Dr. Mercola December 04 2008 51,780 views
The mounting scientific discoveries about the tremendous health impact of vitamin D are nothing short of a revolution within the field of medicine. It’s turning out to be so vital for so many of your biological functions that a future revision of the official guidelines on sun exposure is virtually guaranteed. It’s only a matter of time.
But there’s no reason for you to sit around and wait. The evidence is already overwhelming; you absolutely need a certain amount of unprotected, full-body sun exposure if you want to be optimally healthy.
Every week, more research is being published about the health benefits of vitamin D. For example, it’s already been found that vitamin D can prevent or treat:
And that’s the short-short list.
This latest paper published in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism describes how scientists are now beginning to realize vitamin D is involved in maintaining the health of your brain as well, as they’ve recently discovered vitamin D receptors in the brain, spinal cord, and central nervous system.
There’s even evidence indicating vitamin D improves your brain’s detoxification process.
Vitamin D helps remove mercury from your body safely by radically increasing the amount of intracellular glutathione.
For those of you who are beginning to wonder whether the multitude of vitamin D discoveries amount to nothing but hype, or perhaps even some sort of scientific error, let me explain how it can be that vitamin D is involved in so many different health aspects. Because if you understand the basic science of vitamin D, then you can understand its true potential.
How Can Vitamin D Be So Influential?
As Dr. Cannell, founder of the Vitamin D Council, explains so well in my upcoming Inner Circle interview with him; if you understand that vitamin D is not a vitamin, but rather the only known substrate for a powerful repair and maintenance steroid hormone that is involved in numerous functions of your body and organs, then you can begin to see the bigger picture.
Additionally, if you understand that, like all steroid hormones, it regulates your body by turning your genes on or off, and that you have about 2,000 genes that are directly influenced by vitamin D, then you will be able to wrap your mind around the fact that vitamin D may in fact have as many as 2,000 or more mechanisms of action within your body!
This is the fundamental principle that explains why the same substance, vitamin D, can be involved in, and have a major impact on all the diseases of civilization. It all depends on which gene is being up- or down-regulated by the presence, or absence, of vitamin D.
Why the Current Guidelines on Sun Exposure are Catastrophic to Your Health
It has been clearly established that the only way for your body to synthesize vitamin D is in your skin once it’s exposed to ultraviolet rays from the sun. Hence, the current guidelines to avoid sun exposure, and the fervent pushing of sunscreen, are perhaps some of the most misguided and dangerous health recommendations out there.
You simply cannot obtain sufficient amounts of vitamin D from your diet, as you were never designed to swallow vitamin D but get it from the sun. This would, of course exclude taking a vitamin D supplement, for which the government recommended daily allowance (RDA) is still FAR too low to offer any significant health benefits or contribute to disease reduction.
Consider this; In the summertime, when you put on your bathing suit and sunbathe for 30 minutes, your body produces about 20,000 IUs of vitamin D; as much as exists in 200 glasses of milk, or the equivalent of about 50 multivitamins!
Meanwhile, the current RDA for vitamin D, developed by the Food and Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine of The National Academies, is miserably insufficient as it is only:
Folks, there’s simply no way to reap any benefit whatsoever from these abysmally low amounts.
Lately, I’ve reported extensively on the subject of vitamin D and its health ramifications. If you’ve missed any of my previous articles outlining:
then please take a moment to review them now.
You can also check out my Vitamin D Resource Page, which offers links to the most important pages, and sources for even more information on this life saver.
How great it is to live in Sunny South Florida!
I'm 63, never applied sunscreen to my body.
The falicy of the Sun causing skin cancer is a joke, it is the Sunscreen that is the major cause,
as Ripley would say....."Believe it or Not"!
Also, another tremendous path to go down that involves the Sun, is Sun-Gazing!
I won't go into the protocol, just Google it.
Hail Enki!
This works much better then Vitamin D:
http://www.treat-cancer.nl/
Shhh! Wolfe 203. Let's keep Florida as our little secret, okay!
Hey folks, there's lots of lightning strikes here and gators, too. Our cockroaches must get a lot of steroids from the sun because they are the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Meanwhile, Vitamin D is sounding more awesome by the minute...increased glutathione! That's like the anti-aging gift of the year! It's hard to absorb glutathione taken in a pill, so this is just too cool for school.
There is no doubt that vitamin D is a huge protector against cancers of all types. There is one note of caution, nonetheless. For some people who ALREADY have cancer, it'll help fight it. In others it'll help spread the cancer FASTER.
It's all a matter of knowing the metabolism. Vitamin D is catabolic. So you just need to know which imbalance is present:
hubpages.com/.../How-I-Cured-Stage-4-Cancer-in-Two-Weeks-For-Less-Than-The-Cost-Of-A-Night-At-The-Movies
The best to you.
Kelley Eidem
Together we can cure cancer - one day at a time!
Would appreciate a response from anyone on this one...My son has Cerebral Palsy and just had surgery on both legs...Tendon Release and he has a cast on both legs from the top of thigh down to tip of toes. We do not have a tanning bed and it is too cold to spend time outside. I read, recently, that Vitamin D treats post-operative muscle contractions. He is on Vitamin D and doing well without spasms (which I hear are common with this surgery). I started him on a bottle that I had opened for myself and it was the dry form of Vitamin D3. The sales person, where I bought a new bottle, recommended the liquid form saying that he takes it and he feels that it is better absorbed...I'm giving him two 1,000 IU each day. It is Vitamin D3 (as Cholecalciferol) Other ingredients: Olive Oil and Softgel Capsule (gelatin, glycerin, water). Does anyone know if the dry or softgels work equally well???
Yes wolf.I do sun gazing myself.I learned a technique doing it so you won't go blind.If done properly it works and you don't need to get it through your sking so you can do it even in the winter.It is a spiritual thing called solar technique.Someone I know learned it in Peru.
I do think that there is such a thing as too much sun. Although anecdotal, my grandmother also never used sunscreen and was American Indian so she didn't burn easily. But she spent LOTS of time in the sun and by the time she was sixty her skin was black and leathery and DID had skin cancer in small areas of her more exposed body. Perhaps if she took better care of her skin she wouldn't have had such a problem (I admit her diet wasn't the best either which I'm sure added to the problem.)
I'm still recovering from mercury poisoning I got 8 months ago. If any reader of this entry breaks one of the much touted new-age, low energy light bulbs - run like hell from the room, return in an hour wearing a mask & rubber gloves. Clean up the shards carefully with a whisk broom and disposable damp cloth. Do not vacuum the shards! I broke 2 bulbs -manufacturer's defects in one day. Had no idea what I was inhaling at the time. Most of the packaging merely says in very tiny print - "Contains mercury. At time of replacement dispose of accordingly." - I had never read the label and had no idea what I might be facing. No where does it say .. "hazardous, dangerous, handle with exceptional caution or dispose with toxic waste."
Here are some of the symptoms I experienced: memory loss, slurred speech, eyeball pain, joint pain, dizziness, loss of balance, tinnitus, shooting pains into the limbs, sudden irrational flairs of temper and depression. I thought I was developing MS or early Alzheimer's. Fortunately my MD (Dr. Zoltan Rona who practices complimentary medicine in Toronto) recognized some of the symptoms and had me tested. I did intravenous and oral chelation, along with cocktails of vitamins and minerals to help the body process the stuff out. I stopped eating fish - my favourite thing. I have gone from a +45mercury count to a +7. - Get this; 8-28 is considered normal!!!.
I have some nerve damage - hopefully it will heal. I remain paranoid about eating fish, using detergents, solvents, fabric softeners and lots of other petroleum based products found in the home. Crop sprays often contain mercury as well as other toxins.
Common English expressions to remember: "Mad as a Hatter" (mercury was used in the felt to make hats), "mercuric temperament", "quack" (comes from 'quick' silver used as medicine.) "potty" -some potter's glazes contain mercury.
Website to check for mercury content in fish.
www.mercuryexposure.org/index.php
It amazes me the focus put on these energy saving light bulb. They sure have the presses attention and even the politicians. Not very many are speaking out about the harmful challenges one is exposed to by bringing them into the home office or even the barn. One farmer reported on the changing production and "attitude" of his milking cows. Oh dear how does one get the information out to campaign for safe, smart products not all focused on "energy saving"
Hello Suetrump, I believe that LED's are going to replace the mercury filled CFL's that are practically being given away free these days. While a 23 watt CFL can replace a 75 watt incandescent bulb, a 5.3 watt LED can replace that 23 watt CFL. You would have to smash an LED with a hammer to break it. And they are getting brighter and using less wattage practically every time I check them out.
The industry is new and there is still a lot to be learned. For instance shining a red [660 nm] LED on a tomato plant can almost double the number of tomatoes. For reading, putting in more green-yellow light, which the human eye likes, can make a bulb seem brighter than it actually is saving substantial amounts of electricity. For people who suffer winter time blues they can get bulbs with more blue light in them.
It will be interesting to see if a specific color of the light spectrum is what stimulates the production of vitamin D in the human body. If so, it will be a simple thing to make our light bulbs with an abundance of this color.
It seems unlikely anything will ever be as good as direct sun-light, but if you have no choice but to be indoors, LED's may be enough to really help.
Oh Freevoice,
You have been in the wars!
Thanks for the caution. I cannot get the old bulbs anymore.
But after your tale (and I already have MS) I promise to be very careful disposing of these bulbs!
Unfortunately, Australia is banning all incandescent light bulbs from next year. We have to replace them with the new fluoros - we have no choice. I'm wondering where LED lights fit into all this? What category do they fit into?
Alpha lipoic acid is supposed to treat mercury toxicity. You mentioned taking vitamins and minerals, was wondering if you included this in your treatment?
LucyL: Is there anything Vitamin D can't cure?
ALAN: The FDA?
BoobyLee, I agree, about the Marshall protocol...it looks counterproductive.
If I had sarcoidosis I'd use my recipe for yeast overgrowth with the addition of granular lecithin or , believe it or not, a reishi or shitake mushroom.
I'd want to eliminate the auto-immune component and use a better approach against the bacterial component. The lecithin or the mushrooms help with bacterial infections without the notorious side effects of antibiotics. The mushrooms don't increase yeast growth.
I'd also use IntestiNew instead of the glutamine.
Go to my blog and follow the link to the free info on tummy flattening. It's the same program.
itsnotjustforsex-1.blogspot.com/.../how-to-end-food-cravings-effortlessly.html
Together we can cure cancer - one person at a time!
Who does not feel good after being out in the sun all day? Probably the person who is on all those Rx's and lathered in major layers of sunscreen!
I met a man from Holland about two months ago who was suffering from psoriasis / echsima. One of the things that I told him to do was to get more sun exposure. He was visiting here for almost two weeks. I then came this website and looked Mercola's solutions for this particular situation and of course, one of the recommendations was sun exposure.
He was home for a little more than a week and I was out having dinner with our mutual friend and called and thanked me for my help. His condition was clearing up! All the patches on his face, hands and arms were going away.
I was on holiday last week on a cruise ship and the lady next to me was suffering from heartburn. The lady on the other side said she was going back to her stateroom and had some generic prilosec with her and would give some to her. I could not keep quiet! I asked the waitstaff and even the dining room manager for some raw apple cider vinegar. They took about 20 minutes and only were able to find red wine vinegar. In the meantime, the generic poison arrived back at the table. So I demonstrated to the lady suffering what to do by taking a small teaspoon myself. At first, she was not believing this would work. She took 3 teaspoons each followed by some water. Within just a few minutes she was feeling much better and the heartburn went away. The husband wanted to know what to do with the generic poison and I told him to drop it in the wine glass with the wine still remaining and watch what happens! The waitstaff and even the dining room manager both said that they have used this format in their country to rid themselves of this problem!
So get out there everybody!
It is almost impossible not to over eat on those cruise ships. I can see where one would not have enough stomach acid to digest all the food and then end up with heartburn. It seems almost criminal for someone to offer prilosec which is designed to remove what little stomach acid there is.
However one must be careful, should some other problem come up, you could be blamed for it, even charged with practicing medicine and unless you are a doctor this is a pretty serious charge.
Most of the people I know laugh at the idea that something as simple as raw apple cider vinegar could fix any thing. The suggestion that the sun could help them makes them want to just walk away from me.
I am so glad that I have found that what our biosphere provides can keep us healthy and that powerful drugs that over-power the body are a kind of fad "medicine" that I want nothing to do with.
Thanks for the tip- I am pregnant and have been having awful heart burn. I won't take anything for it and haven't found that eating more frequently or smaller amounts or more water...or anything I've tried has worked. So I'll definitely start drinking apple cider vinegar and see if it helps! Thanks again, Sarah
3903 - Why would you take isolated nutrients like Quercetin and Ascorbic Acid? Is is way better when you get nutrients from whole foods and whole food supplements. Isolated/synthetic substances aren't even recognized by your body, and only about 10% usable. That's why I am always at a loss to understand why so many isolated and synthetic vitamin/mineral/etc. supplements are offered on this site - they are all isolated. Cheap to make, good way to make money.
eaglsong, I am quoting from what I read as it seems that Napoleon Bonaparte died, when imprisoned by the English, from lead poisoning which was found to be in the paint in the rooms in which he was confined. A possible interesting conspiracy theory here? Okay, it is not mercury poisoning but none the less interesting as to how easily we can be poisoned especially by the ignorance of others and especially by those who assume positions of public authoity.