Vitamin D3 Over Calcium to Protect Your Bones and Vertebrae

Because of prior positive VD3 studies over the past years, I've long recommended
VD3 over the loads of Calcium that doctors so nonchalantly tell women to take. But
VD3 is the key. New studies continue to show that fact.
Be sure to notice that to protect yourself from deterioating bones you need
relatively high doses; this simply means higher than the FDA recommends, which is
not enough to protect a rabbit from fractures.
Moreover, because VD3 is a powerful free radical scavenger, it is a cancer
preventer for such places as the breast, the colon, stomach, and particularly the
intestines.
The March 23, 2009 issue of the American Medical Association journal Archives of
Internal Medicine <http://archinte.ama-assn.org/> reported the results of a meta-
analysis conducted at the University of Zurich in Switzerland which concluded that
supplementing with vitamin D was effective for preventing fractures in older men
and women, as long as higher dose supplements were used.
Heike A. Bischoff-Ferrari, DrPH, University Hospital, Zurich, and his associates
selected twelve clinical trials which investigated the effect of oral vitamin D
supplements on non-spinal fractures that included a total of 42,279 participants
aged 65 or older. Eight of the trials examined the supplements' effect on hip
fractures.
The pooled analysis found a 14 percent decrease in nonvertebral fracture risk and
a 9 percent decrease in hip fracture for subjects who received vitamin D
supplements.
When data from the nine trials which tested a dose of vitamin D greater than 400
international units per day were combined in a separate analysis, a 20 percent
reduction in nonvertebral fractures and an 18 percent decrease in hip fracture
risk were revealed.
For the three high quality trials in which the dose of vitamin D was 380
international units or less, no effect on fracture risk was noted.
In a comparison of the benefits of higher dose vitamin D2 and D3, vitamin D3
(cholecalciferol) emerged as protective against nonvertebral fracture, while the
effect of vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) was not considered significant. Greater
increases in serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D also predicted a larger reduction in non-
spinal fracture risk, while increased calcium did not appear to offer further
protection. "Physiologically, the calcium-sparing effect of vitamin D may explain
why we did not see an additional benefit of calcium supplementation at a higher
dose of vitamin D," the authors noted.
"The greater fracture reduction with a higher received dose or higher achieved 25-
hydroxyvitamin D levels for both any non-vertebral fractures and hip fractures
suggests that higher doses of vitamin D should be explored in future research to
optimize anti-fracture efficacy," the authors write in their conclusion.
"Also, it is possible that greater benefits may be achieved with earlier
initiation of vitamin D supplementation and longer duration of use. Our results do
not support use of low-dose vitamin D with or without calcium in the prevention of
fractures among older individuals."