At this time of year, ever since I was a kid, I’m saddened with the diminishing daylight that each day brings. No matter how well you understand that it’s just the cycle of seasons, and that the days will begin lengthening again soon, you still hate to see the sun go.
   But it is also the time of year when an important source of vitamin D goes away. I’ve spoken of the benefits of vitamin D before, but the winter season is when it’s even more important to make sure you are getting enough.
   Today medical research is discovering more and more functions of vitamin D in the human body, every one of them critical for optimal health. For example, vitamin D regulates blood levels of essential minerals such as phosphorus and calcium; it regulates the parathyroid gland, which controls the activity of bone tissue; it is essential to our immune system, plays a role in preventing high blood pressure, and protects against a wide range of diseases, from several forms of cancer to diabetes to multiple sclerosis. One authority estimates that lack of sunshine—and the consequent reduced production of vitamin D—leads to nearly one million deaths per year around the world, 600,000 of those deaths from cancer alone. Many, many times more than caused by the H1N1 swine flu.
   I agree with Dr. Michael Holick, when he says that vitamin D deficiency may be today’s real epidemic. Vast numbers of people are suffering from significant deficiencies of vitamin D. An estimated one billion people around the world have vitamin D deficiency. The rates of deficiency are especially high in the elderly in industrialized countries. According to several studies, 40 to 100% of U.S. and European men and women over 65 are deficient in vitamin D.1
   To make matters even worse, we know that it’s not easy to obtain your vitamin D needs from your diet. Very little vitamin D is naturally present in our food. While oily fish and mushrooms are among the best sources and many foods in the U.S., such as orange juice and breakfast cereals, are fortified with vitamin D, most of us get 90 to 95% of our vitamin D requirement from our skin, when we are exposed to the sun.2
   A misplaced fear of sun exposure has been responsible for untold illness and suffering. However, even if we get over being frightened of the sun’s rays, the cells in the dermis and epidermis will absorb sufficient ultraviolet B radiation to convert cholesterol into precursors of vitamin D only when the sun’s intensity is at a certain level. It may sound unfair, but in order to produce vitamin D we need to be out in the direct sun in the middle of the day on the right part of the earth at the right time of year.
   The bottom line is that everyone who lives more than 37 degrees latitude north or south of the equator is at risk of vitamin D deficiency in the winter months. Look at a map to see if you’re in ‘sun deficient’ zone. So, with the sunshine in the other hemisphere, and only a few good sources of vitamin D in food, we are left with—you guessed it—supplementation.
   Nutrition authorities recently raised the recommended level of vitamin D and are likely to raise it further in the near future. Today a blood level of over 30 ng/mL is considered to be just sufficient, and a daily intake of 800 to 1,000 IU is required to achieve that borderline level. We now believe that an optimal blood level is around double that.
   Largely due to today’s busy lifestyles, along with avoiding the midday sun, overuse of sunscreens and living too far from the equator, most of us need to supplement with vitamin D all year-round, with increased amounts in the winter months. A tiny 2000 IU tablet of vitamin D is now available from USANA, the ideal amount for winter supplementation.
   There’s a new interest in the benefits of vitamin D, and clinical study results are rolling in, which I will be reporting to you. Here’s one: Post-menopausal women who increase their vitamin D intake by 1,100 IU per day reduce their relative risk of cancer by 60 to 77%3. Wow.

1 Holick MF Vitamin D Deficiency p. 267 N Engl J Med. 357:266-81. 2007.
2 Holick, MF The Vitamin D Epidemic and its Health Consequences. J. Nutr. 135:2739S-2748S. 2005.
3 Holick MF Vitamin D Deficiency p. 278 N Engl J Med. 357:266-81. 2007

   If you haven’t already heard about the switch to the new compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), you soon will. That’s because everyone—every business and private residence, as well as schools and government offices in the U.S.—will soon be required to exchange their incandescent lighting for CFLs.
   The last half of the 20th century could be called ‘the Fluorescent Age.’ No illustration of the modern day workplace would be complete without the ubiquitous rows and panels of fluorescent lights that covered virtually every ceiling in every office or shop across the industrial world. Meanwhile, in more private and comfortable places, such as homes and restaurants, incandescent tungsten lighting remained the light source of choice.
   Today, however, millions of the incandescent bulbs are being replaced in the guise of saving electrical energy and, subsequently, the future of the planet. Almost no one ever said they found fluorescent lighting more pleasant, for it simply doesn’t provide the full spectrum of light we get from the sun. But from the beginning it consumed less electrical energy and thus was a less expensive way to light an area. And now, to drive the demand for electrical energy down further, governments, including the U.S. Federal government and the European Union, have banded together to try to eliminate the incandescent lamp altogether. In the U.S., Congress has passed legislation that leaves you no choice: it mandates the phase-out of conventional incandescent bulbs starting in 2012, as part of initiatives to reduce global warming.
   But there is resistance to total conversion to fluorescent lighting. And with good reason. Fluorescent lighting has proven to be unhealthy. The light emitted can pose serious problems to those with certain health conditions such as Lupus.  For those people with Irlen syndrome, also known as Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, the flicker of fluorescent lighting results in a form of dyslexia, preventing them from processing visual information properly. Among other health problems that fluorescents pose are migraine headaches and skin conditions. A study in The Lancet, the leading British medical journal, found that working under fluorescent lights doubled the risk of melanoma.
   Fortunately, these disorders seem to affect a small portion of the population, and many of them can be alleviated with filters and other adustments. But the worst aspect of fluorescent lighting—one that potentially affects all of us—is the fact that every fluorescent lamp contains what I regard as the most toxic element on earth—mercury. Fluorescent lighting is produced by an electrical current changing liquid mercury into a gas. When the excited mercury atoms return to their original energy level they release photons, producing light. The energy emanating from the mercury exchange in the lamps has a negative effect on the body. Kinesiologists understand why we are weakened when we are underneath fluorescent light.
   Each compact fluorescent lamp contains about 5 mg of mercury, which when replacing billions of lamps all around the world will account for many tons of additional mercury being introduced to the environment. And mercury is not degradable; it never goes away. It cycles through the environment, poisoning all forms of plant and animal life.
   Then there are the hazards of disposal, especially if you drop one and it breaks. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends a 19-step procedure to safely clean up while making sure you don’t release mercury into the environment (http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm). Please read it.
   What government and industry should be doing is not banning older technology, but promoting the development and implementation of new technology that will give us healthier, more efficient, and safer lighting. The type of lighting that will achieve that is not fluorescent bulbs of any configuration. The best choice in my opinion, may be light-emitting diode (LED) technology.
   This newer technology is undergoing very rapid development, and it won’t be long before LEDs will be able to replace both incandescents and fluorescents in all lighting applications. In fact, there is already a small town in Italy—Torraca—that is totally illuminated by LEDs. Even the streetlights are 54 LEDs bundled together into each lamp. The Bird’s Nest stadium, made famous around the world during the Beijing Olympic Games, is also lit by LEDs. I know of a new airplane that is lit—interior and exterior—exclusively by LEDs.
   According to my calculations, replacing incandescents and fluorescents with LEDs could save nearly $2 trillion in energy costs globally over the next decade and eliminate the need for as many as 300 thousand-megawatt power plants. And it would prevent the introduction of more than 50 tons of mercury into the environment, both by reduction of power plant emissions and the elimination of mining and refining of mercury for the manufacture of fluorescent lamps.
   We’ve known how essential sunlight is to health for a long time, but it’s been only in the last ten years that researchers have been studying how LEDs affect health. With sponsors such as NASA and the U.S. Navy, we are learning that LEDs have powerful positive effects on wound healing and cancer therapy, even restoring sight to experimentally-blinded laboratory animals. The reason why LEDs should be our first choice for lighting is that it is capable of producing virtually the same quality of light as the sun. To have ‘full-spectrum’ man-made light where we don’t have natural sunlight would have dramatic, positive effects on the health of the world.  And there are other important advantages. The average lifetime of an incandescent lamp is 2 years, and a CFL 5 years, but LED’s have an average lifetime of 25 years. LEDs are the most efficient and have the lowest running temperatures of any lighting available today.
   The technology doesn’t stop there. Next up are OLEDs, organic light-emitting diodes, that emit light in all directions and which can be manufactured in sheets to serve as ceiling panels or even windows. They promise to be even more efficient at producing light. Now that’s the kind of technology that governments should be encouraging and supporting.
   This government-mandated move to total fluorescent lighting by 2012 will save some energy, but its cost to the health of humans, plants, animals and birds is potentially devastating. Incandescent lighting has served us well for over a hundred years. Thank you, Thomas Edison. My advice is to not change from that technology until we have a better alternative. Compact fluorescent lighting certainly is not it.

I want to thank everyone for the great response we’ve had to this Web site. Your comments and questions have been both interesting and informative. My time and schedule, unfortunately, does not allow me to answer all your wonderful questions, so I need to discontinue the “Ask a Question” feature at this time. I will continue to read all of the comments posted to this Web site.

If you have a medical question, please go to Sanoviv’s Web site, www.sanoviv.com, and click on the “Speak to a Doctor” link.