Article archive / November 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 3. Source pages: 8.
In the spring legislative session Senator Mills authored a Senate Resolution to urge the Department of Health and Hospitals to take a more active stand in the prevention of disease model, and specifically in the building of awareness of deficiency of vitamin D.
The resolution pointed to a list of research findings suggesting that deficiency of vitamin D, which is made by human skin during and after exposure to “high- angle sunshine” and ultraviolet B light, is related to a variety of health issues.
The resolution urged the awareness of the health benefits of vitamin D and its relationship to health and disease, including the “increased chances of cancer survival with sufficient levels of vitamin D.”
Sen Mills noted the importance of D in the prevention of Rickets, bone disease, and influenza compared to other school children. Also he noted a 2010 article published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine that reported a study in Egypt that found that children without autism had blood serum levels of vitamin D averaging 40.1 ng/ml, and children with autism had significantly lower blood serum levels of vitamin D, averaging 28.5 ng/ml.
He also noted studies having to do with vitamin D for the first year of life and being less likely to develop type I diabetes by the age of thirty; that females who received regular vitamin D supplementation during the first years of life are fifty percent less likely to develop preeclampsia in their first pregnancy; and a 2009 study at the Medical University of South Carolina found that pregnant women who took 4,000 IU a day of vitamin D during pregnancy had a fifty percent reduction in the rate of premature births and delivered fewer babies with low birth weight than women who took 400 IU a day of vitamin D.
A study of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared cancer rates of a group of post- menopausal women taking 1,100 IU of vitamin D supplements in combination with calcium, to cancer rates of a group taking a placebo, and that found the risk of developing any cancer after four years was sixty percent lower in the group taking vitamin D.
Another study presented at American Association for Cancer Research found that blood serum levels of vitamin D of at least 50 ng/ml were associated with an eighty- three percent reduction in the incidence of breast cancer compared to blood serum levels of vitamin D of 25 ng/ml.
Many more articles were mentioned in the resolution, which can be found on the legislative website as SR 22.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.