All across the country researchers such as Dr. Reinhold Vieth are telling people to supplement with levels of vitamin D up to four times as high as the current RDA, or 2000 IUs a day. A friend attending medical school at UCLA told me yesterday that he and his fellow students have been taught to ignore the RDA requirement for vitamin D and tell their future patients to take at least 1000 IUs of the secosteroid. The Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) announced its recommendation that Canadians consider taking 1000 mg of vitamin D daily in the fall and winter, and have refused to suspend the recommendation pending a review. Why is the substance being promoted in this manner at such high levels? Largely because vitamin D proponents are confident that the substance decreases the incidence of cardiovascular disease.

In fact, in the health section of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, Nova Scotia epidemiologist Dr. Louise Parker touted vitamin D as the “new aspirin” because of its perceived ability to benefit people with heart conditions.

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Note: Much of the analysis in this paper draws from the book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes, and the article would not have been possible without his research.

At the age of 64, after a morning playing golf, President Dwight D Eisenhower had his first heart attack. As Pulitzer Prize winning author Gary Taubes describes in his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories”, Eisenhower’s heart attack “constituted a learning experience on coronary artery disease (CAD).” After the event, his doctors, considered the top experts in the field, gave the public a “lucid and authoritative description of the disease itself,” followed by twice-daily press conferences held on the president’s condition. Soon, most of America, particularly middle-aged men, were intently aware of the dogma surrounding heart disease, dogma that continues to persist today – namely the notion that dietary fat and cholesterol are major factors in the development of CAD. Like much of the rest of the nation, Eisenhower began to avidly lower his fat and cholesterol intake.

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