I’ve talked before in some of my posts around the importance of vitamin D and I wanted to share with you a story I heard last night as I was sharing the Shaklee products with a group of friends. One of the woman noted that she’d been feeling down and her doctor recommended that she increase her vitamin D each day to see if that would help. Not only did it help her, she noted last night that she feels like it has drastically changed her mood and she feels much better.
I was thinking about her this morning when I came across this post from the NYT Well blog about vitamin D and it’s effect on our hearts. The post notes:
A new study suggests many Americans aren’t getting anywhere nearly enough of the vitamin, and it may be affecting their heart health.
In the study, researchers looked at tens of thousands of healthy adults 50 and older whose vitamin D levels had been measured during routine checkups. A majority, they found, were deficient in the vitamin. About two-thirds had less vitamin D in their bloodstreams than the authors considered healthy, and many were extremely deficient.
Less than two years later, the researchers found, those who had extremely low levels of the vitamin were almost twice as likely to have died or suffered a stroke than those with adequate amounts. They also had more coronary artery disease and were twice as likely to have developed heart failure.
The findings, which are being presented today at an American Heart Association conference in Orlando, don’t prove that lack of vitamin D causes heart disease; they only suggest a link between the two. But cardiologists are starting to pay increasing attention because of what they’re learning about vitamin D’s roles in regulating blood pressure, inflammation and glucose control — all critical body processes in cardiovascular health.
I realized that personally I never even think about vitamin D and as we talked in the group last night I wondered why. I took a look at the back of the Vita-Lea bottle (my Shaklee multi that I take 2x a day) and realized that it includes 800 IU of D3 per serving. I guess that explains it 🙂 When your multi provides everything you need it takes the many bottles and the need to take multi things out of the equation!
Our Healthy Living Adventure 