Low vitamin D

I've never had cod liver oil. I do remember little orange pills – vitamin C, I presume, but I think we only had those one winter.

Diet helps with vitamin D. You can get enough from animal fats. Pork fat is particularly good. Exkimos weren,t short of VitD in spite of living within the Arctic circle – whale and seal blubber, lots of fish, etc.

You are right nellie about latitude. UVB rays lacking in UK in the winter. Same goes for early mornings and evenings in summer. It is to do with the angle of the sun as it enters the atmosphere.
And after last summer - how many days were there when it was nice enough to get outside and sit in the sun with bare arms and legs, let alone backs or fronts? I can't just now recall any.
So I went out yesterday and bought some boots cod-liver oil capsules (cheaper than branded).
There are always a minority of people who push high doses of vitamins and this should be avoided as nearly anything is harmful in excess. Having looked into it in some detail I think this is the only vitamin that we should consider taking as a supplement if we live in these latitudes.
I think when one of the doctors Royal Colleges starts worrying about vitamins then we should take notice. We all grew up with the teaspoonful of NHS cod liver oil a day.

If a person has low vitamin D. They has to face many problems.

Margaretx I have heard that in Britain because of the latitude the sun is so low in the sky at this time of year you cannot get enough Vitamin D from the sun between October and April. It is even worse in Scotland. There are a number of health conditions attributed to this.

These two studies show that in people with low vitamin D levels in their blood, supplementing with vitamin D can reduce respiratory infections and antibiotic use in vulnerable adults and in children.
"The results show that symptoms of respiratory tract infection declined by almost a quarter and the use of antibiotics by almost half. Vitamin D treatment was also tolerated well by all patients and gave no serious side-effects."
So worth considering if you, or one of yours tends to get chest infections.

bit.ly/Z4JL74
bit.ly/SVnOkC

I am bumping this thread because it is in the news today.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20710028

It just so happened that I watched a consumer programme on German TV last night about the hype about vitamins. They asked passers by to go into a lab and tested their blood for Vitamins - or lack of. All were OK. The lady representing older people had the most Vit D. The expert said that nearly all GPs are not up to date with the latest findings on vitamins, and supplements are causing - not preventing diseases.
I'm sure that a grey day can help with Vit D. If the sun is not shining it is dark. You shouldn't confuse getting tanned with Vit D, although it means you have had enough sun but being outside in the UV light even through grey clouds should be enough, and your body can store it.

This is tragic and so un-necessary when a vitamin supplement for pregnant and breastfeeding mums, and their babies would prevent. Proprietory baby milks are supplemented.

JessM when I was still working in the medical centre one of our nurses came into our office, she had been horrified to refer a case of obvious rickets to one of the GPs. Sadly the child was an Asian child newly arrived in this country.

Mind you, margaret you are not a juvenile ungulate. But we definitely need some animal fats as part of a healthy diet.
As people age their skin gets less efficient at making Vitamin D apparently. So 15 mins may not do much good. Just remembered. Can I remember my reference on this? I may have to come back to you.
It also depends on how much skin, and what time of day.
I usually reckon that if i have a light tan over arms and legs then I am probably doing OK.

Heard of Mrs Beaton - her cookery book? I was reading once just for pleasure and read a chapter about calves. Calves brought up on skimmed milk did not thrive as well as calves reared with water thinned fullfat milk.
I haven't drunk skimmed or semi skimmed milk since then. I also eat offal e.g. liver and kidney.
DD1 is a midwife and assures me 15 minutes sunshine on bare skin per day is enough for baby and should be enough for us but you need the calcium with it.

As someone who has a common non- threatening skin cancer, I was told that even on a grey day the UV light could be a disadvantage and have SF50 cream for the bridge of my nose, so take heart, just go outside.

MiceElf No, not wrong at all. Quite a few members of Gransnet have mentioned that they do not have grandchildren or even children. It's not a condition of membership.

He he. Yes, she's a granny, all the children long flow the nest. She has heaps of energy and talent and likes the sisterhood. My other friend (the one who was 'outed' as a communist, is likely to join. I told her she didn't have to be a granny. Was I wrong?

MiceElf Used to happen a lot in the past but didn't realise that it still did. I've always fancied a béguinage in old age and widowhood (if it happens that way).

She's a widow.

Penguin-style nuns are very few and far between these days. Since the 1970s it has become more and more usual for nuns to wear knee-length or just below the knee dresses and a light scarf-like arrangement on their heads rather than a tight wimple. Some are even more mufti than that. I think it's great that they have enough sense to realise that their beliefs and commitments do not dictate that what they wear has to be archaic and slightly ridiculous.

MiceElf I'm quite prepared to believe that a nun – or more than one – is a member of Gransnet, but it seems unlikely that she is a granny.

So there are none left wearing wimples etc. ?

There are quite a few around, but they look just like any other gransnetter. One of them is a member!

Are there any left? Hard to tell. Occasionally spot one or two on the continent but they are an endangered species these days.

What about nuns?

Yes even the girls do PE in long sleeves, headscarves etc.

I see a lot of Asian ladies with aches and pains fro m low vit D.
The combination of skin colour and modest dress contributes.

And sometimes their babies have rickets in the UK

Sadly many Asian women from traditional backgrounds have a chronic deficiency in Vitamin D - including pregnant women.

A and D both fat soluble indeed and I agree with Bags - a low fat diet, particularly one low in all animal fat, can give you insufficient of these essentials. Yes sunscreen does prevent you making Vit d in your skin. I think too as we get older a lot of use expose less flesh when we are outside in the summer - trousers rather than shorts, long sleeved tops, hats etc and therefore not enough skin surface engaged with making it.
The need for Vitamin D is almost certainly why Europeans evolved pale skins. Without the pale skin (and with clothing) dark skinned people would get rickets which would have caused deformed pelvises and inability to give birth. A pretty brutal mechanism.