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Summer has ended, and that means a little less fun in the sun for most of us. But it also means you should plan to get out in the sunshine when you can over the winter months. For starters, the sun just makes you feel good – if you haven’t become afraid of it. Many of my patients avoid the sun like the plague. These days you hear frequent warnings that sunshine poses serious risks to your health. Among the many alarmist voices are the sunscreen manufacturers. For more than 20 years, the $5 billion-a-year industry has been propagating the supposition that the sun is deadly and we must be protected from it by slathering on chemical compounds. They conveniently fail to mention that sun exposure is essential for good health; or that common sun lotion contains 5 known carcinogens – two of which are actually activated by the sun – and block your body’s ability to produce essential vitamin D. Sun exposure is your #1 source of vitamin D. And now vitamin D deficiency has reached epidemic proportions. In fact, a 2011 study by the University of Kansas Medical Center estimated 70.3% of Americans don’t have low vitamin D levels!1 Vitamin D is key to avoiding diseases like cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease have all been linked to low vitamin D.2,3 In my opinion, this puts one more nail in the coffin of modern advice to avoid the sun at all costs. Making the recommendation to cover up and stay out of the sunshine about the worst advice you could ever take. Especially since we also now know that vitamin D turns on telomerase production and lengthens telomeres. Telomere biology has exposed the major mechanism by which your body controls the aging process. Your DNA orchestrates this program that controls the forces of aging, and we can now intervene in it to help you become biologically younger. One study showed how vitamin D helps. Doctors there gave a group of overweight people either 2,000 IU (International Units) of vitamin D or a placebo for 16 weeks. The placebo group saw little change. But the vitamin D group had dramatic changes. Their telomerase activity shot way up by 19.2%.4 Vitamin D had triggered DNA repair. Other researchers have measured telomere length in the presence of vitamin D. In an English study of 2,160 women, those with the highest levels of vitamin D also had the longest telomeres.5 I recommend you aim for a minimum of 2,000 IU of vitamin D a day for anti-aging. If you get your level tested and it’s low, take between 5,000 and 10,000 IU a day from a variety of sources until you’re levels are back up. Eating fish a few times a week will give you a lot of vitamin D, too. You might want to stick with the smaller, cold-water fish like sardines to avoid the mercury in some of the larger fish. The best source is the sun. If you’re a light-skinned adult, you need about 10 – 20 minutes of sun on your face and arms daily. If your skin is darker, you’ll need more exposure to make the vitamin D you need. After you’ve gotten your minimum sun exposure, then you can protect against overexposure with a natural zinc oxide (best) or titanium dioxide sun block. These physical sun block products are the safest. Finally, if you live north of Atlanta, GA, the winter sun isn’t strong enough to trigger vitamin D production. So I recommend taking a vitamin D supplement. Look for a supplement with vitamin D3 – that’s the active form of the vitamin. I recommend at least 5,000 IU. To Your Good Health, 1. Vacek, J.L., et al, “Vitamin D deficiency and supplementation and relation to cardiovascular health,” Am J Cardiol. Feb 1, 2012; 109(3): 359-363.
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