Hidden Health Science

It seems that once we humans began to hide from the sun instead of worshiping it, our health woes began in earnest.  More and more things are being attributed to a lack of Vitamin D, the “sunlight vitamin.”  A new study is linking Vitamin D deficiency with multiple sclerosis (MS).

The research was done at the University of Oxford and shows that while MS is caused by a combination of factors, the correlative one seems to be Vitamin D deficiency.  This study follows on an earlier study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006.

The study didn’t measure Vitamin D levels themselves, but instead looked at MS and glandular fever patients throughout the UK between 1998-2005 and used NASA sunlight intensity data to correlate.  They found that 61% of the variation in number of MS cases across England could be explained by available sunlight.  Further, 72% of glandular fever patients could be explained this way.

While some studies have refuted a link between Vitamin D and MS (or other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s), many more are now finding a relationship.

Unrelated studies into MS populations around the world has found that those areas tend to have a high concentration of Scottish immigrants or ancestry and are often low-sunlight areas (or areas with long winters).

See:
Virus and low sunlight ‘raises mutliple sclerosis risk’ (BBC)
Lack of Vitamin D Tied to Multiple Sclerosis (US News)

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