The One Myth About Vitamin D…
…Hint, It’s Not A Vitamin?
Although the Northern Hemisphere Winter solstice starts about the third week of December, Vitamin D Winter begins mid-October and ends mid-March for everyone who lives above the 37th Parallel.
Vitamin D Winter is the time of year when the sun’s energy, at certain latitudes, is insufficient to allow your skin to make any Vitamin D. According to researchers, your latitude also impacts your serum level of Vitamin D all year-round (Leary, et al.).
“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.
Vitamin D is neither a vitamin nor a supplement. It’s a secosteroid hormone made naturally when your skin is exposed to sunlight or a sunbed. No dietary source for “The Sunshine Vitamin” even comes close to vitamin D levels made naturally from ultraviolet light B (UVB 315 nm–280 nm) exposure.
This is an important distinction because Vitamin D you make from the sun and Vitamin D you get from a supplement are two different animals. For example, according to Dr. Sorenson, research shows there are high levels of bone fractures among those who take Vitamin D supplements compared to those who get their Vitamin D naturally through sunshine or a sunbed (Sorenson).
There is either some other photoproduct responsible for bone health or the two forms of Vitamin D are synthesized differently by your body.
In either case, sunshine or sunbed seem to be preferable sources for bone health. It makes sense from a Darwinian theory of evolution standpoint. We’ve evolved millions of years without sunscreen or clothing for that matter. Sunscreen is only several decades old.
“For hundreds of thousands of years, man has lived with the sun: Our ancestors were outdoors far more often than indoors. We developed a dependence on sunshine for health and life, so the idea that sunlight is dangerous does not make sense. How could we have evolved and survived as a species, if we were that vulnerable to something humans have been constantly exposed to for their entire existence?”
~ Dr. Frank Lipman, an internationally recognized expert in the fields of Integrative and Functional Medicine and practicing physician.
Don’t you find it odd that a human is the only primate who chooses to live far from the equator? As a species, we only left Subsahara Africa about 18,000 years ago. Most humans worked outdoors until about 200 hundred years ago. That’s hardly enough time, evolutionarily speaking, for us to no longer need sunshine for good health.
Those who advocate for sun avoidance will tell you, at all costs, avoid the sun or sunbeds. Take your vitamins and shut up.
However, Professor Shuster believes otherwise.
“Excessive avoidance and UV screening is a danger because it does not allow a tan, nature’s own sun block, to develop and as a result exposure is likely to cause sun-burn.”
~ Sam Shuster, Author, “The Skin Cancer Cover-up,” and Professor Emeritus, Department of Dermatology, Newcastle University
This iatrogenic sun-avoidance advice is doing much more harm than good. Additionally, such advice only benefits the whitest of skin types. That makes the sun and sunbed avoidance advice not only iatrogenic but also kind of racist, don’t you think?
I believe a message of moderation, sunburn avoidance instead of sun or sunbed avoidance, is the proper and healthiest message of all. Sunburn is where long-term damage is done. Just like eating the right quality and quantity of food is essential to good health, so it is true when consuming sunshine or a sunbed.
Nature got it right; you need sunshine like you need food, air, and water. Never sunburn.
(1) Effect of Latitude on Vitamin D Levels by Patrick F. Leary, DO, MS; Ina Zamfirova, MS; Johnathan Au, MPH; Ward H. McCracken, DO
(2) Bone, vitamin D supplements, and sunlight by Marc Sorenson, EdD.
