Are statin drugs an expensive version of vitamin D?
For the past few decades, modern medicine has been warning the public away from high-dose vitamin D supplements, claiming high-D may induce calcium overload, severe headaches and other health problems. Many researchers have pursued the development of vitamin D analogues, near look-alike molecules that can be patented and overcome the alleged side effects.
But on second look, the allegations against high-dose vitamin D appear to vanish. Imagine how preposterous this claim. Why standing in the bright sun at midday for an hour in the summer in a southern latitude area will produce 10,000 units of vitamin D. For vitamin D is a natural hormone/vitamin, produced in the skin upon exposure to UV-B rays. But the National Academy of Sciences says more than 2000 IU of vitamin D (this is a trivial 50 micrograms or 1/20th of 1 milligram) is the upper safe limit.
Dr. Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto has conclusively shown that vitamin D toxicity doesn’t begin till 40,000 IU (international units) are consumed daily for a prolonged period of time. Furthermore, the optimal blood level of vitamin D is now believed to be in the range of 75-80 nanomolar/liter concentration. Millions of people, particularly those who live in northern latitudes, have vitamin D blood concentrations one third of the optimal range. Shortages of vitamin D are now being linked to osteoporosis, rickets, cancer, autoimmune disease (rheumatoid, lupus, sarcoid, fibromyalgia), high blood pressure, obesity, mental depression, diabetes, age-related loss of muscle tone and heart failure. [Journal Nutrition 136: 1135-39, 2006; 136: 1117-22, 2006]
Why the major effort to warn the public away from vitamin D? There are a lot of drugs that vitamin D could potentially replace. One class of drugs that vitamin D could possibly replace surprisingly came into view in a recent report in The Lancet, a British medical journal.
David S. Grimes of the Blackburn Royal Infirmary in Britain states: “There are many reasons why the dietary-heart-cholesterol hypothesis should be questioned, and why statin drugs might be acting in some other way to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease. I propose that rather than being cholesterol-lowering drugs per se, statins act as vitamin D analogues (molecular look-alikes), and explain why. This proposition is based on published observations that the unexpected and unexplained clinical benefits produced by statins have also been shown to be properties of vitamin D. It seems likely that statins activate vitamin D cell receptors.’ [Lancet 368: 83-86, 2006]
Early on, European researchers reported that one type of statin drug (simvastatin) raises blood plasma levels of vitamin D. [Cas Lek Cesk 133: 727-29, 1994]
Other researchers in Europe report that patients with a familial high-cholesterol have low concentrations of vitamin D and that a statin drug (Mevacor) actually increases vitamin D levels while lowering circulating cholesterol levels. [Cas Lek Cesk 128: 1254-56, 1989]
Statin drugs have been heralded as wonder drugs, with proposed benefits for bone health, prevention of macular degeneration, prevention of cancer and many other disorders. The list of potential applications for statin drugs mirrors those of vitamin D. [Lancet 368: 83-86, 2006]
The widely disseminated but mistaken concern that high-dose vitamin D is toxic has thwarted research grants. Will modern medicine provide the research funds needed to prove it has been using a liver-toxic form of vitamin D to treat heart disease for the past two decades? © 2007 Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.
