Vit D in childhood and diabetes T1 or schizophrenia - almost total protection!

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Fatty fish, such as salmon etc, are natural sources of vitamin D. (source - Wikipedia)

How often do we see a statistical risk reduction of some disease 8-times (relative risk reduction RR=0.12) or by a factor of 12 (RR=0.08)?   One cannot be 100% sure based on the outcome of just two studies but I am tempted to entertain an idea of the TOTAL PROTECTION, with the residual incidents possibly explained by non-conformance or observational errors.

Intake of vitamin D and risk of type 1 diabetes: a birth-cohort study.

Quote:

Vitamin D supplementation was associated with a decreased frequency of type 1 diabetes when adjusted for neonatal, anthropometric, and social characteristics (rate ratio [RR] for regular vs no supplementation 0.12, 95% CI 0.03-0.51, and irregular vs no supplementation 0.16, 0.04-0.74. Children who regularly took the recommended dose of vitamin D (2000 IU daily) had a RR of 0.22 (0.05-0.89) compared with those who regularly received less than the recommended amount. Children suspected of having rickets during the first year of life had a RR of 3.0 (1.0-9.0) compared with those without such a suspicion.

Vitamin D supplementation during the first year of life and risk of schizophrenia: a Finnish birth cohort study.

Quote:

RESULTS: In males, the use of either irregular or regular vitamin D supplements was associated with a reduced risk of schizophrenia (Risk ratio (RR)=0.08, 95% CI 0.01-0.95; RR=0.12, 95% CI 0.02-0.90, respectively) compared with no supplementation. In males, the use of at least 2000 IU of vitamin D was associated with a reduced risk of schizophrenia (RR=0.23, 95% CI 0.06-0.95) compared to those on lower doses. There were no significant associations between either the frequency or dose of vitamin D supplements and (a) schizophrenia in females, nor with (b) nonpsychotic disorder or psychotic disorders other than schizophrenia in either males or females.

CONCLUSION: Vitamin D supplementation during the first year of life is associated with a reduced risk of schizophrenia in males. Preventing hypovitaminosis D during early life may reduce the incidence of schizophrenia.

Update (6/9/2010):

Another paper on the subject (thanks Neonomide):

Relation of schizophrenia prevalence to latitude, climate, fish consumption, infant mortality, and skin color: a role for prenatal vitamin d deficiency and infections?

A review article by J.J. Cannell MD of "The Vitamin D Council":

The Vitamin D Newsletter August 2009, Vitamin D and Schizophrenia

More update (18/09/2010)

Paper: Schizophrenia, gluten, and low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diets: a case report and review of the literature

Quote:

C.D. is a 70 year-old Caucasian female with a diagnosis of schizophrenia since the age of seventeen. Her diagnosis was based on paranoia, disorganized speech, and hallucinations. She reported both auditory and visual hallucinations,... she has had these hallucinations on almost a daily basis since the age of seven. ...has also been hospitalized at least five times over the last six years for suicide attempts and increased psychotic symptoms.

... Over the course of 12 months, C.D. has continued the low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet and has had no recurrence of her auditory or visual hallucinations. She has also continued to lose weight (body weight 131.4 kilograms) and experience improvements in her energy level.

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Synergistic effect of vitamins A and D

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Very important article by Chris Masterjohn.   Based on the recent Chinese paper using human stem cells in-vitro.  The paper demonstrated that vitamin A acts synergistically in triggering expression of neurogenin-3.  Neurogenin-3 is necessary for activation of stem cells development, in that case - for replacing the damaged insulin-producing islet cells such as in diabetes type 1.

I think that study is important for several reasons:

- Adequate intake of both A and D3 is one of the critcial factors in tissue regeneration, propably not only limited to pancreatic islets but generally to all other organs,

- Supplementation of only one of the vitamins is inadequate because both act synergistically.

- I suspect (speculating) that beta carotene might not be adequate if vitamin D3 level is low, and vice versa - supplementation of D3 might not be effective in the absence of A.  We shall keep in mind that beta carotene (pro-vitamin A)  from plants is NOT the true vitamin A!   This may explain a curious fact of difficult to treat vitamin A or vitamin D3 depletions frequently reported by vegans.

Fuhrman's diet - repeat of the Natural Hygienist's dead end

I thought of rehashing this issue on behalf of my friends and fans (just kidding) from the WebMD forum, especially one person who seems to be doing much better on Dr. Fuhrman's diet and his IMT scan as a measure of arteriosclerotic progression started even reversing as opposed to his previous 30 years on a Pritikin vegan/vegetarian diet. Even though the following text is addressed to EngineerGuy of the webmd forum, I hope that more people will benefit reading it. I am encouraging everyone to read and add comments.

All Dr. Fuhrman did was reintroducing blended salads and added a little bit of meat or fish plus liberal amounts of nuts which are still in severe anathema pronounced by other vegan propagators. One can consider Fuhrman's diet to have 90% in common with the purist vegans like Drs McDougall or Ornish but that 10% difference has made ALL THE DIFFERENCE! What is happening here is that it seems that the 90% compliant vegans seem to be doing better than the 100% compliant vegans!

I think that this little addition of animal produce and nuts has made a huge difference by addressing some of the vitamin deficiencies inherent in the plant-only diets.

That deficiency is not only in B12. I was surprised to find out that some vegans suffer from obvious and easily measurable vitamin deficiencies, even vitamin A in spite of consuming massive amounts of beta carotene! Many seem to suffer from tooth decay, low bone density and/or osteoporosis which would point towards deficiencies of D3,K2 or some other factor. Neurological problems (mood disorders, depression, panic attacks) seem to be associated with the deficiencies of DHA and EPA (fatty acids) in my opinion (this is only my speculative guess, I have no proof).

There is also a possibility that the malnutrition symptoms among some vegans may be caused not only by their deficient diet (note: vitamin D2 and K1 can be obtained from plants, but their proper human forms D3 and K2 cannot!) but also by some intestinal digestive disruption. That possibility was first discovered and proposed as a possible explanation by Natural Hygienists. See Dr. Stanley Bass and read "With Three Generations of Vegetarian Hygienists" by Dr. Gian-Cursio. After suffering many health setbacks on their pure raw food vegan diets, including death of Dr. Cursio's son, they treated them with fasts every few months, followed by some special recovery diet that involved unpasteurized goat's cheese and eggs yolks. Dr. Cursio also introduced (and perhaps invented) the blended salads. (Note: Dr. Bass no longer recommends vegetarian diets, for which he was kicked out of the Natural Hygiene movement, after his life long participation). I am inclined to believe that their recovery approach and explanation may be correct, given the intestinal-disruptive properties of many plants. I think that the absorption problems are related to some plant phyto-toxins from wheat family (I suspect gluten and agluttins like WGA) and the cabbage family of plants (digestive enzyme inhibitors and thyroid hormone disruptors). Fasting would allow the intestinal lining tissue to regenerate itself and recover after excessive raw consumption of those plants.

I am bringing the Natural Hygienist's article to illustrate that Dr. Fuhrman is following in the footsteps of the people who tried that all before him and eventually had to abandon that approach, after many years of trials tribulations and errors. I recommend to learn from their mistakes. Dr. Bass wasted probably ~60 years of his life along this path and is kind enough to inform us of his experience. I am grateful to him since I don't have to go though all this!

Neither should you, after already wasting 30 years of your life on some vegetarianism, you don't need to waste another 30 years on some slightly less harmful variation of the same thing.

P.S. (2/07)

Dr. Bass describes how his fruitarian dietary experiment destroyed his teeth. It turns out that the damage might not be limited to fruitarian diets:

Vegetarian diet 'weakens bones'

Vitamin A,D3,K2 - toxicity levels

This is a short comment to summarize the situation, based on information gathered from the most recent nutrition studies as well as some of the most useful nutrition blogs (Stephan's, Peter's and Chris Masterjohn's - see the links on the left margin).

The issue of supposed toxicity level of D3 is being slowly unraveled in recent research. It turns out that A,D3 and (probably) K2 must come together in balanced proportions, thus some studies that were increasing D3 alone without A reported toxicity of D3 at a lower level than other studies where D3 may have come from natural produce (like fish oil) thus came together with vitamin A! A and D3 always seem to come together in animal food (any exceptions?). The same story repeats with studies analyzing toxicity of vitamin A. Again, the toxic A levels come out lower when only A is being increased on it's own, versus if it comes with natural fats like fish oil, butter, liver, yolks etc. Also, it appears that the body's synthesis of A out of carrotenoids from vegetables (or absorption) is impaired without sufficient level of fat in food. Subsequently, the sunlight-induced synthesis of D3 out of cholesterol, or the utilization of D3 seem to be deficient when not enough vitamin A is present in the system.

All of the above is absolutely consistent and may explain why do low fat vegetarians, even in sunny places like Arizona or Florida may and often do get deficient in both A and D3.