![]() He discovered a previously unknown biological pathway by which the skin uses sunlight to make nitric oxide. ![]() Weller’s doubts began around 2010, when he was researching nitric oxide, a molecule produced in the body that dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure. This pathway is one which came from following the data rather than a desire to overturn apple carts.” “I was always the good boy that toed the line at school. “I’m not by nature a rebel,” he insisted when I called him up this fall. For years, Weller swallowed the party line about the destructive nature of the sun’s rays. One of the leaders of this rebellion is a mild-mannered dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh named Richard Weller. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health-that big orange ball shining down from above. These rebels argue that what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. And if they’re right, it means that once again we have been epically misled. How did we get it so wrong? How could people with low vitamin D levels clearly suffer higher rates of so many diseases and yet not be helped by supplementation?Īs it turns out, a rogue band of researchers has had an explanation all along. In November, one of the largest and most rigorous trials of the vitamin ever conducted-in which 25,871 participants received high doses for five years-found no impact on cancer, heart disease, or stroke. Five years ago, researchers were already warning that it showed zero benefit, and the evidence has only grown stronger. Yet vitamin D supplementation has failed spectacularly in clinical trials. Better to slather on sunblock, we’ve all been told, and compensate with vitamin D pills. Sunscreen also blocks our skin from making vitamin D, but that’s OK, says the American Academy of Dermatology, which takes a zero-tolerance stance on sun exposure: “You need to protect your skin from the sun every day, even when it’s cloudy,” it advises on its website. We produced all the vitamin D we needed from the sun.īut today most of us have indoor jobs, and when we do go outside, we’ve been taught to protect ourselves from dangerous UV rays, which can cause skin cancer. ![]() When our ancestors lived outdoors in tropical regions and ran around half naked, this wasn’t a problem. It’s difficult to obtain in sufficient quantities through diet. Vitamin D is a hormone manufactured by the skin with the help of sunlight. The vitamin is required for calcium absorption and is thus essential for bone health, but as evidence mounted that lower levels of vitamin D were associated with so many diseases, health experts began suspecting that it was involved in many other biological processes as well.Īnd they believed that most of us weren’t getting enough of it. People with low levels of vitamin D in their blood have significantly higher rates of virtually every disease and disorder you can think of: cancer, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, heart attack, stroke, depression, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and more. If there was one supplement that seemed sure to survive the rigorous tests, it was vitamin D. Although they are a $30-plus billion market in the United States alone, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, beta-carotene, glucosamine, chondroitin, and fish oil have now flopped in study after study.
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