>Tom:
>My comment on possible vitamin D deficiency came from reading the remarks
>of Dr. Bass, in "Health & Beyond" or in one of his books (of course I might
>have misunderstood him). Anyway, he remarked that the diet must include
 >sources of vitamin D, that sunlight alone was not enough if the diet had no vitamin
>D in it. Let me add some obscure information here: vitamin D is a steroid!
And now, Axel, comments:

So, would this mean that animal products are a must for anybody living
anywhere, or there are vegan natural sources of vitamin D available? I know
for example that the milk had way too much vitamin D added, but don't
remember what the source of it was.

 This is from "Sunlight", by Zane Kame (pub. 1980, it's not that new).

VITAMIN D DEFICIENCIES

If vitamin D is absent, calcium, which is vital for normal bone growth and
development, will not be absorbed from the intestinal tract, and the bones
will become deformed. In children the condition is termed "rickets," in
adults, "osteomalacia." Either of these disease conditions can occur if
calcium and phosphorus are deficient in the diet, of if the minerals are
present but vitamin D is absent. Healthy bones, then, are dependent upon a
supply of calcium and phosphorus , the absorption of which, in turn, is
dependent upon the presence of vitamin D which, in turn, is dependent upon
ones exposure to the sun.

NOT A VITAMIN BUT A HORMONE

Recent discoveries [don=B4t forget, the book is from 1980] reveal that
 vitamin D is not as much a vitamin as it is a hormone. The metabolically active form
1,25-DHCC has all the charactheristics of a hormne. Hormones ca nbe
described as chemical agents which are synthesized y definite parts of the
body and are carried by th blood to another part of the body where they
produce specific changes in certain tissues and organs. 1,25-DHCC fits this
description, for it is mad in the body by the kidney and transported by the
blood to certain target tissues and cells in the intestinal tract. Vitamin
D, then, is really more closely related to the hormones than to the
vitamins. It is produced from cholesterol ust as are the other major steroid
homones. [...] Homone levels in the blood are controlled by sensitie complex
mechanisms, and cannot be interfered with for long periods without producing
serious problems [...]
     Previtamin D will not change into vitamin D if it is not neede, and
some vitamin D can revert back to previtaminD. Alternate products,
lumisterol and tachysterol, also provide an option to the production of
vitamin D if levels are high.
      As one grows aware of the vitamin D's intricat function as a
 hormone, he needs to seriously review the practice of widespread vitamin D
supplementation of commercial food.

Axel again: OK, I am going for some food, but there will be more on this
soon. Then the author deals with the effects of the ingestion of a hormone.

As for me, (of course you never know what you will learn amazing places like
raw-food) I stick to my hour-long sunbath, with as much cover as when I
first came to this world.

>From the bottom of the continent,

 Axel ([log in to unmask])
    Buenos Aires, Argentina