By Gina Kolata, April 10, 2017
The frenzy for vitamin D began not in natural food stores but in medical journals. Millions of people are now popping supplements in the belief that vitamin D can help turn back depression, fatigue, muscle weakness, even heart disease or cancer. In fact, there has never been widely accepted evidence that vitamin D is helpful in preventing or treating any of those conditions.
“A lot of clinicians are acting like there is a pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency.” In point of fact, an institute of medicine committee concluded in 2010 that very few people were vitamin D deficient and noted that randomized trials had found no particular benefit for healthy people to have blood levels above 20 nanograms per milliliter.
Medical organizations have repeatedly found that there is no reason to assess vitamin D levels in healthy adults. Still, vitamin D has become “a religion,”
This is an important article that all sentient people should read. Make sure your physician or care giver does not order a Vitamin D level without telling you why she is doing so.
Evidence is accumulating that older adults with diabetes, hypertension and other conditions should be treated less aggressively than they commonly are. This approach has been named “Deintensification.”
So writes NY Times reporter Paula Span is an important article in the New York Times: Some Older Patients Are Treated Not Wisely, but Too Much. It is worth the time to read this article slowly and carefully.