“The Sunlight Miracle”

Fifteen Facts You Probably Never Knew About Vitamin D and Sunlight Exposure: (Compiled by Mike Adams, based on an interview with Dr. Michael Holick, author, The UV Advantage)

Vitamin D is highly important to the health equation because it greatly adds to the prevention of osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and even effects diabetes and obesity. Vitamin D is perhaps the single most underrated nutrient in the world of nutrition. That’s probably because it’s free; your body makes it when sunlight touches your skin (all the more reason for clean skin with no cosmetic residues). Drug companies can’t sell you sunlight, so there’s no promotion of its health benefits. Therefore, America’s problem is that most people are not aware of the real story on vitamin D and health. Here is an attempted quick overview taken from an interview between Mike Adams (the Health Ranger) and Dr. Michael Holick.

1. Vitamin D is produced by your skin in response to exposure to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight.
2. The healing rays of natural sunlight (that generate vitamin D in your skin) cannot penetrate glass. So you don’t generate vitamin D when sitting in your car or home.
3. It is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body.
4. A person would have to drink ten tall glasses of vitamin D fortified milk each day just to get minimum levels of vitamin D into their diet.
5. The further you live from the equator, the longer exposure you need to the sun in order to generate vitamin D. Canada, the UK and most U.S. states are far from the equator.
6. People with dark skin pigmentation may need 20 - 30 times as much exposure to sunlight as fair skinned people to generate the same amount of vitamin D. That’s why prostate cancer is epidemic among black men -- it’s a simple, but widespread, sunlight deficiency.
7. Sufficient levels of vitamin D are crucial for calcium absorption in your intestines. Without sufficient vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium, rendering calcium supplements useless.
8. Chronic vitamin D deficiency cannot be reversed overnight it takes months of vitamin D supplementation and sunlight exposure to rebuild the body’s bones and nervous system.
9. It is impossible to generate too much vitamin D in your body from sunlight exposure because your body will self-regulate and only generate what it needs.
10. If it hurts to press firmly on your sternum, you may be suffering from chronic vitamin D deficiency right now.
11. Vitamin D is “activated” in your body by your kidneys and liver before it can be used.
12. Having kidney disease or liver damage can greatly impair your body’s ability to activate circulating vitamin D.
13. Even weak sunscreens (SPF=8) block your body’s ability to generate vitamin D by 95%. This is how sunscreen products actually cause disease by creating a critical vitamin deficiency in the body.
14. The sunscreen industry doesn’t want you to know that your body actually needs sunlight exposure because that realization would mean lower sales of sunscreen products. ‘I have a natural regime of sun protection and I am at the lake all summer long. Blueberries, Spirulina (oceanic micro-algae), Acai berries (found in Mona Vie), and pomegranate. At least get some full sunlight before turning to the sunscreen.’
15. Even though vitamin D is one of the most powerful healing chemicals in your body, your body makes it absolutely free. No prescription required.

Diseases and Conditions Caused by Vitamin D Deficiency:

• Osteoporosis is commonly caused by a lack of vitamin D, which greatly impairs calcium absorption, but don’t we drink milk in abundance here in America??
• Low vitamin D accelerates prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, depression, colon cancer and schizophrenia.
• "Rickets" is the name of a bone-wasting disease caused by vitamin D deficiency, which is surfacing again in lower socio-economic settings.
• Vitamin D deficiency may exacerbate type 2 diabetes and impair insulin production in the pancreas.
• Obesity impairs vitamin D utilization in the body, meaning obese people need twice as much vitamin D.
• Seasonal Affective Disorder is caused by a melatonin imbalance initiated by lack of exposure to sunlight.
• Chronic vitamin D deficiency is often misdiagnosed as Fibromyalgia because its symptoms are so similar: muscle weakness, aches and pains.

Your risk of developing serious diseases like diabetes and cancer is reduced 50% - 80% through simple, sensible exposure to natural sunlight 2-3 times each week. Additionally, infants who receive vitamin D supplementation (2000 units daily) have an 80% reduced risk of developing type I diabetes over the next twenty years.

Shocking Vitamin D Deficiency Statistics:

• 32% of doctors and med school students are vitamin D deficient.
• 40% of the U.S. population is vitamin D deficient, what?? Computers and TV?
• 42% of African American women of childbearing age are deficient in vitamin D.
• 48% of young girls (9-11 years old) are vitamin D deficient.
• Up to 60% of all hospital patients are vitamin D deficient.
• 76% of pregnant mothers are severely vitamin D deficient, causing widespread vitamin D deficiencies in their unborn children, which predisposes them to type 1 diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia later in life. 81% of the children born to these mothers were deficient.
• Up to 80% of nursing home patients are vitamin D deficient.

Moreover:

• Vitamin D is known to enhance the prevention of up to 77 cancers in women
• Vitamin D is used around the world to treat Psoriasis
• If enough vitamin D is stored in the summer sun it can last all winter long
• Insufficient intake of vitamin D may lead to decreased physical strength, increased muscle weakness and increased risk of disability in older women and men, according to a new study published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences.
• It is known to be essential for bone health, but recent studies have suggested that it also plays an important role in protecting against cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis and even the common cold.
• According to researcher Denise K. Houston of the Wake Forest University of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, “Higher amounts of vitamin D may be needed for the preservation of muscle strength and physical function as well as other conditions such as cancer prevention.”
• A thought provoking debate is whether vitamin D is actually a hormone? It is generated from the sun absorbed through the cholesterol on the skin and manufactured into true vitamin D. The skin is an organ so if the skin being an organ makes vitamin D might there be an argument for Vitamin D being a hormone?
• Lastly, what foods are highest in concentrated forms of vitamin D so that weekends when we are not able to get proper sunlight I can eat for vitamin D?

The best foods to consume are

• Oily fish like salmon, swordfish, mackerel and sardines (3 ½ oz salmon=350 IUs) are the best choices
• Tuna
• Oatmeal
• Sunflower seeds
• Eggs
• Sweet potatoes
• Dates
• Shiitake mushrooms
• Dandelion greens
• The herbs alfalfa, horsetail, nettle and parsley also contain Vitamin D.  

Moral of the story is to get in the sunlight!!!

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