Why Vitamin D Reserach Has Vindicated Smart Tanning

Current government guidelines in the United States and Canada for daily vitamin D “intake” are 200 international units (IU) for most people and just 600 units for the elderly.

In contrast, getting a tan outside naturally will produce 10,000 to 20,000 IU of vitamin D, which, as a fat-soluble vitamin, stores quite nicely in your body.

That’s the natural and intended way to make vitamin D – which, as a substance that your body makes outside of diet, really isn’t a vitamin at all. It’s something we get from exposing our skin to UVB in sunlight.

Important to remember is that there are variables that make this inexact. Skin in older people is less efficient at making vitamin D than is skin in younger people. And people with dark skin – the skin acting as a filter to the UV light – may need five to 10 times more UV to make the same amount of vitamin D.

Further confounding the situation: Summer sun is more efficient for vitamin D production than spring or fall sun. And in “Vitamin D Winter” there isn’t enough UVB in sunlight to make any vitamin D.

Vitamin D winter lasts six months in Edmonton, Alberta – from October to April. It lasts from November to March in much of the United States and Canada.

That’s why the dermatology industry’s official positions on vitamin D have been ludicrous and unscientific. Consider:

• In 2004 Big Dermatology told us to avoid every light photon possible and to get all our vitamin D from a multivitamin and a glass of milk. That’s totally unnatural, and, what’s worse, there’s no science indicating it would work.
  

• Big Dermatology’s more recent statements that five to ten minutes of sun to the hands, arms and face is enough to make enough vitamin D is equally laughable. Again, with all the variables involved, how can you make such an unqualified position? While it's at least an acknowledgement that we need some UV, it's simply replacing one unfounded recommendation with another one.

Lost in this funny math is the fact that daily allowances aren’t the end point. Vitamin D blood levels are what’s important – how much of the sunshine vitamin is getting into your system?

According to the Vitamin D Council, a "calcidiol test" of your blood (also know as a 25-hyrdoxyvitamin D test) reveals your true vitamin D status. According to the group, optimal vitamin D blood levels are:

• 125 nanomoles/liter (nm/L), or also measured in some tests as 50 nanograms/millileter (ng/mL).

Consider that most Americans and 97 percent of Canadians never achieve that level. Most of us are vitamin D deficient or have insufficient levels of the sunshine vitamin in our systems. And since some studies show that people who take 4,000 IU of vitamin D supplements don’t achieve full sufficiency even with 10 times the median government recommendation of dietary vitamin D, isn’t it obvious that regular, non-burning sun exposure is the only natural and reliable way to achieve optimal blood levels of vitamin D?

Bottom line: While tanning is marketed as a cosmetic activity, all this vitamin D research shows that tanning in a non-burning fashion is pretty good, pretty natural, and pretty much what nature intended us to do.

New Vitamin D Study Creates A Huge Stir

A landmark vitamin D study – the first-ever clinical trial showing that people rich in vitamin D have a significantly lower risk of cancer – has turned the dermatology world upside down this spring.

The new study, as the first clinical trial on vitamin D, strongly bolstered hundreds of observational and epidemiologic studies that have demonstrated vitamin D’s role in reducing overall cancer risk. The data, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in June, were fairly spectacular.

The four-year clinical trial followed 1,200 Women who took high levels of vitamin D and matched them against a control group who did not take the vitamin. Those rich in vitamin D had 60 percent fewer cancers as compared to the control group.

As research goes, clinical trials are the highest standard of evidence. That’s why this latest study is so important.

As the Toronto Globe & Mail put it in their front-page story that’s “a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error.”

The April 28 Globe & Mail story questioned public health officials in Canada for conspicuously burying the fact that sun exposure is the body’s natural way to produce vitamin D.

In response, the dermatology industries in Canada and the United States have strongly supported the usage of dietary supplements as the preferred way to increase vitamin D levels. Dermatologists in Canada, in fact, have criticized the Canadian tanning industry for pointing out that UVB is Mother Nature’s way to make vitamin D.

The Joint Canadian Tanning Association issued a press release to the Canadian media May 1 responsibly pointing out that indoor tanners have 90 percent higher vitamin D levels as opposed to non-tanners and that the Canadian tanning industry is more effectively teaching sunburn prevention than those who teach sun abstinence.

Adding to the mix, JCTA Executive Director Steve Gilroy had a 1,000-word Op-Ed piece published in Toronto’s Financial Post May 30, explaining the industry’s position on vitamin D.

“While the Canadian indoor tanning industry is primarily a cosmetic service, an undeniable physiological side effect is the vitamin D that Canadians obtain from indoor tanning sessions,” Gilroy wrote, explaining how research shows tanners have 90 percent higher vitamin D blood levels compared to non-tanners, and citing all the new research on vitamin D’s benefits.

“The indoor tanning industry believes that for those individuals who can develop tans, the cosmetic and vitamin D-related benefits of non-burning exposure to ultraviolet light in appropriate moderation outweigh the easily manageable risks associated with overexposure and sunburn.”