New research finds that a lack of vitamin D, which is absorbed primarily through exposure to sunlight, helps boost the risk of heart attacks and strokes. So much so that, according to the study, someone with vitamin D levels below 15 nanograms per milliliter of blood is twice as likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke or other cardiovascular problem within two years as someone with the recommended 20 nanograms per milliliter.

HealthDay:

Vitamin D is well known as the "sunshine vitamin" because human skin makes the nutrient upon exposure to sunlight. Only 10 minutes of exposure to sunlight between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. each day will be enough for whites to reach the recommended level, experts say. People with darker skins will need somewhat longer exposure. Sunscreen can also block vitamin D production, the experts add.

People must balance the risks and benefits of sun exposure, however. "A little bit of sunshine is a good thing, but the use of sunscreen to guard against skin cancer is important if you have more than 15 to 30 minutes of intense sunlight exposure," O'Keefe noted.

Some foods are also rich in vitamin D, he noted. "Salmon and other deepwater fish are good," O'Keefe said. "Also milk, which is supplemented with vitamin D. But you would have to drink 10 to 20 glasses of milk a day to get the recommended intake."

Recommended vitamin D intake is 200 international units a day up to age 50, 400 units for ages 50 to 70, and 600 units a day over the age of 70.

One way to reach that level is to pop a supplement, O'Keefe said. "There is strong evidence that supplementing vitamin D improves health."

"This is an important report," said Robert U. Simpson, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Michigan, whose group was the first to identify vitamin D receptors in heart cells. "It will help those interested in cardiovascular disease understand more about the vitamin D system."

Vitamin D is not just another vitamin, Simpson said. "It is a precursor to a hormone, and this prehormone is responsible for making a very important regulator of cardiovascular processes," he said. (More ...)

As for which supplement to use, vitamin D3 is the recommended form. There are 5 forms of vitamin D. The two major forms are vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and D3 (cholecalciferol). Both forms are present in human nutritional supplements. When our skin comes into contact with UVB radiation, it synthesizes only vitamin D3. Both of these forms are prohormones, precursors to the vitamin D hormone that goes on to perform all of the beneficial processes that have been mentioned. However, the vitamin D3 form is about 3 times more effective at creating the vitamin D hormone and its duration of action is longer that the D2 form. Supplementing with vitamin D3 would be the wiser choice. I include D3 in my own supplement regiment and purchase it online from Vitacost, which I have found to offer the most effective product for the most reasonable cost. If you don't include a regular vitamin-mineral supplement in your own daily routine, you should take use the product that includes calcium and magnesium. It is also important to know that although most multivitamin supplements contain only 400-800 IU of vitamin D, and this is only 10 to 20 percent of what is necessary for optimal physiologic function. For people unable to obtain 20-30 minutes of full-body sun exposure on an almost daily basis, it has become clear that high-dose vitamin D supplementation (a dosage range of at least 3,000-5,000 IU per day) is necessary to ensure that physiologic needs are met, and so that optimal health can be obtained and maintained. Related: High Dose Of Vitamin D3 A Boon for Patients Suffering From Heart Failure Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention? New research shows vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent; cancer industry refuses to support cancer prevention Sunlight emerging as proven treatment for breast cancer, prostate cancer and other cancers

Can anyone tell me how it is that every time Barack Obama or a family member tells of where Obama was born, they seem to have no idea as of December 2008? Apparently not, and there seems to be a good reason for not being able to do so: Hospital after Hospital - all have no record of Obama being born there or even his mother ever being there. What is Barack Obama Hiding? Can anyone answer the question as to where and what hospital he was born in?

The Democratic Party and, so far our justice system, are perpetuating a fraud on the American people and American voters that voted for Obama have put a fraud in the White House. The state of Hawaii issues birth certificates to foreign born residents and Obama was not born in Hawaii - his grandmother in Kenya says he was born there in Kenya (link to audio) and she was present at his birth. If this isn't the case than why hasn't Obama provided the vault copy (original) of his birth certificate instead of the certificate that he provided a website that has since been proven fraudulant?

As Steven Mosher and Colin Mason point out at LifeNews.com, we are indeed entering a very challenging time for the pro-life movement with Barack Obama soon take office and, if his rhetoric is any guide, he's determined to overturn existing pro-life policies and promote abortion both at home and abroad.

Fortunately, Population Research Institute, an organization that tracks population issues and monitors abortion and demographics on an international scale, has produced some highly informative and highly disturbing videos to help get the truth out about the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The UN agency has been implicated in horrible human rights abuses in country after country and  and is one that Obama has promised the abortion movement that he will refund in order to promote abortion abroad.

One would think that common sense (which of course excludes liberal thought) makes this research unnecessary, but it's nice to see that someone was interested enough to spend the bucks for the research in order to make it clear to the moonbats on the left.

America's economy may be in shambles, but President-elect Barack Obama's sparing no expense in buying bling for his first lady.

Via the NY Post, Obama is giving Michelle Obama a $30,000 diamond-encrusted Harmony ring made of "black gold" - rhodium - the world's most expensive metal.

I'm biting down hard on my tongue trying hard not to say what I'm really thinking here, something rather politically incorrect.

Well, when it comes to understanding the real Barack Obama, at least Pravda gets it, even though our own media remains among the clueless and the unwilling (to report it honestly):

Barack Obama is truly an amazing man, with many amazing friends. He has succeeded where countless others have failed. And he has also succeeded where many before him have succeeded with the same time honored methods.

He has managed to create an illusion of a Public Office that does not exist, The Office of the President Elect.

Barry Sotero, AKA Barack Obama, along with the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission have successfully ignored a Federal Lawsuit asking him to produce a valid Birth Certificate. When the time to respond to that lawsuit expired, under Federal Court Rules, they all admitted that he was not a citizen of The United States of America and deemed to have committed fraud. A normal man would have been found to have admitted he was not a US citizen.

But the man with no visible past, was blessed by a light shining from above on a Federal Judge, by having the lawsuit against him dismissed, three weeks after his non-response was proof that he is not a US citizen.

That lawsuit has since been taken to the US Supreme Court, where Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission have until December 1, 2008 to answer the complaint made against them. (More here ...)

Isn't it interesting that the Russian media is now more truthful than our own!

Here's Fred Thompson giving us a dose of common sense about the economy and the government action to rescue it in what Ed Morrissey calls "a masterpiece of sarcasm and wit":


Are we looking at the beginnings of a Fred Thompson candidacy for 2012?

Mark Harding over at Right Side News is on target in saying that the teachings of Islam are the sole reason for the Islamic terrorism that we are seeing today. Quite the contrary to what liberals want everyone to believe, Islamic terrorists are terrorists because they strictly follow the teachings of the Quran, not because of anything America does, has done, or hasn't done.

As was seen so recently in India, Muslim terrorists give no quarter and deserve no quarter, and until the world wakes up and recognize that Islam is not what many peace-loving Muslims believe it is and not what so many non-Muslims are deceived into believing - it is not a religion of peace - it is a religion of hate, intolerance, and violence against Muslims and non-Muslims alike - virtually everyone that doesn't strictly follow it's tenets:

Mark writes:

This Islamic terror from India is the typical result of the blind leading the blind. It started along time ago with the teachings of a madman called Muhammad, and the world continues to be terrorized by his followers today. Until the world wakes up to the "real cause" of the terror it finds itself facing today, Islamic terrorism will continue.

Hitler was the madman that drove so many Germans to do the un-thinkable terror that eventually caused the world to wake up and react to the destruction the terrorism and the murder of Jews and Christians, it was called Hitlerism.

Today the world must wake up to a new form of Nazism, its called Islam.

The teachings of Islam are the soul (sic) reason for the Islamic terrorism that we are seeing today. Muhammad the so called prophet of Islam may be dead but his terrorism lives on today in the hearts and the minds of many Muslim victims today because of the teachings of his manual's for terrorism, destruction and the murder of the Un-believers. These Manuals are the Quran and the Hadiths.

And until we are willing to speak the truth about Islam and protect those who are brave enough to do so, we will continue to see Islamic terrorist attacks like this one that took place in India.

I have studied Islam and its followers for almost 20 years now.

And after some intensive studying I have found that Islam's prophet, Muhammad, was a man that found a way to make other men fight and kill for wealth, power and a false hope of eternal salvation with a war god named "Allah" that does not even exist, unless one calls Lucifer a god.

These men were trained to kill Jews and Christian Infidels or as Islam calls us "Kafirs". There are other Islamic men and women trained to lie and to tell everyone that Islam is a 'religion of peace'. And yet they're others who have been trained to be moderates and their job is to deceive you and I into believing that these "Islamic radicals" are misinterpreting the Quran and that the media and our governments are lying about the persecution of Christians and Jews in Islamic societies. I have met with all three types of these Muslims and with questioning have found these trained men and women to be lying as they themselves exposed the truth about the teachings of Islam and their true identities in a very short order.

More here ...

Mark ends his piece by asking if stopping the 10 Islamic followers in India solves a problem or does it just create more Islamic martyrs from the teachings of Islam who are willing to follow them. Such a question should demand an answer of other than appeasement - which simply leads to the emboldenment of the enemy - the Islamists. The question practically invites the world to consider addressing such a sick ideology cloaked under the guise of religion - with little other than severe condemnation, when in fact, such severe condemnation without equally severe and abrupt destruction of their ability to harm innocents does not adequately address the problem.

The problem is Islam itself and those that strictly follow it's teachings, and both need to be addressed - one by education and economic reforms in the countries that perpetuate the religion, the other by a much more prompt and overwhelmingly violent response (against the Islamists) than we just saw undertaken by the authorities in Mumbai.

Let's just call this the WTF story of the day and a major step toward the Christian faith caving into submission to Islam.

And it's the Bishops that are calling for the prayer rooms and "Muslim toilets" I never knew there was such a thing - do Muslims take a squat differently than non-Muslims?

Go figure. I guess you need to just call me uninformed and insensitive. But can you imagine Muslims setting up prayer rooms for Christians in their mosques and schools?

Never happen, not in 10 million years, right!

The most amazing array of Bulls**t you've ever seen.

How can so many supposedly sane Americans be so dazzled and mesmerized by a completely fabricated and theatrically-orchestrated history and persona, as to not only vote for a copletely empty suit but also want souvenirs that relate to his completely fabricated and theatrically-orchestrated history, persona, and teleprompted performances? In all your years of life have you ever seen so much ado about a nothing being elected to office - and only because the guy's black?

Oh, wait a minute, I did use the words sane and Americans in the same sentence. Perhaps that's the problem here. Given that so many Obama voters think like this and placed emotions over common sense and substance in the recent election, the matter of their sanity is, in my mind, a seriously questionable issue.

Related reading:
America will soon get to meet the Congressional looneys it just put in charge of Obama's Socialist madhouse
Obama WTF

HT - Jonah Goldberg