Well, they say you learn something new every day. Lee learned something entirely new last week.
He went to the dermatologist for his annual mole-check/torture session. He has a history of skin cancer, some of which has been quite stubborn and difficult to excise. He sunburns in an instant, going straight from ghostly-pale to lobster-red, and since he grew up in Miami, he’s had some pretty nasty burns in his life. Every time you get sunburned, your risk of skin cancer goes up by some dramatic percentage (no, that’s not the new thing he learned last week).
Because of his deep dread of sunburn (and the cutting and stitching of skin that will surely follow), he slathers himself in sunscreen if there’s any chance at all that he’ll be outside (we all do, actually). We feel downright virtuous about our sunscreen usage–we are models of good skin care.
Well, it turns out, as is so often the case, too much of a good thing is not necessarily all good. The dermatologist did a test to make sure Lee had enough vitamin D in his system, and guess what? He doesn’t. We did a little research over the weekend, and learned some interesting facts about vitamin D.
First off, our main source of vitamin D is our own bodies: we produce the stuff when we are exposed to sunlight. That’s why so many of us are deficient nowadays–widespread use of sunscreen, coupled with less time spent outdoors, means many of us produce little to no vitamin D. Very little vitamin D occurs naturally in food; a lot of refined foods are supplemented, but that’s not enough for most people.
All of the commercial milk sold in the US has added vitamin D. My calcium supplement also has vitamin D–it turns out vitamin D is crucial in the prevention and delay of osteoporosis (which, for the record, runs strongly in my family).
A little further digging turned up the most well-known consequence of a childhood vitamin D deficiency: rickets (which I tend to associate with things like scurvy and pellagra). I knew that; I just didn’t know what, exactly, rickets is (are?). So I looked it up: whoa! Now you have my attention–rickets is the softening or weakening of a child’s bones. I guess it really is crucial to bone health, at any age.
But as we kept looking, we found a fair amount of evidence that vitamin D is essential to heart health, and perhaps diabetes prevention, as well. I get the feeling this is different from the antioxidant trend of a few years back, where people thought if an antioxidant-rich diet was good, a mega-supplement would be better.* Vitamin D, as I pointed out, doesn’t really come from food. Our bodies have to produce it when we go out in the sun.
Except we don’t want skin cancer, so we’re not going out in the sun.
This is the conundrum that Lee’s dermatologist faced last week. So she prescribed a supplement.
The next interesting thing we learned–there is apparently widespread consensus that the current US RDA is inadequate. My calcium supplement contains 400 IU, as does my multivitamin. Lee’s prescription: 50,000 IU, once a week. Interesting. My theory is that this large, once-a-week dose mimics the body’s response to occasional sun exposure. Apparently the idea is to boost the levels up to normal, then switch to a maintenance dose.
Now, before you go running to the drugstore to buy a bottle of vitamin D pills, know that the dermatologist met with the endocrinologist who manages Lee’s medications. There’s no way Lee would jump into something like this without that doctor’s approval.
The whole scenario–skin cancer, sunscreen, deficiency, supplementation–is an interesting little demonstration of the body as a holistic system. A problem with one part of the system can ripple through the entire organism. It makes me think, as do most health issues, that the only approach to life is the old dictum: all things in moderation. Balance–always balance.
*Edited to add: I wrote this yesterday–Monday. Today (Tuesday), I’m hearing news stories on the radio about another new study that points to a link between vitamin D deficiency and increased risk of heart disease. The link to the LA Times piece on the study is here.