How Vitamin D Protects
Your Heart
by Dr. Joseph Mercola
A new study has linked a lack of sunshine, the body's most natural source of vitamin D, to the prevalence of cardiovascular
disease.
Factors that affect sunlight, and therefore vitamin D production, are tied to a patient's cardiovascular risks.
In other words, the more sunlight you get, the better your cardiovascular health will be. These factors can include time of
year, altitude, and geographical location.
There are a number of physiological mechanisms triggered by vitamin D production
through sunlight exposure that act to fight heart disease, according to the study:
- An increase in the body's natural anti-inflammatory cytokines.
- The suppression of vascular calcification.
- The inhibition of vascular smooth muscle growth.
British Journal of Nutrition October 2005; 94(4): 483-492
Dr.
Mercola's Comment: As you know, getting the right amount of vitamin D treats and prevents a variety of ailments and diseases,
including:
- Protection against multiple sclerosis (MS)
- Prevention of diabetes
- Signals colon, breast and prostate cells to stop growing and eventually succumb to programmed cell death.
Sunshine is your best source of Vitamin D. Unfortunately, most of you simply don't receive the daily amounts of vitamin
D you need to stay healthy. Hopefully as a reader of this site it is not due to ignorance and you still don't believe the
broken rhetoric that so-called experts continue to burn into their brains: avoid all sun exposure.
Fortunately we
are in the midst of a radical revision of vitamin D understanding. The leading vitamin D scientists in the world have changed
their position within the last few years and have started the warning sirens that most of traditional medicine was dead wrong
when it comes to sun avoidance.
If you want to learn more about the healthy, healing benefits of the sun throughout
history and what it can do for you today, consider Dr. Richard Hobday's book, "The Healing Sun". Hobday's book is
an important tool that will help you bring the benefits of sunlight into your lives safely.
As a matter of fact, statistics
show that avoiding the sun has likely caused an extra 50,000 cancers per year, and that is just cancer deaths. It does not
include heart disease or autoimmune diseases like MS or rheumatoid arthritis.
At this time of the year the primary
reason for most readers of this newsletter is related to the fact that they don't have adequate sun exposure. As I write this
in Chicago it is sunny but five degrees below zero (Farenheit). Very difficult to go outside and get sun exposure on your
bare skin as it would quickly be frost bitten.
However even if it were a balmy 50 degrees there still would not be
enough photons this time of year to generate significant vitamin D production in your skin. Just not enough sunlight penetrates
the atmosphere in the northern US this time of year.
That's why I recommend maintaining your optimal vitamin D levels
by taking a high quality cod liver oil regularly from now until early spring.
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