The continuing saga of Vitamin D deficiency

When you blog, your friends send you links. Links to stories similar to what you've been writing about. Sometimes stories they simply think you should be writing about.

Today my friend Maria NIles contributes to my ongoing series of posts about Vitamin D, or Vitamin D deficiency to be more specific.

The post: Why Black People Need More Vitamin D from TheRoot.com.

This I already knew, but the article goes into some detail about why.

Bottom line: The melanin in the skin of people of color does something great: It protects them from harmful UV rays. but it also does something not-so-great: It blocks Vitamin D production.

And since the medical community has evolved from thinking Vitamin D only impacts bone health, but also may lower the risk of diabetes, hypertension and other very common illnesses and conditions, they are thinking that epidemic Vitamin D deficiency is really not a great thing!

The article's bottom line is that it is very very difficult to get enough Vitamin D naturally from either our diet or from foods. They recommend supplements all the way.

Kind of a bummer, but there it is...

Comments

[JRS Medical]

With every "pro" their seems to be a "con" to match it. I'm glad doctors continue to study the differences between different ethnic groups and realize their may be a correlation between a medical problem and how a group handles their environment differently.

I recently read that a medical study of 20,000 people is being done to study the effects of Vitamin D & fish oil supplements to better understand the health benefits associated with it. Here's a quick quote from the article:

"One quarter of the participants will be black. The researchers believe higher rates of cancer, heart disease, and stroke among blacks, compared with whites, might be related to dark skin’s lower ability to make vitamin D from absorbing sunlight, and they want to establish whether taking vitamin D supplements could reduce or eliminate these disparities."

For more info read here:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/06/23/brigham_and_womens_study_to_test_vitamin_d_fish_oil_supplements/

Great post!! Keep up the good work.