The Starch Solution (25 page)

This simply is not true. Plants synthesize vitamins; they are not found in the soil. If a plant is going to bear roots, seeds, flowers, and/or fruits fit for sale in your market, then it is going to have to produce all of the organic chemicals that are necessary for its own survival. We call the plant-derived organic chemicals vital for human nutrition vitamins.

Mineral deficiency from depleted soil is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely to affect anyone living in a modern society. The classic example of a mineral deficiency is iodine deficiency, which caused the “goiter belts” of the Great Lakes region nearly a century ago and
still causes goiters in underdeveloped parts of the world, such as Africa. There are also some rare cases of selenium deficiency and possibly zinc deficiency in underdeveloped countries. These deficiencies occur because of the geographically restricted supply of foods available to these people. Their foods are grown locally, generally within about 25 miles of their village. The soil in their neighborhood may be deficient in one of these minerals, resulting in health problems among those who eat only those local foods.

Your risk of suffering from mineral deficiency caused by depleted soil is so incredibly small that a single case would make national headlines. That’s because you eat foods grown in a wide variety of soil: corn grown in Nebraska, grapes from Chili, bananas from Panama, and so forth. In the unlikely chance that one food was low in a mineral due to depleted soil, your next bite would likely contain an abundant supply. People take supplements to protect against unfounded fears of developing deficiencies, and false hopes of preventing and curing illnesses that those deficiencies have never been known to cause (for example, heart disease and cancer).

Beta-carotene is one of about 50 similar naturally occurring active substances in our diet, classified as
carotenoids,
that are especially abundant in colorful fruits and vegetables. After nutrients move into the cytoplasm, they attach themselves to the cellular machinery through a specific receptor, the way a key fits into a lock. Beta-carotene, like all of the other biologically active carotenoids, must attach to these specific carotenoid receptors before it can function.

When a cell is flooded with one type of carotenoid, in this case beta-carotene from vitamin supplementation, there is overwhelming competition for the carotenoid receptor sites.
⁷
The other 49 functional carotenoids are displaced by the beta-carotene from their cellular connections, creating deadly nutritional imbalances.

People continue to put their faith in the latest supplement and its
new, enticing marketing claim, regardless of what the preponderance of scientific evidence shows. The most careful studies on isolated, concentrated nutrients have focused on the effects of beta-carotene, vitamin E, and folic acid. Randomized, controlled trials involving more than 150,000 subjects have proven that taking these and other supplements actually increases your risk for heart disease, cancers, and premature death. Studies of supplement use have also reported more fractures in women at risk for osteoporosis, damage to the kidneys in diabetics, and an increase in the severity of respiratory infections.

Vitamin D is unusual in two ways. First, it is actually a hormone and not a vitamin, even though we call it a vitamin. And second, we get it not from eating food, but rather through exposure to sunlight. Not everyone lives in sunny Florida or California, so depending on where you live, you might need to work a little harder to get enough sun to manufacture needed levels of this essential hormone.

If you take a calcium pill, or consume dairy foods, there’s a good chance some vitamin D has been added. Cow’s milk typically has both vitamins A and D added, and calcium pills often come combined with vitamin D, which is believed to help with the mineral’s absorption into our system. The problem is that drinking milk and taking calcium pills are both harmful practices, as we learned in
Chapter 8
. I don’t recommend doing either. So how will you get enough vitamin D?

The answer is easy: Go outside. Sunshine is the best way to get your vitamin D, which safely and effectively prevents weak bones. Sadly, instead of that easy and no-cost solution, your doctor is more likely to suggest a vitamin D supplement. The problem is that, while a pill will indeed increase the level of vitamin D in your blood, making it look as if you are benefiting from the vitamin, studies show that getting your D through pills or milk is not very effective at strengthening your bones. The benefits for bone fracture prevention are small and largely restricted to institutionalized elderly women, and to subjects who take
a combination of vitamin D and calcium, not vitamin D alone.
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As your skin soaks up ultraviolet sunlight, it produces vitamin D with the help of the liver and kidneys. The average person living in the United States produces about 90 percent of his or her vitamin D from sunlight and gets only about 10 percent from food or supplements.
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Changes in vitamin D levels in the body are affected mostly by sun exposure rather than by diet.
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Your body stores in your body fat the extra vitamin D you produce during the sunniest months of the year, then slowly releases it during the darker months.

For white people, exposing a large part of the skin to the summer sun for 20 to 30 minutes at one time provides about 10,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D.
³²
The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the National Institutes of Health recommend 200 IU daily, so you can see that 10,000 units is far more than enough. In spring, summer, and fall, exposing the hands, face, and arms to the noontime sun for 5 minutes two to three times a week is plenty for light-skinned people.
³³
Because their skin is darker and does not absorb the sun as well, people of Asian or Indian descent may require three times as much sun under similar conditions, and those of African descent 10 times as much, compared with light-skinned people of European descent, in order to produce enough vitamin D.
³⁴

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun provides benefits beyond the production of vitamin D.
³⁴
Sunlight directly alters the immune system, modulates other hormones, and changes the number and function of skin cells.
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Sunlight also establishes circadian rhythms and resets your biological clock after jet lag. Increased sun exposure improves survival rates for those with cancers of the breast, colon, prostate, and lung, as well as melanoma and lymphoma.
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Exposure to sunlight for extended periods of time does not cause vitamin D toxicity, but overexposure to the sun or a tanning bed can cause skin damage.

The most dramatic consequence of sunlight deficiency is the bone-deforming childhood disease rickets, which can be corrected by increased sunshine and supplements. A similar softening of the bones in
adulthood is called osteomalacia. In most cases, sunlight deficiency causes no symptoms, but it can contribute to diffuse muscle and bone pain and weakness, which may be misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia.
⁴¹

Recently, lack of vitamin D has been associated with many other illnesses, such as heart disease, strokes, type 2 diabetes, common cancers (breast, prostate, and colon), and multiple sclerosis. People living farthest from the equator, whether north or south of it, are at greater risk for these common diseases, which is blamed on the lesser amount of sunshine they receive over the course of the year. But this assumption overlooks a crucial fact: As people move farther away from the equator, they eat fewer plant foods and more animal foods. Sunshine plays a big part in overall health, but a small part in the prevention of common Western diseases. Vitamin D supplements will not cure these diseases.

Examining a patient’s blood for vitamin D levels has become common practice, with many millions of tests performed annually in the United States. Based on the current standards of normal—30 or more nanograms per milliliter—between 50 and 90 percent of adults and children are considered deficient in vitamin D.
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Even people who get quite a lot of sun exposure cannot meet this standard. My wife, Mary, recently had her vitamin D level tested shortly after a spring and summer of abundant California sunshine and a July trip to Costa Rica, where she spent long hours sunbathing. Her vitamin D level was a hair short of the recommendation, at 29.6 nanograms per milliliter. Many well-meaning doctors would have told her to take a vitamin D supplement, perhaps for a lifetime.

Mary is not an unusual example. Similar results were found during a study of active young people living in Hawaii with average sun exposure of
29 hours per week. Even with all that vitamin D—promoting sunshine, 51 percent of the group failed to meet the minimum recommended level.
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Another study of 495 women in Hawaii with an average age of 74 found 44 percent of subjects to have vitamin D values below this normal standard.
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Recent scientific literature suggests that the level for normal of 30 nanograms per milliliter is exaggerated and should be lowered.
^46,
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I believe a level of 20 or more is adequate; most children and adults already meet this target. If your test comes back with a level below 20, I suggest the first thing you do is take a second test to rule out laboratory error. If it is still under 20, try spending more time in the sun and test again before considering something so drastic, and potentially dangerous, as taking vitamin D supplements.

Why are so many doctors promoting vitamin D testing these days? Because with the inflated standards, your levels are inevitably found to be too low, and the business of medicine benefits by increasing your need for more medical visits and blood tests, while the pharmaceutical industry benefits by selling you supplements you don’t need. I call this practice, where healthy people are turned into patients through unnecessary medical testing,
disease mongering.
Sadly, it is rampant.

Definitely deficient: 10 or less

Deficient: 19 or less

Insufficient: 20 to 29 (although recent research says this level is sufficient)

Sufficient: 30 to 80

Excess: 81 to 199

Toxic: above 200

Note: To convert nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) to nanomoles per milliliter (nmol/ml), multiply the nanogram figure by 2.496.

Indoor tanning devices for home or commercial use emit the same spectrum of ultraviolet radiation as sunlight. In areas of the world where sunlight hours are limited or when getting outdoors is impossible or impractical, artificial ultraviolet light is the preferred way to correct vitamin D deficiency.

Tanning beds have a bad reputation because they can cause skin damage when used improperly. After all, they can provide higher doses of ultraviolet rays than the midday Mediterranean sun. Tanning beds’ reputation for being damaging is influenced by the fact that users, typically women age 17 to 30, tend to smoke more cigarettes, drink more alcohol, and eat a less healthy diet than do nonusers.
⁵¹
Just like sunshine, improper use of tanning beds can indeed increase risk for skin cancers, skin damage, and premature aging. However, when used appropriately, like sunshine, they can safely prevent or reverse vitamin D deficiency.
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While sunshine promotes good health, taking vitamin D supplements may actually increase your risk for certain diseases. Unless you are unwilling or unable to get out in the sun and don’t have access to a tanning bed, I hope you will avoid supplements, because the benefits are meager and the costs and risks substantial.

When consumed as isolated, concentrated nutrients, vitamin D supplements cause nutritional imbalances that can lead to illness. At what are considered “safe” dosages, they have been shown to contribute to increased LDL (bad) cholesterol, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, immune system suppression, autoimmune diseases, gastrointestinal symptoms, kidney disease, and kidney stones.
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Supplements may actually hurt the bones. A major research article in the May 2010
Journal of the American Medical Association
showed that a large dose of
vitamin D given to elderly women resulted in more falls and 26 percent more fractures than in women taking a placebo.
²³
In my opinion, the adverse effects of vitamin D therapy are understudied, underestimated, and underreported.