Without sunshine, none of us would be here…
After all, we evolved to live under the sun.
But modern medicine wants you to think the sun is your deadly enemy.
Every day doctors warn you to stay out of the sun. And if you do go out, they want you to cover your skin in toxic sunscreens.
Their 30-year-old campaign has been very successful. So successful, in fact, that people are dying at higher and higher rates.
Let me explain…
Your body makes vitamin D when ultraviolet B rays hit your skin. But fear of sunshine has lead to critically low levels of this essential vitamin.
A new clinical review shows that nearly a billion people across the globe have low levels of vitamin D.1
And low vitamin D is a surefire path to chronic disease and an early death…
In fact, the more vitamin D you make from UVB sun rays, the lower your chances are of dying from 15 kinds of cancer.2
Another study found that an incredible 96% of people who had heart attacks were vitamin D deficient.3
Researchers from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and seven other institutions found that low vitamin D levels are responsible for almost 13% of deaths in the U.S.
But when you boost vitamin D, death rates drop by 11%.4
One big reason is that modern humans just don’t spend enough time in the sun. Our Paleo ancestors weren’t afraid of going out in the sun. They saw it as a source of life.
But our modern world stands in the way of nature’s most important vitamin.
Unlike our Paleo relatives we wear a lot of clothing. We also get in our cars first thing in the morning and drive to work. Then we work inside all day until we drive home.
I advise my patients to get out in the sun for 20 minutes every day without sunscreen. I encourage them to build up the same sun defense that our Paleo ancestors used.
I’m talking about melanin. This hormone is your body’s built-in sun block. When your skin is exposed to sun it produces melanin. It’s what causes your skin to darken or tan.
Three Tips for Boosting Vitamin D
1. Practice what I call “gentle tanning.” If you haven’t spent a lot of time in the sun, start out gradually. If you’re fair-skinned, go outside for about 10 to 20 minutes a day. If you have a darker complexion, then you can push it to about an hour.
Make sure you have skin in the game. This means actually peeling down and getting a good area of your skin exposed.
Get out in the sun when your shadow is shorter than you are. Typically that’s between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. That’s when the sun is highest and rays are strongest so you can get good exposure over a short time. Just 10 minutes in the midday sun can give you 10,000 IU of vitamin D.
As your skin begins to tan, you can spend more and more time in the sun. Your supply of melanin acts like a natural sunscreen to protect you from burning.
If you are going to be in the sun longer than 20 minutes apply a zinc oxide based sunscreen with added vitamin D.
2. Get some D from food. This is a good strategy during the winter. The best sources include salmon, mackerel, tuna, sardines, pastured eggs, and grass-fed beef and dairy.
3. Take the right supplement. But I find that most people just don’t get vitamin D from food and sunshine. That’s why I give all my patients a simple blood test to measure levels of “25-hydroxyvitamin D.”
Most doctors will tell you that a blood level of 20 ng/mL is “sufficient.” But that’s because mainstream medicine still does not understand how important vitamin D really is. I encourage my patients to keep their levels in the range of 40 to 60 ng/mL.
If your levels are below 40 ng/mL, take a vitamin D supplement. I usually recommend 5,000 IU every day. For every 400 IU of vitamin D3 per day you take, you can expect your blood levels to improve by 1ng/ml.
But it won’t happen overnight. It may take six months to get your vitamin D level up.
Also, look for vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol. It’s identical to the D your body produces. Avoid the D2 form. It’s usually synthetic and your body has to convert it to D3.
You can also take cod liver oil. Look for cold-pressed oil with a lemon flavor. One tablespoon a day will give you over 1,200 IU of vitamin D.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD, CNS
1. Kim M. Pfotenhauer, DO; Jay H. Shubrook, DO. “Vitamin D Deficiency, Its Role in Health and Disease, and Current Supplementation Recommendations.” The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. May 2017.
2.Grant, W.B., et al. “The association of solar ultraviolet B (UVB) with reducing risk of cancer: multifactorial ecologic analysis of geographic variation in age-adjusted cancer mortality rates.” Anticancer Research. 2006.
3.Lee J, Gadi R, Spertus J, Tang F, O’Keefe J. “Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in patients with acute myocardial infarction.” Am J Cardiol. 2011.
4.Chowdhury Rajiv, Kunutsor Setor, Vitezova Anna, et al. “Vitamin D and risk of cause specific death: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational cohort and randomised intervention studies.” BMJ. 2014.