Schizophrenia/sun

[Guest guest]

copied and pasted this from www.mercola.com

*-- Pam--*

 

Your Chances of Developing Schizophrenia Depend on How Much Sunshine Your

Mother Received

 

 

Evidence is accumulating to support the theory that vitamin D deficiency

during pregnancy, caused by a lack of sunlight, can alter the development of

a child's brain in the womb. The data for a link with schizophrenia is still

controversial, but potentially worrying because vitamin D deficiency is so

common.

 

Vitamin D's role in building healthy brains had been largely ignored, until

researchers began to spot some curious epidemiological trends.

 

People who develop schizophrenia in Europe and North America are more likely

to be born in the spring. And they are roughly four times as likely to be

born to Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in England as they are to have

parents of other ethnic origins living in the same areas.

 

The body needs sunlight to make vitamin D, and people with darker skin need

more than paler-skinned people. So such observations led investigators to

propose that a lack of vitamin D during early development tips the balance

towards schizophrenia in genetically susceptible people.

 

Loud Noise

 

Investigators have completed studies on rats that add experimental meat to

the epidemiological bones. They have found that - just like humans with

schizophrenia - adult rats deprived of vitamin D from conception are more

startled than normal by a loud noise preceded by a soft noise.

 

Ventricles in the brains of vitamin-deprived baby rats are also unusually

large, a feature seen in people with schizophrenia.

 

The researchers also used " gene chips " to look at the activity of thousands

of genes in the brains of adult rats deprived of vitamin D during gestation.

The chips revealed many genes had become less active, including three for

brain receptors, and several that code for proteins involved in building

nerve synapses.

 

Wake-Up Call

 

The rat studies clearly show that too little vitamin D does something nasty

to the brain. We urgently need to find out exactly what that is, because

vitamin D deficiency affects 12 per cent of women of childbearing age,

according to a large US survey.

 

This should be a big wake-up call. We should find out quickly because low

vitamin D could impact general intelligence, and have a whole range of

neurological outcomes.

 

International Society for Developmental Neuroscience meeting in Sydney,

Australia February 2002

 

 

--

 

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:

 

Sunlight is man's primary source of vitamin D. It seems quite obvious that

man developed in tropical or subtropical areas and thus, has a need for

sunlight as a nutrient.

 

When we migrated further away from the equator, our ability to obtain

valuable sunlight and its important influence on our health, was

dramatically reduced.

 

The 12% figure of vitamin D deficient women cited in the U.S. is likely to

be dramatically underestimated. They were likely using reference ranges

designed for average, thinking that was optimal.

 

I have been enormously blessed to connect with Krispin Sullivan. She is a

nutritionist in northern California and, in my estimation, is one of the

most knowledgeable people on the planet in this field.

 

She will be publishing a book called Naked at Noon, which should be out

later this year. I thought it was some crazy novel when I first saw the

title, but it is a very accurate description of what most of us in the U.S.

need to be doing when adequate sunshine is available.

 

If you need to know this information before her book is published a

preliminary copy of her vitamin D research is available on her web site.

While she has an e-mail listed on her site, please understand that she

doesn't have any time to respond to personal e-mails, or her book will never

be finished.

 

Obviously, we should not be prancing around in the nude, but most all of us

need to expose far more of our skin to the sun during the noon hour to get

the beneficial UV-B.

 

Now, I can just hear scores of you getting alarmed that this recommendation

will increase your risk of skin cancer. Well folks, nothing could be further

from the truth.

 

I will provide all of the documentation and scientific research to support

this assertion in future issues. But, I am convinced beyond any shadow of a

doubt that as long as you avoid being sunburned, sun exposure at noon on

unexposed skin, is one of the healthiest things you can do for your body.

 

Krispin has been kind enough to mentor me in the incredible value of vitamin

D and how it is one of the biggest missing nutritional links not being

addressed, even by incredibly astute physicians.

 

Using foods to optimize people's health has been my driving passion for more

than a decade. I have reviewed tens of thousands of articles and I missed it

big time, so I am sure many others have also.

 

I will be providing a series of articles in the upcoming weeks to further

expand on this extremely important topic.

 

The necessary doses for vitamin D are far higher than previously imagined.

Most of us would likely benefit from doses closer to 4,000 units, not 400

units. This is a full order of magnitude higher than the RDAs.

 

However, the best way to get this is through sun exposure, NOT though

supplements. Unfortunately, for most of us in the U.S. there are only a few

months of the year where this is even possible.

 

Then, even in those months, if you live in a polluted urban area, or it is

cloudy, there will not be enough UV-B to penetrate the clouds, smog, or

ozone to stimulate vitamin D production in your skin.

 

I am working with a company on a very inexpensive UV-B meter tha can be

brought with you places, so you can know exactly how much sunlight you need

on a given day to generate vitamin D exposure. It is a complex

determination, since you also need to factor in the color of your skin.

 

So, most of us will be stuck using supplements. My favorite is cod liver

oil, since that solves another major issue in our diet, omega three

deficiency.

 

However, one needs to be cautious with supplements at these doses, and the

solution will be to monitor your blood levels of vitamin D.

 

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