Supplements

Supplements: how much is enough......too much.............what supplements are right for you ?

Q: I want to make sure I’m getting enough vitamin D. I read an article about how spending more time in the sun can raise vitamin D levels and prevent some cancers, but I'm worried about skin cancer. What should I do?

There's no doubt that exposure to ultraviolet radiation, a component of sunlight, is a risk factor for skin cancer. But, as you suggest, the picture has gotten more confusing lately. That's because some studies have linked sun exposure to a lower risk of other types of cancer, including colon, prostate and breast cancers.

Sunlight's possible protection may stem from the fact that when our skin is exposed to ultraviolet radiation, it makes vitamin D, which is essential for strong bones and teeth. (That's why D has been dubbed the sunshine vitamin.) And because vitamin D helps regulate how cells grow and mature, it may also put the brakes on runaway cell growth associated with cancer. There's also evidence to suggest that it improves neuromuscular function.

But vitamin D is relatively scarce in the average diet. To get 400 IU of vitamin D, the current recommended daily amount for people ages 50 to 71, you'd need to eat a 6-ounce can of tuna or drink 4 cups of milk a day. Few people consume that much, and many experts recommend getting significantly more vitamin D -- 800 to 1,000 IU a day.

Casual exposure to sunlight provides a person with most of their vitamin D. Sunlight contains two forms of ultraviolet radiation: ultraviolet A (UVA) and ultraviolet B (UVB). UVB provides the energy the body needs to generate vitamin D. For example, if you sat outside at the equator on a sunny day in the middle of summer wearing only a swimsuit, your body could create 20,000 IU of vitamin D per hour.

But a number of factors affect how much UVB reaches your skin, including the season, the time of day and where you live. Except during the summer months, people who live at latitudes above 37 degrees north or 37 degrees south of the equator don't get enough UVB to make all the vitamin D they need.

Age and skin color play a role, too. Older people can't synthesize vitamin D as well as younger people. In fact, an average 70-year-old can produce only about one-quarter of the vitamin D of a 20-year-old. More melanin, the pigment that gives skin its color, affects the skin's ability to make vitamin D. That's why black Americans have, on average, half as much vitamin D in their blood as whites Americans. Sunscreen use can also influence vitamin D production.

Getting more sun is certainly one way to increase vitamin D levels. But doing so means ignoring the advice to avoid the sun and wear sunscreen to protect against skin cancer (including deadly melanomas) and sun damage, which makes skin look wrinkled and old prematurely. You could also boost levels by eating more foods rich in vitamin D, but just a few foods are natural sources: Salmon, mackerel, sardines and other kinds of oily seafood are about it. In the United States, milk and some brands of orange juice are fortified with vitamin D, as are some breakfast cereals. But you'd have to eat a lot to raise the amount of vitamin D in your blood.

So how can you safely up your vitamin D intake to the often-recommended level of 800 to 1,000 IU a day? For most people, a vitamin supplement is the answer. Most multivitamins contain 400 IU of vitamin D, but you shouldn't just take two. That's because you might get too much of other vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin A and folic acid.

That leaves vitamin D pills. A daily 1,000-IU supplement should take care of your needs. Or, if your usual multivitamin contains some vitamin D but less than 1,000 IU, you can take a separate vitamin D supplement to make up the difference. Don't overdo it, though. Excessive doses of vitamin D can build up to toxic levels, but doses up to 2,000 IU a day are considered safe.

Please contact the office, as we’re happy to help you design a supplement plan right for your body and lifestyle. We offer the premier brand of all natural supplements from Pharmanex.

Kinoki Foot Pads

Greetings everyone. Your favorite podiatrist checking in.........

There isn’t a week that goes by that a patient hasn’t asked about the Kinoki Foot Pads, which “reportedly”, when placed on the bottom of your feet and worn overnight draw toxins from your body.....welllllllllllll not so fast...........

It turns out that Kinoki Foot Pads are a Scam !!
The nice folks at NPR have done us all a favor and taken some used Kinoki foot pads to be tested to see if they'd drawn anything out of a guinea pig reporter's body. Guess what? They didn't.

Reporter Sarah Varney bought some Kinoki foot pads and wore them to bed.She also subjected her husband to the (alleged) detox treatment. In the morning, they both awoke to the stinky brown mess that the advertisement had promised. Not convinced that the brown stuff had actually come from their bodies, our hero took the foot pads to a lab and had them analyzed and compared with unused pads.

"Compared to the blank that's almost identical," said the scientists. "It looks like three of the same sample, basically."

A doctor from UC Berkeley confirms the scam diagnoses. Your body already eliminates "metabolic waste" and "toxins" through, um, other means...

"For many hundreds of thousands of years we've been successfully eliminating them through the usual means, which is urine and feces, and there has been no demonstrated need to accelerate that."

So what is all that gunk in the pad? We're not really sure, but it shows up if you hold the pad over a pot of boiling water. Who knew steam had "metabolic waste"?