It would seem that the lunatics who have made people afraid of sun exposure have a great deal to answer for. The morbidity associated with widespread population vitamin D deficiency is incalculably large. The anti-melanoma lobby, skin cancer fear-inspiring, anti-sunshine industry has gone too far.

Here is a real health news flash: Get your bare, unadulterated skin into the direct sunshine every day. Just be sure that you do not get exposure enough to cause sunburn. Sunshine is 100% natural and does a lot more for you than just boosting your vitamin D level, but that alone is important enough to justify doing it. People have been getting exposure to sunshine for as long as there have been people!

When doctors today tell you not to expose yourself to direct sunshine because it is bad for your health ask what planet they are from. Remind them that only a few short decades ago the official position of the AMA was that smoking is actually good for you. They told people with lung disease to take up smoking! They really are no better today at promoting health.

What is particularly troubling about the sunny Australian findings in the study above is that pretty low levels were used to identify a healthy level of vitamin D in the blood. At 75 nmol/L people were deemed to be fine. That equates to just 30 ng/ml.

More recent studies strongly suggest that people generally should target 50 ng/ml and try to always stay at least in the 40 to 60 ng/ml range. (Some conditions require higher levels.) That translates to a target range of 100 to 150 nmol/L which is well above the levels adopted in the study. At these more realistic levels there would be a much larger proportion of the Australian population who need to boost their vitamin D levels.

Oral supplementation with D3 is clearly needed but don’t forget sunshine!

Where Dr Cannell refers to CRP we could in fact add a very large number of other measures of interest. Equally, the assertion that “we don’t know the incidence of heart disease in 65-year-old men; we know the incidence of heart disease in vitamin D deficient 65 year-old men” is perfectly true and once again the words “heart disease” could be replaced with a long list of other pathologies.

What Dr Cannell says in this paragraph about almost all medical studies being suspect because they have failed to take into account the subjects’ vitamin D levels is exactly the position I and many naturopathic doctors have maintained for a very long time about the overlooked toxic condition of subjects. We really only know the observations made on people of varied, untested and unmeasured levels of toxicity, not those made on truly “normal” healthy people.

Empirical and anecdotal, but I watched her suffer through enough asthma attacks that I’m willing to take her word on it!

I don’t even know who you are Mr.-You-Look-Like-A-Kindly-Doctor but….I…will…be…back!

I like your site already!

Thanks for listening,

kickaha