely high doses," writes Hollick, a professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston University School of Medicine.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Mayo Clinic. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Scientists discover protein that boosts immunity to viruses and cance
Scientists have discovered a protein that plays a central role in promoting immunity to viruses and cancer, opening the door to new therapies.
Experiments in mice and human cells have shown that the protein promotes the proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, which kill cancer cells and cells infected with viruses. The discovery was unexpected because the new protein had no known function and doesn’t resemble any other protein.
Researchers from Imperial College London who led the study are now developing a gene therapy designed to boost the infection-fighting cells, and hope to begin human trials in three years.
The study also involved researchers at Queen Mary University of London, ETH Zurich and Harvard Medical School. Their discovery, which has been six years in the making, is reported today in the journal Science.
Cytotoxic T cells are an important component of the immune system, but when faced with serious infections or advanced cancer, they are often unable to proliferate in large enough quantities to fight the disease.
By screening mice with genetic mutations, the Imperial team discovered a strain of mice that produced 10 times as many cytotoxic T cells when infected with a virus compared with normal mice. These mice suppressed the infection more effectively, and were more resistant to cancer. They also produced more of a second type of T cells, memory cells, enabling them to recognise infections they have encountered previously and launch a rapid response.
The mice with enhanced immunity produced high levels of a hitherto unknown protein, which the researchers named lymphocyte expansion molecule, or LEM. They went on to show that LEM modulates the proliferation of human T cells as well as in mice.
The researchers now aim to develop a gene therapy designed to improve immunity by boosting the production of LEM. With the support of Imperial Innovations, the technology commercialisation company for the College, the researchers have filed two patents. A company called ImmunarT has been formed with the aim of commercialising the technology.
Professor Philip Ashton-Rickardt from the Section of Immunobiology in the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the study, said: “Cancer cells have ways to suppress T cell activity, helping them to escape the immune system. Genetically engineering T cells to augment their ability to fight cancer has been a goal for some time and techniques for modifying them already exist. By introducing an active version of the LEM gene into the T cells of cancer patients, we hope we can provide a robust treatment for patients.
“Next we will test the therapy in mice, make sure it is safe and see if it can be combined with other therapies. If all goes well, we hope to be ready to carry out human trials in about three years.”
Dr Claudio Mauro, who led the research from the Centre for Biochemical Pharmacology, based within Queen Mary University of London’s William Harvey Research Institute, said: “This study has identified the novel protein LEM and unlocked an unexpected way of enhancing the ability of our immune system to fight viruses or cancers. This is based on the ability of the protein LEM to regulate specific energy circuits, and particularly mitochondrial respiration, in a subset of white blood cells known as cytotoxic T cells. This discovery has immediate consequences for the delivery of innovative therapeutic approaches to cancer. Its ramifications, however, are far greater as they can help explaining the biological mechanisms of widespread human diseases involving altered immune and inflammatory responses. These include chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, such as atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.”
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation.
Dr Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at The Wellcome Trust, said: “The discovery of a protein that could boost the immune response to not only cancer, but also to viruses, is a fascinating one. Further investigation in animal models is needed before human trials can commence, but there is potential for a new type of treatment that capitalises on the immune system’s innate ability to detect and kill abnormal cells.”
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Imperial College London. The original article was written by Sam Wong. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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Thyroid hormone
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Experiments in mice and human cells have shown that the protein promotes the proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, which kill cancer cells and cells infected with viruses. The discovery was unexpected because the new protein had no known function and doesn’t resemble any other protein.
Researchers from Imperial College London who led the study are now developing a gene therapy designed to boost the infection-fighting cells, and hope to begin human trials in three years.
The study also involved researchers at Queen Mary University of London, ETH Zurich and Harvard Medical School. Their discovery, which has been six years in the making, is reported today in the journal Science.
Cytotoxic T cells are an important component of the immune system, but when faced with serious infections or advanced cancer, they are often unable to proliferate in large enough quantities to fight the disease.
By screening mice with genetic mutations, the Imperial team discovered a strain of mice that produced 10 times as many cytotoxic T cells when infected with a virus compared with normal mice. These mice suppressed the infection more effectively, and were more resistant to cancer. They also produced more of a second type of T cells, memory cells, enabling them to recognise infections they have encountered previously and launch a rapid response.
The mice with enhanced immunity produced high levels of a hitherto unknown protein, which the researchers named lymphocyte expansion molecule, or LEM. They went on to show that LEM modulates the proliferation of human T cells as well as in mice.
The researchers now aim to develop a gene therapy designed to improve immunity by boosting the production of LEM. With the support of Imperial Innovations, the technology commercialisation company for the College, the researchers have filed two patents. A company called ImmunarT has been formed with the aim of commercialising the technology.
Professor Philip Ashton-Rickardt from the Section of Immunobiology in the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the study, said: “Cancer cells have ways to suppress T cell activity, helping them to escape the immune system. Genetically engineering T cells to augment their ability to fight cancer has been a goal for some time and techniques for modifying them already exist. By introducing an active version of the LEM gene into the T cells of cancer patients, we hope we can provide a robust treatment for patients.
“Next we will test the therapy in mice, make sure it is safe and see if it can be combined with other therapies. If all goes well, we hope to be ready to carry out human trials in about three years.”
Dr Claudio Mauro, who led the research from the Centre for Biochemical Pharmacology, based within Queen Mary University of London’s William Harvey Research Institute, said: “This study has identified the novel protein LEM and unlocked an unexpected way of enhancing the ability of our immune system to fight viruses or cancers. This is based on the ability of the protein LEM to regulate specific energy circuits, and particularly mitochondrial respiration, in a subset of white blood cells known as cytotoxic T cells. This discovery has immediate consequences for the delivery of innovative therapeutic approaches to cancer. Its ramifications, however, are far greater as they can help explaining the biological mechanisms of widespread human diseases involving altered immune and inflammatory responses. These include chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, such as atherosclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis.”
The research was funded by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation.
Dr Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at The Wellcome Trust, said: “The discovery of a protein that could boost the immune response to not only cancer, but also to viruses, is a fascinating one. Further investigation in animal models is needed before human trials can commence, but there is potential for a new type of treatment that capitalises on the immune system’s innate ability to detect and kill abnormal cells.”
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Imperial College London. The original article was written by Sam Wong. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Related Articles
BRCA1
Thyroid hormone
Soy protein
Gene therapy
Natural killer cell
Virus
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Important connection between the mouth and heart
A new study from the Forsyth Institute is helping to shed more light on the important connection between the mouth and heart. According to research recently published online by the American Heart Association, scientists at Forsyth and Boston University have demonstrated that using an oral topical remedy to reduce inflammation associated with periodontitis, more commonly known as gum disease, also results in the prevention of vascular inflammation and can lower the risk of heart attack.
This study is the first time researchers anywhere have demonstrated the ability of an oral treatment for gum disease to also reduce inflammation in the artery wall. The active ingredient is an inflammation resolving molecule, known as Resolvin E1. This discovery further underscores the increasing body of evidence showcasing how problems in the mouth -- and how they are treated -- can have life changing influences on other key systems in the body, such as the heart in this case.
"Our research is helping to underscore the very real link between oral health and heart disease," said Lead Investigator Hatice Hasturk, DDS, PhD, an associate member of Forsyth's Department of Applied Oral Sciences and director of Forsyth's Center for Clinical and Translational Research. "The general public understands the connection between heart health and overall wellness, and often takes appropriate steps to prevent heart disease. More education is needed to elevate oral wellness into the same category in light of proven connections to major health conditions."
According to the CDC, heart disease accounts for one in four deaths in the United States, and the rate continues to rise. Forsyth's findings suggest a need to expand the public's understanding of risk factors beyond cholesterol, smoking, hypertension and diabetes to include a focus on oral health. With support from the scientific community, Forsyth aims to generate greater awareness of gum disease (affecting 64.7 million American adults according to the CDC) as a critical risk factor for heart disease, independent from diet and lifestyle.
The study, titled, "Resolvin E1 Prevents Atheromatous Plaque Formation," will be published in print in the May issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), a journal of the American Heart Association. It is the first paper to show a rabbit model of accelerated heart disease, demonstrating a range of atherosclerotic plaque stages that more closely resemble those in humans without genetic modification of the animal. This research is authored by Hatice Hasturk, Rima Abdallah, Alpdogan Kantarci, Daniel Nguyen, Nicholas Giordano, James Hamilton and Thomas E. Van Dyke.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Forsyth Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
Hatice Hasturk, Rima Abdallah, Alpdogan Kantarci, Daniel Nguyen, Nicholas Giordano, James Hamilton and Thomas E. Van Dyke. Resolvin E1 Prevents Atheromatous Plaque Formation. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, May 2015
This study is the first time researchers anywhere have demonstrated the ability of an oral treatment for gum disease to also reduce inflammation in the artery wall. The active ingredient is an inflammation resolving molecule, known as Resolvin E1. This discovery further underscores the increasing body of evidence showcasing how problems in the mouth -- and how they are treated -- can have life changing influences on other key systems in the body, such as the heart in this case.
"Our research is helping to underscore the very real link between oral health and heart disease," said Lead Investigator Hatice Hasturk, DDS, PhD, an associate member of Forsyth's Department of Applied Oral Sciences and director of Forsyth's Center for Clinical and Translational Research. "The general public understands the connection between heart health and overall wellness, and often takes appropriate steps to prevent heart disease. More education is needed to elevate oral wellness into the same category in light of proven connections to major health conditions."
According to the CDC, heart disease accounts for one in four deaths in the United States, and the rate continues to rise. Forsyth's findings suggest a need to expand the public's understanding of risk factors beyond cholesterol, smoking, hypertension and diabetes to include a focus on oral health. With support from the scientific community, Forsyth aims to generate greater awareness of gum disease (affecting 64.7 million American adults according to the CDC) as a critical risk factor for heart disease, independent from diet and lifestyle.
The study, titled, "Resolvin E1 Prevents Atheromatous Plaque Formation," will be published in print in the May issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), a journal of the American Heart Association. It is the first paper to show a rabbit model of accelerated heart disease, demonstrating a range of atherosclerotic plaque stages that more closely resemble those in humans without genetic modification of the animal. This research is authored by Hatice Hasturk, Rima Abdallah, Alpdogan Kantarci, Daniel Nguyen, Nicholas Giordano, James Hamilton and Thomas E. Van Dyke.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Forsyth Institute. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
Hatice Hasturk, Rima Abdallah, Alpdogan Kantarci, Daniel Nguyen, Nicholas Giordano, James Hamilton and Thomas E. Van Dyke. Resolvin E1 Prevents Atheromatous Plaque Formation. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, May 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Vitamin D research history, and toxicity examples.
I include this entire article, to make a point that massive is about 1,000 time what I believe is beneficial (a planned and monitored 50,000 iu per day dose of D3.) Here is the history of Vitamin D3 use and research.
The article:
____________________________
The article:
Warning: If you intend to take massive doses of vitamin D based on this newsletter, which I highly recommend you do not, read the entire newsletter. In addition, accurate determination of side effects of massive doses of vitamin D was not available in the early 1930s, nor was accurate determination of the true amount in each pill possible.
Is 2,000,000 IU/day of vitamin D toxic?
Ask Gary Null, alternative medicine guru and entrepreneur. He took his own supplement, Ultimate Power Meal, for a month and became extremely ill; one batch of Power Meal apparently contained 1,000 times more vitamin D than it should. That is, it contained 2,000,000 IU of vitamin D3 per serving instead of 2,000 IU per serving. Mr. Null became sicker and sicker as he gulped it down.
After suing his own supplier for permanent physical damage, Mr. Null then reported it took 3 months to get the extra vitamin D out of his system and that he is now alive and well.
New York Post: ‘Death’ is now Null and void
If Mr. Null took it for the full month that he claims, and if his Power Meal contained 2,000,000 IU per dose, Mr. Null consumed 60,000,000 IU in one month. Could he really be fine now with no lasting injuries?
In an attempt to answer that question, I went back to the 1930s and 40s.
Massive doses in the 1930s
The earliest references I could find to enormous doses of vitamin D were in the 1930s. In 1935, Drs. Dreyer and Reed, of the University of Illinois School of Medicine, published their observations on 700 patients treated with “massive” doses of vitamin D for up to two years.1
First, the authors report that vitamin D had remarkable treatment effects on all kinds of arthritis, especially rheumatoid arthritis. They report on 67 arthritic patients so treated, with 75% of the patients responding most dramatically.
The dose used? Drs. Dreyer and Reed started all patients on 200,000 IU per day! They started some patients on 200,000 IU/day of D2 and others on 200,000 IU/day of D3, noticing no difference in efficacy. They used vitamin D preparations made by Mead Johnson, Glaxo, and Abbott.
“If there was no improvement and no evidence of sensitivity, the daily dose was increased by 50,000 units each week until there was some improvement or evidence of overdosage. In some stubborn cases, it was found necessary to increase to 600,000 or even 1,000,000 units for a few days and then reduce to 200,000 to 500,000 units. Most of our results have been obtained with daily doses of 300,000 to 500,000 units.”
The authors report that 63 of the 700 patients on this dosage became clinically toxic. That is, about 10% of the patients on these doses became sick (toxic) from the vitamin D. Today, we usually think of vitamin D toxicity as asymptomatic high blood calcium but these were old time doctors; toxic meant sick.
How did they treat the 63 patients who became sick from massive doses of vitamin D? Hospitalize them in the ICU? No, they simply stopped the vitamin D, told them to drink plenty of fluids, waited for the symptoms of toxicity to dissipate, and then restarted them on a lower dose, such as 150,000 IU per day.
The authors do mention that many of the patients had high blood calcium, one in the 20s, but if the patients were not sick, the doctors didn’t care about the calcium. As the authors did not draw serum calcium on all of the 700 patients, we don’t know what percentage of patients on these doses became hypercalcemic.
Symptoms of Toxicity
The authors report that the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity began with persistent nausea, which the doctors instructed their patients to be on the lookout for, as well as increased frequency of urination without increased volume of urine. Weakness and increased thirst were common, and “if the treatment is continued, diarrhea, gripping pain in the gastrointestinal tract, and vomiting.” The authors bragged that they could not report on pathological findings in toxicity, because none of their 700 patients had died and “come to autopsy.”
In 1934, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study on vitamin D overdose:Reed CI. Symptoms of Viosterol overdosage in human subjects. JAMA. 1934;102:1745–1748.
They reported on 300 patients given high doses of vitamin D2 for asthma and hay fever. The author reported that each cc contained 900,000 IU of vitamin D2. The good doctor gave one patient 3 cc per day for five days (that would be a total dose of 13.5 million units) “without the slightest evidence of injury.”
However, in his conclusion, Dr. Reed was much more conservative:
“There need be little apprehension about the administration of amounts ranging up to 150,000 international units daily for indefinite periods. Larger amounts had better be limited to periods of a few months at most, depending on the therapeutic effects desired.”
Dr. Rappaport and colleagues at the University of Illinois studied the effects of Viosterol (vitamin D2) on asthma and hay fever in 212 patients, giving placebo to a control group. The authors reported that 82% of the hay fever patients and 96% of the asthma patients “experienced definitive significant relief.” The authors concluded that the “optimum dose” of vitamin D was 60,000 to 300,000 IU per day.
Rappaprt BZ, et al. The treatment of hay fever and asthma with Viosterol of high potency. J. of Allergy. 1934;5:541–553.
Why these doctors did not try 5,000 or 10,000 IU/day, instead of 200,000 IU/day, I could not ascertain.
Death in the 1940s
Things began to change in the 1940s. In 1946, two case reports of fatal vitamin D toxicity in adults (the authors report five previous fatal cases in children) appeared in the medical literature.1
Another case report of a fatal dose of vitamin D in adults appeared in 1947. This death was from Ertron, vitamin D2, at a dose of 150,000 IU daily for 18 months, and it included a description of foot lesions similar to what Gary Null reported. This paper is free to download and I suggest everyone who is flirting with the idea of using massive doses of vitamin D obtain it and read it. It is chilling to read the detailed autopsy report.2
By 1948, the medical community began condemning the use of such massive doses of vitamin D as evidenced by a paper from Johns Hopkins University:
The authors reference 12 earlier papers on vitamin D intoxication with calcification of everything from the kidneys to the sclera of the eyes. The first symptoms of vitamin D toxicity in their series of 11 patients were weight loss and fatigue, which occurred before the anorexia (poor appetite) and vomiting. All of their patients suffered from kidney damage and anemia. Virtually all of the patients had a characteristic eye lesion, which are calcium deposits in the sclera and cornea, just beneath the conjunctival basement membrane.
All patients had high blood calcium, ranging from 12.4 to 15.1 mg per 100 cc. Dosages of vitamin D ranged from the lowest at 150,000 IU/day for 4 months (serum calcium 13.9) to the highest at 500,000 IU/day for 18 months (serum calcium 14.3). They reported on another patient who developed hypercalcemia after she reported taking 300,000 IU of vitamin D2 for only 2 weeks; she also had eye lesions evident on slit lamp exam. Although accurate follow up was not possible due to the fact the patients came from around the country, no patients died but some suffered permanent renal damage from the excessive doses of vitamin D.
The treatment the authors used for vitamin D toxicity was discontinuing the vitamin D, drinking 4,000 cc of fluid per day, and a low calcium diet. Improvement occurred within 2–8 weeks when nausea, vomiting, and lassitude disappeared. Blood calcium fell in all patients by one month but continued to be elevated for as long as a year in one patient.
These reports of toxicity were all the medical profession needed to condemn vitamin D as dangerous, as I learned in medical school in the early 1970s. The dark ages of vitamin D meant that for several generations of doctors, vitamin D was toxic at all but the most meaningless doses. Its use to treat asthma and arthritis became verboten. For fifty years, doctors forgot about vitamin D — other than vitamin D deficient rickets — because of fear of toxicity. During these dark ages, the Food and Nutrition Board periodically reviewed vitamin D and repeatedly distributed toxicity alarms, along with their recommendations that we only take insignificant doses.
Out of the dark ages
Then, at the turn of the century, Professor Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto showed us the way out of the dark ages with an objective review of the toxicity literature.
What Vieth’s paper showed was that there is a difference between 5,000 IU per day and 50,000 IU per day, the first being a physiological dose and the second being a pharmacological dose, a drug. However, in 1999 the world was using neither dose properly, in that no doctors were prescribing 5,000 IU per day and no scientists were studying 50,000 IU per day.
After Vieth’s paper, in the first few years of this century, a steady stream of vitamin D papers began flowing out of research labs, with the number of publications increasing every year. For example, scientists published 1,582 new papers on vitamin D in the first six months of 2010. Very few are about toxicity, instead they cover a breathtaking variety of diseases. These papers raise the possibility that many of the diseases that we take as being part of the human condition are not part of the human condition, instead they are simply the result of the toxicity scare: vitamin D deficiency. That is, these diseases are simply different presentations of the same deficiency. In that way, vitamin D deficiency is similar to syphilis.
Sir William Osler said, “Know syphilis in all its manifestations and relations and all other things clinical will be added unto you. Know syphilis and the whole of medicine is opened to you.” He called it the “Great Imitator,” because late stages of syphilis simulate almost every disease known to man. Smoking is similar, some smokers get emphysema, some lung cancer, some heart disease, some bladder cancer, some pancreatic cancer, and some live to be 100. Increasingly, vitamin D deficiency looks as if it may do the same thing. Some vitamin D deficient people will get asthma, others cancer, others heart disease, others autoimmune illness, and some will live to be 100.
Let’s look at one rare disease, childhood multiple sclerosis, a nightmare for any parent to face. The child will have problems with vision, co-ordination, or balance, with relapses and remissions, that is the disease seems to come and go. Recently, Dr. Ellen Mowry and her colleagues discovered that these relapses, these periods of active autoimmune illness, are associated with low levels of vitamin D. The disease comes and goes as vitamin D levels come and go. Dr. Mowrey speculated that a 15 ng/mL increase in vitamin D levels would cut the relapse rate in half.3
Dr. Mowry did not raise the fundamental question: would these children have become ill in the first place if they had adequate amounts of vitamin D during their growth and development? The average vitamin D level of these 110 children was 22 ng/mL, so Dr. Morey could not say what an increase to 50 ng/mL would do, nor could she say if low vitamin D levels were what allowed the disease to appear in the first place.
That is, is juvenile multiple sclerosis simply one of many possible presentations of childhood vitamin D deficiency? Some vitamin D deficient children will get multiple sclerosis, some asthma, some diabetes, some rickets, and others autism. That is, is vitamin D deficiency the modern day syphilis?
Unlike syphilis, vitamin D deficiency is largely an iatrogenic disease, caused by the medical profession’s near hysterical fear of vitamin D toxicity. Physicians simply forgot what Paracelsus said many years ago, “All things are poison and nothing is without poison, the dose alone permits something to be poisonous.” We went from intemperance in the 1930s to hysteria in the 1950s and we are only now coming to our senses.
We look around at the diseases debilitating our children, the triple A epidemics of autoimmune disorders, asthma, and autism. All are truly epidemic, all are debilitating or worse, and vitamin D is involved in all three. We failed to make sure our children had enough vitamin D throughout their growth and development and now our children suffer, in large part because of the hysteria over vitamin D toxicity.
What dose is toxic? I don’t know but I’d guess for some adults it is around 50,000 IU/day. However, it will vary widely and some people may get asymptomatic side effects on lower doses, such as kidney damage, without getting clinical signs of toxicity. Just because you feel fine, that does not mean your kidneys are fine.
Getting back to Mr. Gary Null and his ingestion of 60,000,000 IU over one month, could he have survived that dose? Apparently, the answer is yes, although I doubt he took it every day, especially as he got sicker and sicker. Could he have survived that dose without permanent kidney damage? I doubt it.
6 Apr 2015
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