Is Clothing Making You Sick?

A new debate over Vitamin D and human health has emerged in light of new studies which show that deficiencies can cause a myriad of ailments.

The studies have produced evidence that low levels of Vitamin D make men more likely to have heart attacks, breast and colon cancer victims less likely to survive, kidney disease victims more likely to die, and children more likely to develop diabetes. Two other studies suggested that higher Vitamin D levels reduce the risk of dying prematurely from any cause.

So what is causing this epidemic deficiency?

With people spending more time indoors surfing the Web, watching television, working at desk jobs, and covering up and using sunblock when they do venture outdoors, the amount of Vitamin D that people create in their bodies has been falling. Milk and a few other foods are fortified with Vitamin D, and it occurs naturally in others, such as fatty fish, but most people get very little through their diets.

"Humans evolved in equatorial Africa wearing no clothes," said Robert P. Heaney, a leading Vitamin D researcher at Creighton University in Omaha. "Now we get much less direct sunlight, and so we don't make nearly as much Vitamin D."

Nudists and naturists should be part of this study. It could prove one of the earliest tenets of the movement, that sunshine and health are one and the same.

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