Published on August 20, 2024
Listen to this exclusive interview with Dr. Linda Rapson, a vitamin D expert, advocate, and speaker at the upcoming Empowering Health with Vitamin D Symposium
Key Points
- Signs and symptoms of vitamin D deficiency include stiffness, muscle/bone pain, muscle weakness (weak grip, difficulty getting out of a chair, problems climbing stairs), unsteady gait/poor balance, stress fractures, neuropathic pain
- In this video interview, Dr. Rapson discusses her vitamin D deficiency symptoms, with muscle weakness that improved days after starting vitamin D supplementation. She addresses issues including the lack of nutrition training among most medical professionals and difficulties associated with coverage for vitamin D testing in Canada, and she discusses her use of both vitamin D testing/supplementation and acupuncture in addressing pain for her patients.
Dr. Linda Rapson is a medical doctor who has been specializing in the treatment of pain since the early 1990s, and she will be speaking on the topic of “Vitamin D Deficiency and Pain” in the upcoming Empowering Health with Vitamin D symposium, held in Canada on November 1, 2024. We recently shared a past webinar with Dr. Rapson on Vitamin D and Chronic Pain, which you can view here.
In the video below, Jen Aliano, Director of GrassrootsHealth, interviews Dr. Rapson about her experiences with vitamin D both personally and in her medical clinic. Dr. Rapson discusses her vitamin D deficiency symptoms, with muscle weakness that improved days after starting vitamin D supplementation. She addresses issues including the lack of nutrition training among most medical professionals and difficulties associated with coverage for vitamin D testing in Canada, and she discusses her use of both vitamin D testing/supplementation and acupuncture in addressing pain for her patients.
About Dr. Linda Rapson, MD, CAFCI
Dr. Rapson has been an influential advocate for the awareness and inclusion of acupuncture and nutrition in mainstream medicine. Her areas of expertise include neuropathic pain in spinal cord injury as well as ubiquitous chronic myofascial pain. Guided by the medical literature on chronic pain, she began testing Vitamin D levels in her pain patients in 2004 and was shocked to find very low levels in many of them. Today she continues to advocate for Vitamin D in general, not only for pain management, but also for general health. She was a co-winner of the prestigious Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2021 for her leadership in promoting integrative medicine in Canada.
Watch the Video Interview
The Empowering Health with Vitamin D Symposium
Mark your calendars! Join the virtual symposium on Vitamin D Day, November 1st.
Learn more about the event here.
Measure Your Levels of Vitamin D, Magnesium, and Other Important Nutrients and Markers
Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3s, zinc and other nutrient levels can help improve your health now and for your future. Choose which to measure, such as your vitamin D, omega-3s, and essential minerals including magnesium and zinc, by creating your custom home test kit today. Take steps to improve the status of each of these measurements to benefit your overall health. You can also track your own intakes, symptoms and results to see what works best for YOU.
Enroll and test your levels today, learn what steps to take to improve your status of vitamin D (see below) and other nutrients and blood markers, and take action! By enrolling in the GrassrootsHealth projects, you are not only contributing valuable information to everyone, you are also gaining knowledge about how you could improve your own health through measuring and tracking your nutrient status, and educating yourself on how to improve it.
How Can You Use this Information for YOUR Health?
Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D and other nutrient levels can help improve your health now and for your future. Measuring is the only way to make sure you are getting enough!
STEP 1 Order your at-home blood spot test kit to measure vitamin D and other nutrients of concern to you, such as omega-3s, magnesium, essential and toxic elements (zinc, copper, selenium, lead, cadmium, mercury); include hsCRP as a marker of inflammation or HbA1c for blood sugar health
STEP 2 Answer the online questionnaire as part of the GrassrootsHealth study
STEP 3 Using our educational materials and tools (such as our dose calculators), assess your results to determine if you are in your desired target range or if actions should be taken to get there
STEP 4 After 3-6 months of implementing your changes, re-test to see if you have achieved your target level(s)
