Dinner is served. Grandmother Sally, alert and happy, is facing her first meal, in some time, at her son’s California ranch style home. Her son Clyde is a comfortably settled dairy cattleman who loves his wife Lela’s cooking, a bit too much—Uncle Clyde believes in eating generously.
Studies show that up to 90% of the vitamin D in our bodies is obtained from our skin being exposed to sunlight. Exposure to sunlight converts cholesterol in the skin to vitamin D, which is then absorbed into the bloodstream by the capillaries. As it passes through the liver, vitamin D undergoes a biological change.
Sleep expert Dr. James Maas asks these three questions: Do you need an alarm clock in order to wake up in the morning? Do you hit the snooze button a few times before finally getting out of bed? Do you sleep extra hours on the weekend? If so, consider yourself one of the millions of chronically sleep-deprived people.
If I were to offer you an all-natural supplement that helps to prevent undesirable clotting, improves your antibody function and mental processing, increases endurance, reduces skin wrinkling, and perks up every cell in your body, how much would you be willing to pay for it? “Well,” you might say, “before I spend money—what is it?” The answer may surprise you—it’s water!
You hear much about sunlight causing skin cancer. Indeed, solar ultraviolet radiation seems to account for approximately 93 percent of skin cancers and about half of lip cancers. However, there are many scientifically established physiological, cancer-protecting benefits of sunlight as well.
The skin is a vital organ. Indeed, with a total area of about 20 square feet, it is the largest organ of our bodies. We cannot live without it. One square inch of skin is composed of 19 million cells, 625 sweat glands, 90 oil glands, 65 hair follicles, 19,000 sensory cells, and 4 meters of blood vessels. The skin protects, provides immunity, excretes, breathes, and is involved in thermal balance. The outer part of the epidermis helps maintain fluid balance. How can we keep it healthy and slow down its aging?
Scientific studies show that even mild dehydration, from short periods of fluid restriction, decreases alertness and ability to concentrate and impairs performance. German researchers have found that dehydration contributes to and exacerbates many chronic diseases. For example, dehydration increases the risk of developing urinary tract infections, kidney stones, constipation, asthma during exercise, high blood pressure, clots, stroke, chronic lung disorders, and diabetic ketoacidosis.
Chronic inflammation is one of the major factors to obesity’s deadly medical complications. After all, pot-belly fat cells generate pro-inflammatory chemicals. For obese individuals acute exercise activates inflammatory triggers inside the body. Furthermore, obese individuals are at a greater risk for vitamin D deficiency. This complicates matters as vitamin D makes a very important anti-inflammatory hormone.
Ideally, before the flu season begins, find out your vitamin D status. A study involving 18, 883 participants, 12 years and older, found that people with the lowest blood level of vitamin D reported having significantly more recent colds or flu. The analysis adjusted for demographics and clinical factors–season, body mass index, smoking history, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Psychological influences not only influence the effectiveness of the flu vaccine, but directly impact the immune system itself. For example, studies show that loneliness appears to have a significant impact on physical health, being linked detrimentally to worse sleep and immune stress responses over time in the elderly.