News from GrassrootsHealth

Greetings!

Welcome to 2014! Major new items are coming your way this year. Our goals are focused on:

Providing individuals with information and tools for their own health empowerment with vitamin D and other components of health. The 'other' will be an expansion of the nutritional and behavioral information that impacts overall health, and in many ways, is related to the absorption and use of vitamin D.
Putting the proven science of vitamin D and other nutrients into practice through public health promotions.
Doing and participating in major nutritional and behavioral research projects.

MyOWNHealth™

MyOWNHealth™ is a new system developed to allow you to track the health items YOU find interesting and necessary. This system will be provided FREE to all D*action participants. It is expected to be released for use mid-February. It can also be licensed for use by major health organizations.

Track and chart your health status (on many items, including custom ones you enter)
Create your personal health system: reminders, notes, calendars
Analyze, share information with your provider, access and learn from additional resources

Stay tuned - a demonstration version will be ready soon.

Your Data, Your Answers

A full research set of information with data from 1000's of participants to use to analyze your own health. This will be expanded in 2014 to include more basic health action recommendations from qualified sources that you can use to help analyze your own responses.

We will be using GrassrootsHealth' own research database as the core of the data and, looking at the populations from many points of view, e.g., by state, by gender, by age, by what health conditions are impacted by what behaviors!

Highlights of YOUR Data, YOUR Answers from a couple of articles published in 2013:

25-Hydroxyvitamin D in the Range of 20 to 100 ng-mL and Incidence of Kidney Stones (Published October 2013 in the American Journal of Public Health)

Key Points:

Of the 13 kidney stone cases, eight were below the median serum level of 50 ng/ml and five were above.
No association found between serum 25(OH)D in the range of 20-100 ng/ml and incidence of kidney stones.
Individuals with a body mass index (BMI) of ≥ 30 had a 3-fold higher risk of developing kidney stones.

Quantifying the non-food sources of basal vitamin d input and Quantifying the food sources of basal vitamin d input (Published Oct/Nov 2013 in Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology).

Key Points:

Non-food factors associated with vitamin D serum levels were indoor tanning use, sun exposure, body mass index (BMI) and percent of work performed outdoors.
Food sources associated with vitamin D serum levels were eggs, whole milk cottage cheese, red meat and total protein.
Ability of non-food and food sources to explain inter-individual variability was limited, therefore supplementation will likely be key to improving vitamin D status on a population level.

Scientists Answer YOUR Questions

for Individuals and Clinicians

This will include interviews of the scientists for the purpose of providing clinical guidelines for practice.

Up first in 2014:

Vitamin K and Its Interaction
with Vitamin D

by Dr. Sarah Booth, Ph.D., Director and Senior Scientist, Vitamin K Laboratory, Tufts University

In a video to be published on January 14th, Dr. Booth, a leading expert in vitamin K, answers many of the questions we receive about vitamin K and its interaction with vitamin D.

Why is vitamin K important?
How much vitamin K should I take and which form?
Is it important to balance vitamin K intake with vitamin D and other nutrients?

Find out what the latest research has to say about these questions and more! Refer to Dr. Booth's published works, Effect of Vitamin K Supplementation on Bone Loss in Elderly Men and Women and Gamma-Carboxylation of osteocalcin and insulin resistance in older men and women, for more information about this topic.

Research Projects and
Researchers' Information

GrassrootsHealth is involved in several research projects There will be more information provided on the research done by the GrassrootsHealth panel of 42 researchers along with commentary and interviews with the researchers about their work.

Thanks so very much for your active participation in this D*action project. It is an opportunity for us all to truly save lives.

Carole Baggerly

Director, GrassrootsHealth

A Public Health Promotion & Research Organization

Moving Research into Practice NOW!