I got sunshine

These days, there seems to be a vitamin for anything and everything. Seeing ads of food supplements and vitamins claiming to cure this and that and to make you beautiful, intelligent, stay young and strong – makes me wonder whether we have come to view vitamins as some sort of molecular compromise, our fallback in case life would not be able to deliver a full-fledged miracle. Vitamins as a halfway miracle — I don’t know about you but if I pay full price for something, I do not want to get only half a promise in return. What makes this even more painfully hilarious is that after these vitamins and food supplements claim to have the power to give you all the good stuff of life, they still manage to stick a government-required statement on their labels saying, “No approved therapeutic claims.” Then I wonder, if they cannot even claim “therapeutic,” what are they really claiming aside from your business? The territory of human health, it seems, has been mapped largely by vitamin and food supplement companies.

That is why I was a bit relieved when I read Cell Defenses and the Sunshine Vitamin, an article by Luz E. Tavera-Mendoza and John H. White in the November issue of the Scientific American. Both have worked in Dr. White’s lab in McGill University in Canada investigating what Vitamin D does in human cells. Tavera-Mendoza is also a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School focusing on the links between Vitamin D and cancer. I was relieved because they reclaimed for me that kind of perspective (for at least one vitamin) we should have when inundated by all kinds of ads about vitamins.

Vitamin D is activated by a gift from space that every living thing is so familiar with (except deep sea creatures). This is our Sun. You get to be a vitamin maker yourself because as soon as ultraviolet B light (UVB) hits your skin, your skin gets the go-signal to start the process of making Vitamin D. All you have to do, according to these experts, is step outside and be under the sun, absorbing its light for 15-20 minutes (if you are fair-skinned but longer if you are darker) in your favorite swimsuit so that your whole body could be exposed to it. When you do, your skin gets to work and manufactures Vitamin D3. Foods have it, too, but in much lesser amounts — like cooked tuna, mackerel and sardines also have Vitamin D3 and shitake mushrooms have Vitamin D2, and much more of it when it is dried. When D2 or D3 reaches the liver, it is converted by enzymes into 25D and when it reaches the kidney, becomes 1,25D  — which is the form that travels all over our cells and tissues, affecting our overall physiology.

The authors recalled a point in medical history before antibiotics were discovered, when TB patients who lived in relatively sunnier places “miraculously” got better compared to the ones who lived in places where the sun was not as glorious. They also cited how in the 1800s, cod-liver oil cured patients who had rickets — a condition that keeps the bone from hardening. We now know that 1 tbsp of cod liver oil contains 1360 IU of Vitamin D3. Many years and many studies later, Vitamin D has come under the light of science to reveal its role in allowing calcium to flow through our bodies, boost our immunity, perhaps even prevent some cancer conditions and lately, perhaps even have something to do with making you live longer.

In terms of boosting our immunity, the studies the authors referred to have shown that in the lab, immune cells treated with Vitamin D (1,25D) were able to kill certain kinds of fungi, viruses and bacteria, even the one that causes tuberculosis. Vitamin D can also turn genes on and off by attaching themselves to cells and triggering them to make certain proteins. Proteins are the live ammunition of cells. The experts think that about 1,000 of the 25,000 human genes are regulated by 1,25D. If a vitamin can turn a gene on and off that way, that is one important vitamin.

The authors also found differences in the incidence of multiple sclerosis (a disease that affects the protective sheath of the nervous system, disabling motor coordination), which is higher in places located farthest from the equator — like in North America, Europe and Australia. Even symptoms and the progression of MS seem to follow the seasons — from when the sun is more visible (summer) to elusive (winter). Even in those who have identical genes — twins — they found that those who spent more time outdoors had a 57 percent lower risk of MS. Other cancers like that of the bladder, breast, colon, ovary and rectum increase twofold as you go south to north in the US. This does not yet prove anything conclusive but it points scientists to focus directions that could clarify the nature of the link between low levels of sunlight and occurrences of these kinds of cancers.

And in a study recently published in the Journal of American Nutrition, also reported in the Guardian by Ian Sample last Nov. 8, it seems that they also found that among 2,160 women aged 18-79, the ones with the lowest levels of Vitamin D showed the “greatest signs of biological aging.” How did they know this? Scientists have long discovered that there are “strings” present in the free ends of DNA called “telomeres” that shorten with age. When the telomeres get to be too short, the cell eventually dies. That is the cellular process that underlies the aging process. They found that those with the lowest Vitamin D levels had shorter telomeres compared to the ones of the same age but with higher Vitamin D in their bloodstream. I can imagine women now weighing whether they would sacrifice “sunspots” for longer telomeres. But the experts concede that they need to study larger samples to further strengthen the link.

But do not just take loads of vitamin D supplements because you can suffer from an overdose of Vitamin D this way. According to research, above 150 ng of Vitamin in your bloodstream is considered toxic and will cause abnormal calcification. However, no toxicity has been observed for any amount of Vitamin D that has been produced from sunlight (except perhaps the tradeoff — chances of skin cancer is raised) so just get yourself under the sun. The experts, however, are not zealously raising Vitamin D to be the super-vitamin just like the vitamin industry heralded Vitamin C before (which has been dethroned recently). The recommended daily allowance for Vitamin D is about 1,000 units daily (which is what Dr. Tavera-Mendoza takes during the winter months) — just enough to raise it to the healthy level of 30 ng a day.

So even if you are not getting enough Vitamin D, do not automatically go buy vitamin D pills because you can make Vitamin D yourself and in much bigger amounts by dropping the umbrella and getting some sunshine. It seems to be the only thing that is free that a lot of people are not getting enough of.

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