Judging by a report from the UK’s Daily Mail, a sunbed would have come in handy for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the famous classical era composer who reportedly often worked at night and slept during the day.

“Mozart died at 35 because he ‘didn’t get enough sun'” states a sidebar to a recent article about an auction of the composer’s hair, referencing a 2011 published letter by William B. Grant, PhD and Dr. Stefan Pilz, MD, of Austria. More specifically, the researchers cite vitamin D deficiency as the likely cause of the composer’s death.

Not only did Mozart apparently often sleep during hours or sunlight, he lived in high-latitude Austria, where vitamin D cannot be produced during much of the year. He died on December 5, 1791, two to three months into the “vitamin D winter,” when his serum 25(OH)D level likely would have dropped off from summer levels. Of course, vitamin D supplements were not available in the 1700s.

“Almost every disease has a vitamin D connection,” Grant said in 20011. “If only Mozart had known about vitamin D and had access to supplements, he could have doubled his lifetime’s output of work.”

Click here to read the sidebar from the Daily Mail (scroll down).

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