Slashdot Mirror
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.
.. since pollution decreases sunlight penetration, whereas down south we have cleaner air and a lovely big ozone hole.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
This is EASY, people. It's not like they don't sell UVB 2% up to 10% daylight CPF screw in light bulbs at any decent pet store that carries reptiles.
It would be nice to know the proper balance between too much and not enough. Given the fact that too much will cause cancer and an equally alarming rate.
We'll all going to die!
I have this uneasy feeling that sooner or later, we're all going to die.
Loose lips lose spit.
and outside one may get onto these creatures, they call them women, strangely they all wear clothes and behave differently than in documentaries that we like to watch between coding sessions.
Time to add another UV tube to my growing collection of case mods.
If this were true, then Vampires would die young. But they're immortal. Thus this theory holds no water.
I should like, totally do science for a living.
Low levels of vitamin D have been implicated in the susceptibility and severity of attack in patients who have auto-immune diseases. Multiple Sclerosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis are two of the diseases that seem to show a link. Coversely, patients suffering from Sarcoidosis ( another auto-immune disease ) where the body produces too much vitamin D, may benefit from staying out of the sun and cutting vitamin D out of their diet.
you should live a healthy life if you don't want to die early.
does vitamin d in milk contain the same sub-elements as that found in UV? If not, would milk be a viable alternative to UV exposure at all?
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
The article acknowledges its own shortcomings: Vitamin D levels could possibly be used as a measurement of sunlight exposure in people not taking supplements and not conscientiously eating the proper foods. So when someone's chronically ill or massively overweight and doesn't go outside to exercise, their vitamin D levels will be decreased. Those people already have an increased 8 year mortality regardless of how much vitamin D they consume or have in their diet. It's like the studies "linking" coffee to lung cancer years ago: once it was realized that lots of people smoke when they drink coffee, those studies looked ridiculous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding_variable
Seriously, you only have to go to northern sweden/norway to see this in action. You'll find a combination of zombies and nutcases!
OK wise guy... now explain California!
Well, that would explain the lower population number in Norway, for instance, where Wikipedia says that they are only 4.7 millions inhabitants in such a beautiful country.
If your vitamin D level gets down during winter and you catch a rainy summer, you're doomed!
deathmatch and early death, or exercising and long life... the choice is clear *starts up HL2*
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
I always stand in the sun when I smoke. Do I break even?
We sometimes have entire months here in Ireland with little direct sunshine (I think last year some places had an entire 80 day block with rain each day, and that was in the lousy summer we had last year).
In any case, it's not a matter of the amount of light in winter. It is to do with UVB rays, and these don't reach us in the winter due to the sun being low in the horizon and refraction from the rays passing through more atmosphere. Not only that, but even past the height of winter, these rays only reach us when the sun is higher in the sky (the middle of the day).
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Last I checked the mortality rate was 100%
Disclaimer: IAAJD (I am a junior doctor) but this is NOT medical advice. Please consult your physician for your specific situation.
Vitamin D supplements come in two forms: ergocalciferol and cholecalciferol. Studies suggest that cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) increases serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OH-D) more efficiently than does ergocalciferol (vitamin D2). Milk in the United States has been fortified with vitamin D3 (the natural form made through sunlight) since the 1940. This was mandated and reduced the incidence rate of juvenile rickets by 85% in the United States.
Calcitriol is the most active metabolite of vitamin D. It can frequently cause hypercalcemia and/or hypercalciuria, necessitating close monitoring and adjustment of calcium intake and calcitriol dose. Therefore, it isn't recommended that calcitriol be given for vitamin D supplementation in osteoporosis. However, calcitriol or other vitamin D analogs are an important component of therapy for secondary hyperparathyroidism in chronic kidney disease.
Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. The intake at which the dose of vitamin D becomes toxic is not clear. In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences defined the Safe Upper Limit for vitamin D as 2000 IU/day. Newer data however indicate that higher doses are safe at least over a several-month period. Doses as high as 10,000 IU per day for up to five months were not associated with toxicity. It is important to inquire about additional dietary supplements (some of which contain vitamin D) that patients may be taking before prescribing extra vitamin D. Excessive vitamin D, especially combined with calcium supplementation may cause hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria, and kidney stones.
So be careful and only take the amounts listed on your supplement bottles and inquire with your doctor before starting anything. We have a mentality here in the United States that more is better. When it comes to the human body moderation is key.
As a side note, I also don't really understand the significance of Vitamin D's fat solubility making it any more or less dangerous in higher dosages.
Vitamin D is produced by the skin in response to certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light, and as such is not a true vitamin (since vitamins are substances we can't naturally produce -- it's a hormone). Vitamin D is also found in certain fats (e.g. cod-liver oil).
This basic form of Vitamin D gets processed by the liver into an second form (25-hydroxyvitamin D3), and then by the kidneys into the active form 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, which tells your body how much calcium to draw out of your food. If you don't have enough calcium in your diet, but enough Vitamin D, the body can even draw the calcium out of your bones. Calcium is also required for the correct transmission of brain signals, so too little vitamin D can also lead to seizures.
To veer back to the OP's question: whether the synthetic vitamin D additive to milk products (as opposed to the vitamin D we used to create in foods in the 1920's and 1930's using mecury lamp ultraviolet radiation) is Vitamin D or Vitamin D3 is pretty much irrelevant for our body, but I believe it is the latter, yes.
Aside: Did you know we can cure cancer with Vitamin D? Sadly, the dosis required is lethal to humans... they're working on it.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Sun...light?
Now you're just making stuff up!
I used to believe you, Slashdot. But now you're all 'sun' this, and 'outside' that, like all those other nutbags! Screw you guys! Go ahead, go outside, see if I care! Maybe you'll get eaten by one of those 'wild animal' things you people are always going on about. Like a..uh..what was it...beer? Bar? Oh, right... A bear! Maybe you'll get eaten by a bear! It'd serve you right!
This post was brought to you by the latter hours of a horrible caffeine bender which failed to see anything accomplished. Enjoy!
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Do correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that the problem with lipophilic substances is that they can lead to poisoning easier because they tend to accumulate in the fatty tissues of the body and cannot be excreted easily; an excess of water soluble vitamins on the other hand would be flushed out the next time you urinate. :)
Disclaimer: I'm not even a little bit of a doctor, so this might be completely wrong or misremembered...
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
My MD said it's nothing to worry about because I'll usually make the saving throw for death from vitamin deficiency due to my high stamina as an ogre.
Err, wait that was my DM...
Still, he does play a Cleric.
scientists try to scare us about global warming, but nature has a way to balance things out, we don't have to do anything to fight global warming:
with hotter temperatures, vampires get more sun, thus dying off. with less vampires to prey on pirates, pirate numbers explode, thus lowering global temperatures. with global temperatures down, vampires get less sun, rebound in population, and begin keeping piurate populations in check again
see the beauty and wonder of the natural world?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"OK wise guy... now explain California!"
Easy. It's even more dangerous to mix basement-dwelling troglodytes with sunshine-loving surface dwellers. They may not interact much, but when they do all sorts of horrible side-effects can occur (read George Wells' "The Time Machine" for examples).
But we don't wants to, Master. It burnss us. Don't make uss go away from preciouss...
*huggles his monitor*
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm a perfectly adapted vitamin D producing machine.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I'm from Essex. They behave exactly like that.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
.
The best way is to look at the median lifespan - the age to which 50% of people reached or to look at life expectancy at age 20. Life expectancy at 20 didn't reach the 60's till the last century. There were certainly some lucky people who survived to age 70 or 80, but that was the exception rather than the rule. However the biggest gains in life expectancy in the modern era weren't because of level 1 trauma centers and ICUs. The big improvements were due to things like public sanitation, improved nutrition, vaccinations, refrigeration, and simple prenatal and antenatal care.
There's no evidence to suggest people died earlier 5,000 or 50,000 years ago -- and there's strong counter evidence for that during historical periods of the last 3-5k years. Um. No. The life expectancy at birth in the Bronze age, Upper Paleolithic, and Neolithic was all 33 years or less. If you assume a 30% infant mortality it still doesn't average out to approach modern life expectancy. And until the early 20th century, the average life expectancy at birth didn't cross 40. That's not even cutting edge research, that's textbook/encyclopedia data. However if you have some citations supporting your argument, please provide them..
Hobbes was right: life in the state of nature is "nasty, brutish and short".
The hydrophilic substances will happily circulate in the blood stream and excess will be flushed out by the kidneys. That's why, when you read closely the composition of most vitamin supplements, they advertise quantities as stupidly excessive as 3'000% the daily recommendation or Vitamin C (which is hydrophilic). Most of the excess will simply get peed out.
Lipophilic substances, if not handled properly (binds to blood transporter - like albumin or substance specific transporter - and processed in liver - which will convert them into soluble substances) tend to accumulate wherever there's fat :
skin, nerves, CNS, also in organs : inside the liver, inside the kidney (but get stuck in the basal membrane instead of getting flushed out), etc...
The fact that Vitamin D seem to be tolerated at high concentration despite being rather hydrophobic is probably due to the fact that this is a naturally occurring substance and the body has ways to deal with it anyway.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
At first I heard that "sunscreen increases cancer risk" from an unreliabel source (but it was on the internet, so it had to be true!) but I then did my own searches.
Indeed it seems that there is a /slight/ correlation between sunscreen use. There is no solid explanation as of yet, but there are two basic theories:
So it seems sunscreen is at best called a "sunburn inhibitor" as that is all it really does. Current recommendations are to limit exposure, wear hats, and develop a tan without sunscreen and without burning.
But there is one thing for sure: use sunglasses. UV light speeds cataract formation. Cataracts are a normal part of the aging process, so if you live long enough you'll get them. But you can slow the development with UV protective glasses.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
in summer, of course.
in antalya, mediterranean coast, southwestern turkey, it gets 40 degrees celsius in shadow, and 99% humid in the summer.
Read radical news here
Actually, we have better statistics than that. Say, from the Egyptians, we have plenty of records left of when someone died. You know, plaques, inscriptions, etc. So you have a somewhat random sample, and the ages at which they died.
So you can sorta plot a gauss curve, albeit one with a massive spike in the first 3 years, due to the infant mortality that you mention. But the more interesting part is what happens when you look past that spike, at the peak of the proper gauss curve. That's basically the age where, if you survived those infant years, you'd have a 50%-50% chance to be dead anyway.
And for the Old Kingdom period (i.e., a bit over 4000 years ago) that peak was in the 30's for men and in the 20's for women. By the New Kingdom (a bit over 3000 years ago), it had progressed to 40's and respectively 30's.
So, yes, they did live less. Seriously. Yes, there was massive infant mortality, but, no, you can't dismiss everything based on just that.
Yes, like with anything statistical, there were exceptions in both directions. There were the occasional guys who lived very long lives, but they were the exceptions, not the rule. They also tended to be the rather rich guys.
And I think one funny thing that may have helped confuse people about life expectancy back then, is the egyptian expression that someone lived to 110 years old. It's funny because it's just a metaphor. In their numerology, 110 was the perfect number, and they believed it to be also the absolute maximum someone can live, if they led a perfect life. So "he lived to 110", was basically just a way to say, "he lived a perfect life." Meaning typically that he was really well liked guy in the community. In practice most of those were dead in their 30's and 40's.
Basically it's just as much a metaphor as when we say that someone was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or jumped the shark, or put his foot in his mouth, or the like. We don't mean it literally, and it's silly to build biological explanation based on it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That is why you need to drink your milk, children.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.