The familiar chill of fall reminds us that we’re seeing less of the sun.  Less sunlight means fewer opportunities to maintain adequate levels of vitamin D in our bodies.   With all the buzz surrounding calcium, the importance of vitamin D in supporting strong teeth and bones was long overlooked.  So let’s spend a few minutes getting up to speed on calcium’s biggest supporter, vitamin D. 

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in few foods, fortified in few others, and available as a dietary supplement.  Additionally, our bodies can synthesize vitamin D with adequate sun exposure. The process begins with the inactive form of vitamin D in our skin.  When met with sufficient sunlight, the hormone is converted into an active form of vitamin D through a process in our kidneys and liver.  Active vitamin D allows our bodies to better utilize calcium, meanwhile playing an important role in maintaining muscle.  Thus, vitamin D has been credited with the prevention of falls and subsequent fractures in aging populations.

Groups at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency include older adults, people with limited sun exposure (which would include most Americans in the winter months), people with dark skin, obese individuals, and breastfed infants.  So how much do you need?  The jury is still out on this one.  Current recommendations suggest the following daily intake:

- Age 50 and under:  200 International Units (IU) or 5 micrograms (mcg)
- 51-70:  400 IU (10 mcg)
- 71 and older:  600 IU (15 mcg)

That said, research suggests these intakes are too low, with some researchers estimating as high as 1000 IU per day.  In other words, it’s best to think of the current recommendations as minimums. 

Below is a list of food sources of vitamin D.  As you can see, foods that naturally contain vitamin D aren’t common in the American diet, and those that are fortified with vitamin D (most notable being milk) are not very rich sources. So unless you typically consume a tablespoon of cod liver oil daily, or drink upwards of 48 ounces of milk, it’s best to leave it to supplementation. 

Sources of vitamin D:

Source: http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp

For more information, check out the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements website. 

Tanya Zuckerbrot, MS, RD is a nutritionist and founder of www.Skinnyandthecity.com.    She is also the creator of The F-Factor Diet™, an innovative nutritional program she has used for more than ten years to provide hundreds of her clients with all the tools they need to achieve easy weight loss and maintenance, improved health and well-being.  For more information log onto www.FFactorDiet.com.

Researchers at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and other academic medical centers scattered around the country are now testing psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, the active ingredient in “mushrooms,” to send terminal cancer patients on acid-like “trips.”  

Some of the patients report the drugs open their minds to great insights that help them overcome the desperation and depression they had felt facing their own mortality.  These insights, they say, are lasting ones that sustain an increased sense of well-being and self-possession for months or even years.

That sounds great.  Why not break free from the reality of your unfortunate circumstances and see the vastness of the universe around you?  Why not feel a connectedness with your fellow man so powerful and so far-reaching that it might reach even beyond death?  Who would keep the doors of perception locked to those with so little time left on the planet?  What harm could come from extending the medical use of marijuana in cancer victims to other illicit drugs?

The devil, however, is (as usual) in the details.  The clinical trials of psilocybin and (in other medical centers) Ecstasy to treat psychological distress have at their core the theory that hallucinogens or other illicit substances have demonstrable and defensible benefits to users that outweigh the benefits to society of blanket criminalizing of such substances. 

Certainly those battling cancer and facing death have unique needs and challenges.  But what about those who are grieving the death of a child, or those experiencing severe stress from terrible accidents, or those with post traumatic stress disorder, or those with chronic depression?  Don’t they deserve the same chance to shake off the shackles of their psyches and see what a “trip” might do for them?  Why can’t they have some mushrooms or Ecstasy or LSD?

You can see the slippery slope ahead.  It’s hard to tell young people, for example, that these drugs are paths away from the truth, not toward it, when doctors are touting their mind-expanding and healing properties.  It’s hard to argue that they or anyone else should see their problems, including their anxiety and depression, as wake-up calls to understand and take charge and change their lives, when they could just take a pill—just once—and trip right out of their troubles.

Cancer is big trouble.  Our mortality is something hard to “get our heads around.”  It brings up significant and even tortuous questions about whether we have lived our lives as we might have wished to, whether we have expressed our love for those who deserved it, whether we’ve ever gotten the love we deserved ourselves. 

I, for one, believe that the search for answers to such questions, even when painful, even when undertaken from a hospital bed, is a worthy and human one.   And I worry about short-circuiting that process by taking a trip anywhere other than deeper into one’s heart, clear mind and relationship to the universe and God.

A mushroom widely used in oriental medicine may help fight breast cancer by slowing the growth of tumors and starving them of blood, a study has shown.

Extracts of the fungus, Phellinus linteus, have been used for centuries by Eastern healers, who believe it has the power to rejuvenate and extend life.

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