Shea butter instead of sun screen? Need advice ASAP! - Page 3

[amcal]

I'm not saying vitamin D is bad. In fact, if you've read my posts, you'll see the opposite.

I've said getting a tan is bad. It's skin damage. You've said it's healthy. I've asked for research to back up this claim and have yet to see it.

A mothering.com thread is not research - it's people's opinions. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I think it's important to make decisions based on research. I've yet to see any research that says tanned skin is healthy skin. Or any research that says you must tan in order to get adequate vitamin D.

Of course there are many variables in regards to how much sun is enough. However, all the reserach I've done says that 10- 15 minutes of mid day sun exposure a couple times a week for a light skinned person is adequate. Now, if you are dark skinned or if it's winter and you live in the north then obviously your needs would be different.

I don't think there is one prescription for everyone. I would encourage everyone to get their vit d levels checked and supplement/expose accordingly. However, I highly doubt you will find anyone that says damaging your skin - and a tan is damaged skin - is remotely healthy when trying to encourage vitamin D production.

[amcal]

How Much Sunshine Do I Need?
To make vitamin D the natural way, through your skin, you need sun exposure on naked skin, without sun block, at or near mid day:

• For most people, 10 or 15 minutes in noontime summer sun is enough, and leads to the production of 10,000 IU (International Units) of Vitamin D, according to Dr. John Cannell, head of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit U.S. organization. Dr. Cannell is concerned that people aren't getting enough of the vitamin, especially when they are advised to avoid the mid day sun.

UV-B rays from the sun on the skin convert cholesterol into the "sunshine vitamin," which, researchers are finding to be a potent anticancer agent.

It is ironic that skin cancer may actually be prevented by what many feel causes it -- sunshine.

In his book, “Naked at Noon,” Krispin Sullivan says that: "One of the known protectors of skin cells from pre-cancerous changes is vitamin D. For most Americans the primary source of this vitamin is sunlight. UV-B, the only band of light producing D, is significantly present only midday during summer months in most of the U.S., the exact time we are advised to avoid sunlight. UV-B is blocked by sunscreen."

HOW BEST TO GET UV-B? The Vitamin D Council suggests wearing a hat to protect your face against sun damage, while exposing other parts of your body to modest amounts of noontime sunlight, stopping before there's even the slightest trace of redness.

http://www.healthdiscoveries.net/vitamin-D.html

[tanyalynn]

Originally Posted by Juvysen

Interesting - wonder if your being in arizona makes the difference. She stopped using sunscreen all summer and was out mostly after 3 or before 10 and her levels went down, not up... but then, she's in upstate NY... so we get different levels of sun, maybe? She had been supplementing before the summer but quit thinking the sun would do a better job... apparently not.

Time of day is HUGE for how much vitamin D you make. You make a lot more, a lot faster, in the middle of the day. Plus, that's pretty far north.

Cool calculator for that stuff, includes latitude/longitude, date, skin type, % skin uncovered, which is also a significant factor...

http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/VitD_quartMED.html

[savithny]

Originally Posted by TanyaLopez

Time of day is HUGE for how much vitamin D you make. You make a lot more, a lot faster, in the middle of the day. Plus, that's pretty far north.

Cool calculator for that stuff, includes latitude/longitude, date, skin type, % skin uncovered, which is also a significant factor...

http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/VitD_quartMED.html

I was coming to post that, with this addition:
About it:
http://blog.nutritiondata.com/ndblog...vitamin-d.html

The actual calculator:
http://nadir.nilu.no/~olaeng/fastrt/..._quartMED.html

Find your latitude/Longitude:
http://www.bcca.org/misc/qiblih/latlong_us.html

World clock for converting to GMT:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

[tanyalynn]

This is a really interesting abstract, I haven't seen the full article...

http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v1.../5611153a.html

They more than doubled the amount of sun it takes to start burning (minimal erythema dose--I had to look the exact definition up, it's the amount of sun it takes to produce redness 24 hrs later) by supplementing fish oil, they think/assume the omega-3s are the important part.

I don't think anyone knows, but I have to wonder if we are more prone to burning and cancer as our--collective our, as a society--diet has increasingly become imbalanced between omega-3 and omega-6. I hope someone looks at that a bit closer, and soon, ideally figuring out how to measure total body composition, not just current intake, since it takes quite a while to make a big shift in fat composition your body, at least to my understanding.