Science Daily: “The sunshine vitamin that ‘D’elivers on cardio health”

2021-12-08 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: correlation is not causation, electrolytes, ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, health, magnesium, nutrition, photobiomodulation, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2

re: ethics in medicine
re: Vitamin D

Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it.

Keeping in mind that while most scientific studies are bullshit, such findings at least dovetail with my sense of wellbeing from April through October from sun exposure.

See also: Do You Know the Signs of Vitamin D Deficiency?

Sunshine has a lot more to offer than just Vitamin D, see photobiomodulation.

Science Daily: “The sunshine vitamin that ‘D’elivers on cardio health”

December 6, 2021, University of South Australia

Free from the sun, vitamin D delivers a natural source for one of the hormones essential to our bodies, especially the bones. But when you're down on this essential nutrient, it's not only your bones that could suffer, but also your cardio health, according to new research.

In the first study of its kind, researchers from the UniSA's Australian Centre for Precision Health at SAHMRI have identified genetic evidence for a role of vitamin D deficiency in causing cardiovascular disease.

The study, which is published in European Heart Journal today, shows that people with vitamin D deficiency are more likely to suffer from heart disease and higher blood pressure, than those with normal levels of vitamin D*. For participants with the lowest concentrations the risk of heart disease was more than double that seen for those with sufficient concentrations.

...

"If we don't get any vitamin D through the sun, this is one of the rare nutrients for which we sometimes need to take a daily supplement to keep up with the requirements.
[WIND: false premise ("rare"): most people are also deficient in magnesium and many other things, due to poor diet, and the RDA is often the minimum to stave off clinically visible symptoms]

...

...if we can raise levels of vitamin D within norms, we should also affect rates of CVD. In our study population, by increasing Vitamin D-deficient individuals to levels of at least 50 nmol/L, we estimate that 4.4 per cent of all CVD cases could have been prevented."
[WIND: estimates are models = bullshit. Still, I am inclined to accept the claim as reasonable. But who knows what the “norm” ought to be, in general or for any individual. And who knows what else might improve, or what synergies are there to be won?]

...

"Those with the lowest concentrations are likely to have the strongest effects, yet a population-wide approach to eradicate vitamin D deficiency could reduce the global burden of CVDs."

Notes to editors:

*The Australian and New Zealand Bone and Mineral Society (ANZBMS) and Osteoporosis Australia (OA) guidelines (2012) classify vitamin D results as follows:

• 25-hydroxy-vitamin D of less than 30 nmol/L is deficient
• 25-hydroxy-vitamin D of 30-50 nmol/L is mildly deficient
• 25-hydroxy-vitamin D of greater than 50 nmol/L is sufficient for the health of bones

[WIND: Vitamin D by itself is hamstrung for bone health. Without adequate magnesium and Vitamin K2 , which most people are highly difficient in, and other minerals, benefits of D be curtailed. The body is a complex system and no single nutrient ever works in isolation]

WIND: we need more studies, but I’ll give this one a better than 50/50 chance. But it’s a no-brainer to supplement as needed to ensure that Vitamin D levels are solid.

It could just be a correlation (correlation is not causation), with Vitamin D a marker of better health. But I would assert that optimal health is likely unachievable with low Vitamin D levels.

Failing to look for other likely factors

I am disappointed that this study suffers from the commonplace (in science) failure of not also assessing another key driver of cardiovascular health, magnesium. And therefore producing a study that might be bullshit by omitting it—it could be that the association is as strong or stronger with magnesium. And it is likely that when one is deficient both are deficient, and many other nutrients too. The body is not a single-substance test tube, and it is naive to think that one substance acts by itself in isolation. So long as we have blinders-on studies with ignorant researchers like this, we will learn at a snail’s pace, and suffer from misleading studies that fail to even look for other likely causative/contributory factors.

Sunlight vs suppementing

Here in the northern hemisphere in December, I can no longer get any meaningful amount of Vitamin D from sunlight, even with my light skin (and it’s too cold to go without a shirt). So I supplement with Vitamin D3 + Vitamin K2 in the winter. Do not omit the Vitamin K2 (or magnesium!), because it is required to carboxylate proteins that allow minerals into tissue for bone formation, a fact that few doctors are even aware of.

Doctors as a rule get near-zero training on nutrition and are very poor sources for nutrition advice. Even nutritionists need to be viewed with skepticism, as schooling is heavily influenced by financial interests. Ditto for all supplement vendors, etc—follow the money.

Optimal health

My guess is that Vitamin D is at the least a requirement for superior health overall and if not directly related to heart health, at least a key part of the mix.

Further, I hypothesize that low Vitamin D levels would be a strong predictor of degraded health in general—this is seemingly well-known already.

But note well that many studies are designed to fail, by looking at Vitamin D levels in healthy people and/or pretending that the human body is a testtube for a single compound all by itself. Studies serious about health should be supplementing Vitamin D + Vitamin K2 + magnesium and measuring all of these things before/during/after. Anything else is scientific masturbation.

COVID malfeasance

Perish the thought that those with high Vitamin D are likely to do better with COVID than those with low Vitamin D, since our public health leaders have ignored it and we really don’t want to embarrass them—deaths are far more acceptable than questioning the possible malfeasance of the experts.

Most of the populace is deficient to highly deficient in magnesium and deficient to highly deficient in Vitamin D.

So it shocks the consience that our public health officials have not made a major campaign out of making sure the populace has adequate Vitamin D and magnesium levels—both have key roles to play in improving baseline health and therefore allowing the body to fight-off COVID. . Instead, we poison people with statins, for a non-existent benefit. Follow the money.