by Helen Lobato

Created on: June 05, 2008

Many of us are not getting enough vitamin D. The dearth of this wonder vitamin has transpired due to the consumption of depleted industrialized foods coupled with an overzealous adherence to the anti-cancer slip,slop and slap campaigns of the past twenty-five years. The consequences of this vitamin deficiency are proving to be considerable and of great human and social cost.

There exists a link between vitamin D and Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a disabling neurological condition affecting 20,000 Australians and growing at a rate of 8% per annum.The disease affects mostly young people with women in their twenties and thirties who are juggling careers and families being affected three times more often than men.

And it also appears that vitamin D has a huge role to play in cancer prevention. Joan Lappe, a professor of medicine conducted a four year study in which she found that large doses of vitamin D may reduce the risk of cancer. Women who took calcium and a dose of vitamin D almost three times the US Government's recommended daily intake for middle-aged adults saw a 60 per cent lower incidence of all cancers than women not taking the vitamin.

So what is Vitamin D?

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that dissolves in and can be stored by fat deposits in the body and is commonly found in oysters, mackerel, sardines plus generous amounts of butter, egg yolk, butter and cod liver oil. Vitamin D is also synthesized by sunlight acting on the skin.

Then what is the problem?

Don't we have a plentiful supply of sunshine and loads of fish and dairy products. Yes we do, but once again we have listened to well- meaning, but detrimental health campaigns and neglected our dietary history.

Over the past few decades western diets have tended to ignore the lessons observed from history where traditional diets included lots of saturated fats supplying varying amounts of vitamin D. Primitive peoples instinctively chose vitamin-D-rich foods including the intestines, organ meats, skin and fat from certain land animals, as well as shellfish, oily fish and insects. On the other hand our modern diets have tended towards the processed low-fat diets leading to vitamin D deficiency and other nutritional disorders.

Vitamin D can also be synthesized in the skin during sun exposure, but precise amounts of sun exposure are difficult to pinpoint since they depend on a person's skin type and age, as well as on latitude, season, time of day, and amount of skin exposed. The ultraviolet wavelength that

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