Vitamin D in the News

An informative look at recent Holistic Fitness News

DR KAPLAN'S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

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Reader's Digest had a Vitamin D on its cover this week. In a leading article called 'The Healing Vitamin Are you getting enough?' the popular magazine suggests that we are living 'amid an unrecognized epidemic'. Vitamin D has long been known to be vital to forming strong bones. A severe lack of Vitamin D is the cause of rickets, a condition that produces bowed legs and fragile bones. In the 1920s doctors found that it could be cured by sitting in the sun and taking cod liver oil - both of which produce Vitamin D. In fact all you have to do to get your daily recommended dose of Vitamin D is sit in the sun for 20 minutes a day, preferably avoiding the hottest time of the day. Exposing just your arms and face is enough.

Doctors have known about rickets, Vitamin D and the sun for nearly a century now, but now scientists are beginning to believe that Vitamin D is even more important for our health than we previously thought. Scientists are exploring links between Vitamin D deficiency and cancer of the breast, prostate and ovaries. Babies who lack Vitamin D may be more likely to get diabetes. High blood pressure may also have some links to Vitamin D deficiency. We do know that the further north of the equator a country is, the more people with hypertension there are in that country. Is it connected to the sun and Vitamin D? Nothing totally proven yet but it's easy enough to make sure you don't lack this vitamin. Just eat an oily fish once or twice a week, the occasional egg and best of all, expose your skin (without sunscreen) to a mere 20 minutes of sunshine a day. Of course sunscreen is vital for longer periods of sunbathing, beach holidays etc.

Vitamins: To supplement or not to supplement?
Patients often ask me if they should take vitamin tablets. Conventional medical wisdom maintains that a healthy diet will give you everything you need (nutritionally speaking of course). The 'Vitamin Camp' says we eat so few pure foods that we are sure to lack certain vitamins and minerals. My advice is that there is no harm in taking a good multivitamin and mineral complex in a very conservative way. Such as one tablet a day or one every second day. Of course the directions on the bottle may suggest more, but more probably just means more expensive urine.
High doses of Vitamin C have not been proved to achieve much in spite of their huge popularity in preventing and treating colds.

Homeopathic Tip

Let's stay with the topic of health and the sun. Now the sun can be both healthy and unhealthy for you. Twenty minutes a day (and no more) of exposing your face and arms without sunscreen is good. Sunburn is very bad and can predispose you to cancers of the skin, including the deadly malignant melanoma. So what to do if you inadvertently do burn your skin. Make sure you drink plenty of water to rehydrate yourself. Then take homeopathic Belladonnna 6c, one tablet three times a day for a few days. The same plan is also useful for headaches due to too much sun.

Dr Kaplan's personal website is: www.drkaplan.co.uk and his practice website is www.140harleystreet.co.uk and he can be contacted on (020) 7487 3416