Don't worry - be happy...

I am on my way to Japan for some business meetings and was reintroduced to the Unicity Women's website. Katharine Peterson, a member of our marketing group, posted a cool article about the relationship between the emotional state of a women and their risk for cardiovascular disease. After reading the post and the article - I decided to change my attitude and make my time productive (four hour layover due to delays) here in LA. It's a great site regardless of your gender and you should all check it out!

More Support for Vitamin D

Insufficient levels of vitamin D have been found to correlate with an increase in cardiovascular disease, and researchers at Washington University School of Medicine believe they know why. In their study titled, "1,25(OH)₂ Vitamin D Inhibits Foam Cell Formation and Suppresses Macrophage Cholesterol Uptake in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus", which came out this week in the journal Circulation, they demonstrate that vitamin D inhibits the uptake of cholesterol by cells called macrophages. In the absence of vitamin D, macrophages aren't very good at controlling how much cholesterol they take in; basically, if it's around they'll gobble it up.

Cholesterol is transported through the blood attached to lipoproteins such as LDL, which is known as the 'bad' cholesterol". When cholesterol comes into contact with free radicals (like reactive oxygen species), LDL becomes oxidated, and macrophages eat it uncontrollably. At this point, the macrophages become clogged with cholesterol and become what is known as foam cells. This is the beginning of atherosclerosis (stiff blood vessels).

The good news is that vitamin D is able to inhibit the uptake of cholesterol by macrophages and thus prevent or slow their transformation into foam cells.

While these studies were done in vitro (with cells in test tubes), principal investigator Bernal-Mizrachi, has begun another vitamin D study on diabetics that are vitamin D deficient and have high blood pressure to see if vitamin D supplementation will lower blood pressure and improve blood flow.

With all the good news coming out based on vitamin D, we've decided to up our amounts of vitamin D in BoneMate Plus from 400 IU per serving to 2000 IU.

Millions of US Children Low in Vitamin D

I came across this interesting article regarding vitamin D deficiency in American children. At first take, a problem as simple as not getting adequate amounts of vitamin D might be something that you'd think would be confined to third world or developing countries; however, a study by researchers at Albert Einstein College found that 7.6 million American children are vitamin D deficient (defined as less than 15 ng/mL of vitamin D in blood) and 50.8 million are vitamin D insufficient (defined as 15 to 29 ng/mL of vitamin D in blood). Low vitamin D levels were especially common in children who were older, female, African-American, Mexican-American, obese, drank milk less than once a week, or spent more than four hours a day watching TV, playing videogames, or using computers. Low vitamin D levels are associated with higher parathyroid hormone levels, a marker of bone health, higher systolic blood pressure, and lower serum calcium and HDL (good) cholesterol levels, which are key risk factors for heart disease.

The good news is that vitamin D supplementation can help. In the study, children who took vitamin D supplements (400 IU/day) were less likely to be deficient in the vitamin.

The bad news is that only four percent of the study population actually used supplements. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which recently updated its vitamin D guidelines, now recommends that infants, children, and teens should take 400 IU per day in supplement form.

Unicity's current BoneMate Plus formulation contains 400 IUs of vitamin D per serving. We are in the process of reformulating this to increase the amount of vitamin D and be in line with current recommendations of 2000 IUs.