Thank you for being a part of GrassrootsHealth, whether you started out with us at our first seminar in December of 2008, or just found out about us today, we appreciate your support and your own efforts to spread the word about vitamin D. 

GrassrootsHealth was established to get the message of vitamin D beyond academic journals, out to people who could put the existing information to use in their own lives or the lives of their patients, family, and friends. While more research and information may still be needed to better understand the details of how vitamin D works, the information that is already known should be shared and put to use without waiting 17 years or longer (it has already been 35 years since the Garland brothers first published their observation of the association between higher vitamin D levels and lower rates of colon cancer!). How many painful diagnoses of cancer, diabetes, pre-term birth, or several other diseases might we prevent during those 17 years?

This year was a big one for GrassrootsHealth - it marked the first time a major medical institution, the Medical University of South Carolina, partnered with GrassrootsHealth and changed its standard of care to include vitamin D testing, supplementation, and education for all prenatal patients. This is the first step to changing lives, changing our health care system, moving research into practice.

As you read this newsletter please think about those friends and family members who could benefit from one of our three studies: Protect Our Children NOW!, Breast Cancer Prevention, and general D*action. Would you be willing to sponsor 6 of them? Please see the section on our D*advocate program for more information.

Finally, as 2015 comes to a close, please consider GrassrootsHealth for your year-end giving. As a 501(c)(3) organization, your donations are tax deductible and would go towards initiatives that further our ability to engage in public outreach for vitamin D,  more projects, more information sharing, and funding of programs such as Protect our Children NOW! Contact me if you want to take on one of these initiatives with your company - or donate here for an end of the year contribution.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you learned something from this summary of our research. GrassroostHealth provides a great service to the community with its at-home vitamin D tests, but that is not our reason to exist. We are much more than that. We want to provide a service, and in return you provide us data we can use to help change the world - to move research into practice. It is very costly to run randomized control trials (RCTs) and many would not use the high supplementation levels that are necessary. It is very powerful to have your data, the answers to your health outcomes and your vitamin D serum level - to investigate and analyze different ways. We then work in conjunction with our scientists to publish papers with the hope of moving this research into practice--your answers!

So, with this summary - know that there are people you could introduce to one of these trials. You could start them on a way to a healthier life, and also help provide data for ongoing research into how vitamin D can solve a host of health problems - at a fraction of the price. Think about giving these tests to your friends or family as a holiday gift - 6 tests for $300, including a bottle of vitamin D from Bio-Tech Pharmacal and  letter explaining your gift. This could be the perfect gift for the person who has everything. Do they need another sweater? Another gadget?