On 1/22/2010 11:03 AM, william wrote:
> Don Wiss wrote:
>> Taking Vitamin D supplements is the one thing that very much would be
>> paleo. At least it is for those of us that don't live outside year
>> round.
>>
> I used the ixquick search engine for symptoms of vitamin D deficiency;
> found that it is weak bones.
> Hm. Never noticed, but...
> A university study of schoolchildren during a winter in Edmonton,
> Alberta showed that those who were exposed to the kind of fluorescent
> light that is supposed to duplicate the spectrum of sunlight not only
> got no dental cavities, but the little brown spots on teeth that show
> beginning cavities disappeared.
>  From memory years ago, so no url.
>
> I bought a reading lamp that was designed for that kind of light, used
> it for two years, no apparent effect.
>
> The change for the better (stronger, whiter) in my teeth came with raw
> paleofood.
>
> I live at 46°N latitude, and spend an average of a few minutes outside
> in sunlight each day.
>
> William

The farther north one lives in the USA, the lower one's vitamin D blood 
levels and the greater one's chance of getting diabetes, cardiovascular 
disease, MS, cancer, flu, and a dozen other diseases.

The lab reference ranges in the USA are 32-100 ng/ml, while the average 
person who has reported the results of their first vitamin D blood test 
usually comes in at 10-25 ng/ml (personal reports from several dozen 
people at least).

The optimum range keeps moving higher and the most recent 
recommendations are 50-80 ng/ml.  It took me 9000 IU/day of D3 to raise 
my blood levels to the mid 60s and spending 6+ weeks working on my 
personal landscaping in the heat of the day (I usually didn't get out 
till noonish and did about 5-6 hours) had no noticeable effect on my 
blood levels.  It could have had a small effect but wasn't great enough 
to step outside the noise variation from blood test to blood test.  I've 
been taking 13,000 IU/Day of D3 for many months but haven't gotten 
around to getting the blood work done.  I want a blood level of around 
80 and probably even higher.

Somewhere I have a report where children in the tropics (like Costa Rica 
or thereabouts) that spend a lot of their days outdoors had blood levels 
of D in the 100-150 ng/ml, a number well above the lab reference range 
in the USA.

I too have a vitamin D lamp but I haven't used it yet.  It puts out 35% 
UVB and I figure it will come in handy in my Utah location if D3 
supplements ever get restricted to RDA levels.

I see Paleo is a good in principle, but I don't live in the tropics, I'm 
not going to spend the majority of time outdoors, and life extension is 
also an interest which means perfect paleo will certainly come up short 
on that account.  Hence, the interest in having blood vitamin D levels 
that are will above what one could normally get living far north of the 
equator where 6 months out of the year the angle of the Sun is too great 
to produce any vitamin D from exposure since most of the UVB gets 
filtered out by the greater amount of atmosphere it has to travel through.

As to the lamp, when I do start to use it, I'll be using it for a short 
time per day somewhere between late morning and early afternoon since I 
don't want to mess with a natural sleep cycle which is already 
sufficiently screwed up.  So, a reading light that reports to provide 
UVB outside of the natural cycle (evenings) doesn't interest me.

-- 

Steve - [log in to unmask]