The “scientific consensus” that has held sway for four decades regarding both exposure to the sun and vitamin D has collapsed. What has emerged in place of the old “settled science” is the knowledge that most people in America are seriously vitamin D deficient or insufficient. The same is true for Canada and Europe, and the implications are staggering.

Simply put, unless you are one of the few people with optimal serum D levels, such as lifeguards and roofers in South Florida, you can cut your risks from most major diseases by 50 to 80 percent. All you have to do is get enough D. This also means we can significantly reduce healthcare costs by taking a few simple steps.

As a financial writer, I bemoan the fact that no one can patent sunshine. I’d buy stock in any company that did. Biotechs with therapies supported by far less evidence have exploded in value. GlaxoSmithKline, for example, bought Sirtris for $720 million to acquire IP for certain resveratrol-like substances. If you compare the evidence supporting the benefits of resveratrol vs. sunshine, sunshine leaves resveratrol in the dust.

I realize, incidentally, that such bold claims probably inspire skepticism. They should, in fact, and I’m going to make even more bold claims. So allow me to make the necessary disclaimers and move on.

I’ve come to the conclusions I’ve written here because my job, as a tech investment researcher, requires that I survey thousands of the most recent scientific studies. In the last few years, an overwhelming flood of new evidence has been produced supporting the view that the medical and nutritional establishments have been fundamentally wrong about vitamin D’s physiological role and optimal dosage.

If researchers on the cutting edge are right, the benefits of raising your serum D levels to about 40 ng/ml are enormous. If they are wrong, the risks associated of the recommended therapy are trivial if not nonexistent, especially if done through supplementation. This is simple Bayesian analysis.

What You Aren’t Being Told About Vitamin D

Behind the scenes even as I write today, the NIH is looking for a face-saving way to change positions on vitamin D without taking too much blame for having resisted those who have urged reassessment for decades.

The stakes are huge as are the benefits of attaining optimal vitamin D levels. The embarrassment for those who must admit past error, however, may be even greater. The reason is that untold millions have suffered and died prematurely because those who challenged the “settled science” regarding sunshine and D decades ago were treated like crackpots and demonized.

Now we know that very few people have optimal serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], the principal form of vitamin D circulating in the blood.

Dr. Michael Holick, the researcher most responsible for this radical change in thinking, has described the current state of widespread vitamin D deficiency as a “silent epidemic.”

Vitamin D deficiency is not one of those metaphoric “epidemics.” It is an extremely serious public health problem that affects virtually all diseases. To understand this change in thinking, we need to review briefly the history of vitamin D and our understanding of its function.

After Decades of Bumbling, One Researcher Strikes Out on His Own Path

In the 1890s, the bone-softening children’s disease rickets was still widespread in northern states, which has more pollution and a thicker ozone layer than the northwest. Ozone blocks the invisible component of sunshine, ultraviolet-B, which produces vitamin D in the skin.

In the early 1900s, it was demonstrated that summer midday sunshine prevented rickets. As a result, there was an effort to educate the public and nearly everybody learned that a little sunshine was good for you. If you’re of baby boom age, your mother undoubtedly told you to “go outside and get some sun.” That’s why.

Ironically, the beginning of the end of this attitude came in 1923 when a means of producing dietary D was found. UW-Madison biochemistry professor Harry Steenbock discovered that the vitamin D content of milk could be increased with ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. This led to the enrichment of milk and the near elimination of rickets. Slowly, the perception of sunshine as healthy began to fade.

For the most part, scientists lost interest in the biological role of sunshine for higher animals. Dr. Michael Holick was the notable exception. For the last thirty years, Holick has been gathering data, doing research and studying the role of sunshine and vitamin D.

When Science Overcomes Conventional Wisdom, Opportunities Pop Up

We now know, however, that D is not actually a vitamin. It is prohormone, meaning that it is a precursor form of a steroid hormone created by conversion in various organs. This active hormone acts to regulate multiple important biological functions. Every single cell in the body has a D receptor; even stem cells.

Holick, a professor of dermatology himself, lost his teaching position when he published his findings. When he wrote a book on the subject, he was targeted by a well-funded PR campaign, aimed at debunking him, by the leading dermatological organization.

Supposedly objective journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, refused to publish his exhaustively documented research; research now accepted as both accurate and pioneering.

About five years ago, the vitamin D climate began to change. Holick has finally begun to get the recognition he deserves and now serves on multiple prestigious boards as well as advising the NIH. He is, incidentally, Professor of Medicine, Physiology and Biophysics at the Boston University School of Medicine. Holick is also director of the General Clinical Research Center, the Vitamin D, Skin and Bone Research Laboratory and the Biologic Effects of Light Research Center at the Boston University Medical Center.

Holick explains that new breakthroughs in the biological sciences have helped him make his case. With the decoding of the human genome, for example, it now appears that a remarkable 2000 genes are influenced by vitamin D.

A Trend to Watch – Vitamin D Awareness and Opportunities for Investors

Optimal vitamin D serum blood levels, attained through sunlight or supplementation, dramatically reduces the risk of many diseases other than bone maladies. Many of the most serious are ameliorated by an astonishing 50 to 85 percent. These diseases include cancers, from breast and colon to deadly melanoma skin cancers.

Yes, that’s right. The really nasty skin cancers can be prevented by getting moderate, sensible sunshine or through vitamin D supplementation. Non-melanoma skin cancers do increase somewhat with sun exposure, especially with sunburns. These skin cancers, however, are relatively benign as they tend not to spread into other parts of the body. They are easily detected and removed because they appear on skin exposed to the sun.

Melanoma, on the other hand, is the deadly skin cancer that most people erroneously relate to sunshine. Melanomas, however, do not tend to occur on parts of the body that get direct sunlight. The bottom line, which is worth repeating, is that the incidence of truly nasty melanoma skin cancers goes down significantly with sensible exposure to UVB-containing sunshine or with vitamin D3 supplementation.

This is not the end of the list, though. The big killers and most expensive diseases respond similarly to adequate D. I’m talking about hypertension, cardiovascular disease and stroke. So do type 1 diabetes, type 2 to a lesser extent, rheumatoid arthritis, peripheral vascular disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia, autoimmune diseases and apparently even viral diseases such as H1N1 and AIDs.

I predict, in fact, that other diseases will also be linked to vitamin D insufficiencies as more studies are performed. I’ll keep you posted on any further developments I discover. In the meantime, you might benefit from doing some personal research on vitamin D.

Your body and your portfolio might thank you…

For transformational profits,
Patrick Cox

January 27, 2010