Doubling of Vitamin D for Children Is Urged; I Also "Urge" K2, Menatetrenone (MK-4)
Yet again, something I blogged about 18 months ago may just now be coming to the mainstream. Stay tuned, and it's not the only thing. Within another 18 months, you might hear a bombshell about K2, Menatetrenone (MK-4) as well. More on that, below.
Here are my past entries on Vitamin D.
- Politicized Science: How the Sun Might Save Your Life
- Vitamin D
- An elegant slice of evolution
- "Loving Lard"
The first of those is the most important. Feel free to go take a look at how I used to blog (political), but the important thing is the article I linked. How-a-bouts a couple of quick excerpts?
For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.
But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.
[...]
What's more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.
[...]
But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D's effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.
A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.
Now, think about this from an evolutionary perspective, prior to modern mass migration. Northern latitude: white skin. As you proceeed south, toward the equator, increasingly dark skin on average. Vitamin D is fat soluable, which means, it can build up. At certain high levels it can produce a toxic effect. Final piece of the puzzle: white skin absorbes UV and synthesizes vitamin D way faster than increasingly dark skin. So, natural selection being what it was, those able to make use of the far shorter summers and lower angle of exposure to sunlight (white skin) fared better in the harshness of life; whereas, those in the south where the sun is year-round -- and very high in the sky for efficient exposure -- fared better by having protection against too much (dark skin), with consequent toxicity.
Now, apply the facts, again: "rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries."
So, now to the next article, in The New Yort Times: Doubling of Vitamin D for Children Is Urged. It's short, so do read the whole thing. One interesting tidbit: mother's milk, just like virtually all our foods, doesn't cut it for vitamin D. And why? God (or nature, take your pick) stupid? Well, I think Occam compels me to conclude that vitamin D from food was no more necessary for ancestral man than was getting air from food. And, since we spent a great deal of time outdoors exposed to sunlight, just like we spent a great deal of time breathing the atmosphere, there was no problem. There was no evolutionary pressure to get D from food.
Then modern ignorance happened, and everyone's afraid of the sun because of a minuscule risk of skin cancer (1,500 people die per year), and they leave all the other cancers on the table (1,500 die PER DAY from the others), most of which aren't found in developing countries where there's lots of sun and people spend a lot of time in it. If that's not a fool's wager, then I don't know what is.
I said I'd mention K2. Let me give you the references. Later, I will blog about the amazing results both my wife and I have experienced in having supplemented with this fat soluble vitamin for these past months (in combo with A and D from cod liver oil, as well). You really owe it to yourself to look into this. Think of it this way: 60 years ago they were curing cavities in teeth by getting them to re-calcify using this exact thing. Now, think of what happens with a vitamin D deficiency; rickets, right? rubbery bones. Calcium. Other mineral salts. What you will find is that these vitamins, in combination, essentially cause your minerals to go everyplace they should, and no place they shouldn't (such as the walls of your arteries).
- Activator X
- Vitamin K2, menatetrenone (MK-4)
- Vitamin Deficiency
- More Fat-Soluble Vitamin Musing
- On the Trail of the Elusive X-Factor
You are not going to get through that in a short time, but you must get through it. Please read all of those references. The first four are by Stephan the biologist, and the last, by Chris Masterjohn of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
Oh, and K2 (MK-4) is only found in animal sources. Vegans and vegetarians lose, again.
Later: A final thought. If you're a dark skin living in a place that doesn't get a lot of sun, or you don't get a lot of sun, you should look into supplementation. Conversely, if you're a white skin living in a place that gets a lot of sun, or you happen to get a lot of sun, you should look into protection. The bottom line is that you ought to understand this, think about how your experience may be different from the ancestors who came before you and the conditions under which they evolved and set your genes in motion, and take action accordingly.
