We live in the danger zone! Just barely.
Time to work on our tans?
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Tidewater News and Opinion Forum
A place for civil discussion of the events of the day for Tidewater residents without the limitations imposed by media forums.
Just another reason to tend my garden a little more often then just the weekend. Plus the Vitamin D supplement I’ve been on for 2 years helps. Though I’m not 70 (or even 60 for that matter), my cancer and treatments give me concern. Even 13 years later.
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Accepted skin cancer when I embraced Vitamin D decades ago, ahead of the curve, as always.
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Beware self selecting samples.
Are people sick because they don’t get enough sun or do they not get enough sun because they are sick?
I am outdoors a great deal, every month of the year, but people in nursing homes not so much.
But a vitamin D supplement can’t hurt, I just don’t expect much.
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@Tabor
I am not sure that there is a self-selecting sample involved. My understanding of the finding was that latitude alone was predictive of the statistical severity of the disease.
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It’s a self selecting sample at every latitude.
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@Tabor
Sorry, you are not making any sense. Is there some difference other than latitude that explains the finding? Logically, it would have to be that Southern people are more likely to seek help for less serious infections – and thus be “selected” and lower the average severity – than more northern people. That does not seem very likely.
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There are any number of false connections possible with self selected samples.
People who pilot an airplane are less likely to die of a heart attack then those who don’t. Is that because flying an airplane prevents heart disease? No, it is because if you have heart disease you won’t be ale to get a pilot’s license.
Vitamin D may have a beneficial effect, but is it just as possible that that people who are otherwise sickly aren’t getting outdoors in the sun.
It’s just another case where correlation does not impute causation.
That said, in addition to getting a LOT of sun, I will take a Vitamin D supplement.
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@Tabor
Uh, Nope. You are still not thinking straight on this admittedly minor point.
“Vitamin D may have a beneficial effect, but is it just as possible that that people who are otherwise sickly aren’t getting outdoors in the sun.”
That is likely true, but it is true both North and South of the magic line. It might explain – without bringing in Vitamin D – why suntanned people are healthier than pale people, but it does not explain the difference between north and south in the severity of the disease found by this study.
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…” a vitamin D supplement can’t hurt, I just don’t expect much.”
My oncologist put me on the supplement because I wasn’t absorbing enough naturally. Tending my garden, playing golf, hiking with the Mrs., still not enough, in my case.
Our PCM put my wife on it, along with calcium, for bone density issues that occur in women “of a certain age”.
It has done us well in both cases.
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