The Latest Miracle Nutrient—Vitamin D
I review nutritional studies that are published in medical and scientific journals every week. For the last 4-6 months, the majority of these have focused on the “wonders” of vitamin D (and many of you have been led to believe that the addition of it to your diet will markedly improve your life and protect you from disease.)
Vitamins do not prevent disease—scientific studies have proven they don’t—rather, they are crutches that treat symptoms, and you have all been wrongly and dangerously led to believe that if you have few symptoms, it means you are healthy and will live a long time.
It may concern some of you at times that I do not follow in the footsteps of all of the “miracle vitamin D” recommendations and make the same to you, but you should not be concerned. On the contrary…
The concerns I have about the vitamin D mania are as follows. One, while vitamin D is a crutch like all others; this crutch is not necessarily a safe one! Vitamins A, D, and E are fat-soluble, which means that you can retain excess amounts in your fat cells, and they can accumulate to toxic levels. None of the crutches that I recommend can do this! (By the way, of the many studies I have read about the wonders of this vitamin, none have been long-term, which means the long-term consequences of these recommendations have not been observed, either.)
Two, your kidneys produce calcitriol—the active form of vitamin D—when they are healthy. So, rather than take a lot of this fat-soluble vitamin, you would be much healthier, and safer, healing your kidneys. And by the way, “most people don’t learn about kidney problems until it’s too late, because most kidney disease don’t produce symptoms, says Leslie Spry, M.D., of the National Kidney Foundation. “Symptoms don’t appear until 60 to 70 percent of kidney function is lost.” (Chronic kidney disease has become more prevalent in the last 10 years, which is largely the result of our higher consumption of protein during this time.) Of course, when you heal your bowel, you heal your kidneys too…
You also get vitamin D from sunshine. Sun does not cause skin cancer—it is merely a trigger. Your skin is an organ and like all others, the more acidic it is, the more likely you are to damage this organ and get skin cancer! Of course, when you heal your bowel, you heal your skin, too…
When your kidneys and skin are healthy, your vitamin D levels will be healthy, too. If you take vitamin D and do not heal these organs with this program, you can dangerously think you are healthier than you really are. If your vitamin D levels are low due to unhealthy kidneys and skin, you are vulnerable to an earlier disease (like cancer and heart disease), as these organs “at the bottom of your pipe” protect your organs at the “top of your pipe”—like your heart and cells (so you don’t have a heart attack or die from cancer…) So, when you do this program you not only get healthy kidneys and skin and therefore ideal levels of vitamin D without supplements, but you create organs that protect your heart and cells. Supplementation with vitamin D alone does not and cannot offer you the same protection.
Ultimately, the harm of using this vitamin D crutch is consistent with the harm of using any crutch, as discussed in Chapter 4 of This Works, Crutches Don’t. Still, if you choose to take this vitamin while you are healing your bowel and body that is fine. Just remember, when your bowel and body are healthy, you will have sufficient levels of vitamin D in your body without the need of ingesting extra in supplement form.
For more information, see www.ThisWorksCrutchesDont.com
Hi Donna: This is interesting.....and of course I have lots of questions.
ReplyDeleteMy curiosity is about sun, sunscreen, sunglasses. David says he never thought of supplementing Vit D because he/we are outside in the sun often.
I asked him if he knew if using sunscreen blocks the ability of the body to use the sun to make Vit D. He replied that he thought it didn't because the sunscreen only blocks some of the rays and only part of the sun's spectrum of light. Do you agree?
I'm "off" sunscreen---feeling it is more toxic than the sun is. I wear hats, long-sleeved shirts, etc. when out hiking or on the water and try to avoid getting burned. Other than that, I don't want to avoid the sun.
What do you think of sunscreen? And what about sunglasses for preventing cataracts?
Lovely question! The sun is very good for us--both because of the vitamin D and because it helps stimulate our immune system. And the sun does not cause skin cancer, it is only a trigger--and can only cause skin cancer (or cataracts) if the body is unhealthy. So you are right about "enjoying" the sun and avoiding sunscreen--we do--but we also avoid getting a sunburn. As for the sunscreen blocking the vitamin D, I don't know that answer, but assume it blocks some of it at least. And you are right, most sunscreens are very toxic--making your body less healthy and maybe more vulnerable to cancer...
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