Sunlight

Just back from a holiday with a bit too much sun.
I wasn't sunbathing at all I can assure you - I try to cover my skin and wear medically effective sunglasses to block all types of lightwaves. The glasses are to protect my extremely light sensitive eyes, which produce one of the seven forms of vitamin D in the body resulting in big swings in my condition.

As I am generally physically better after more than a year on my personalised drug treatment (hooray!), I was trying to be more active and sociable with my family on holiday. Unfortunately the kickback from the excess of sun has knocked me for six. Back to trying to have a normal life while keeping myself away from too much UV light (which also includes some fluorescent lights).

Has anyone else noticed an increase in pains or depression or other physical changes about one or two days after getting an excess of sunshine - maybe by the sea with the extra reflections from the water? Sometimes the sunlight and changeable weather at the turn of the seasons have a similar effect.

Pain and one tiny unscientific conclusion

I just had to respond to Lynne McTaggart's What Doctors Don't Tell you blog on pain: this was the comment I posted.

Was very interested to read this timely posting on an important issue for patients as I agreed with 95 per cent of all you said.....until you made the comment about vitamin D. It is a very fashionable conclusion. But who benefits if everyone (apparently) needs to supplement their vit D intake? The health supplement producers, and particularly a large lobby of vit D producers, that's who.

If vitamins are defined as chemical substances that the body cannot produce itself but which must be ingested for correct functioning of the body, then why is vitamin D produced by the body (in several complex forms) through the action of light on skin and eyes? Maybe because it is not a vitamin and needs detailed investigation?

Many research studies recently have concluded there is a link (or correlation) between low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (the most commonly and simply measured form of vit D) and pain/underlying disease. But note the word 'correlation'. The cause meanwhile could be one of at least two options: pain/underlying disease causes low levels of vit D; or low levels of vit D cause pain/disease. Too often it is claimed that a proven correlation has the latter cause. I am not just unconvinced but find this repeated mistaken conclusion totally unscientific.

Also, how come this study below (and others) showed that people with long-term avoidance of light still maintain normal vit D levels in their bodies?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9418761