In this “Sunday Summary” the topic is vitamins; namely one great one, Vitamin D, and a dozen to avoid. Check it out.

Vitamin D and Mental Health

IF YOU read about health matters regularly, it’s likely that you’ve noted much press about the health benefits attributable to Vitamin D supplementation.   (If not, read 30 Reasons to Take Vitamin D.)  The list is long, and includes such varied things as increasing the effectiveness of weight loss efforts to improving the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome.

So, it should not be surprising that we add another one – mental health.  Yes, according to the Vitamin D Council’s website:

1. Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
2. Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
3. Mental illness shows a significant co-morbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
4. Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
5. Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness.

There’s much more about this reported by blogger Therese Borchard in her article Vitamin D and Mental Health, so go take a look.

How Vitamin D Can Be Life Saving

Moving right along, check out this ABC News report entitled 5 Ways Vitamin D Can Save Your Life. It’s a fast read that first tells you that most Americans are deficient in Vitamin D and then goes on to list those “5 Ways” it can be very beneficial, which are:

1. Helps weight loss
2. Reduces risk of death
3. Fewer bone fractures
4. Less risk of heart disease
5. Helps fight cancer

The report briefly explains each of these five and then goes into how you can get fortified with Vitamin D.

A Dozen Dangerous Supplements

Rounding out this Sunday’s summary on vitamins, let’s move from the one vitamin that has near universal acclaim to present an article by Consumer Reports via Yahoo Health about dangerous supplements.

Without fanfare, it’s simply called, Dangerous Supplements.

The gist of the article is that supplements do not benefit from the level of inspection, nor do they consistently have sufficient quality ingredients to be uniformly beneficial.  Sometimes, supplements that are tested have pesticides and heavy metal content.  China, which exports much of the raw material that goes into supplements is known to export contaminated food, and yet such raw material is not inspected.

Consumer reports did some testing and found a dozen ingredients that are “linked to serious adverse events”.  They are: aconite, bitter orange, chaparral, colloidal silver, coltsfoot, comfrey, country mallow, germanium, greater celandine, kava, lobelia, and yohimbe.

For more about this and a link to “11 supplements to consider”, go read this report.

Related posts:

1. 30 Reasons to Take Vitamin D — Watch
2. The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 – Food to Live By (Watch)
3. Easily Avoid Cancerous Plastics and Food Containers (Bisphenol A) — Watch

Tagged as: consumer reports dozen dangerous supplements, Therese Borchard, vitamin d and mental health

Published on February 20, 2011