Basic Pursuits

In much of the reading I've done about vitamin D, it has been stated that the best source of vitamin D is sunshine. The skin synthesizes sunlight and makes vitamin D.

But almost as a precaution, it's further stated that if you are old, you lose the ability to make D.

A recent study just published in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests otherwise.

Do something nice for yourself.

Evidence grows daily that we moderns (or are we post-moderns) are suffering from a deficiency of Vitamin D.

Ordinarily, humans manufacture their own supply of Vitamin D with help from sunshine. It's been that way for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of year.

But we post moderns spend most of our time indoors. You can't get Vitamin D from florescent lights.

I just got my latest newsletter from the Vitamin D Council. While many of the assertions of Vitamin D advocates are yet to be proven, strong evidence exists that Vitamin D may become the biggest public health issue of the decade. Epidemiological studies suggest that Vitamin D is involved in fighting many human miseries from diabetes to several forms of cancer and even autism.

The Vitamin D Council is a great resource for news and discoveries about Vitamin D.

I recently ran across an article from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition entitled, Vitamin D: importance in the prevention of cancers, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis.

It concludes that the easiest way to get Vitamin D is from the sun. But we all know that overexposure to the sun raises the risk of getting skin cancer. So how much sun is adequate for Vitamin D?