Nutrition: Sunlight-Sun Beds-Vitamin D

[Explor­ing Life] Sun­light is the essence from which all life on our planet orig­i­nates, evolves and is ener­gized. With­out sun­light we would not exist. Light and health are com­pletely inte­grated; a lack of sun­light impairs our health. For thou­sands of years, humankind was nat­u­rally exposed to sun­light, with­out the psy­cho­log­i­cal bur­den of fear we have man­u­fac­tured today. Sun­light is essen­tial to nutri­tion. It is the most impor­tant source of Vit­a­min D we have.

Vit­a­min D has gained a sig­nif­i­cant amount of atten­tion in nutri­tional sci­ence and has be her­alded by some as a won­der cure for a col­lage of dis­eases and dis­or­ders. How­ever, intu­itively we all instinc­tively know that expo­sure to sun­light is not only enjoy­able it is essen­tial. We don’t need sci­ence to con­firm a glar­ingly obvi­ous real­ity. It is inter­est­ing, how­ever, to explore the ter­rain of emerg­ing Vit­a­min D research as it relates to nutri­tion, dis­ease pre­ven­tion and cure, as well as phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal health.

Deena Kas­tor went into the 2008 Bei­jing Olympics full of hope and expec­ta­tions. But barely three miles into the race, the Amer­i­can marathon record holder frac­tured a bone in her foot. A blood test soon after revealed a sur­pris­ing pos­si­ble cul­prit: vit­a­min D defi­ciency. (Karen Asp, Run­ning on D, Runner’s World Mag­a­zine, Decem­ber 2009)

Sun­light: Myths and Reality

The first thing we must do is undo the anx­i­ety caused by years of mis­in­formed advice warn­ing us against expo­sure to the sun; equat­ing sun­light with skin can­cer has become the norm. How is it that the sin­gle most impor­tant source of energy sup­port­ing life on this planet becomes com­pletely maligned, mis­rep­re­sented, and degraded? Undoubt­edly, sun­screen man­u­fac­tur­ers have prof­ited as have the sci­en­tists cre­at­ing the sun­screen prod­ucts. Ulti­mately, how­ever, an unjus­ti­fied fear of the sun was man­u­fac­tured and paraded through the mind-numbing inter­sec­tion of sci­ence, busi­ness and the media.

While the sun is healthy for us, a sun­burn is not; it is obvi­ous that sun­burn should be avoided. This does not mean that sun­screens should be used. The best and most nat­ural defense against a sun­burn is a tan. A tan is cre­ated by intel­li­gent expo­sure to the sun over time; the deeper a tan the more nat­ural pro­tec­tion from the sun there is in the skin. The process of tan­ning requires a strong nutri­tional base as well, in other words, the nutri­tional health of the indi­vid­ual is impor­tant as a defense against sun­burn and sun damage.

Most sun­screens are toxic. The con­stant use of sun­screens cre­ate the chronic intro­duc­tion of toxic chem­i­cal directly into the blood­stream. Sun­light is not toxic. Con­sis­tent and intel­li­gent expo­sure to sun­light reg­u­lates the healthy pro­duc­tion of Vit­a­min D in the body, and builds a nat­ural and safe sun­screen called a tan. The real­ity is that intel­li­gent expo­sure to sun­light, with­out the use of a sun screen, is essen­tial to health and well-being.

Sunlight-Health-Vitamin D: Key Ideas

The Sun is the cos­mo­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non which is mainly respon­si­ble for what the world has become and it would be impos­si­ble to remove from the skies with­out end­ing the exis­tences of most of all liv­ing beings in the same process.
* Unknown

Light is the basic com­po­nent from which all life orig­i­nates, evolves, and is ener­gized. Light and health are insep­a­ra­ble.
* Ken Ceder, for­mer co-director Hip­pocrates Health Insti­tute, Boston, Massachusetts.

Nat­ural sunlight’s ben­e­fits are not lim­ited to vit­a­min D pro­duc­tion. As light enters the eyes, pho­tore­cep­tors con­vert the light into nerve impulses that travel along the optic nerve to the brain. These impulses trig­ger the hypo­thal­a­mus gland to send neu­ro­trans­mit­ters to reg­u­late the auto­matic func­tions of the body, such as blood pres­sure, body tem­per­a­ture, res­pi­ra­tion, diges­tion, sex­ual func­tion, moods, immune and hor­monal mod­u­la­tion, and cir­ca­dian rhythm.
* John Maher, DC, DCCN, FAAIM.

Humans make thou­sands of units of vit­a­min D within min­utes of whole body expo­sure to sun­light. From what we know of nature, it is unlikely such a sys­tem evolved by chance.
* Dr. John Can­nell, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Vit­a­min D Council.

Tech­ni­cally not a “vit­a­min,” vit­a­min D is in a class by itself. Its meta­bolic prod­uct, cal­citriol, is actu­ally a sec­os­teroid hor­mone that tar­gets over 2000 genes (about 10% of the human genome) in the human body.

The skin pro­duces approx­i­mately 10,000 IU vit­a­min D in response 20 to 30 min­utes sum­mer sun expo­sure: 50 times more than the US government’s rec­om­men­da­tion of 200 IU per day! [1] [2]

If you live north of the line con­nect­ing San Fran­cisco to Philadel­phia, odds are you don’t get enough vit­a­min D… World­wide, an esti­mated 1 bil­lion peo­ple have inad­e­quate lev­els of vit­a­min D in their blood, and defi­cien­cies can be found in all eth­nic­i­ties and age groups. The Nutri­tion Source: Vit­a­min D and Health — Har­vard School of Pub­lic Health

Per­haps the most per­sua­sive ratio­nale for con­sid­er­ing vit­a­min D opti­miza­tion comes from a study of 3,400 French men, age 50 years and older, cor­re­lat­ing vit­a­min D sta­tus with all-cause mor­tal­ity. Men in the low­est quar­tile of 25(OH)D lev­els had a 44% higher death rate. What Lies Behind The Vit­a­min D Revolution

Opti­miz­ing Vit­a­min D Levels

There are four main sources of Vit­a­min D: 1) sun­light; 2) sun beds; 3) food; and 4) sup­ple­men­ta­tion. The ideal source of vit­a­min D3 is daily expo­sure to the mid­day sun over as much of the skin as pos­si­ble. In colder cli­mates, sun (tan­ning) beds can pro­vide an impor­tant source of vit­a­min sup­ple­men­ta­tion. Food and sup­ple­ments can be also used to ensure an ade­quate bal­ance of vit­a­min D3 in the body.

1. Sun­light: Sun­light is the sin­gle most impor­tant source of Vit­a­min D. Reg­u­lar expo­sure to the mid­day sun in spring, sum­mer and fall, is essen­tial for main­tain­ing ade­quate lev­els of Vit­a­min D in the body. Of course, sun­burn should be avoided. How­ever, the use of sun­screen should be avoided since it blocks UVA/UVB rays. Only when expo­sure to the sun is pro­longed and avoid­able (i.e. — no shaded areas avail­able) and sun­burn is inevitable should sun­screen be applied.

   On a sunny day, full body expo­sure to the sun for 30 min­utes will pro­duce approx­i­mately 10,000 IU of vit­a­min D. Only peo­ple liv­ing lat­i­tude 35 degrees north or south get enough sun­light for vit­a­min D pro­duc­tion each year. In addi­tion, dark-skinned peo­ple require more time in the sun since their skin absorbs less sun­light. Vari­ables affect­ing vit­a­min D pro­duc­tion include:

   • Skin color, and cur­rent tan level
   • Amount of time spent in the sun
   • Weather con­di­tions such as: cloud cover and pol­lu­tion, ozone layer, sur­face reflection
   • Lat­i­tude and alti­tude (elevation)
   • Sea­son
   • Time of day
   • Use of sunscreen
   • Cloth­ing

   [See: How Much Sun­shine Does it Take to Make Enough Vit­a­min D? Per­haps More Than You Think!]

   The Nor­we­gian Insi­tute for Air Research offers an online Cal­cu­lated Ultra­vi­o­let Expo­sure Lev­els for a Healthy Vit­a­min D Sta­tus, which allows an indi­vid­ual to cal­cu­late vit­a­min D pro­duc­tion in the body around vari­ables includ­ing geo­graphic loca­tion, skin type, nature of expo­sure, and other variables.

2. Sun (Tan­ning) Bed: Dur­ing the win­ter months, a sun (tan­ning) bed should be used to main­tain Vit­a­min D lev­els. The sun bed must pro­duce UVB rays and also must use elec­tronic, not mag­netic bal­lasts (seebelow).
3. Food: The fol­low­ing foods are rich in vit­a­min D: mush­rooms (450IU/3oz); salmon (360IU/3.5oz); mack­eral (345IU/3.5oz); sar­dines (250IU/1.75oz); tuna (200IU/3oz); whole egg (20IU). While not exactly food, cod liver oil con­tains 450IU of vit­a­min D per teaspoon.
4. Dietary Sup­ple­men­ta­tion: The cor­rect sup­ple­ment to take is vit­a­min D3; vit­a­min D2 is a syn­thetic ver­sion and is less effec­tive. There is a grow­ing con­sen­sus that the RDA of 200 IU is far too low, how­ever deter­min­ing the opti­mal daily dose The Vit­a­min D Coun­cil rec­om­mends tak­ing 5,000 I.U per day until blood lev­els reach 50-80mg/nL, then low­er­ing the dose to main­tain lev­els in the ideal range. This method of determing the cor­rect dose is depen­dent upon blood tests.[3] In The Vit­a­min D Cure, Dr. James Dows pro­poses 1,000 IU per 100 pounds of body weight as a esti­mated safe daily doseage with­out requir­ing blood test­ing. As noted below, a daily doseage of 2,000 IU has been shown to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against the flu.
   

   Vit­a­min D has been shown to reduce colds and flu. A study pub­lished in the jour­nal Epi­demi­ol­ogy and Infec­tion demon­strated that tak­ing 2,000 I.U of vit­a­min D3 reduced the inci­dence of viral infec­tions. Only one per­son out of 104 in the study had the flu while tak­ing 2000 I.U. doses of vit­a­min D, while the peo­ple in the con­trol group, who did not take vit­a­min D, had three colds EACH for a total of 312 colds.[4]

   The Mer­cola Insti­tute rec­om­men­da­tion is: “Based on the most recent research, the cur­rent rec­om­men­da­tion is 35 IU’s of vit­a­min D per pound of body weight.” A per­son weigh­ing 170 pounds would there­fore require nearly 6,000 IU of vit­a­min D3. [5]

5. Med­ical Inter­ven­tion Dose: As a med­ical inter­ven­tion (e.g. using vit­a­min D to com­bat the N1H1 Flu) a dosage of 2,000 IU per kilo­gram of body weight for seven days is rec­om­mended. For exam­ple, a per­son weigh­ing 80kg would take 160,000 IU of Vit­a­min D for a one week period (a total of 1.142 mil­lion IU in a one week period). [6]

Vit­a­min D Toxicity

• The vast major­ity of peo­ple are vit­a­min D deficient.
• “If there is pub­lished evi­dence of tox­i­c­ity in adults from an intake of 250 ug (10,000 IU) per day, and that is ver­i­fied by the 25(OH)D con­cen­tra­tion, I have yet to find it.” Rein­hold Vieth, PhD [7]
• “In fact, liv­ing in Amer­ica today while wor­ry­ing about vit­a­min D tox­i­c­ity is like dying of thirst in the desert while wor­ry­ing about drown­ing.” Dr. John Can­nell [8]
• Blood lev­els of vit­a­min D requires a test not gen­er­ally sup­ported in the med­ical community.
• It is very rare to over­dose on vit­a­min D. Vit­a­min D tox­i­c­ity induces abnor­mally high serum cal­cium lev­els (hyper­cal­cemia), which could result in bone loss, kid­ney stones, and cal­ci­fi­ca­tion of organs like the heart and kid­neys if untreated over a long period of time.
• “Early reports of vit­a­min D tox­i­c­ity with doses as low as 3,600 IU/day have been chal­lenged due to method­ologic flaws. It has been reported that human tox­i­c­ity likely begins to occur after chronic daily vit­a­min D con­sump­tion of approx­i­mately 40,000 IU/day. See What Lies behind The Vit­a­min D Rev­o­lu­tion.

Vit­a­min D Testing

There are almost no symp­toms of vit­a­min D defi­ciency; a blood test is the best way to deter­mine vit­a­min D lev­els. See: Vitamin D Council: Test Kits.

Sunburns, Sunscreens, Tanning

A sunburn is to be avoided; too much of a good thing quickly turns bad. A sunburn is overexposure to the sun and is like drinking forty glasses of water a day instead of eight. It is also an indicator that there is not enough of a tan in place to help protect the skin. In any case, sunburns mean too much sun at one time.

The single most important fact anyone needs to know about vitamin D is how much nature supplies if we behave naturally, e.g., go into the sun. Humans make at least 10,000 units of vitamin D within 30 minutes of full body exposure to the sun, what is called a minimal erythemal dose. Vitamin D production in the skin occurs within minutes and is already maximized before your skin turns pink. [9]

The use of sunscreen is toxic in two ways: a) By blocking the sun's rays, the body is not able to produce Vitamin D and we develop a chronic deficiency leading to disease and a weak immune system; and b) the toxic chemicals present in the sunscreen itself enter our bloodstream through the skin.

Melatonin, an artificial hormone, encourages the skin to tan more quickly and is considered to be a replacement for sunscreen. [10] Tanning is the skin's natural response to sunlight exposure and is something to be encouraged, not avoided. However, any nutritional deficiencies will limit the body's ability to properly respond to sunlight exposure, so maintaining a high level of nutrition is essential in developing a tan. In the absence of natural sunlight, a tanning bed should be used to gain exposure. [11]

Interestingly, if you avoid getting sunburned yet have regular sun exposure, you will have a decreased risk of the dangerous form of skin cancer, melanoma. Optimizing your sun exposure in this way also reduces your risk of 16 other common cancers! [12]

Sun (Tanning) Beds

A tanning bed may be used if: a) it produces UVB rays; and b) it uses electronic not magnetic ballasts. UVB rays are the cause of vitamin D production in the body. If the tanning bed does not have UVB it is ineffective. Magnetic ballasts create a humming sound and are an audible indicator that the tanning bed is producing an unsafe energy field that will have a negative impact on the body's energy field. Unless a tanning bed meets both of these quality standard it should not be used. [13]

Sunlight and Vitamin D: Key Points

1. Sunlight = Health: Exposure to sunlight, without the use of sunscreens, is an essential requirement of health and well being. Avoidance of sunlight increases the probability of diseases and disorders.
2. Sources: Sunlight is the single most important source of Vitamin D. The psychology of fear created by medical science is misguided; exposure to the sun is natural, therapeutic, essential and enjoyable. A tanning bed can be used to provide alternative sunlight exposure during the winter months. Nutritional supplements can be used as a daily supplement, as well as a form of medical intervention (similar to a prescription medication).
3. Sunburn, Sunscreen, Tanning: Sunburns should always be avoided. A tan is the bodies natural response to sunlight, and the main preventative measure against a sunburn. Therefore, a tan is nature's most natural and important sunscreen. Melatonin accelerates the tanning response in the body. Sunscreens should be used when the danger of sunburn is immanent and there is no other recourse. Sunscreens are an absolute last resort.
4. Tanning Beds: During the winter, a tanning bed can be very useful if it produces UVB rays and uses electronic (not magnetic ballasts).

Notes

1. The source for many of these quotes is Vitamin D Council | Vitamin D Quotes.

2, 3. Supplementation recommendations taken from the Vitamin D Council.

4. See The Vitamin D Cure and Mercury-Free Flu Shots Available: But Vitamin D and Homeopathy Better Prevent the Flu by Melanie Grimes

5. This recommendation is found in How Much Vit­a­min D Do You Really Need to Take?. In another arti­cle Mer­cola states: “We rou­tinely put peo­ple on 10,000 units a day or more of vit­a­min D safely as long as we mon­i­tor them. It is impor­tant to under­stand that most of us get 10,000 units on a sunny sum­mer day if we have sig­nif­i­cant expo­sure. Although the RDA of vit­a­min D is cur­rently 400 units, it will likely change to 4,000 units in the near future.” Mer­cola | Too Much Vit­a­min D Can Cause Can­cer. There are also a num­ber of vari­ables that need to be con­sid­ered as out­lined by David Ros­tol­lan in Vit­a­min D: How to Deter­mine Your Opti­mal Dose.

6. Vit­a­min D as a med­ical inter­ven­tion: Vit­a­min D Coun­cil: N1H1 Flu and Vit­a­min D. Cur­rently, the max­i­mum sin­gle dosage avail­able seems to be 50,000 IU avail­able through Pro-Health | Vit­a­min D3 Extreme

7. Rein­hold Vieth PhD is a Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ments of Nutri­tional Sci­ences, Lab­o­ra­tory Med­i­cine, and Patho­bi­ol­ogy at the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto, and Direc­tor of the Bone and Min­eral Lab­o­ra­tory Depart­ment of Pathol­ogy and Lab­o­ra­tory Med­i­cine at Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal in Toronto.

8,9. Vit­a­min D Coun­cil | The Truth About Vit­a­min D Tox­i­c­ity.

10. See Nat­ural News | Arti­fi­cial Hor­mone May Replace Sun­screen; Allow Users to Expe­ri­ence Nutri­tional Ben­e­fit of Sun­light With­out Risk of Sunburn

11. See Mer­cola Vital­ity Tan­ning Beds for more information.

12. Mer­cola | Test Val­ues and Treat­ment for Vit­a­min D Defi­ciency.

13. Mer­cola | Can a Tan­ning Bed Be Healthy?

Resources

1. Explor­ing Life @ Deli­cious — Vit­a­min D