The English language has at least 34 words for rain and another 12 for cloud or fog – 46 in all to describe the most pervasive aspect of the British climate: the cloud and rain brought in from the Atlantic by the prevailing westerly wind. This is what makes Britain so green and gives Ireland its title “emerald isle”. So, while Britain is often said to have a temperate climate, in one respect it is extreme: we get a lot of cloud and rain, and very little sun. Indeed Glasgow has about the same amount of ultra violet B (UVB) rays annually as a place in Sweden inside the Arctic Circle.
So, while you have all heard of vitamin D insufficiency in relatively sunny New England or other parts of the United States, the situation is substantially worse in Old England. And Scotland, which is on the same latitude as Labrador, has the worst of it with the westerly wind bringing cloud straight in from the Atlantic to block the sun over the lowland belt where most Scots live. Scots have the highest incidence of multiple sclerosis in the world, not so surprising now we know that MS is largely the result of insufficient vitamin D in pregnancy or other major growth stages.
Sunlight robbery: A critique of public health policy on vitamin D in the UK (Article first published online: 28 JUN 2010 DOI: 10.1002/mnfr.200900589)
Vitamin D nutritional policy needs a vision for the future (Published online on 28 July 2010 Exp Biol Med, doi: 10.1258/ebm.2010.010014)
Vitamin D insufficiency is a major health issue here in the UK, but still many doctors know little about recent research which implicates D insufficiency in cancer, heart disease, immune system problems, infection and much more, as well as the classic bone conditions. According to one estimate the cost to the UK is more than £27 billion ($43 billion dollars) annually which is five times the cost of smoking diseases. Vitamin D is said to interact with some 3 percent of the genome and could be a risk factor for as many as a hundred diseases. Vitamin D insufficiency is as important as any of the other well recognised risk factors such as obesity, salt, diet and alcohol problems but it has not yet got into our public health plans in the UK.
Even existing policy that recommends pregnant women and infants in the UK should have vitamin D is being overlooked. Women don’t know about the recommendations because they are not told by doctors that they need a D supplement in pregnancy.
There are more deaths in Scotland among all social classes compared with England which cannot be explained by differences in smoking, alcohol, diet or poverty but could be explained by vitamin D insufficiency. UVB in Scotland is at an Arctic level but Scots don’t have the marine diet that gives Inuit their vitamin D.
