The Simple Key to Better Health

There are many things that you can and should be doing to make sure you are as healthy as possible. But, frankly, most of you will resist doing them for one reason or another. You won’t really change your diet because, “I can’t live without bread!”; or “Cheesy fries are SO good!”; or whatever. Maybe you will try to add a few more fruits and veggies, but give up anything you love? No way!

And what about exercise? You know you need to get more, but your life is so busy! Where can you fit it in? You could park at the back of lot so that you’d at least get a little exercise at the office or the store, but hey, “I’m running late!”; or “The bags are so heavy!”; or whatever.

Recent research has shown that adequate sleep (8 – 10 hours) is necessary to consolidate learning and to reboot our immune system which gives our bodies a chance to heal and fend off invaders. But we live in a 24/7 society. Who has time to sleep?! So much to do; so many places to be. So…not enough sleep.

We’ve become a pill-popping, easy-fix society. Normally, I am against this. But there is one case where I no longer think we have a choice; where popping the pills may be the best and simplest key to better health.

Those of you who’ve read my newsletters and blogs over the years probably know where I am headed with this.  Yes, the simple key to better health is taking more vitamin D3 pills. You can do this in, what, 30 seconds? I think you can manage to fit that into your busy schedule. And the cost is reasonable. Give up a can of soda and you’ve paid for about one week’s worth of pills [2000 IU/day].

Now, your skin is capable of making vitamin D, but… But unless you have very light skin and can spend about 10 minutes/day between 10 am and 3 pm in the sunlight, making adequate levels of vitamin D via your skin is going to be difficult. The range of skin color is large and as each shade darkens, the length of time needed to spend in the sun increases. If you have very dark skin color, you will need to spend around 6 hours in the sunlight. Unless you have an outdoor job and expose your skin without sunscreen or clothing (say, like a life guard), getting enough sun exposure is just not feasible for most of us. And the dermatologists would have a fit anyway.

In addition, making vitamin D via skin exposure to sunlight only works during April – October in northern latitudes. During the winter months, you are draining your stores so that by February, you are running on empty. The easy fix to this problem is to take vitamin D pills year round.

Some of you might think you can get enough vitamin D from food sources, but this is not the case. The best food source is fatty fish such as sardines, but that will give you only about one-quarter of what you need daily. I do eat sardines daily, but I also take a supplement. Milk is not a good source of vitamin D for multiple reasons, but primarily because it provides so little per glass compared to what your body actually needs. Skip the milk and take the pills.

Back in the early 1990s when I first began doing research on vitamin D deprivation, the literature stated that 20 ng/mL was the normal (and presumably adequate) level of 25 OHD (the baseline form of vitamin D used in your body). By the late 1990s, the optimal level was raised to 32 ng/mL. It has been going up ever since as researchers discover more and more health issues related to vitamin D deprivation. The optimal level is now at 60 ng/mL. This level is impossible to achieve with the current RDIs of 200 IU [children and young adults] or 400 IU [adults over 50] or even 800 IU [senior citizens]. The minimum daily dose recommended by most researchers in the field is now 2000 IU/day for older children and adults. During the winter months, you will need more. If you are confined inside or are a senior citizen, you will need more year-round. Vitamin D is fat soluble, so if you are overweight, your fat cells are pulling 25 OHD out of your blood stream, preventing it from doing its job. This means that you will also need to take more vitamin D year-round than may be true of someone who is slimmer.

Because vitamin D is fat soluble, pills should be taken with healthy-fat foods. For instance, I take my pills in the morning with my real egg salsa omelet. You might want to take yours with a handful tree nuts such as cashews. Current researchers do not recommend taking cod liver oil. Cod liver oil contains significant levels of vitamin A in addition to vitamin D. Vitamin A acts as an antagonist to vitamin D limiting its effectiveness. Also, excessive doses of vitamin A are harmful. Therefore, it is better to take a vitamin D pill that is not combined with vitamin A. It should also not be combined with calcium. If you and/or your doctor feel you need more calcium, it is probably because your vitamin D levels are much too low. When vitamin D is optimized, the body can function properly with around 500 mg of calcium/day. Getting too much calcium in supplements can also be harmful.

For those who want to know more, a recent book, The Sunlight Solution by Laurie Winn Carlson, PhD, provides a good source of information on the history of vitamin D deprivation and research, and on current research along with all the various health issues related to vitamin D deprivation. [Full Disclosure: Dr. Carlson devotes two pages to the discussion of my article: Health Disparities: Reframing the Problem. 2003 Medical Science Monitor 9 (3): SR9-15] After reading the book, you will probably want to spend more time in the sun and will definitely want to take more vitamin D.

Vitamin D is not a panacea. Taking a couple of pills each day will not magically change your life, nor will it solve all your health problems. However, if you are reluctant or unwilling to make the type of changes that take more effort (e.g. diet, exercise, sleep), taking vitamin D supplementation will at least give your body and your health a fighting chance. If you decide you want to learn more about these other aspects of your health, in addition to further information on vitamin D, you can order my book: Walking in Sunshine: LifeStyle Changes to Make for a Bright, Healthy Future.

ConservaDams

Watch out! Change is coming. Are you comfortable in your little niche? Watch out! Your niche may disappear. In fact, it is probable that all our current, comfortable niches will disappear in the next 10 – 20 years. What will you do? For many who are conservatives, the answer is to build walls and dams that they believe/hope will protect their niches. Some of these walls and dams are literal (the southern border fence) while others are figurative (banning ethnic studies).   But all will ultimately fail. The flood of change that is happening cannot be dammed.

I think many conservatives would like to return to a pre-industrial world that somehow included all the gadgets of the 21st century. Of course, that’s impossible. The reason we have 21st century technology is precisely because of the changes wrought by industrialization, one of the most important of which is massively increased population density.

Back in the distant and conservative past, when change was so slow that your niche seemed to last forever, population density was extremely low. You would have lived in groups of 25 – 50, separated from other such groups by a many-days walk. The stone tools of the Lower Paleolithic showed no change for about one million years: Conservative Heaven.

Then groups became more mobile, meeting up with other groups, exchanging ideas. And tools changed, became more sophisticated. But those changes lasted almost one million years, too. Oh, Happy Conservatives!

During the Middle Paleolithic, human brain size reached its current capacity and tools became more sophisticated yet. These changes lasted around 250,000 years. Joy in the Conservative World!

But then climate change forced groups into smaller regions, requiring that they interact more. New ideas sprang forth and we entered the Upper Paleolithic. Humans weren’t any smarter than they had been, they were just experiencing the benefits of increased population density: more diversity and exchange of ideas leading to new inventions. Of course, compared to the Present, change was still slow, so perhaps conservatives would find this world to their liking.

Yet more climate change pushed more populations closer together, and in some areas led to the development of agriculture and settled populations. In short order, population density increased dramatically, and by 5000 years ago we had the first urban centers. With urban centers came bureaucracy (big government) and taxation: the two evils against which many conservatives rail.

Hmmm…so the world to which these conservatives must wish to return is a pre-agricultural one since urbanization requires and results from the development of agriculture. I don’t know about you, but I can’t quite see those conservatives giving up their current lifestyles to live the life of foragers, even if that is the only lifestyle consistent with an anti-big government, no taxes stance. Even the Amish are reliant on big government to provide roads to market towns and police and fire fighters for protection; all of which are funded by taxes.

The conservatives, who cannot go back and do not want to go forward, are busily building their dams to protect their niches. In Texas, they are trying to build a textbook dam that will keep within its walls only the information they want their children to learn. But the flood of knowledge will breech the walls of that dam.

In Arizona, the dam builders hope to stem the tide of ethnic change that is flooding over the state. One law after another is passed in an attempt to build the dam walls higher and higher. But these dams, too, will fail.

Change will happen no matter how much we might fear it or fight it or build dams against it. And it will happen at a faster pace than ever before. The population of the United States has more than doubled since 1950, the year to which those conservatives hiding behind their dams appear to wish to return. From 1950 to 2010, Arizona’s population increased almost 900%!! No wonder there are furious attempts to put up dams to stem this flood. But just as the New Orleans’ levies were no match for category 5 Katrina, conservadams will be no match for the 21st century’s flood of change.

Population growth is everywhere. From 1950 to the present, the world population has almost tripled. Most of this increase in population (in both the US and the rest of the world) lives in densely-populated urban centers. While this can create many problems, it also has beneficial results.

Higher density populations mean more contacts with more diverse individuals which can lead to an increased exchange of ideas resulting in more creativity and a snowball effect of technological and social change. The globalization of interconnective technologies has accelerated this change. As more of the world’s population becomes better educated, the pace of change will race ahead.

Trying to hold onto the past, to stay safely behind our dams, will not succeed. As the Red Queen states to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

If we refuse to run at all, the future will pass us by and we will be left in our little niche, cowering behind our dam; if the flood of change hasn’t destroyed the dam and swept us away.