Update: If you are Japan-Earthquake-Nuclear-reactor or Lybian-war "fatigued", please read ahead.
Update 2: I did want to address the Vitamin D2 (Ergocalciferol) versus D3 (Cholecalciferol) debate. I recommend either (or bot, at different phases of treatment) depending on my patient. Yes, Vitamin D3 is better for you and should be more effective. However, to my knowledge, there exists no PRESCRIPTION Vitamin D3 option. I can only prescribe (and have Insurance pay for) Ergocalciferol 50,000 IU (daily for a few days and then weekly for several weeks). Why is this important? It is not that I feel compelled to always write a prescription, it is that many PATIENTS WILL SIMPLY NOT BUY INTO the notion that their path to feeling better is NOT necessarily found at the pharmacy. Yes, I practice a bit of psychology too. :>)
I practice traditional Western primary care medicine in the Northeastern United States. My job is to see and treat a large cohort of "Dis-eases" in a contemporary American primary care practice. Being in full-time practice for five years has allowed me to meet tens of thousands of individuals who suffer many ills including: depression, chronic pain, substance abuse and addiction. In our society, it is the family physician who is on the front lines of the war against these illnesses. These patients are often complex cases that take time and energies not easily found in specialists' schedules. Too often, these individuals hurt the bottom line in the fee-for-visit scheme of medical business and as such are shunned by many of my colleagues. For reasons not fully obvious to me, I attract these patients. Given this vast opportunity to help others, I have tried to educate myself in the importance of having "the raw materials of life" available to us in our bodies in order to live a life without dis-ease.
In this context is how I learned of the importance of Vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency in the etiology of hard to define medical illness. Please follow me on this voyage in my description of my understanding of what I have learned.
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