Sunshine Can Actually Decrease Your Vitamin D L... - Thyroid UK

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Sunshine Can Actually Decrease Your Vitamin D Levels

Danifox6 profile image
11 Replies

Has anyone seen this or seen similar research?

youtube.com/watch?v=J1sTYuL...

"As you no doubt know, exposure to sunlight causes vitamin d to be produced in your skin. but it is only a portion of the solar spectrum known as uvb that has this effect. other parts of the solar spectrum can have very different results."

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Danifox6 profile image
Danifox6
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11 Replies
Danifox6 profile image
Danifox6

no, but i have found research supporting the theory. My nutritionist is fab and has discovered all these things when the NHS failed to and she plugs her products. I guess if they are good products then good luck to them :)

excerpt from vitamindcouncil.org/blog/wa...

Humans make some vitamin D on the surface of their skin, which water washes off. How much humans make on the surface and how much inside the skin, no one knows. However, the vitamin D levels of the African tribesmen support (but do not prove) the proposition that humans living in a natural state make a significant proportion of vitamin D on the surface of their skin for later absorption. Assuming the African hunter-gatherers do not take showers twice a day that so many cosmetically brainwashed Americans do, then simple water, especially soapy water, routinely washes off oils containing vitamin D in modern humans. This means we must add soap and frequent showering to the list of things that explain why modern vitamin D levels continue to decline, decade after decade.

Marz profile image
Marz in reply to Danifox6

...and of course those pesky sun creams blocking out the sun in the first place.....

snowstorm profile image
snowstorm

Well what a surprise!!!!!!. Yes there probably is a little truth in it but that will depend on HOW MUCH exposure is taken. Best to take so much stuff with a great pinch of salt. Sunshine is good for the body, good for the soul, and very good for the brain.

Oh, and you either need s supplement or you don't.

I guess we keep up with the " eat plenty of oily fish " advice then......I'm certainly not giving up my soak in the bath at night along with some Classic FM soothing music......It might not be good for the skin but it's certainly good for my soul !!!

DaizeeFoo profile image
DaizeeFoo

Well for years I have worn sun block, try to stay out of the sun and do not shower daily though I do have one every other day and a strip wash the others.

My vit D level was in the severe deficiency zone.

Danifox6 profile image
Danifox6

I don't wear sunblock in the UK anymore so mine isn't sunlight :(

I've had a couple of tests done recently, maybe we will never fully see the link as to why so many of us are vit D deficient.

ellarose1234 profile image
ellarose1234

I don't like his face! So that's it! He should be selling cars.

A doctor told me that if you take vitamin D tablets, you need some sunshine for it to work properly.So that implies that taking vitamin D in the winter when it's most needed, it doesn't have the correct effect.Everyone says something different as usual.And yes, he should carry on with the car sales.

sky00 profile image
sky00

LIKE !!!

waveylines profile image
waveylines

I find the Vitamin D COuncil to be a great source of good info for this subejct. They do have an article about washing vit D off the skin. Link and article below:-

Washing away vitamin D

Posted on January 31, 2012 by John Cannell, MD

The recent Netherlands paper on “natural” vitamin D levels in Africa immediately brought to my mind another paper, a similar attempt to gather this vital information. If we don’t know what our vitamin D levels were during the two million years our species was evolving, then how do we know what level to achieve while we wait for science to complete its work?

Binkley N, et al. Low vitamin D status despite abundant sun exposure. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2007 Jun;92(6):2130-5. Epub 2007 Apr 10.

Professor Binkley and his colleagues found that surfers and skate-boarders in Hawaii had levels around 30 ng/ml with the highest level being 60 ng/ml. Why would light-skinned sun-drenched outdoor sport enthusiasts in Hawaii have an average level of 30 ng/ml, while very dark-skinned hunter-gatherers in Africa have levels of 50 ng/ml?

Sunscreen is one possibility, but 40% of Binkley et al’s subjects reported never using sunscreen, and the rest were not obsessive about using it. Essentially, all of Binkley et als’ subjects had evidence of abundant sun-exposure, indicating that the author’s calculation that they obtained the equivalent of 11 hours of full-body sun exposure per week with no sunscreen was correct. If not sunscreen, then what could explain the difference between Hawaii and Africa? Genetics is a possibility, as about 40% of vitamin D levels are heritable, but if genetics was the answer, why would the highest levels be in subjects living on the equator, where sun can so easily do the job?

What about latitude? The Africans were at latitude 3 degrees while the “A’ala Park Board Shop” in Hawaii is at latitude 21 degrees. That may explain some of it, although the sun in Hawaii gets very high in the sky, even in March. Anyway, the hunter-gatherers in Africa regularly avoided activity during midday, planning their foraging and hunting trips in the morning or evening.

The only other possibility I can think of is an obscure paper from 1937, a paper that continues to be ignored. The authors obtained surface oils from young men, sebum. In the first experiment, they irradiated the oils and in a second experiment irradiated the young men. They collected the sebum and showed that irradiated sebum cured rickets in rats (showing effective treatment of rachitic rats was the only way of measuring vitamin D activity in 1937). The authors concluded, “The evidence presented in the two groups of experiments indicates that washing the human skin by the usual methods removes vitamin D and its precursors from the outer layer of the skin.”

Helmer AC, Jensen CH: Vitamin D precursors removed from the skin by washing. Studies Inst Divi Thomae 1937, 1:207-216.

Even more upsetting, they concluded, “There is definitive evidence that the secretions from the skin contains precursors of vitamin D, which after irradiation are to be reabsorbed by the body, and the removal of which tends to produce a dearth of the vitamin unless it be supplied in some other form.” I could not see evidence that they supported this statement with their research. What they showed was simple.

Humans make some vitamin D on the surface of their skin, which water washes off. How much humans make on the surface and how much inside the skin, no one knows. However, the vitamin D levels of the African tribesmen support (but do not prove) the proposition that humans living in a natural state make a significant proportion of vitamin D on the surface of their skin for later absorption. Assuming the African hunter-gatherers do not take showers twice a day that so many cosmetically brainwashed Americans do, then simple water, especially soapy water, routinely washes off oils containing vitamin D in modern humans. This means we must add soap and frequent showering to the list of things that explain why modern vitamin D levels continue to decline, decade after decade.

vitamindcouncil.org/blog/wa...

cloud1 profile image
cloud1

Just to say that his name is dr Mercola;i look at his website alot and (get email updates from it)find it v informative and credible(have a look at it)and intelligent.i do trust him 100%, though of course he mite not have all the answers.But what he is saying is not to wash with soap(apart from essential areas!)and that sunlight is unhealthy when its filtered through glass(even apart from the vit d decrease effect).He actually says that the best source of vit d is the sun;followed by sunbed and leaves supplementation last;so clearly he is not doing it just to sell products, as some have assumed.

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