UPFRONT | Roundup SUPPLEMENTS Vitamin D deficiency widely overestimated, doctors warn DOCTORS are warning about vitamin D again, and it’s not the “we need more” news you might expect. In-stead, they say there’s too much needless testing and too many people taking too many pills for a problem that few people truly have. Misunderstandings about the recommended amount of vitamin D have led to misinterpretation of blood tests and many people think-ing they need more than they really do, some experts who helped set the levels write in the New England Journal of Medicine. Correctly interpreted, less than six per cent of Ameri-cans aged one to 70 are de-ficient and only 13 per cent are in danger of not getting enough. That’s concerning, “but these levels of deficiency do not constitute a pandemic,” the authors write. Yet people may think there is one. Blood tests for vitamin D levels – not advised unless a problem like bone loss is suspected – are soaring. Under Medicare, there was an 83-fold increase from 2000 to 2010, to 8.7 million tests last year, at $40 apiece. It’s Medicare’s fifth most common test, just after cho-lesterol levels and ahead of blood sugar, urinary tract infections and prostate can-cer screening. Vitamin D pill use also grew, from five per cent of Americans in 1999 to 19 per cent in 2012. That may be due to many reports suggesting harm from too little of “the sun-shine vitamin.” The bottom line, experts say: Get 600 to 800 units a day from food or supple-ments and skip the blood test unless you have special risk factors. – Marilynn Marchione, The Associated Press COMMUNITY Volunteer chiros give kids a sporting chance Many of the doctors and volunteers who attend chiropractic mission trips abroad and briefly leave their comfortable lives in North America discover that the needs of the people they serve are far greater and more desperate than they realized. This has certainly been the case for thou-sands of volunteers who have been traveling to the Dominican Republic, one of the regular international countries ChiroMission serves. ChiroMission is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Forest Lake, Minn., that has been conduct-ing outreach in poor communities since 2001. It is also dedicated to providing, teaching and spreading the good news about chiropractic to the world, helping improve health outcomes in communities. Last September ChiroMission teamed up with Dreamweaver International’s Gear for Goals sports project to bring the largest, single delivery of baseball equipment to the Antero Mota Baseball League in Puerta Plata, Dominican Republic. The goal of the project was to bring 1,000 lbs. of new and used sports equipment, which participat-ing doctors collected from their pa-tients. The sports gears were provid-ed to the baseball program during a Goals. The mission of Gear for Goals is to bring hope and opportunity to the one billion children living in poverty around the world. One out of every two children still lives in poverty. Their opportunity for an education and meaningful purpose is often bleak. But hope is tangible and there are some signs of positive change, especially when sports development is part of the pro-gramming. Working with compassionate partner charities, churches and volunteers, Gear for Goals has pro-vided sports gear to over 550,000 children in 30 countries. Gear for Goals and ChiroMission have been teaming up over the past four years and helping nearly 50,000 children in the Dominican Republic alone. ChiroMission president, Dr. Jason Gerard, appreciates the value of a partnership and recognizes the needs of the people are immense. When we can come together with other charities and local leaders, we have a much better chance of mak-ing lasting change for the commu-nity, he said. To learn more about ChiroMission visit www.chiromission.com and to learn about Dreamweaver visit www.dreamweaver911.org. www.canadianchiropractor.ca planned tournament that ChiroMission, Gear for Goals and Antero Mota hosted together. Dreamweaver’s executive director Dr. Warren Bruhl wanted to add to this outreach to see if ChiroMission could help Antero Mota build a bath-room on their baseball field. For over four decades, the local baseball program has struggled to just supply enough equipment for the youth to fuel their baseball dreams of star-dom, and has been unable to organ-ize and collect enough money to build a restroom for players and spectators. As a result, some of the players end up literally urinating on the wall or in a ditch at the corner of the baseball fields. Bruhl and ChiroMission leaders, Dr. Jason Gerard and Jeff Cobelli, wanted to try something new and see if they could help them solve this problem. They asked the local coaches to price the donated equip-ment for sale and then offer it to parents and other coaches. In turn, all the money raised would be do-nated back to the Antero Mota program to build the bathroom. Not only did the community respond, they were thankful to be able to purchase the baseball equipment in lieu of receiving it for free. They appreciated the partner-ship to co-create a way they could build the bathroom and give their youth the equipment required to fuel their talent. In just one day, chiropractors and coaches raised more money than was ever raised in 30 years com-bined. Since 2012, Bruhl, a Chicago area chiropractor, has been execu-tive director for Dreamweaver International and the leader for the charity’s sport project Gear for 8 Canadian Chiropractor December 2016
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