June 20, 2024. What a deal. Sunlight’s free and you don’t even have to strap a solar panel to your back to use it. Just take off your shirt. Or your pants.
Because your skin synthesizes Vitamin D – a lot of it – when it’s exposed to sunlight. But get this: most of us are Vitamin D-deficient. And this matters a lot. As more studies focus on it, Vitamin D-deficiency looks more and more like a causal factor in everything from obesity to arthritis to high blood pressure to diabetes to breast, colon and other forms of cancer.
Sure, Vitamin D’s about bone health, too – because without Vitamin D you can’t absorb and use calcium to strengthen and maintain your bones. But it’s about much more. Vitamin D is actually a hormone that’s centrally involved in your metabolism – and in muscle, cardiac, immune and neurological functions.
So while the days are long and the sun is high, you might want to rethink your relationship with the sun. I’m not suggesting sun worship. I’m just thinking that, when it comes to the sun, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
You and me – deficient?
How did this happen? Long story short: for millions of years, until a few decades ago, we humans and our primate ancestors spent most of our days outdoors and in the sun. During the last century, many of us began to work indoors five days a week. And about thirty years ago, the ‘experts’ told us to avoid direct sunlight in order to avoid wrinkles, skin damage and cancer. That’s when things got really bad, according to Michael Holick, Ph.D., M.D., the man responsible for the first isolation and identification of the active form of Vitamin D and author of The Vitamin D Solution.
“The dermatology community and, more recently, the World Health Organization have recommended that people never be exposed to direct sunlight. This has been a major cause of this worldwide pandemic of Vitamin D deficiency. Drug companies can sell fear, but they can’t sell you sunlight, so there’s no promotion of the sun’s health benefits… Some fifty thousand to seventy thousand Americans die prematurely each year because of insufficient UV exposure, compared with nine thousand to ten thousand deaths in the U.S. due to skin cancer – skin cancer that can be prevented and treated when detected early… Melanoma is seen more often in people who do not receive regular, moderate sun exposure than in those who regularly spend time in the sun. Most melanomas also occur on parts of the body that receive little or no sun exposure.”
The Vitamin D Solution is not an excuse for a tan. It advocates a “sensible amount of unprotected sun exposure“. What’s ‘sensible’? “Our richest source of Vitamin D is the sun. Most of us need only a few minutes a day of sun exposure during the summer months to maintain healthy Vitamin D levels throughout the year.”
If you still want to keep your face out of the sun, that’s OK. It’s only 9% of your skin. Your legs are 36%. Your arms are 18%. Your back: another 18%. So take off your shirt. And/or your pants.
If this has you re-thinking your relationship with the sun, check out the book – especially the eight-page “Holick’s Sensible Sun Table” to calculate how much sun you should get based on your skin type and where you live.
And what time of year it is. Plenty of sun to go around as we approach the summer solstice.
New Recommended Daily Amounts of Vitamin D and Calcium, from the National Institutes of Health
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Take a walk on the sunny side. Any walk. Try a Better Cheaper Slower Walk – or map your own hiking trail to better health.
The Walk That Ate New York
The Walk That Ate San Francisco
The Trek That Ate (Organic in) Nepal
The Dark Ages
Old folks like me (should) fear falling because, get this: of the 300,000 men and women over 65 who fracture a hip this year, 10 – 20% will die within a year. And 50% won’t regain their mobility; 25% will move to nursing homes. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports this in a study that shows Vitamin D supplementation to dramatically reduce the incidence of hip fracture.
Specifically, the study showed the benefit resulted from the daily supplement of 700 – 800 IU of Vitamin D and suggested that the addition of a 700-milligram calcium supplement may be necessary. How does this compare with free sunlight? Well, if you’re a 20-year old, three or four weekly “sensible” sun exposures get you the equivalent of 20,000 IU. If you’re 70, you can still convert that amount of solar energy to 3,000 – 5,000 IU. So get out there.
Of course, not falling down is a really good way to prevent all sorts of fractures. The Better Cheaper Way: balance training. Outdoors. In the sun. Stronger bones? Try Better Cheaper strength training.
Seasonal Affective Disorder
It’s SAD. When the sunlight hours get shorter here in the northern hemisphere in six months, the sun gets lower and weaker in the sky. Sad for everybody, SAD for some. Darkness prompts the body to produce melatonin, which slows everything down.
Some bodies can’t suppress the melatonin release; those bodies end up with a major depressive syndrome. For many of them, daily “bright light therapy” – especially blue light therapy, is the solution. I’m no doctor and I’m not writing a prescription here. I’m just saying – get outside for a few minutes at high noon whenever you can. It feels good. It’s free.