Vitamin D in Treating Osteoporosis

Diabetes Care 28:2850-2855, 2005 carried the information from Sweden that indicated an upswing in hip fractures for both men and women at age 40. The major drawback was that this was only dietary assessment and no measurement of blood levels were taken.

This is a fatal flaw but is a piece of information that might stalk you as yet another risk factor for having type 1 diabetes – as if there weren't enough.

A few years ago a paper in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism pointed out that the Swedes had excessive Vitamin A, an antagonist of Vitamin D in high amounts, added in by the Government. They did not asses the A intake in the diet nor in the amount of vitamins. Any patient with chronic disease usually ends up taking vitamins when the Government says that is a good thing.

I measured blood levels of Vitamin A and D for about 18 months after the Swedish paper. Nobody had an elevated Vitamin A in the San Francisco Bay area and no one had levels of Vitamin D that got as high as the normal range.

You heard last week that Vitamin D is a strong anticancer agent so get it up to normal levels and forget about getting a hip fracture about at age 40. We now use large amounts of vitamin D to treat osteoporosis. It is much more effective than things like Fosamax, Actonel and the rest.