in home vitamin D test

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Mike Bartolatz
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in home vitamin D test

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in home vitamin D test


The Vitamin D Newsletter

December 28, 2008



The Vitamin D Council is happy to announce that we have partnered with ZRT Laboratory to provide an inexpensive, $65.00, in-home, accurate, vitamin D [25(OH)D] test. The usual cost for this test is between $100.00 and $200.00.



If you read this newsletter, you know about our interest in accurate vitamin D testing. In the next few weeks, you may read about the Vitamin D Council's quest for accurate vitamin D blood tests in the national media. Before we partnered with ZRT, we verified, repeatedly, that ZRT provides accurate and reliable vitamin D tests and that their method corresponds very well to the gold standard of vitamin D blood tests, the DiaSorin RIA.



Our ZRT service is not just inexpensive, it means no more worrying about your doctor ordering the right test or interpreting it correctly. You buy the test kit on the internet or by phone, a few days later the kit comes in the mail, you or a nurse friend do a finger stick, collect a few drops of blood, and send the blotter paper back to ZRT in the postage paid envelope provided with the kit. A week later you get results back in the mail and know accurate 25-hydroxy-vitamin D levels of you and your family.



For every test you order, ZRT will donate $10.00 to the Vitamin D Council. Please read the new page hyperlinked below on our website as it both explains the procedure and how to order the test.



http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/d ... ient.shtml


Executive summary: keep your family's 25-hydroxy-vitamin D blood test above 50 ng/ml, year around. Most adults need at least 5,000 IU per day, especially this time of year. Most children need at least 1,000 IU per day per every 25 pounds of body weight. Bio Tech Pharmacal provides high quality and inexpensive vitamin D. Currently Bio Tech Pharmacal is providing vitamin D for numerous scientific studies. To see their prices and for ordering, click the hyperlink below.

http://www.bio-tech-pharm.com/catalog.aspx?cat_id=2

As a gift to our readers for the New Year, Thorne publications have provided a free download to a basic paper about vitamin D. I wrote it earlier this year for educated lay people as well as health care practitioners. Please read this paper carefully, your family's well-being, even lives, may depend on you understanding it.

http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fulltext/13/1/6.pdf

Seasons Greetings
John Cannell, MD
vitamindcouncil.org




Thank you for subscribing to the Vitamin D Newsletter from the Vitamin D Council. The Vitamin D Council is a non-profit trying to end the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Please reproduce this newsletter and post it on Internet sites. Remember, we are a non-profit and rely on donations to publish our newsletter and maintain our website. Send your tax-deductible contributions to:


The Vitamin D Council

9100 San Gregorio Road

Atascadero, CA 93422
Mike Bartolatz
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Mike Bartolatz
Posts: 6595
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 9:58 pm

Re: in home vitamin D test

Post by Mike Bartolatz »

January 7, 2009

The New York Times just posted their article about Quest Diagnostic Laboratory's recall of their vitamin D blood tests. To my knowledge, this is the biggest recall in the history of medicine. Like the influenza and autism stories, the Vitamin D Council newsletter was the first publication in the world to report the story (July newsletter ).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/busin ... l?emc=eta1

Here is the trade publication, The Dark Report, which wrote about the issue yesterday. I cannot get their report for free, so please do not email me, asking or complaining about the cost.

http://www.darkreport.com/landing-page/ ... esults.htm

It is important to note that I think Quest Diagnostics has fixed the main problem with their vitamin D testing. As far as I can tell, the problem was in their preparation of blood samples.

However, I cannot get Quest to fix their second problem, correlating their method with the method used in virtually all the major scientific studies of vitamin D, the DiaSorin RIA (I am a consultant for DiaSorin). When you read that levels of 50 ng/ml protect you from heart disease, that does not mean levels of 50 by Quest, rather levels of 50 by a method correlated with DiaSorin RIA.

So don't be afraid to use Quest, but, if you do use Quest, you must divide your 25(OH)D result by 1.3 to get an accurate 25-hudroxy-vitamin D [25(OH)D].

Thus, if Quest says your 25(OH)D is 40 ng/ml, divide 40 by 1.3 (40/1.3 = 30) to get a true reading of 30 ng/ml.

As a 25(OH)D level of 50 ng/ml is the minimum needed for good health, your Quest level must say 65 ng/ml or higher for optimum health (65/1.3 = 50). Thus, when you read that levels of 50 ng/ml protect you from breast cancer that would be levels of 65 ng/ml if you use Quest.

LabCorp is not affected by this recall and continues to have accurate vitamin D tests, correlated very well with DiaSorin RIA.

Remember, you can save yourself all this concern and some money by testing your vitamin D levels in the privacy of your home. ZRT is accurate, has correlated their test with Diasorin RIA, and only charges $65.00 if you order through the Vitamin D Council.

http://www.zrtlab.com/Page.aspx?nid=12& ... %20Council

Remember, you can save even more money by starting vitamin D supplements before getting your 25(OH)D tested. Most adults need 5,000 IU per day of vitamin D in the winter. Children need about 1,000 IU per every 25 pounds of body weight. However, many people will still be deficient at these doses so after taking the vitamin D for three months, get tested. Please read the page below before doing anything, including emailing me with a question already answered on the page below.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/d ... ient.shtml

John Cannell

9100 San Gregorio Road
Mike Bartolatz
Moderator
Mike Bartolatz
Posts: 6595
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 9:58 pm

vitamin D prevents disease

Post by Mike Bartolatz »

The Vitamin D Newsletter

February 24, 2009



I know some of you want to unsubscribe but the system I used, like the

formatting in this newsletter, is beyond my computer skills. Thus, accept

my apologies. If you want to unsubscribe, simply send a blank email

to unsubscribe@vitamindcouncil.org.



As readers from 3 years ago remember, this newsletter first published

evidence vitamin D would prevent influenza and many varieties of the

common cold in 2005:



http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newslett ... -nov.shtml



I then published the theory in:



Cannell JJ, et al. Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiology and Infection. 2006 Dec;134(6):1129-40.



As Science News reported, I realized this after observing an influenza epidemic at Atascadero State Hospital.



The antibiotic vitamin: deficiency in vitamin D may predispose people to infection. Science News, November 11, 2006



Last year, we used vitamin D to explain virtually all of the many unsolved mysteries of influenza.



Cannell JJ, et al. On the epidemiology of influenza. Virology Journal. 2008 Feb 25;5:29.



Our second influenza paper is by far the most accessed paper in the journal this year.



Top 20 most accessed articles for last year in Virology Journal



Today, researchers from Harvard and the University of Colorado, writing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, published convincing evidence my observations at Atascadero State Hospital were correct.



Vitamin D deficiency linked to more colds and flu. Scientific American, Feb 23, 2009



Adit A, et al. Association Between Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Level and Upper Respiratory Tract Infection in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(4):384-390.



Influenza kill around 35,000 Americans every year and similar viruses cause additional mortality and untold morbidity. As I have said, It appears Linus Pauling was right about everything he said about vitamin C, but he was off by one letter. The Vitamin D Council, the nearly broke non-profit educational organization, now believes most influenza deaths and many other respiratory infections, like the common cold, could be prevented if Americans, and their doctors, understood some simple facts:



· Vitamin D is not a vitamin, but a steroid hormone precursor, which has profound effects on innate immunity.

· The amount of vitamin D in most food and nearly all multivitamins is literally inconsequential.

· The correct daily dose of vitamin D for adults is approximately 5,000 IU/day, not the 200-600 IU recommended by the Institute of Medicine, the National Institutes of Medicine and the FDA.

· The only blood test to determine vitamin D adequacy is a 25-hydroxy-vitamin D, not the 1,25-di-hydroxy-vitamin D test many physicians now order.

· Healthy vitamin D blood levels are between 50-80 ng/ml, levels obtained by fewer than 5% of Americans.

· Medicare’s new proposed rule change, which forbids Medicare carriers for paying for virtually all vitamin D blood tests (Draft LCD for Vitamin D Assay Testing (DL29510), will kill tens of thousands of Americans yearly.

· The mechanism of action of vitamin D in infection, dramatically increasing the body’s production of broad-spectrum natural antibiotics (anti-microbial peptides or AMP) suggests pharmaceutical doses of vitamin D (1,000 IU per pound of body weight per day for several days) will effectively treat not only influenza and the common cold, but help treat a host of other seasonal infections, including meningitis, septicemia, and pneumonia, in both children and adults.

· In 1997, when the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) set the current guidelines for vitamin D intake, they forgot to correct for the widespread sun avoidance that began in the late 1980’s when the AMA’s Council of Scientific Affairs warned against sun-exposure, and recommended that all Americans should make every effort to never let a photon of sunlight strike their skin. The failure of the 1997 FNB to compensate for sun-avoidance, has led to millions of deaths around the world.

· Physicians who ignore vitamin D deficiency will eventually suffer medical-legal consequences.

· While many think the influenza virus causes influenza, Cannell notes it was George Bernard Shaw who first understood: “The characteristic microbe of a disease might be a symptom instead of a cause.” George Bernard Shaw, (Preface on Doctors, The Doctor’s Dilemma, 1911).



If you want professional newsletter services, you will need to help find a foundation that will fund us.



John Cannell, MD

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/

The Vitamin D Council

9100 San Gregorio Road

Atascadero, CA 93422
Mike Bartolatz
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