I needed to design a new exercise method for this winter. The 5 weeks of 5K on the week-end needed to be abandoned due to needing to get more sun energy.
I use having a go to concept so I do not have to make decisions. A plan to deviate from. I also want to stay away from a regiment that I accomplish as that is not good for me right now.
I came up with going to the local beach as there I can get reflected sun. I decided on walking up hills and then recovering. I decided on 3K a day as my go to distance. That way I can go twice a day if I want.
I am well familiar with changing my activity to work around the clouds.
I use a step counter rather than exercising for a specific time. Works out that 3000 steps is 3K +-.
With the 3K as my go to than I can snowshoe, do snow drawings, cross country ski if that becomes possible and still get sun. The lake will freeze and I can do all that on the lake.
I would not be honest if I said I hold out much hope for continuing the improvement I experienced the last 5 weeks through the winter. There are too many added factors with the winter. Good news is I learned a lot about how to mitigate the winter when I was B12 deficient without any treatment. Plus I got really good gear.
Pretty much being in a better place come spring would be a success then I can hit the ground running.
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WIZARD6787
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I researched vitamin D 10+ years ago before B3 was commonly used and the consensus was it only gave you a good blood test result.
It was the first vitamin discovered and there are many misconceptions associated with it.
Ironically I chose to get sun energy as I knew I felt better and this lead to a more efficient use of B12 and B6 and this lead to somewhat temporary acute B12 and B6 deficiency while I was in Canoa Ecuador about 8 years ago.
I love skiing! I took cross country lessons during the pandemic because the lines were too long on weekends (the ski hill was the only exercise option open for awhile). But I have not been doing it much because downhill is more fun. I also love dancing (for example Zumba and Richard Simmons videos). The dancing is not out in the sun, but it is such a fun way to get exercise and more gentle on my body than jogging. It is wise to have some sun screen if you are out in the sun for a long time. You don't want skin cancer.
My reading and experience indicates the only time I would use sunscreen is to prevent my skin from getting pink from too much sun. I read a study long ago. I think it was 60,000 women over 20 years in Sweden. Women that avoided the sun had an 80% higher mortality rate.
If I had a miraculous turn around, I might try downhill again at age 68.
If you avoid the sun in Sweden and don't take a vitamin D supplement you would likely become vitamin D deficient with all the consequences of that. So unless they corrected for adequate vitamin D supplementation/blood levels, such a study wouldn't be telling us anything we don't already know and would have nothing worthwhile to say about safe sun exposure.
"We have no data on vitamin D supplementation or vitamin D levels, but it is well known that sun exposure is the most important determinant of vitamin D status. "
Now imagine you're designing a study to see whether sun exposure affects mortality in a Scandinavian country that gets very poor natural sunlight many months of the year.
It is obvious that getting sufficient vitamin D from either sunlight or supplements would be a crucial factor that could affect the conclusion.
But they somehow managed to not collect that data and then concluded that lack of sunlight exposure led to the increased mortality observed among those that avoided sun exposure.
But without the vitamin D supplementation and data on Vitamin D levels, we cannot see whether those who avoided sun exposure were taking supplements that ensured they were getting adequate levels of vitamin D, which could reasonably be expected to influence the result.
Or to put it more succintly, the study is total nonsense.
Not saying that sunlight is of NO importance - clearly there are affects on circadian rhythms etc but this study does not go any distance towards justifying your dismissal of the value of sunscreen to prevent harm if spending long periods in strong sunlight.
That is why I go with only using sunscreen to prevent my skin from turning pink. I wear a hat and long sleeves.
I am not dismissing the value of sun screen I use it the way I see as most likely being valuable. I will not be surprised if the standards do not change although I would be shocked if the confidence level diminished. See cholesterol.
I guess you are referring to the changed recommendations on dietary cholesterol. This is an interesting topic where the popular narrative is often that dietary cholesterol was unfairly vilified but has now been completely exonerated.
But actually this is not really the case and the scientific picture is considerably more nuanced.
The American Heart Association released a blog on this in August:
They mention that the 300mg limit on dietary cholesterol intake was eliminated but also that
"the current guidelines instead suggest keeping dietary cholesterol consumption "as low as possible without compromising the nutritional adequacy of the diet.""
This isn't exactly exonerating dietary cholesterol and if you look into the nutrition science with this article from Sigma Nutrition you can see why:
"the effects of dietary cholesterol on blood cholesterol levels are dependent on the levels of dietary cholesterol in relation to levels of saturated fat in the diet"
...
"While dietary cholesterol is not benign in biological effect, in the context of a low saturated fat intake (and high P:S ratio), the effect of dietary cholesterol on blood lipids is incredibly small, as is the magnitude of reduction in blood lipids achieved through reduced dietary cholesterol alone.
However, there is a correlation between dietary intake of cholesterol and saturated fat, and tightly controlled feeding trials demonstrate an additive effect on blood lipids of high dietary cholesterol when consumed concomitant with a high saturated fat intake."
This is also covered in depth in their podcast episode:
#371: Dietary Cholesterol – Are Eggs & Cholesterol-rich Foods a Cause for Concern?
Of related interest may be this extensive study of the research on eggs and their effect on blood lipids by Matthew Madore which concluded:
"In closing, when taking all of the available evidence into consideration and focusing on results from the highest quality analyses, eggs appear to increase the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality consistently. In many cases this effect seems to arise beyond intakes of half an egg per day (~4 per week), but it is especially uniform with intakes at or above one per day, consistent with the impacts on lipids reflected in randomized controlled feeding trials. Overall, this effect is not as large as those seen with other foods that increase CVD risk such as red/processed meat, refined carbohydrates, higher fat dairy products, and coconut/palm oil, but much of this likely owes to the disparity in intake ranges of these foods within observational studies. For those looking to absolutely minimize apoB/LDL and their corresponding CVD risk, strictly limiting or eliminating eggs would be appropriate, especially in the case that baseline intake is high."
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Suggestions for questions for gastroenterologist?
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