Recently Diagnosed or Relapsed? Stop Looking For a Miracle Cure, and Use Evidence-Based Therapies To Enhance Your Treatment and Prolong Your Remission
Multiple Myeloma an incurable disease, but I have spent the last 25 years in remission using a blend of conventional oncology and evidence-based nutrition, supplementation, and lifestyle therapies from peer-reviewed studies that your oncologist probably hasn't told you about.
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How Myeloma Benefits from Vitamin D
The Endocrine Society’s recent clinical practice guidelines on vitamin D leave out myeloma patients and survivors as a group that benefit from vitamin D supplementation so I thought I would focus on MM patients and why they need to supplement with vitamin D.
I have been living with multiple myeloma since my diagnosis in early 1994. Though I’ve been in complete remission since April of 1999, I believe that I can relapse at any time. After all, all MM survivors eventually relapse so I have to live life as if I have monoclonal proteins hiding in my bone marrow.
Nutritional supplementation therefore, is an important component of my anti-MM lifestyle. I supplement with 1000 IU twice daily with vitamin D3. My serum levels of vitamin D range from 35 ng/mL to 45 ng/mL.
I need to point out at the outset that because we can get vitamin D from food and/or sunshine as well as supplementation, it is necessary to have a blood test to learn a person’s blood levels. Supplementing with a specific dose may or may not translate to a specific amount of vitamin D in your system.
How does vitamin D3 benefit multiple myeloma patients?
- Bone Health: Multiple myeloma often leads to bone damage and increased risk of fractures. Vitamin D3 helps maintain bone density and strength, which can be beneficial in reducing skeletal complications in these patients.
- Immune System Modulation: Vitamin D3 plays a role in modulating the immune system. It can enhance the body’s ability to fight infections, which is particularly important for multiple myeloma patients who often have weakened immune systems.
- Cancer Cell Regulation: Some studies suggest that vitamin D3 might have anti-cancer properties, including inhibiting cancer cell growth and inducing apoptosis (programmed cell death) in cancer cells. This can potentially help in controlling the progression of multiple myeloma.
- Anti-inflammatory Effects: Vitamin D3 has anti-inflammatory properties, which might help reduce inflammation associated with multiple myeloma and its treatment.
- Quality of Life: Adequate levels of vitamin D3 are associated with better overall health and well-being. Ensuring sufficient vitamin D3 levels might help improve the quality of life for multiple myeloma patients by enhancing mood and reducing fatigue.
If a newly diagnosed MM patient asks his/her oncologist about the possible benefit of vitamin D supplementation, they might get the Endocrine Society’s recent clinical practice guidelines on vitamin D.
If the NDMM patient is not working with a MM specialist, the oncologist may not understand the specific needs of NDMM patients and survivors.
man hand holding his nutritional supplemets, healthy lifestyle background.
If you are a newly diagnosed MM patient remember that, according to research, more than 90% of MM patients will experience bone involvement at tome time during their MM experience.
If you are a MM survivor and you’d like to learn more about vitamin D, curcumin, resveratrol, etc. please shoot me an email at David.PeopleBeatingCancer@gmail.com
Thanks,
David Emerson
- MM Survivor
- MM Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Vitamin D: Who Benefits From Supplements Now?
“The bottom line of these guidelines is that there is a very limited role for vitamin D supplementation and for screening for vitamin D deficiency in the general population…
The guidelines generally endorse the recommended dietary allowances (RDA) that were set forth by the Institute of Medicine (now known as the National Academy of Medicine) in 2011, which include an RDA of 600 IU daily for adults until age 70 and 800 IU daily after age 70…”
Vitamin D and Multiple Myeloma: A Scoping Review
“…As the global incidence of multiple myeloma (MM) increases, the identification of modifiable risk factors for disease prevention becomes paramount. Maintaining optimal vitamin D status is a candidate for prevention efforts, based on pre-clinical evidence of a possible role in disease activity and progression…
Vitamin D deficiency is fairly common among patients with MM, with 42.3% of participants in the studies identified as having a vitamin D deficiency. No included publication reported on vitamin D status and the risk of developing or being newly diagnosed with MM…
The definition of vitamin D status as either “sufficient” or “deficient” varied between publications according to both cutoff values and units of measurement.
The most common paired cutoff values within the same publication (n = 4) [18,21,22,27] were <20 ng/mL 25(OH)D (deficient) and >30 ng/mL 25(OH)D (sufficient).
After conversion of ng/mL to nmol/L (and vice versa), the most common individual cutoff value for vitamin D deficiency from all publications was <50 nmol/L (<20 ng/mL) 25(OH)D (n = 9) [14,18,19,21,22,24,26,27,28] and >75 nmol/L (>30 ng/mL) 25(OH)D for vitamin D sufficiency (n = 6) [17,18,21,22,27,28]…”