Can This 7-Cent Vitamin Prevent Diabetes ?

[Hum]

Researchers have launched the world?s first large, definitive clinical trial to find out if vitamin D supplements can stave off type 2 diabetes in people at high risk for the disease.

About 20 US medical centers are participating in the National Institutes of Health-funded trial, known as the D2d study, which will include some 2,500 volunteers with prediabetes, a problem affecting 79 million Americans.

?Without an effective intervention, about 10 percent of people with prediabetes will progress to type 2 diabetes each year,? reports Anastassios Pittas, MD, co-director of the Diabetes Center at Tufts Medical Center, who has received a grant of more than $40 million over five years from the NIH as part of the D2d study.

In the double-blinded clinical study, prediabetic participants ages 30 and older will be randomly assigned to take 4,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D3 or a placebo. Their health will be tracked for about four years.

New strategies are urgently needed to halt the diabetes epidemic, which now affects nearly 26 million Americans?with about 1.9 million new cases diagnosed each year, according to the American Diabetes Association. Rates have been rising in tandem with the obesity epidemic.

?There?s a lot of hype about potential benefits of vitamin D?which is one of the most popular supplements with sales of $425 million a year in 2009?but not enough good scientific evidence to support a recommendation for or against taking it for diabetes prevention,? adds Dr. Pittas.

However, there are strong signals that the inexpensive vitamin?available for as little as 7 cents per pill?might be helpful.

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[theyarecomingforyou]

Or people could spend nothing and simply go out in the sun occasionally.

[Hum]

^ diabetes or skin cancer ... decisions, decisions.

[Lizardslap]

ill take skin cancer I have diabetes and it blows