'Today, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) has failed millions...'

[tiptoe]

Vitamin D Council Statement on FNB Vitamin D Report*

Today, the FNB has failed millions...

3:00 PM PST November 30, 2010

After 13 year of silence, the quasi governmental agency, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB), today recommended that a three-pound premature infant take virtually the same amount of vitamin D as a 300 pound pregnant woman. While that 400 IU/day dose is close to adequate for infants, 600 IU/day in pregnant women will do nothing to help the three childhood epidemics most closely associated with gestational and early childhood vitamin D deficiencies: asthma, auto-immune disorders, and, as recently reported in the largest pediatric journal in the world, autism. Professor Bruce Hollis of the Medical University of South Carolina has shown pregnant and lactating women need at least 5,000 IU/day, not 600.

The FNB also reported that vitamin D toxicity might occur at an intake of 10,000 IU/day (250 micrograms/day), although they could produce no reproducible evidence that 10,000 IU/day has ever caused toxicity in humans and only one poorly conducted study indicating 20,000 IU/day may cause mild elevations in serum calcium, but not clinical toxicity.

Viewed with different measure, this FNB report recommends that an infant should take 10 micrograms/day (400 IU) and a pregnant woman 15 micrograms/day (600 IU). As a single, 30 minute dose of summer sunshine gives adults more than 10,000 IU (250 micrograms), the FNB is apparently also warning that natural vitamin D input — as occurred from the sun before the widespread use of sunscreen — is dangerous. That is, the FNB is implying that God does not know what she is doing.

Disturbingly, this FNB committee focused on bone health, just like they did 14 years ago. They ignored the thousands of studies from the last ten years that showed higher doses of vitamin D helps: heart health, brain health, breast health, prostate health, pancreatic health, muscle health, nerve health, eye health, immune health, colon health, liver health, mood health, skin health, and especially fetal health.

Tens of millions of pregnant women and their breast-feeding infants are severely vitamin D deficient, resulting in a great increase in the medieval disease, rickets. The FNB report seems to reason that if so many pregnant women have low vitamin D blood levels then it must be OK because such low levels are so common. However, such circular logic simply represents the cave man existence (never exposed to the light of the sun) of most modern-day pregnant women.

Hence, if you want to optimize your vitamin D levels — not just optimize the bone effect — supplementing is crucial. But it is almost impossible to significantly raise your vitamin D levels when supplementing at only 600 IU/day (15 micrograms).

Pregnant women taking 400 IU/day have the same blood levels as pregnant women not taking vitamin D; that is, 400 IU is a meaninglessly small dose for pregnant women. Even taking 2,000 IU/day of vitamin D will only increase the vitamin D levels of most pregnant women by about 10 points, depending mainly on their weight. Professor Bruce Hollis has shown that 2,000 IU/day does not raise vitamin D to healthy or natural levels in either pregnant or lactating women. Therefore supplementing with higher amounts — like 5000 IU/day — is crucial for those women who want their fetus to enjoy optimal vitamin D levels, and the future health benefits that go along with it.

For example, taking only two of the hundreds of recently published studies:

Professor Urashima and colleagues in Japan, gave 1,200 IU/day of vitamin D3 for six months to Japanese 10-year-olds in a randomized controlled trial. They found vitamin D dramatically reduced the incidence of influenza A as well as the episodes of asthma attacks in the treated kids while the placebo group was not so fortunate. If Dr. Urashima had followed the newest FNB recommendations, it is unlikely that 400 IU/day treatment arm would have done much of anything and some of the treated young teenagers may have come to serious harm without the vitamin D.

Likewise, a randomized controlled prevention trial of adults by Professor Joan Lappe and colleagues at Creighton University, which showed dramatic improvements in the health of internal organs, used more than twice the FNB's new adult recommendations.

Finally, the FNB committee consulted with 14 vitamin D experts and — after reading these 14 different reports — the FNB decided to suppress their reports. Many of these 14 consultants are either famous vitamin D researchers, like Professor Robert Heaney at Creighton or, as in the case of Professor Walter Willett at Harvard, the single best-known nutritionist in the world. So, the FNB will not tell us what Professors Heaney and Willett thought of their new report? Why not?

Today, the Vitamin D Council directed our attorney to file a federal Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the IOM's FNB for the release of these 14 reports.

Most of my friends, hundreds of patients, and thousands of readers of the Vitamin D Council newsletter (not to mention myself), have been taking 5,000 IU/day for up to eight years. Not only have they reported no significant side-effects, indeed, they have reported greatly improved health in multiple organ systems.

My advice, especially for pregnant women: continue taking 5,000 IU/day until your 25(OH)D is between 50–80 ng/mL (the vitamin D blood levels obtained by humans who live and work in the sun and the mid-point of the current reference ranges at all American laboratories).

Gestational vitamin D deficiency is not only associated with rickets, but a significantly increased risk of neonatal pneumonia, a doubled risk for preeclampsia, a tripled risk for gestational diabetes, and a quadrupled risk for primary cesarean section.

Today, the FNB has failed millions of pregnant women whose as yet unborn babies will pay the price. Let us hope the FNB will comply with the spirit of "transparency" by quickly responding to our Freedom of Information requests.

John Jacob Cannell MD
Executive Director

*Unless otherwise expressly stated, all site content licensed under a Creative Commons License.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I had a strong sense that there was something wrong

with those warnings. For one thing, I noticed that they didn't even mention all the studies showing vit D as a preventative for flu & related diseases.

[tiptoe]

3. FNB suppressed 14 Vit D expert reports: Protects AMA & Am Acad Pediatrics from autism liability,i.e.

...IF Dr. John Cannell's Vitamin D Theory of Autism, accepted by Harvard University in August 2009, continues to stand up to full scientific scrutiny.

Five "quacks" @ Harvard University accept the Vitamin D Theory of Autism and credit Dr John Cannell ...
...was my response to an attempt to impugn Dr. John Jacob Cannell and the Vitamin D Council by mentioning the organization's listing on Quackwatch (without providing link), as well as asserting the meme of vitamin D being promoted as a "panacea" (like a snake-oil...despite one author's explicit reprehensio at the very onset of this OP -- "No one is proposing that vitamin D is a panacea, however it seems to provide part of the sturdy framework for our physical and mental well being..." -- and choosing to ignore Dr. Cannell's own emphasis that "vitamin D will not prevent all cancer or heart disease, or respiratory infections...That's why I believe in complementary, not alternative, medicine."), instead of appreciating its scientific discovery in late-2004 and early 2005 as the very foundation for the human innate immune system, followed up by thousands of research articles re vitamin D and tissues newly discovered post-1999 to contain vitamin D receptor cells. Intellectual philistinism. Nothing but lowlife, ugly likely-corporate-backed attack campaigns against vitamin D scientific research...compounded, now, by the IOM FNB suppression of 14 vitamin D experts' reports, kowtowing, too, perhaps, to behind-the-scenes corporate $$$ and special interests, even as rates of autism continue their multi-fold increase since 1990. A corporate media consortium appears to have attempted release of a fake preliminary national exit poll in 2004, and quietly suppressed them totally in 2008. The CEOs of such anti-democracy, pro-disease corporate entities need be recognized for who they are and what they've been doing to "corporatize" American Congress by systemic election fraud and the Health Industry by ignoring inferior -- indeed, extremely deleterious, if Cannell's theory is right -- medical practices after 1999.

The actual danger to infants -- if Cannell's vitamin d deficiency theory of autism continues to hold up -- will prove to be the pre- and post-natal anti-sun advice of AMA doctors and AAP pediatricians (continuing to promulgate 1999-inaugurated practices, playing dumb with infants' health risks and society's expense), possibly buttressed, now, and insulated from liability by the "considered decision" of the IOM FNB itself, for its choices of focus and loyalties and suppression of 14 reports of vitamin D experts, most very-likely dissenting.

As Cannell puts it, in a response to a mother of an autistic child:

Finally, expect anger and defensiveness from many in the medical profession. Remember, if I'm right, it was not the evil power plants, or the mercury polluters, or the vaccine industry that caused your son's autism. It was the CDC, the NIH, the AMA, and all the other committees and organizations that fell for the dermatologists' calculations (the cosmetic industry will give me a larger grant if I warn about sunlight) and who then blasphemed the Sun God. That is, the worst charge you can level against medicine, "You have violated your primary duty; you have caused harm." If I am right, the current autism epidemic is the worst iatrogenic disease in human history — John Cannell, MD

"Consider the iatrogenic factors "setting the stage" for prospective mothers AND infants post 1999:..."

[Sienna86]

2. Thanks for sdahring this report

I believe taking D3 improves my immune system.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I take 2000 units daily.

[hlthe2b]

5. Sadly, this will not get the press as the "very scary" FNB report

I listened to the lead author of that report siting in my car and was almost screaming at the radio that they had looked at nothing but BONE HEALTH! I was so appalled and pissed.

I can only hope other vitamin D researchers will come out very loudly now. I will continue to supplement as I have.

[hedgehog]

6. The first time I googled Vitamin D a few years back - the first

hits that came up were half a dozen published scientific studies from different areas - one studying Vitamin D and insulin, one studying Vtamin D and rheumatoid arthritis, one studying Vitamin D and osteoarthritis, one studying Vitamin D and prostate cancer, etc. This was well before Vitamin D hit the popular press.

I can believe that one person can do a study and come up with unreliable results, but when so many studies come from so many different directions and seem to center in on the same recommended blood levels, I have to believe that they are on to something.

[hedgehog]

7. Is there a copy of the actual FNB report posted anywhere?

All I've seen are executive summaries. I would really like to examine their protocols for coming up with the conclusions they made.

[tiptoe]

8. Pre pub ("read the report online for free"):

Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D
Released: November 30, 2010
Type: Consensus Report
Topics: Food and Nutrition, Public Health
Activity: Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium
Board: Food and Nutrition Board

DRIs for Calcium and Vitamin D (HTML)
Press Release (HTML)
Report Brief (PDF, HTML)


"Read the report online for free: (Pre Pub)"
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13050

Front Matter (R1-R16)
Summary (1-12)
1 Introduction (13-28)
2 Overview of Calcium (29-60)
3 Overview of Vitamin D (61-102)
4 Review of Potential Indicators of Adequacy and Selection of Indicators: Calcium and Vitamin D (103-290)
5 Dietary Reference Intakes for Adequacy: Calcium and Vitamin D (291-340)
6 Tolerable Upper Intake Levels: Calcium and Vitamin D (341-384)
7 Dietary Intake Assessment (385-406)
8 Implications and Special Concerns (407-432)
9 Information Gaps and Research Needs (433-440)
Appendix A Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations (441-452)
Appendix B Issues and Interests Identified by Study Sponsors (453-454)
Appendix C Methods and Results from the AHRQ-Ottawa Evidence-Based Report on Effectiveness and Safety of Vitamin D in Relation to Bone Health (455-642)
Appendix D Methods and Results from the AHRQ-TuftsEvidence-Based Report on Vitamin D and Calcium (643-928)
Appendix E Literature Search Strategy (929-934)
Appendix F Evidence Maps (935-938)
Appendix G Cases Studies of Vitamin D Toxicity (939-944)
Appendix H Estimated Intakes of Calcium and Vitamin D from National Surveys (945-964)
Appendix I Proportion of the Population Above and Below 40 nmol/L Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations and Cumulative Distribution of Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations: United States and Canada (965-974)
Appendix J Workshop Agenda and Open Session Agendas (975-980)
Appendix K Biographical Sketches of Committee Members (981-988)
Summary Tables--Dietary Reference Intakes (989-999)

Also:
Download statement by vitamin D expert Dr. William Grant (MS Word document)

 

[hedgehog]

13. Based on reading the summary, I think what the report says is not exactly what

was reported in the media. For example, the report does not say there is no benefit from higher levels of vitamin D; it says that solid proof is lacking and that the area is worthy of further study.
In other words, there is evidence that higher levels of Vitamin D are good, there just isn't enough evidence yet.

The Report mentions that there is also an interplay of Vitamin D levels with multiple other nutrients.
Another problem is that we don't know what causes a lot of the conditions now associated with Vitamin D levels: autoimmune disorders including rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes; depression, breast, colon and prostate cancers. Not only that, but they are sporadic enough that it may be impossible to set up a double blind study that controls all the parameters in order to obtain definitive evidence.

The one area that is well studied is bone health. Yet even a study of osteoporosis has to consider such factors as level of physical activity, body mass, genetics, alcohol consumption and total nutritional status. So a study trying to determine an optimum Vitamin D level would have to control for all of those other factors. So, what is an optimum level for a skinny white woman who is a couch potato and has two glasses of wine every day vs. a black woman at optimal weight who is physically active and doesn't drink but who lives in the Upper Midwest?

The summary indicates that while the authors are confident that a serum level of at least 30 nmol/L indicates a sufficient blood level of Vitamin D, there may be benefits from obtaining a serum level of 75 nmol/L.

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13050&page=11

Levels above 125 nmol/L appear to be harmful.

[greymattermom]

9. they say there's not enough evidence to support it

so, the answer is to do more studies. DUH.
From a vitamin D researcher.

[snagglepuss]

10. The studies that would prove conclusively that Vit D and Vit D supplementation

is essential are phenomenally expensive. Normally drug companies undertake these studies however Vit D cannot be patented and is one of the cheapest supplements on the market so companies have no incentive to do the studies.

[lildreamer316]

12. THIS. n/t

[lildreamer316]

11. Thank you so much for posting this.

Very important information. Kick and rec.