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Lack of Sunlight Could Lead To Early Death
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Members of this community may want to venture out of the basement more often, because Dr. Harald Dobnig and his team have found that vitamin D deficiency leads to increased mortality. These results still hold when they take into account such factors as exercise and heart disease. Low vitamin D status has 'other significant negative effects in terms of incidence of cancer, stroke, sudden cardiac death and death of heart failure,' Dr. Dobnig said. The evidence of ill effects from low vitamin D 'is just becoming overwhelming at this point.' Vitamin D3 is usually produced by exposure to the UV-B in sunlight, but in high latitudes, especially in the fall and winter, insufficient UV-B gets through the atmosphere to produce enough vitamin D3, even with hours of exposure. The researchers are recommending that people at risk for deficiency take 800 IU of vitamin D3 daily. Just don't go overboard — as a fat-soluble vitamin, D3 is more capable of causing adverse effects at unnaturally high dosages. The human body tops out at producing about 10,000 IU per day." According to the Wikipedia entry linked above, the D2 (ergocalciferol) version -- available as a vegan product -- works approximately as well to supply humans with their needed vitamin D.
I am not sure about 60thousand years - I studied once history of my family and got back to the end of 18th century. The records in this particular part of Europe end or should I say start then.
What I saw is that my grand grand born in XVIII century got married second time and had a kid in late 80ties of his life. He was a simple farm worker. The life span of others were similar. It changed when the area they lived got industrialized - life span of working men went down to 40 around end of XIX and beginning of XX century. It recovers significantly afterwards sign of reaction to bad working conditions (sick worker = not efficient worker). I suppose this varied a lot from place to place and time to time so talking about short lifespan and high mortality rates is not entirely correct.
When this was discussed a year ago I was desperate enough to try it. I had severe constant back pain from a squashed vertebrae (that happened from lifting a garbage bag out of the container under the sink) that was worsened from playing very gentle soccer on a sandy beach. It astonished me that I hurt my back just from the soccer and I was pretty desperate for a solution. After reading the article, I knew that my vitamin D intake was low because (1) I am allergic to fish, (2) I don't drink milk, (3) I'm half way to a century, (4) I'm a basement-loving geek.
I started taking fish oil (containing both vitamin A and D -- they work together) and immediately reduced my pain levels. Since then I have tried a combination of mostly synthetic D + fish oil (did not work as well, yet got the symptoms of over consumption) and eventually found the lowest level that took away all pain -- about 1,500 IU per day or about double what the article suggests.
In addition to the risk factor we geeks share for being outside less than average, vitamin D absorption declines with age and the average slashgeek seems to be in their forties or fifties.
Increasing my intake of vitamin D has saved my life, and especially the quality of my life. Frankly, I'm surprised the medical profession let this information out.
And now back to the vampire and sunburn jokes...