SKIN SIGNS THAT YOU ARE IN
NEED OF SOME VITAMIN D
Vitamin D is important for good overall health and strong and healthy bones.
It’s also an important factor in making sure your muscles, heart, lungs and
brain work well and that your body can fight infection .
by Skin Vision in Articles
Vitamin D seems to be getting some positive publicity lately,
but the tide of public opinion is yet to shift on the importance of
sunlight in this equation. While scientists debate the topic, perhaps
a conclusion can be reached with some good old-fashioned logic.
A quick stroll around any Walgreens shows the trend these days to
lather sunscreen each day to protect against damage from the sun.
Sunscreen under your make-up, sunscreen in your
make-up, sunscreen for baby, sunscreen for those who are
sweating, sunscreen with added tanner, the list goes on. This
would all be well and good, except it isn’t working! Our
overuse of sunscreen hasn’t stopped skin cancer at all, it is actually
increasing! On top of that, people are getting the most
dangerous types of skin cancer in places the sun
never even touches. Something here just doesn’t add up…
First, let’s break down what role the sun plays in our
bio chemistry, and why it is important in the first place.
Organisms like plants and algae use sunlight for photosynthesis
to create oxygen and other important by-products. Sunlight
doesn’t work quite the same way for us, but is still just as
important. When we are exposed to ultraviolet B light from
the sun or artificial sources, vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol
is created photochemically in our skin. Food sources like
fatty fish, eggs, and meat also provide D3. However, once
Vitamin D enters the body, it is then transported through
the bloodstream to the liver where it is converted into the
prohormone calcidiol. Calcidiol is then converted by the
kidneys or organisms in the immune system into calationol.
Calatinol circulates as a hormone and regulates mineral
concentration in the blood (including calcium), function
of the neuromuscular and immune systems and gene
proliferation (this is the reason for the link between
Vitamin D deficiency and cancers). Vitamin D3 can be
obtained by adequate sun exposure or by oral
supplementation, but which is better? For years and years
(basically all of human history until the last few hundred
years) vitamin D was obtained from the sun in varied
amounts based on proximity to the equator. Obtaining
Vitamin D from food wasn’t really a feasible option, since
most foods didn’t have any mentionable level of Vitamin D.
People who got the most sun exposure because
they lived in hot areas of the world developed
excess melanin (a darker skin pigment) to block burning
while lighter skinned people could produce Vitamin D
(and a sunburn) a lot more quickly. This system worked
really well when in the time when people lived in the
same basic area their whole lives, but now a light-skinned
person like me could go live in Ecuador or a naturally dark
skinned person could move to Moscow. For this reason,
people with lighter skin need less sun exposure
to get their vitamin D, while those with darker
skin need much more sun to get the same amount.
These days, health experts propose that vitamin
D deficiency is the most rampant and dangerous vitamin
deficiency. What then, is the best way to get this all
important vitamin, the sun or a supplement? No matter
how Vitamin D is obtained, it ends up in the exact same
form once it hits the liver (as long as the oral form is D3).
While I would personally suggest getting Vitamin D from the
sun if possible because of the other benefits of sun exposure,
the most important thing is to just get Vitamin D. If sun
exposure is not possible or not feasible, supplementing orally is
necessary. The amount of Vitamin D a person should
take varies by person, and a blood test is the only
certain way to tell if you are getting the right dose orally
(the body regulates this quite well if you are getting it
from the sun). You want to get your 25(OH)D levels tested
and aim for getting them between 50 and 70. Experts are
now estimating that most people need at least 10 times the
suggested RDA (400 IU) of Vitamin D to accomplish this.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to get your
vitamin D from the sun, your body will tell you how
much you need and when you have enough (hello,
sunburn). The goal is to get adequate sun and not ever burn.
For light skinned people this may be only 15-30 minutes,
but darker skinned people may need two hours or more!
So then, lather on the sunscreen, right? Not so fast! The
chemicals in sunscreen have been linked to cancer
themselves (hmmm, could that be the reason for the
increasing
skin
cancer
rates?).
Chemicals
in
suns creens are also found to create free radicals in the body
and produce an estrogenic effect (man boobs anyone?).
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