Weight is definitely not an area where more is better when it comes to our health. Yet America is on the brink of allowing childhood obesity to reach epidemic proportions. It is endangering our health and adding to health care costs.The governor’s annual survey of South Dakota school districts found more than one third of K-12 students who took part were either overweight or obese. The same is true throughout the country.

That simply is not acceptable, especially since weight is one of the few things in this life that we can control, except in rare medical situations.

Excess weight is responsible for serious children’s health issues, ranging from Type 2 diabetes to depression, acid reflux to asthma, sleep apnea and more. During the formative years it affects all of our organs. One recent study found that obese children as young as 3 had warning signs of developing heart disease.

Obesity also results in societal problems. Being overweight often leads to taunting by peers, which in turn leads to low self-esteem. Many find solace in food, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

New studies warn that significant numbers of today’s overweight and obese youth will be prime candidates for potentially fatal coronary disease, high blood pressure, asthma and various types of cancer as they reach adulthood.

The American Heart Association reported that if childhood obesity continues into adulthood at the present rate, it can shorten a person’s life two to five years. If unchecked, childhood obesity could result in the current generation of children being the first in American history to live shorter lives than their parents.

Obesity is also taking a growing bite out of the health care budget. Nationwide, today’s health care costs attributed to obesity stand at about 10 percent; in 2018 that number is projected to be 21 percent — that’s more than double in just eight short years. All of us are footing the bill: individuals, government and businesses.

We can no longer afford to look the other way. It’s time for action. We need to teach our children (and remind ourselves) to eat healthier and engage in more physical activity.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish those goals is to lead by example; make it a family affair. Begin small — drink water instead of soda; walk instead of ride or drive whenever weather and distance make it feasible.

Many schools, including those in Aberdeen, are taking steps to provide healthier lunches; organizations such as the Aberdeen YMCA offer a number of fitness programs geared toward youth.

It will take a coordinated effort by parents or other child care providers, doctors, schools and insurance companies for those and similar programs to reduce obesity.

Without that support, efforts to turn the tide will change little. As in many recovery programs — and that’s exactly what this is — the support group is vital.

Every road has its bumps and potholes; this one will, too, but we must not let them stop our efforts. We cannot allow childhood obesity to become an epidemic. We have the tools to turn the tide and we must do it. Our children’s lives depend on it.

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Copyright (c) 2010, American News, Aberdeen, S.D.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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People with occasional spikes in their blood pressure could be at higher risk of having a stroke than those with regularly high blood pressure, new studies said Friday.In four articles published in the medical journals Lancet and Lancet Neurology, European researchers suggest current guidelines for treating people with high blood pressure need to be revised.

In one of the studies, Peter Rothwell of the Stroke Prevention Research Unit at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, Britain, tracked about 8,000 patients who had had a heart attack. They found patients who had consistently variable blood pressure rates were at least six times more likely to have a stroke than those with regularly high blood pressure.

“We tend to believe average underlying blood pressure rates and ignore occasional high rates as blips,” Rothwell said. “But it turns out they are very informative and that these people, who are mostly not treated for hypertension, could be at high risk of having a stroke.”

In two other studies, Rothwell and colleagues examined the effects of different blood pressure drugs. They found the drugs that reduced occasional spikes in blood pressure rates the best were the most effective at preventing strokes.

No funding was provided for any of the studies.

Rothwell estimated the findings could double the number of people being treated for high blood pressure, which accounts for about 50 percent of a person’s stroke risk. High blood pressure affects more than half of all adults.

Experts have previously studied whether people with fluctuating blood pressure rates are at greater risk of having a stroke, but the Lancet studies are the first to track the risk over several years.

The American Heart Association recommends everyone with high blood pressure check their rates at home regularly, since having readings taken a few times a year in the doctor’s office may not be accurate enough.

Other doctors said while Rothwell and colleagues’ findings are intriguing, more evidence is needed before changing treatment recommendations.

“We can’t change the guidelines every time something new comes up,” said Lars Hjalmar Lindholm of Umea University Hospital in Sweden, who was not linked to the studies. “We should be a bit cautious before we change how patients are treated.”

Still, Lindholm called the Lancet studies “a fantastic contribution” to our understanding of blood pressure.

Rothwell said people with variable blood pressure rates shouldn’t rush to change their treatment, but should talk to their doctors. “The damaging effect of variable blood pressure takes months and years to develop,” he said.

He said patients with consistently high blood pressure should continue to be monitored - and that some of them with occasionally high rates could benefit from changing their medications.

“I wouldn’t want people to think if their blood pressure is stable and high, that isn’t a bad thing. They definitely need to be treated,” he said. “It’s just that the patients we’ve currently been reassuring, whose blood pressure isn’t high all the time, also need to be treated.”

—

On the Net:

http://www.lancet.com

Alfred T. Sapse MD of Endogenous Stem Cells Activators, Inc. released a statement today:”To my knowledge and I have the support of the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR), there are two types of cholesterol each synthesized in different locations, with different pharmacological actions, each one being the cause of different diseases.

“They are the endogenous cholesterol, manufactured by the liver and intestines and the other is the exogenous cholesterol, introduced in the body by foods rich in saturated fats and cholesterol.

“The endogenous cholesterol, when manufactured in large amounts, induces the appearance of fatty plaques on heart arteries and is at the origin of atherosclerosis, and other cardio vascular disorders.

“The exogenous cholesterol once in the human body is used by the adrenal gland cortex on the top of the kidney as raw material for the manufacturing of vital hormones, aldosterone, estrogens, testosterone, and cortisol, among many others. Cortisol is the stress hormone that protects the body against everyday stress but when stress is continuous and severe, the production of cortisol goes up and at that time cortisol becomes a destructive force on practically every organ, tissue and cell, and the ’stress diseases’ are setting in under the name of ulcers, hypertension, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, and many more.

“As such, to state that statins reduce cholesterol is ambiguous and misleading and to set the record straight, the truth is that the statins reduce only the endogenous cholesterol.

“However since the ’statins reduce cholesterol’ slogan, did not bring any complaints before, and no harm had been done, I believe that a clarification from the statins industry is needed.

“This clarification would remove a major obstacle that, as I will explain later, would open the use of statins, in many other areas of therapy that were closed to their use at the present time.

“On the other hand if no clarification would be coming up soon, this matter might become a legal issue.”

End of Part I

“Part II to be issued in a few days will deal with: Statins control the endogenous cholesterol and Endogenous Stem Cells Activators, Inc. (ESAI) controls the exogenous cholesterol. Is there any synergy here? I believe there is.”

For More information regarding ESAI please visit our website www.kronosiv.com

Alfred T. Sapse MD (r) Endogenous Stem Cells Activators, Inc. 6330 S. Pecos Rd., Ste 100 Las Vegas, NV 89120 Tel: (702) 792-1601 Fax: (702) 733-9505 Email: Email Contact

SOURCE: Endogenous Stem Cells Activators, Inc.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials added a boxed warning Friday to the anti-blood clotting drug Plavix, or clopidogrel.The warning alerts patients and healthcare professionals that the drug — which reduces the risk of heart attack, unstable angina, stroke and cardiovascular death in patients with cardiovascular disease by making platelets less likely to form blood clots — can be less effective in people who cannot metabolize the drug to convert it to its active form.

However, Plavix does not have its anti-platelet effects until it is metabolized into its active form by the liver enzyme, CYP2C19, the FDA said in a statement.

“People who have reduced functioning of their CYP2C19 liver enzyme cannot effectively convert Plavix to its active form. As a result, Plavix may be less effective in altering platelet activity in those people,” the FDA statement said. “These ‘poor metabolizers’ may not receive the full benefit of Plavix treatment and may remain at risk for heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular death.”

It is estimated that 2 percent to 14 percent of the U.S. population are poor metabolizers. The FDA recommends that healthcare professionals consider alternative dosing of Plavix for these patients, or consider using other anti-platelet medications.

Tests are available to assess CYP2C19 genotype to determine if a patient is a poor metabolizer, the FDA said.

Patients with severe COPD should take vitamin D supplements, Belgian researchers have suggested. Wim Janssens and colleagues from Leuven University measured serum vitamin D levels in a group of 414 people aged over 50 years.Among the 262 patients with COPD, the degree of vitamin D deficiency was correlated with severity oflung symptoms.

In addition, COPD patients with two copies of a particular variant of the vitamin D binding gene rs7041 were at higher risk of vitamin D deficiency, the researchers found.

Dr Janssens and his team concluded: Our data warrants vitamin D supplementation in patients with severe COPD, especially in those carrying at-risk rs7041 variants.’

They suggest that supplementation could represent ‘an attractive therapeutic option to prevent disease progression’, before the consequences of COPD and ageing further reduce vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D deficiency in COPD is thought to be a consequence of increased skin ageing secondaryto smoking andreducedsunlight exposure as a result of low exercise tolerance.

However, Dr Janssens and his colleagues believe that vitamin D levels might also be important for pulmonary function.

GPletters@haymarket.com

* Thorax Online 2010

Copyright Haymarket Business Publications Ltd. Feb 26, 2010

(c) 2010 GP. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

1 Monounsaturated fats in olive oil. are associated with lower rates of heart disease and colon cancer, and reduced risk of diabetes and osteoporosis. 2 Quercetin in onions is one of the most powerful flavonoids (natural plant antioxidants). Studies show it helps prevent cancer.3 Rich in carotenoids, carrots may help lower cholesterol, regulate blood sugar levels, and protect against coronary heart disease and certain cancers.

4 An excellent source of potassium and manganese, zucchini provides your body with vitamins C, B1, and B6.

5 Several population studies associate an increased intake of garlic with a reduced risk of cancers, including stomach, colon, esophagus, pancreas, and breast.

6 Processing makes the cancer-fighting compounds in tornato paste more available to your body because heat breaks down the plant’s cell walls.

7 The type of soluble, cholesterol-lowering fiber found in chickpeas is not only heart-healthy, but helps stabilize blood sugars- particularly important for people living with diabetes.

8 Fresh basil boasts a healthy dose of blood-clottingvitamin K, and its oils and extracts are said to possess antibacterial and antioxidant properties.

9 Omega-3 fatty acids found in salmon promote heart, skin, and joint health. A study in the British Journal of Ophthalmology suggests omega-3s could also protect against age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

10 Data from a study published in Diabetes Care reported that a dietary pattern incorporating more low-fat dairy products may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged or older women.

11 According to a USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston report, blueberries may improve motor skills and reverse the short-term memory loss that comes with aging.

12 A limited study at the University of Memphis Exercise and Sports Nutrition Laboratory found honey to be one of the most effective forms of carbohydrate gels to ingest prior to exercise, also functioning well in post-workout recuperation.

Copyright Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society Mar/Apr 2010

(c) 2010 Saturday Evening Post, The. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

Relatively few grains have the protein indigestible to those with celiac disease and psoriasis and some grains are safe for them to eat, a U.S. researcher says.Lona Sandon, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, says relatively few grains — wheat, barley and rye — contain the protein indigestible to those with celiac disease and psoriasis, and while these grains may be widespread, so are many other gluten-free grains including corn, rice and wild rice.

“Buckwheat, amaranth, sorghum and quinoa are also gluten-free,” Sandon says in a statement. “Oats are another option, but they’re often processed alongside wheat so people should look for gluten-free oats.”

Sandon says the key in limiting or eliminating gluten from dietary choices is for people to try the numerous options available where natural or healthy-choice foods are offered.

Celiac disease is a hereditary digestive condition that damages the small intestine and interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food because of gluten sensitivity, Sandon says.

Candy Rinehart schedules a patient at her practice every 20 minutes, seeing people from age 4 to 93 for everything from sinus infections and abdominal pain to diabetes.Rinehart was a pioneer of sorts in Ohio when she opened her growing practice in 2004, and it’s still a rarity in the region. That’s because Rinehart is a certified family nurse practitioner, not a doctor.

Nurse-led practices are expected to become more common amid an aging population and a shortage of primary-care physicians. Patients nationwide already rely on advanced practice nurses (APNs) for 25 percent of primary care, according to Lori Herf, lobbyist for the Ohio Association of Advanced Practice Nurses.

But that shift has set off a sometimes testy debate between doctors and nurses over the limits on care that APNs like Rinehart can provide. Nurses frame the issue in terms of providing better access to primary care for patients, while doctors cite concerns about patient safety.

Intensifying the debate in recent months are two Ohio bills — one that would expand APNs’ ability to prescribe certain medications, and another that would create pilot programs to test a kind of family medicine that incentivizes preventive health care.

“The more nurse-led practices we have, the more we’ll be able to set it as a standard,” Rinehart said. “If it’s become a turf war, it’s not from the nurse practitioners’ aspect. We have to put out front what we’re capable of doing.”

Physicians go through four years of medical school followed by a residency that lasts three to six years, more extensive training than that required of nurses, said Tim Maglione, senior director for government relations at the Ohio State Medical Association.

In contrast, recognition as an APN in Ohio requires a registered nurse to hold a master’s degree in nursing and pass a national certification exam in their specialty area.

“To us, it’s about defining and distinguishing the professions,” Maglione said.

As a certified nurse practitioner who owns and runs her own family practice in Springfield, Rinehart is required by law to have a collaborative contract with a physician.

Rinehart said she typically consults with Dr. Ashfaq Ahmed, a Springfield internist, once or perhaps twice a week, on average.

Rinehart said the arrangement has worked out well in Springfield. But she said she sometimes encounters difficulty when calling out of town to make referrals.

Across the nation, the American Medical Association has been lobbying state legislatures to block any bills that would expand the scope of practice for APNs.

“This is a big deal. It almost wouldn’t matter what the issue is right now — they’re going to fight it. It’s part of their national platform now,” Herf said.

Maglione said doctor groups are constantly fighting to keep a bright line between what physicians and others are trained to do.

“People like to say this is just a turf war between the doctors and nurses, or between the doctors and optometrists, or between the doctors and name-the-allied-professions. To us, it’s not. It’s about safety,” Maglione said.

Last year, the AMA tracked more than 300 bills in state legislatures that considered expanding practice scopes for nurses and other allied professionals.

“I suspect they (APNs) view those fights as steps toward independent practice authority,” said Ann Spicer, executive vice president of the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians.

In Ohio, the two sides have recently battled over two bills now pending in the Statehouse that would give more authority to APNs.

House Bill 198 until recently had been caught in a months-long crossfire between doctors and nurses over whether APNs should have the right to head up “patient-centered medical homes.” The health care model emphasizes preventive medicine in part by basing payments to doctors not just on fees for service when someone’s sick, but for how well they manage a patient’s chronic conditions and overall health.

The House of Representatives passed the bill on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, House Bill 206, which has yet to get a floor vote, would let some APNs prescribe some controlled substances in certain settings.

Ohio’s roughly 8,000 APNs, who typically specialize in areas such as obstetrics or anesthesiology, have the authority to write prescriptions and treat patients, but must collaborate with a licensed physician.

Patients nationwide rely on APNs for 25 percent of the primary care service and for 600 million primary care visits each year, according to Herf. While there are serious doctor and nurse shortages, APNs are entering health care careers at nine times the rate of physicians, Herf said.

Ohio faces shortages in both nurses and family care physicians. According to a report by the Ohio Nurses Association, the state could be short 31,977 nurses by 2020 as more retire than can be replaced. The U.S. Department of Labor ranks nursing as the top growth occupation through 2012.

On top of that, the American Academy of Family Physicians estimates only 35 percent of physicians go into primary care while the rest opt for more lucrative specialty areas. Nationwide, 139,531 family physicians will be needed by 2020, it projects.

But Maglione says the answer to fixing the shortages isn’t to allow APNs or others to do more than they are capable or trained to do. Instead, policies should be adopted, such as education grants and loans, to help spur more people into the professions, he said.

State Rep. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, a co-sponsor of House Bill 198, said patient-centered medical homes can address the shortage by letting physicians and nurses work at the peak of their training.

Freeing up physicians from handling aspects of care that nurses are trained to perform allows them to focus on areas that go beyond a nurse’s training, Lehner said.

“If you’re using a physician to do what a nurse can do, you’re not making good use of your limited resources,” she said.

“Scope of practice” disputes complicate efforts to develop better ways of delivering care, she said.

“They’re just looking at how to grab each other’s piece of the pie, rather than working together to divide the pie,” she said.

Doctors and physician groups often cite safety concerns in speaking of scope of practice issues, though none interviewed for this article could cite specific poor outcomes or lawsuits that had resulted from expanding nurses’ scope of practice.

Quantifying the harm done by a health care professional can be difficult to do, said Dr. Gary LeRoy, a family doctor at East Dayton Health Center and associate dean of student affairs/admissions at Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine.

For example, “if I don’t know about it, then I probably won’t know that I missed it,” LeRoy said.

Advocates for doctors also speak of differences in training, which Spicer called “substantial.”

“The training that an APN has is complementary to that of a physician, but there’s no way it can be viewed as an equivalent, and that’s something that people need to think about,” she said.

Patricia Martin, dean of Wright State University’s College of Nursing and Health, said the disputes between doctors and nurses don’t just stem from a “turf war” mentality, but from a lack of understanding.

“There are physicians who aren’t familiar with the education and the preparation and what nurses might safely be able to do,” she said.

Much is at stake in reaching an understanding between doctors and nurses, LeRoy said.

“If the dust doesn’t settle between the nursing profession and the physician profession, I think it can become detrimental to the health and welfare of our citizens,” LeRoy said. “…There’s a lost opportunity to enhance the care that can be provided to our patients.”

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To see more of the Dayton Daily News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.daytondailynews.com.

Copyright (c) 2010, Dayton Daily News, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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Some dietary supplements may harm rather than help prostate cancer patients, U.S. researchers say.Researchers at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., looked at three widely used commercial prostate-specific dietary supplements taken by many prostate cancer patients to improve or increase sexual potency or alleviate symptoms associated with poor prostate health.

The study, published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, finds cell growth and sensitivity to radiation of the malignant tumor cells were not affected by any of the supplements.

However, two supplements inhibited the growth rate of normal prostate cells and the third also increased the cellular sensitivity to radiation of some normal cell lines by inhibiting DNA repair.

Study senior author Brian Marples said the study shows what some patients believe is helping them may actually be harming them.

“It is very important for all patients to discuss any type of supplement they may be taking with their physician and especially important for prostate cancer patients receiving radiation therapy as this study shows that it may be negatively affecting the effectiveness of their treatments,” Marples says in a statement.

As far as Dr. Joseph Mercola is concerned, Vitamin D is the magic bullet we’ve all been looking for. A lack of this wonder nutrient, the controversial natural health advocate says, can set the stage for no fewer than 33 disorders, including autism, cancer, diabetes and infertility.”Vitamin D appears to reduce your risk of dying from virtually ANY disease,” he wrote on his popular Web site. His recommendation? Get more sun, relax in a tanning bed or try supplements such as “Sunshine Mist,” a vitamin D spray he sells.

Long ignored and feared in high doses, vitamin D is now being hailed as the answer to nearly every health issue under the sun. The excitement stems from a flurry of preliminary studies finding links between vitamin D deficiencies and various illnesses, and this summer the federal Institute of Medicine plans to announce revised recommendations regarding dietary intake of vitamin D and calcium that almost certainly will be higher.

But despite the scientific attention being paid to vitamin D, experts caution that claims of wide-ranging health benefits are not yet supported by clinical evidence.

Though D is thought to hold tremendous promise, we’ve been down this garden path before: Hopes for the powers of vitamin E, beta carotene, antioxidant vitamins, selenium and other nutrients collapsed under the weight of rigorous randomized clinical trials.

“It’s premature to go out and make a big deal out of vitamin D supplementation when we don’t have the evidence,” said endocrinologist Anastassios Pittas, co-director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts University Medical Center. “We’ve been burned before on nutrition-based interventions,” he said.

Yet already bread, pasta, orange juice and soy foods are being fortified with vitamin D, and sales of vitamin D supplements grew 116.5 percent from 2007 to 2008, from $108 million $234 million, according to estimates from Nutrition Business Journal.

The body naturally makes the vitamin when the sun’s ultraviolet rays hit the skin, but fear of health risks and modern lifestyles have limited sun exposure for many.

Mercola, a non-practicing osteopathic physician who owns a clinic in Hoffman Estates, Ill., is one of the nutrient’s most public and ardent supporters, with an evangelical style that can grate on the nerves of more cautious physicians.

Unlike most doctors, Mercola recommends universal baseline testing and widespread high-dose supplementation. “I’ve been preaching about this for a long time,” said Mercola, who started his campaign 10 years ago. “Eventually the evidence comes out.”

Mercola said children should get almost six times the amount of vitamin D currently recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, while adults and pregnant women should be receiving 5,000 IUs per day.

Most leading vitamin D researchers recommend no more than 1,000 to 2,000 IUs a day to the general public, citing insufficient evidence for higher doses. The current federal guidelines, which are widely considered to be woefully inadequate, range from 200 to 600 IUs, depending on age.

“Dr. Mercola popularizes and promotes vitamin D in a very passionate way,” said Dr. Gregory Plotnikoff, a senior consultant at the Center for Healthcare Innovation in Minneapolis who is conducting vitamin D trials. Mercola’s high dosing recommendations “may be correct, but we need supportive data,” he said.

Still, Plotnikoff and other researchers have high hopes for the vitamin, saying it could prove to be the single most cost-effective medical intervention in the U.S. today.

Best known for preventing rickets in children _ the reason it is added to milk _ vitamin D shines most in the role of absorbing calcium, which we need to form bones. A deficiency of vitamin D can contribute to osteoporosis by reducing calcium absorption.

Unlike vitamin E and others, vitamin D is a potent steroid hormone that has receptors in most, if not all, cells of the body. Mounting evidence suggests the so-called “sunshine vitamin” may also influence conditions unrelated to the skeleton, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune disorders and overall mortality, said Dr. Michael Hollick, director of the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory at Boston University Medical Center.

“Vitamin D is as important for every cell in the body as thyroid hormone, estrogen and testosterone,” said Plotnikoff. “These hormones turn on and off genes in our DNA. At least 1,000 key genes are under at least partial control by vitamin D. This was never the case for vitamin C, E and others.”

Though observational studies have found a link between low vitamin D levels and an increased risk of disease, such an association doesn’t prove a deficiency caused the problem. Low levels of D could also be a consequence of the illness.

The results of studies can also be skewed by the people participating (vitamin D trial subjects are disproportionately white-skinned) or if the research does not account for sunlight exposure or consumption of D in foods. The doses studied are sometimes too low, experts also say.

When Pittas and his colleagues systematically reviewed studies on vitamin D’s effect on type 2 diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, for example, they found “no clinically significant effects at the dosages given,” according to the research published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine. They called the vitamin a “promising but unproven” new factor in cardiometabolic disease management.

“There’s a potentially large problem with leaping from observational studies to making decisions about interventions,” said Dr. Ethan Balk, associate director of the Center for Clinical Evidence Synthesis at Tufts Medical Center, a co-author of the Annals study.

“Advocates take the studies and say: ‘If we can move someone’s vitamin D from low to high, the risk would go down.’ While that might be the case, there may be another explanation,” said Balk.

In some ways, it’s much easier to study drugs than nutrients because “everyone starts a pharmaceutical study at the same point, namely … zero,” said Plotnikoff. “In contrast, everyone starts a nutritional study with baseline measurements all over the map. Everyone is given the same dose as if one size fits all. This is a huge mistake.”

Drug effects, meanwhile, tend to be immediate, focused and measureable, while vitamins may have long-term, subtle effects.

Proponents also may oversell the study findings. Mercola’s Web site, for example, recently headlined an item on a new study this way: “Vitamin D fights Crohn’s disease.” But the lead researcher, Dr. John White of the Research Institute of McGill University Health Center in Montreal, said the data came from a lab study that “will have to be born out in the clinic, which may be tricky.”

“Data is coming, but there’s a good reason to be skeptical; people have been on this bandwagon before,” said White, an endocrinologist. “When it gets into the clinic, it often doesn’t work out quite as well.”

The debate over optimal amounts of vitamin D and how to get it, meanwhile, is ongoing and will likely not be settled by the new NIH guidelines.

But one thing is clear: Vitamin D levels are lower than they were 20 years ago. Most Americans _ especially those with dark skin _ are likely deficient, the result, some say, of widespread campaigns for sunscreen use and sun avoidance as well as smog and cloud cover, living indoors and rising national trends for inactivity and obesity.

Cardiologist Diane Wallis is one doctor who will continue to test her patient’s vitamin D levels, even though it’s an unproven treatment in her field. “We’re at the threshold,” said Wallis, of Midwest Heart Specialists in Downers Grove, Ill., who, 10 years ago, began seeing female patients with chest pain but no obvious signs of heart trouble. When she tested them, they all had one thing in common: Low vitamin D levels. “When I started it we’d just gotten off the whole Vitamin E fiasco and people thought I was crazy,” she said. “Anything that had the word ‘vitamin’ led to derision. But no one is making fun of it anymore.”

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(c) 2010, Chicago Tribune.

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ARCHIVE GRAPHIC on MCT Direct (from MCT Graphics, 202-383-6064): 20000728 Vitamin D For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.