Hi folks,
I hope to present, for your consideration, possibly new thoughts concerning Vitamin D. These considerations especially concern people like us, who are on a healthy diet. I supply references to support this new viewpoint.
Please allow me start my tome with an anecdotal case history, my own experience.
An anecdote
When I was 58, 9 years ago, I attended the Pritikin Longevity Center. Instructional lectures were presented by Dr. Jay Kenney, PhD nutritionist, and (our very own and wonderful) Jeff Novick. I found these lectures informative and entertaining, nay, spellbinding.
In one of those lectures at the Pritikin Center, I first learned that sunlight was very beneficial, for forming Vitamin D. I realized that I got nearly zero sunlight. Returning home, I changed my routine to run outdoors every day at noon, for one hour. I wore trunks and a T-shirt. Above 60 degrees, I didn't wear a T-shirt. Also, I started taking Pritikin vitamins, including 200 IU of vitamin D.
Two years later, at age 60, I attended the Pritikin Center again, in June. My doctor assigned to me there, said "You're a skinny guy. Why don't you get a DEXA bone density check?" I had been running 4 miles a day, 7 days a week, for nearly 2 years. I thought "A bone density check? What a waste of money." Well, I got the test anyway.
The results of the test were shocking. My hips were at the bottom of osteopenia, almost to the osteoporosis range. My lower back was at the top of the osteopenia range, almost to normal. Oh, great! Almost normal! For 4 months, I didn't tell anyone. I felt like there was an osteoporosis stigma.
Why did I, a healthy active 60 year old man, have osteopenia? Was it because I became severely lactose intolerant at age 32, 2 years after starting the Pritikin diet, and I had low calcium intake (doubtful)? Why didn't 2 years of running, age 58 to 60, strengthen my bones? (DEXA bone density test is less sensitive to the inner sponge-like trabecular bone. Exercise tends to strengthen the inner trabecular bone, more than the hard outer shell, the cortical bone.)
I returned home, and my regular doctor gave me some blood tests to check for causes of osteopenia. Testosterone was right in the middle of the normal range. He gave me a Vitamin D blood test. 16 ng/ml, quite deficient. Note that the normal range is a question with some controversy. Dr. Fuhrman recently recommended the bottom normal of 25. Dr. McDougall recently recommended a bottom normal of 20. By any yardstick, 16 is deficient.
I saw my eye doctor for an annual checkup. He said I had cataracts. He said most doctors would recommend having them out then, but he would recommend watching them. I had noticed halo's around headlights of oncoming traffic, while driving at night. It developed so slowly that I didn't really notice it. (Happy ending: That was the last day I went in sunlight without dark wrap-around sunglasses. (Photogray's dont work. I was wearing photograys when the cataracts developed.) The next year, when I visited the eye doctor, he didn't mention cataracts. They went away, and the halo around the headlights went away also.)
I saw a dermatologist for a minor rash. The dermatologist asked if I would like him to squirt liquid nitrogen on some skin tags. I asked why. He said because the skin tags could be pre-cancerous. I said squirt away. He spent about 45 seconds happily squirting 7 or 8 skin tags, and charged my insurance $200.
I mention the cataracts and skin tags, to show that, in the prior 2 years, I had enough UV to have some forms of sun damage. But I did not have enough UV for my body to make a normal vitamin D level. Plus, I had been taking 200 IU vitamin D in Pritikin supplements. It is likely that my vitamin D had been much lower, for perhaps decades, prior to when I increased my sun exposure, at age 58.
Clearly, my body was making little vitamin D from sunlight. For the prior 2 years, I was in the sun one hour at noon, 7 days a week, wearing minimum clothing, rarely missing a day. The high altitude increases the UV. Most days are blue skies, especially in the summer in Salt Lake city. Utah has one of the highest melanoma rates. My vitamin D test was taken in June. I should have had plenty of UV and vitamin D.
Sunlight simply did not work for me. So, since age 60, I have taken 3000 IU Vitamin D3, and my blood level is about 35.
As an aside, 16 months after fixing my vitamin D deficiency, my severe lactose intolerance, dissappeared !! After carrying lactase pills for 29 years, and nearly a thousand bouts of painful diarrhea from accidental ingestion of small amounts of lactose, I no longer needed the pills. I could eat any amount of dairy with no issue. Of course, I only ate dairy while travelling or on some social occasions, when I broke the diet for convenience.
One item to draw from my case history, is that I appear to be deficient in vitamin D, in spite of perhaps even too much sunlight exposure.
It's only an anecote (one person's experience), but it's my anecdote. Thanks for reading this far, at least.
Supporting information
Before introducing the (possibly) new consideration that I promised, please allow me to provide some supporting information.
Healthy diet increases carotinoids in the skin
A Pharmanex machine can measure antioxidant levels in the body. (Interesting video from Dr. Oz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRkRDc_GHG8 ) The more fruits and veggies a person eats, the higher the machine would read. Typical readings are roughly 4000 to 15,000. I had a reading probably 15 years ago. The guy runnnig the Pharmanex machine's mouth dropped open. He said he had never seen anyone with a reading as high as mine. My reading was 70,000.
The Pharmanex machine works by shining a blue laser light on the skin at the palm. The blue light is not strong, and is entirely safe. The machine looks for green light coming back, out of the skin. If the skin contains carotenoids, the blue light is absorbed by the carotenoid, causing it to fluoresce, and emit green light. The more carotenoids, the more green light, and the more antioxidants in the diet.
Eating veggies helps prevent skin damage from sunlight
Here is a highly technical paper from 2011 in the British Journal of Dermatoloty: "CONCLUSIONS: Tomato paste containing lycopene provides protection against acute and potentially longer-term aspects of photodamage." (abstract http://www.pubmed.com/20854436) Eating tomato paste reduced UV damage to the skin, and reduced damage to skin mitochondrial DNA.
Heliocare supplement reduces sun damage
When my dermatologist squirted my skin tags, he asked if I wanted "sunblock in a pill?" (I do not take this, nor am I recommending it. I am simply illustrating a plant based product reducing UV sun damage.)
From the heliocare website:
The powerful antioxidant formula in each capsule of HELIOCARE® is naturally derived from the extract of Polypodium leucotomos (PLE), a fern native to Central and South America that has been used for centuries as a remedy for skin related conditions.
HELIOCARE’s active extract contains antioxidants, which aid in eliminating free radicals produced by sun exposure. A reduction in these potentially dangerous free radicals helps to maintain younger, more resilient skin.*
Common knowledge about dark complected skin
It is common knowledge (that is, I don't have a reference for it right now), that people with dark complections are less susceptible to sun burn. They also make less vitamin D, for the same amount of sunlight exposure. The melanin in the skin, blocks the UV in sunlight, to produce less sun damage, and to produce less vitamin D.
The New Consideration
We have seen the Pharmanex machine which shows that eating more fruits and veggies absorbs blue light in the skin.
We have seen that lycopene reduces UV damage in the skin.
We have seen a plant supplement reduce skin damage.
We have seen that skin melanin reduces skin damage and reduces vitamin D production, in people with dark complections.
Here's a question: If eating fruits and vegetables stops a portion of the UV light in the skin, thus reducing skin damage, does eating fruits and veggies also stop some of the UV before it can reach the cells to make vitamin D?
The new consideration is that since we are on a healthy diet, we might consider getting a blood test for our vitamin D level. We might have less vitamin D BECAUSE we are on a very healthy diet, since antioxidants may reduce the UV reaching the layer of skin that makes vitamin D.
My own thoughts
Carroll's daughter may have had a similar experience, where the vitamin D level was measured in the single digits, in spite of getting sunshine. Carroll's daughter developed rheumatoid arthritis, which improved but was not cured, when the vitamin D deficiency was remedied.
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Thinking about my own case history, I became severely lactose intolerant at age 32, 2 years after starting the Pritikin diet. Amazingly, to me, my lactose intolerance disappeared 29 years later, 16 months after fixing my vitamin D deficiency. Did vitamin D deficiency create my severe lactose intolerance?
Did I become vitamin D deficient because of lots of veggies on the Pritikin diet (very similar to McDougall)? I ran a great deal, from age 30 to 32, culminating in a marathon. I had pleny of sunlight for those 2 years.
At age 60, I found I had near osteoporosis, in a DEXA scan, and I found I had a blood vitamin D level of 16. Had I been strongly vitamin D deficient, for 3 decades, contributing to osteoporosis? There is no way to know. (For most of the 30 years, I also got little sunlight.) But I do know one thing. If all things are equal, it is my preference not have any vitamin deficiencies.
The point of this discussion is the possibility that we, as persons choosing to eat a healthy diet, might be especially susceptible to a vitamin D deficiency. The only way we can know, is with a blood test.
Best regards, EngineerGuy (Stacy Hall)
