For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow

From Dennis Mangan I learn my health is at risk because I live in a cloudy climate which has weather similar to the weather in the UK:

“[S]olar exposure and the subsequent manufacture of vitamin D are crucial for your health. For example, an adequate level of vitamin D causes an 80% drop in the risk for colon cancer.”

Mangan quotes from the British Medical Journal:

“Active sunbathing which exposes the whole body can supply up to 10,000 IU per day(7,8). To obtain something approaching the optimum annual amount of vitamin D a person would have to sunbathe in a swimming suit on about 100 sunny summer days. This is, for practical purposes, impossible in the UK even for a dedicated nudist…

Northern Europe is an extreme climate for man. Human beings evolved in tropical Africa where the sun shines strongly every day...the cloudy maritime weather of the British Isles makes our climate one of the most extreme in Europe so far as sun deprivation is concerned.”

Since I have no intention of moving, gaining this knowledge means I now expect to get colon cancer, and when I do instead of blaming chance I will blame myself.

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity...

Comments

  1. Maybe someone should tell this Dennis Mangan that vitamin D supplements are rather cheap these days, not to mention vitamin D fortified milk & other food stuffs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. From the BMJ link above:

    "The human vitamin D requirement needs to be considered over the period of a year because vitamin D is stored during the summer months in the body and used in the winter. If we take Heaney’s lower figure of 3,000 IU as the optimum daily requirement of vitamin D then the requirement over the period of a year is 1,095,000 IU. Diet can provide only a very small portion of this, less than 200 IU per day or 73,000 IU per year(5). The remainder, 1,022,000 IU, must be obtained from supplements or from the sun.

    Vitamin D supplements sold over the counter in the UK supply relatively small quantities of the vitamin which are insufficient to substantially increase blood levels. Prescription products for vitamin D in the UK all consist of vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) which has a potency about one third that of vitamin D3(6). So prescription products prescribed in recommended quantities in the UK are also likely to be ineffective in raising blood levels of D substantially."

    ReplyDelete
  3. You must immediately don spaghetti pants and dance in the open place. It has certainly worked for me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I shall and I will, just as soon as I figure out what the hell spaghetti pants are...Hey, you aren't Small Talks, are you?

    ReplyDelete
  5. No, I am not.
    However, let's look on the bright side. With the buzz we have created, I have no doubt that Old Navy will have spaghetti pants in stock for the Fall.

    ReplyDelete

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