My neurologist wanted me to take megadoses of Vitamin D because I have MS. My blood levels were below average. After a few months, they were way up and she has decreased my dosage. I was nervous about taking that level of supplements but it’s link to MS is pretty well established, my neurologist is a MS specialist, and I asked about it on various MS message boards and it was well received. So far, so good.
It is always good to be a doubting Thomas about this sort of thing.
I take 2000 mgs of vitamin d3 every day since I had blood tests show too little vit d and too much calcium. Every day I take it I wonder if it matters but it’s quick and painless so I do it. Im also very fair skin with Pre cancerous moles removed. Seems like I can’t win this one.
@eyemamom - I’m another taking supplements for very low Vitamin D. Doesn’t seem to elevate it too much. Fair skinned in a northern climate where I’ve read its impossible to get enough Vitamin D exposure during a good chunk of the year - and then there are the skin cancer risks…
Vitamin D deficiency seems to be the current hot button issue in the healthcare community.
doshcios
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/260147.php
evolving knowledge sometimes comes slowly, and sometimes is ignored. I remember when it was believed stress caused ulcers or spicy foods… not h pylori http://www.everydayhealth.com/ulcer/ulcer-myths.aspx
or that chocolate caused acne etc…
Try taking it with a meal that has fat in it. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble substance. Your body absorbs it better if it’s dissolved in fat.
I’m getting visions of “Vitamin D-enriched french fries”.
Marketing genius or just another idea before it’s time?
I’m not sure that the vitamin is sufficiently heat-stable to be added to a food like french fries. It’s awfully hot in those fryers.
I do know that there are concerns about the effectiveness of adding it to nonfat (skim) milk. Adding vitamin D to milk has a long and successful history, but the milk that it was traditionally added to contained fat. Skim milk doesn’t.
^Ben & Jerry’s in lieu of french fries? 
Thanks for the link, @zobroward but mine is super low so not in the healthy range and I meet a risk category so in my case it is probably warranted, now if I could get it to budge more than a little bit…
My favorite example of false beliefs vs. science is the “drink 8 to 10 glasses of water a day” myth. This was apparently invented out of thin air during the aerobics craze. While the act of drinking water can be a good weight loss tool (keeping mouth and hands busy) there is no need to drink more than what you are thirsty for plus maybe an extra little bit. More deaths have been caused by OVER-HYDRATION than dehydration in healthy individuals.
What do the numbers look like?
Water has always been a funny thing for me. If I don’t bring my water jug with me, I won’t drink it! When I’m at home I’m more likely to turn towards milk, oddly enough. I looked around on the internet and turns out it isn’t advised for anyone to drink more than 30 oz. of water in an hour. At first, I thought the amount was relatively small, but it’s essentially my Nalgene bottle. I try to drink about 64 oz. of water a day. With a given meal I generally drink about 24 oz. so it isn’t particularly difficult. The more you know! 
movemetoo same thing with the BMI, which is just 100% made up nonsense.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439
If you are thirsty, you are dehydrated.
Dehydration causes alot of problems.
Makes you susceptible to heat exhaustion or even heat stroke for example, which HAS caused deaths, even if dehydration was not listed as primary cause.
People can also have medical conditions, &/or medication that make staying hydrated even more important.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/conditions/non-traumatic_emergencies/dehydration_and_heat_stroke_85,P00828/
http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00319
I tend to be dehydrated, because I dont like having to pee often, especially when traveling but last summer, when I was visiting my daughter, it was very warm, probably 100f, and although she had me drinking water, it wasnt enough and I got heat exhaustion, which was very scary. I was so hot that I could not think, and could barely talk intelligibly.
I now carry a bottle with me constantly and keep it filled and feel much better.
Your cells need liquid to function, and I drink a glass in the morning before I get up, and I hardly even need coffee!
EMERALDKITY4
I have been to the ER twice with people who were dehydrated. one was in the hospital for a couple of nights because they were starting to get to the point they were having kidney issues. and the other once he was on an IV for a while came back to normal , he was not able to stand, his heart was racing and he was disoriented. both people it came on quick and if it gets to a certain point you must get to the hospital or an urgent care center.
p.s. the one thing that is much better to drink than Gatorade when you need fluids is Pedialyte or the generic version. it tatses a little funny at first but the taste grows on you. when i am going to be in a hot situation I drink it.
Right, cause two anecdotal experience from a college student outweighs reports from Johns Hopkins and other reputable medical organizations.
:-<
Were these people taking Ectasy by any chance?
So what if it is 200 years old? That is a bad argument right there. The example with bodybuilders gets really, really old. What % of the population is like these athletes? No matter what measure you use, these guys are outliers… To bring this example up is to show one’s lack of understanding of statistics.
The author does have a valid point: the problem with BMI is that people don’t use it as a general guideline among the many but instead rely on it as if it were a holy bible and the one and only measure of health. This should have been emphasized more in the article instead of trying to make an artificial Letterman-like list of 10 things (which is completely repetitive). And yes, we do look bad as a nation - because we are fat, not because we use some imperfect number.
The BMI is problematic because it is a one size fits number, like IQ, and in many ways measures things based on ‘average people’. If you look at the way they are calculated, they don’t take into consideration bone structure, a 6 foot tall person of asian descent may be a lot more slender bone structure than someone from another place. Yeah, athletes like Lebron James are special cases (according to the BMI tables, he is obese or morbidly obese), or body builders, but there are a lot of people who do strength training who are going to show badly…there also are people who are 6’ 200 pounds who are in great shape, yhet the BMI says they are not healthy.
One of the biggest problems is that BMI is easy, you take the height, the weight, put it throw a simple formula, and voila, fitness in a can, easy and simple, health insurers can use it, life insurance people, and your doctor can wave it in your face and tell you to ‘lose weight’. The real measurements of fitness and health are expensive, a BMI can be calculated using a 50 buck scale and measuring stick, doing a body fat analysis is very expensive (I guess no one wants to make a cheap, effective tool to do that, more money in charging hundreds of bucks for a hydrostatic test). A BMI is like the old rule of thumb, it gives a rough idea of where someone is, but is like comparing dead reckoning navigation against a gps…if you are trying to see where you really are, dead reckoning is likely to tell you where you aren’t, rather than where you are;).
There is no science behind the 8 glasses of water or any specific number. It does keep the kidney and liver active, and drinking water like that can help fill someone up so they eat less, but there is no science behind the 8 glasses stuff either. Most people urinate about a liter a day of water that needs to be replaced, but there is no evidence drinking more for most people does anything. If someone has a problem, like their body is suppressing anti diuretic hormone in the kidney that makes them urinate more than normal, or they sweat a lot, obviously they need to drink more, and if people want to drink 8 glasses or so and it feels good to them, why not? But it isn’t like if you don’t drike the 8 glasses you are gonna die at 40, either.
As far as vitamins go, there is a lot of back and forth with them. The RDA standards I can tell you have little meaning other than those are what you need to, for example, not get deficiency diseases like ricketts or scurvy, and there is real evidence out there that the cells and other functions of the body use vitamins in ways well beyond the min, that if you take more, they do things with them. Whether that is best done by diet, or can be done by vitamins, I don’t know. WIth Vitamin C and other water soluble vitamins, other than perhaps an upset stomach (unless you ate pounds of it), taking too much of it is not a big deal, because you will urinate it out (if your kidney or liver is compromised, it could be an issue, talking an average healthy person).With C, human beings are part of the greater primate family (well, okay, unless you belong to certain religious traditions), and in the zoos and wildlife preserves they make sure the apes, chimps and baboons get a diet with at least 15g of vitamin C a day. The US RDA is 500 MG (or 30 times less), and keep mind genetically that human beings are only about 1% different in DNA from the closely related ape species…so why the difference? One of the factors with vitamins that they aren’t talking about is that people take large quanities of E and D, which is dangerous, because they are fat soluble, or A (if you want to take A, take beta carotene, your body will convert what it needs into A). The studies have been back and forth, and quite honestly, very few full blown studies are being done, with control groups and the like, to actually try and look at the effects of vitamins and fish oil and so forth, for a very good reason. Those studies cost a lot of money, and no one is going to do that for OTC supplements. We don’t even regulate them for quality, in Europe they don’t let the manufacturers make health claims, but they regulate the content, Germany is especially good with naturopathic substances and supplements, in the US it is the wild west (literally, a lot of the makers of supplements are in Utah, and Orin Hatch has made sure for a long time that they don’t even have to certify what is in the crap you buy).
And my take is, if you think the supplements will help, take them, if you don’t, then don’t take them. If people are taking fish oil thinking it helps their heart, and it isn’t, that is their decision. Maybe taking supplements like that also makes them aware of what they are eating and being health conscious beyond the supplements, unlike let’s say the ‘magic diet pill’ that shows someone way overweight eating Ice Cream and hamburgers taking the pill and losing 70 pounds, while eating junk, people who take supplements also tend to try and be healthy otherwise.
Good points, musicparent. The cosmetics and supplements, sadly, don’t have a watchdog like the FDA.
" in Europe they don’t let the manufacturers make health claims…"
Even though the FDA has no jurisdiction over cosmetics and nutritional supplements, making unsubstantiated health claims is against the FDA regulations. But in the US, there is a sneaky way around it: when the manufacturers put something on the bottle along the lines “promotes heart health,” there is always a disclaimer that it has not been clinically proven. But who would read disclaimers, anyway?!
I seriously doubt that more people die from over hydration than dehydration. Especially when you consider all the poor children in the world who die from dehydration brought on by diarrhea.
It makes the news when someone gets water intoxication from trying to beat a drug test or from taking MDMA. Athletes have to watch out, but otherwise it’s not at all a common occurrence.
As for BMI, my D1 had her college entrance physical and came out, smiling, “I’m not obese anymore!”. She never was - just rather short and muscular.
Greenwich, maybe that was a tongue in cheek comment about drownings.
ETA: wow. Googled it, and good lord:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/
Speaking of WHO, D interning there this summer pulled a drowning person out of a lake.