Published on June 14, 2024
Happy Birthday wishes to our amazing founder, Carole Baggerly
Key Points
- Today, June 14th, is our founder Carole Baggerly’s birthday – sign her digital birthday card below!
- GrassrootsHealth and D*action were started after Carole’s experience with breast cancer and its treatment – watch the video to hear her story
- D*action is about more than just testing vitamin D levels; it is about participating to improve vitamin D levels for ALL through measurement, education, action, research, and most importantly, awareness and advocacy
Today, June 14th, is the birthday of a very special person – our founder, Carole Baggerly!
Share your birthday wishes by signing Carole’s digital birthday card!
Carole’s Breast Cancer Turned D*action Story: The motivation behind the beginning of GrassrootsHealth
Carole Baggerly was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005. As she describes it, the cancer was bad enough, but then, she had the treatment for cancer. She had a mastectomy, chemotherapy (which permanently damaged some of her body), and radiation (until she bled), and all of that led her to an intense desire to find a better way to address breast cancer.
Through her research and the research of the scientists she met in the months that followed, she found a way to address it – through prevention.
Carole was invited to attend a two day seminar in May of 2007, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, with researchers from all over the world presenting what they knew about vitamin D and cancer. So much was already known about vitamin D and cancer! Yet what were they going to do with the information? What was the researchers’ response to how they were going to get the message out?
Carole immediately realized that, while these researchers had spectacular scientific knowledge about the role of vitamin D in cancer prevention, their message would fail to get out without a dedicated “sales” team!
She then spent the next three months travelling the United States and Canada to visit vitamin D researchers with the goal of creating a defined message about vitamin D. Unfortunately, the question that is often asked, “What dose should I take?” was the wrong question to be answering and would therefore lead to the wrong message… since someone’s dose depends on several different factors and varies widely from person to person.
Based on a consensus from a panel of now 48 respected vitamin D scientists from around the world, the key message about vitamin D remains the same as it was first defined at the start of D*action – the 25(OH) vitamin D level in the blood should be 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L), and given that, the correct dose can be determined.
With this as the core message, D*action was born to help get the message out, to give access to many individuals who did not have a way to test their vitamin D level at the time, and to further define the health outcomes related to a level within the 40-60 ng/ml range.
A Tribute to Carole’s Legacy with GrassrootsHealth, from William B. Grant, PhD
Carole Baggerly entered the field of vitamin D research and advocacy quite by accident. After she had survived breast cancer treatment in 2005, her general practitioner told her that she had osteopenia or osteoarthritis and should start taking vitamin D. As a good researcher she researched vitamin D and learned that vitamin D reduces risk of breast cancer and that Cedric Garland at UCSD was one of the discovers of that fact. She met with Cedric and became convinced that the effects of vitamin D on cancer were real. Later, with her husband Leo, she drove around the US during two summers meeting vitamin D researchers and asking what role she, as a retired business woman, could have in advancing the public’s interest in vitamin D. She also realized that the medical and pharmaceutical system in the US was not interested in vitamin D. As a result, in 2007, she formed GrassrootsHealth as a non-profit organization to tell the general public the benefits of vitamin D, and she enrolled about 40 vitamin D researchers as advisors. She also started the GrassrootsHealth self-sponsored Vitamin D*action cohort for people to use mail-in blood spot tests to measure their serum 25(OH)D concentrations and report on health status twice yearly. The results from this cohort have been used in presentations and several journal publications.
Carole’s work has some measurable results. The first paper using D*action cohort data, was published in 2011. This paper was a wake-up call as the first publication showing the dose response relationship as a curve versus a linear relationship, and showing the uniqueness of individual response… Read More Here
What is D*action?
D*action started out as a 5 year (now on-going) public health project to provide education and research to SOLVE the vitamin D deficiency epidemic, by measuring vitamin D serum levels, collecting health data from participants, and tracking the health effects of getting to levels of 40-60 ng/ml (100-150 nmol/L).
Take action now! We know enough to reduce diseases today.
- Measure your vitamin D level (sign up and participate in the study)
- Adjust your level (through supplementation, co-nutrients, sun, food)
- Re-test to see if you’ve achieved your target
- Spread the word to everyone you know!
Learn more about what is involved in participation, the achievements GrassrootsHealth has made over the years, and how GrassrootsHealth and vitamin D has changed the lives of others.
Order Your Kit to Participate or Donate Today
Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D levels 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)
