Recently read a New York Times Blog that has riven me to put on my lawyer’s wig, respecting Nonsense On Natural Sunlight!…and become ‘devil’s advocate’ to challenge ‘expert’ thinking, and categorical conclusions, with far reaching effects for the public. After all, we’re inclined to respect expertise! This time: Dr. Francesca Fusco, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and educational spokesperson for The Skin Cancer Foundation.
I was a ‘red head’..as boy, in Malaysia, exposed to tropical sunlight and healthy outdoor swimming pools!…a stark contrast to schooling in gloomy Britain, and a subsequent fight against autoimmune rheumatoid arthritis! Convinced sunlight an early and paleolithic major human past adaptation to harshness of sun, and specific survival advantage. Currently living in the North West in British Columbia, where it’s vital to compensate for long, sunless, rainy winters. This Website has repeatedly analysed benefits sunlight…example: Mediterranean diets! Just that respect believe magic not particularly diet…although plentiful healthy vegetables, fruit, healthy fats are major…comes down to latitude and proximity sunlight! We are all trapped within sunless offices…buildings…even in California, where they exist in auto, shopping malls, air conditioning, shields sun…despite Southern huge advantage of endless blue skies!
Natural ‘sunlight’ IS our birthright…our bodies HAVE specially adapted, inherited DNA mechanisms, to create Vitamin D…just from that source! Nonsense On Natural Sunlight!
It is no accident that North American Vitamin D level recommendations continually revised upwards…this even noted by Dr. Fusco! But note her glaring avoidance of any discussion of human ability to manufacture Vitamin D! The following is her quote: “Therefore, my position, and that of The Skin Cancer Foundation, is that the safest and recommended way to obtain vitamin D is a combination of diet and supplements….The Institute of Medicine has formed a committee to assess relevant data and update the recommended daily intake for vitamin D……..But based on current data, The Skin Cancer Foundation’s Photobiology Committee is revising their recommendation for adults who have limited sun exposure and who protect themselves from the sun to 1,000 IU of vitamin D daily.” Wow! “Photobiology” should imply ‘something’ with sunlight…surely absence of objective sciences, other disciplines there! Just avoid the sun and lather with sun block! My view…our ancestors certainly could not compensate with available ‘supplements’! Thus Nonsense On Natural Sunlight!
