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Vitamin D and the prevention of falls: has the time come?

in
Publisher: 
Future Medicine
Author: 
John Robbins
Date published: 
18 June, 2010
Region: 
United States of America
Publication type: 
policy
Featured item on home page: 
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This article on Vitamin D and health and disease by John Robbins was recently published in Future Medicine. The full article is available below:

Vitamin D and the prevention of falls: has the time come?

Summary

Vitamin D appears to be taking the place of vitamin C as the natural cure all. Even though Linus Pauling may have made an error with vitamin C, there is growing evidence that vitamin D deficiency may play an important role in health and disease. In the developed world, rickets has been generally eradicated as a childhood condition but less extreme manifestations of vitamin D deficiency are now coming to the fore. If we agree upon a definition of vitamin D insufficiency, not necessarily an easy chore, it could turn out to be a common disorder. Much as we define hypothyroidism by increased thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), an attempt has been made to define low vitamin D by increased parathyroid hormone (PTH). Unfortunately the relationship is not as clean and we end up with a fuzzy line of demarcation. Depending on the chosen definition, 40–100% of US and European elderly men and women living in the community are reported to be deficient in vitamin D.

 

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