Issue Date: January 4, 2004
Health Briefs
Bones: Add vitamin D during the dark winter
Get vitamin D in canned salmon, tuna and fortified foods. But your best bet is a supplement.
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Less sun during winter can leave us low on vitamin D (called the "sunshine vitamin" because the body produces it when exposed to sun). A deficiency can raise the risk of osteoporosis and congestive heart failure, and also cause problems such as muscle weakness, aches and bone pain that can be misdiagnosed as arthritis or even fibromyalgia. Vitamin D also plays a role in controlling high blood pressure and protecting against diabetes; promising research links it to inhibiting cancers and multiple sclerosis, reports "Nutrition Action Healthletter."
The official recommendation is to get 400 to 800 IU daily, although some experts think the bar should be set much higher. Taking a supplement is your best bet, because it's difficult to get 800 IU through food alone.
Back pain: Check the (medium-firm) mattress
Want to get rid of persistent back pain? Try changing your mattress.
Researchers asked 313 back pain patients to rate their degree of disability and report how much pain they had while lying in bed and on rising in the morning. Then the patients got new mattresses, not knowing which firmness they had received. After three months, the researchers did another rating. A study published in the medical journal "The Lancet" showed that medium-firm mattresses worked better to banish back pain than did extra-firm. The medium-firm mattress group reported half as much pain and disability and needed less medicine.
-- Peggy J. Noonan
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