I returned to my old neighbourhood last night to have dinner with my mother. I had to fire up the machine in my old room, man - it still has the power! It inspired me to write this post.
Narrowband UVB therapy may be a better treatment for vitamin D deficiency than supplementation, Swedish researchers reported here:
A total of 32 patients completed the full 6 weeks of Narrowband UVB treatment. Patients treated with UVB phototherapy had significantly greater improvements in serum vitamin D levels than those taking supplements, rising from 19.2 nmol/L to 75 nmol/L in the phototherapy group compared with an increase from 23.3 nmol/L to 60.6 nmol/L with supplementation.
Narrowband UVB is more efficient at elevating vitamin D status (especially in the malabsorption prone).
I have been thinking about this for a while now.
Do you think there could be any other important physiological process bypassed by taking vitamin D orally instead of Ultraviolet Light on the skin.
UVB consists of wavelengths of light that are able to synthesize vitamin D in our skin. These wavelengths produce an erythema, the reddening of the skin a.k.a sunburn. This is also known as dermal pooling, because the blood pools into the skin. Effective it is the blood transferring into our skin to harvest the light energy into the blood.
This happens during your sleep, which is why most people will notice they wake up less red in the morning following a day in the sun. The light is transported and stored in your melanin, i.e freckles.
You can transfer 60% of your blood mass into your skin in the case of a really bad burn before other major organ systems begin failing.
This transference of blood actually reduces blood pressure by giving slack to the vasculature, you can think of like reducing the pressure in a water pipe.
UVB has been shown to decrease vascular inflammation in mice and also significantly decrease C Reactive protein - a protein associated with the developed of arterial plaques.
Did you know, inflammation is the prerequisite to calcification, especially in the case of vascular osteogenesis which is the formation of bone in the artery - the same thing that researchers have noticed in specimens that take high doses of oral vitamin D supplements.
Recently, researchers have identified that the arterial calcification is induced not by imbalanced hydroxy D levels - but by dysregulated vitamin D activity.
So i started to think to myself, what would dysregulate vitamin D activity in the body if not obtaining the majority in the form not intended by nature (oral supplements).
"It is needed to be emphasized that, because of tight homeostatic control of calcium and phosphorus, when hypercalcemia and/or hyperphosphatemia is apparent following vitamin D supplementation, the process of tissue and/or organ damage might already have been started." (7)
90% of vitamin D was mean to be synthesized in the skin via Ultraviolet Light!
There is now enough clinical evidence that Narrowband UVB therapy can prevent atherosclerosis they are doing a clinical study on humans.
Scientists will irradiate participants 3x a week for 12 weeks and then measure levels of inflammatory biomarkers in the blood.
REF:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29080365
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1972833 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29524288 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29786640 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27765767 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03083730 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5087213/ (7) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28734988?fbclid=IwAR26R4mD2EMRus0RsW3PjpxsVT9qca76Lz8DgKfj4nA45Hem2981t5ILHTM