Multiple health concerns surface as winter, vitamin D deficiences arrive

A string of recent discoveries about the multiple health benefits of vitamin D has renewed interest in this multi-purpose nutrient, increased awareness of the huge numbers of people who are deficient in it, spurred research and even led to an appreciation of it as “nature’s antibiotic.”

Let them eat snail: Nutritional giant snails could address malnutrition

A nutritionist in Nigeria says that malnutrition and iron deficiency in schoolchildren could be reduced in her country by baking up snail pie. She explains snail is not only cheaper and more readily available than beef but contains more protein.

Treatment with folic acid, vitamin B12 associated with increased risk of cancer, death

Patients with heart disease in Norway, a country with no fortification of foods with folic acid, had an associated increased risk of cancer and death from any cause if they had received treatment with folic acid and vitamin B12, according to a new study.

UK women at risk from vitamin A deficiency

Almost half of UK women could be suffering from a lack of vitamin A due to a previously undiscovered genetic variation, scientists have found.

Vitamin B niacin offers no extra benefit to statin therapy in seniors already diagnosed with coronary artery disease, study suggests

The routine prescription of extended-release niacin, a B vitamin (1,500 milligrams daily), in combination with traditional cholesterol-lowering therapy offers no extra benefit in correcting arterial narrowing and diminishing plaque buildup in seniors who already have coronary artery disease, a new vascular imaging study shows.

In a Time of Cutbacks, Organic Chocolate Maker Looks to Expand

Green & Black’s, the British organic chocolate maker, has expanded to North America, and is now aiming at Northern Europe, including Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Germany.

Dutch Cooperative Blurs Food Prejudices

In a Europe where conservative attitudes to farming are entrenched and hostility to genetically modified crops is sometimes obsessive, Food Valley is different.

Early end to key study on benefits of niacin, a B vitamin, in keeping arteries open was premature

Heart experts are calling premature the early halt of a study on the benefits of combining extended-release niacin, a B vitamin, with cholesterol-lowering statin medications to prevent blood vessel narrowing. Cardiovascular atherosclerosis, as it is also known, is believed responsible for one in three deaths in the United States each year.

Inadequate levels of vitamin D may significantly increase risk of stroke, heart disease and death

Researchers found that patients with very low levels of Vitamin D were 77 percent more likely to die, 45 percent more likely to develop coronary artery disease, and 78 percent were more likely to have a stroke than patients with normal levels. Patients with very low levels of Vitamin D were also twice as likely to develop heart failure than those with normal Vitamin D levels.

Heart and bone damage from low vitamin D tied to declines in sex hormones

Researchers are reporting what is believed to be the first conclusive evidence in men that the long-term ill effects of vitamin D deficiency are amplified by lower levels of the key sex hormone estrogen, but not testosterone.

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