Summary:
Americans do NOT get enough sunshine and outdoor time.
The best vitamin D source is sunlight interacting with your skin.
Few died from COVID-19 when their vitamin D was optimal.
Flu is much more prolific in the winter.
Live in the north? Then simulate the sun at home.
After publishing on grip strength (part 1) and peak expiratory volume (part 2), I decided to write a series of blogs on simply longevity "hacks" (I don't like that term - oh well) that are VERY inexpensive to measure. Importantly, they have inexpensive solutions for the most part.
Myth Buster: You do not want to live beyond 100 because you will be attached to tubes, ventilators, etc, in the hospital. This is NOT the case. Like most medical dogma, this to is DEAD wrong.
What is the best way to measure your longevity potential?
23 and me? - wrong
Telomere length? - wrong
Arterial plaque measurements? wrong
Extensive biomarker testing? wrong
David Sinclair? wrong
Why "wrong?" Because they do not provide ample information as to what to do.
The best way to measure - and improve - your longevity potential is with a simple, boring, well-crafted survey that no one wants to do. We run an extensive survey that takes about 30 minutes. Motivated people have no problem filling out the survey with integrity. However, those less motivated balk at the idea of spending 30 minutes describing their health environment. How many spend 30 minutes going to Mickey-Ds? Oops, I forgot - Uber Eats and Doordash. If you will eat that super processed food, why go outside and accidentally get some sun in the process?
Today's longevity potential measurement
Survey Question:
Survey Answer:
The orange color implies there is a significant risk of having limited exposure to sunshine.
Here are some graphics that may convince you to get more sun.
Increase in all-cause cancer mortality with sunlight intensity.
Increase in flu deaths in the northern hemisphere.
Here is some information on how the health of hospitalized patients improves when they are allowed to get some sunshine.
But first..
Some public health officials were concerned about delayed or missed diagnoses of TB disease in 2020."
1.
Many factors affect the healing of hospital patients – staff expertise, state-of-the-art equipment, proper nutrition, medications, and more.
But one often overlooked and completely cost-free way to improve patient outcomes is to let in the daylight.
Rinat Hadashi Gannon, a master’s student in the Technion – --Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, has developed new methods to evaluate daylight in inpatient rooms and new design guidelines for improved inpatient health.
Natural light significantly affects our physiological and psychological health, well-being, and performance. It helps regulate the circadian rhythm, modulating the cycle of sleep and wakefulness and neurological and hormonal processes that affect our health.
2.
At the present time sunbathing is being actively discouraged by medical authorities,1 yet little more than fifty years ago it was quite common for sunlight to be prescribed in the treatment of tuberculosis and other diseases. During the First World War sunlight therapy or, as it became known, heliotherapy was used to heal the wounds of casualties on both sides of the conflict; and in the years that followed a number of hospitals and clinics were built so that tuberculosis patients could be exposed to solar radiation under medical supervision.
3.
The Sanatorium Movement in America
The first American sanatorium was built by Edward Livingstone Trudeau at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks in 1885. Trudeau, like many of the early pioneers of the Sanatorium movement, was afflicted with tuberculosis but believed he had cured himself of his symptoms after an extended stay in the mountains in the 1870s.
At his sanatorium, he prescribed the same regime of healthy eating and outdoor living that had resulted in his own recovery, requiring residents to spend daylight hours outside riding horseback, walking, or reclining on the broad porches that encircled each of the sanatorium’s “cure cottages.” Trudeau also required his patients to eat several large meals a day, including at least three glasses of milk maintained a strict code of personal behavior that prohibited drinking, smoking, and cursing, and enforced a dress code.
By 1900, Trudeau had raised enough money to build over twenty cottages at Saranac Lake, an infirmary, library, and chapel, as well as his own Saranac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis.
4.
The English physician John Coakley Lettsom was one of the first advocates of the ‘open-air method’ and, in 1796, founded The Royal Sea Bathing Hospital in Margate, UK which claimed to be the earliest specialist orthopedic hospital in Britain, if not the world, and was a pioneer in the use of open-air treatment for patients with non-pulmonary tuberculosis.
George Bodington founded the first tuberculosis sanatorium in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham, England. His treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis was a combination of gentle exercise outdoors, fresh air, a varied nutritious diet and the minimum of medicines.
Florence Nightingale wrote about the importance of sunlight and fresh air in the 1850s in the recovery of hospital patients.
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