Practicing What We Preach: A Vitamin D Perspective
This week’s post was inspired by several conversations going on within the Mushroom Council team recently. Bart Minor, the Mushroom Council President and Chief Executive Officer, is leading the rest of us by example- he’s got his vitamin D test results in hand and he knows how to use them!
MushroomChannel (MC): How did you become aware of vitamin D and its health impact?
Bart Minor (BM): My personal awareness of vitamin D started in 2004 when Dr. Mona Calvo began talking about the idea that most people are undernourished when it comes to vitamin D and then the FDA came to (the Mushroom Council) to talk about vitamin D later that same year. Publicly, vitamin D was named one of the Top Ten Medical Breakthroughs of the Year by Time Magazine in 2007 then WebMD in 2008. There have also been studies steadily coming out related to the pediatric ramifications of low vitamin D levels.
In the last five years, the Mushroom Council as an organization has become immersed in the topic because mushrooms are the only fruit or vegetable to have naturally occurring vitamin D. Reading so much about it made me want to find out where my own vitamin D levels stood.
MC: And how did you go about getting your vitamin D level tested?
BM: That wasn’t as easy as I expected! A year ago, my doctor refused to perform the test, telling me that the vitamin D studies were still just in the research phases. When I went back I asked again, but still no. Other people I’ve talked to have had their doctors volunteer the test so I know it’s on a case by case basis. Even though I still didn’t know my level for sure, I started taking vitamin D a few times a week in accordance with recent research I had read. Then last summer I attended a seminar where self-tests were discussed and I decided to go about it that way.
Now I’m part of a five year clinical study where I test myself and mail the results in every 6 months. I was vitamin D deficient and it’s made me more aware of getting my allowance in natural ways by walking around in the sunlight for15-20 minutes on my lunch breaks and, of course, making sure my diet is full of vitamin D-rich foods like some mushrooms
MC: Any other advice for people interested in their personal vitamin D levels?
BM: Think of this as one more proactive thing you can do for yourself and I like knowing that the things I’ve incorporated into my life are actually making a difference in the numbers. I want to get good vitamin D levels down to a personal science and would encourage anyone else to join me in that.
