An Alaska newspaper on Sunday urged its readers to more closely examine the connection between sun avoidance and vitamin D deficiency.

“When I was 18, my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a debilitating disease that slowly, in her case, anyway, robs you of the ability to walk, move your hands, feed yourself, and eventually, live. It’s a nasty sentence, made all the more so by the fact that no one really seems to understand why it occurs,” the Arctic Sounder’s Carey Restino writes. “One of the few things they do know is that it mostly afflicts people in the north. And now, the link has been made fairly certainly between the high prevalence of Multiple Sclerosis in the north and a lack of vitamin D, otherwise known as the sunshine vitamin. Essentially, because of where we live, our bodies don’t get enough sunshine to make vitamin D. Even if we went out naked and sat on the snow on a sunny day between September and March, our bodies wouldn’t make any vitamin D (and the frostbite sure would be a bummer).”

Restino referred to the Vitamin D Council’s efforts to educate people that vitamin D levels should be what they’d be if we all lived and worked outdoors, and that sunlight is the natural way to get it.

To read the essay click here.

SmartTan.com news articles regularly report medical and scientific information to keep you abreast of current events related to UV light. This information is not intended to be used by any party to make unwarranted health claims to promote sunbed usage. Indoor tanning businesses are obligated to communicate a fair and balanced message to all clients about your products and services including the potential risks associated with indoor tanning. Contact your Smart Tan representative to find out more about what you can and can’t say in your tanning salon business.

© 2012 International Smart Tan Network. All rights reserved.