People's Pharmacy

Yesterday morning, I got up early to go to the conference and had a rare opportunity to listen to the People's Pharmacy live. When I used to read a hardcopy newspaper, I would read their column every week. This week, they had a particularly interesting program on vitamins and herbal supplements and I recommend checking out their podcasts to listen. They were interviewing Dr. Tieraona Low Dog, who is the Director of Education for the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.

One of the strongest messages was the importance of taking large doses (as much as 1000 IU per day) of Vitamin D3 or to even get tested for deficiency. The majority of us actually are actually deficient, because we don't get enough exposure to sunlight or use sunscreen, preventing the natural production of the vitamin. Vitamin D deficiency can have several deleterious effects.