Thursday, July 11, 2013

so while on the subject of vitamin D

Well I’ve said it before but there are profound benefits from getting your daily vitamin D exposure and best source is sunlight not supplements.

Just listened to a webinar by Prof. Michael Holick from Boston University Medical Centre who has been researching benefits of vitamin D for forty years! It beats me why in all that time we’ve been diligently avoiding sun exposure, slathering ourselves in toxic sun-protective chemicals. I’ve never fully subscribed to the cover-up scare campaign, so now I’m very happy to simplify and summarise some of the science as put forward by Prof. Holick. 

In essence, middle-of-the day sunlight exposure stimulates the production of vitamin D first in the liver then the activated form is produced in the kidneys. The kidney vitamin D is involved in bone metabolism but in fact there are vitamin D receptors in every cell and tissue of your body. They are needed for the cell to mature and it is this vitamin D in cells that is responsible for gene expression.

At least 200, but maybe 2000 genes are regulated by vitamin D. Holick’s studies have demonstrated that 82 genes which were high-expressed at baseline, were down-regulated with vitamin D supplementation and the converse occurred for 209 genes which were low-expressed at baseline. What are these particular genes that are so strongly influenced by vitamin D? Wel, they're the ones responsible for immune response, cytokine production, how you feel when under stress, the way your body responds to stress and how well it repairs damaged DNA. No surprises then that those individuals with the highest levels of vitamin D have massively reduced rates of diabetes, MS, cardiovascular disease and all types of cancer. They were probably less stressed and less depressed as well although those results were seen in a separate study.

Don’t know about you, but it’s midday, the sun is shining and I’m going out to get my daily dose. If you want to know how much time you need in the sun depending on your geographical location, time of day, season, skin colour and state of dress or undress, simply download the app for your iPad or iPhone. 

Pretty simple stuff and how good does that sunshine make you feel?

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