[TheSleeper]

http://health.usnews.com/health-news...-for-vitamin-d


" In the winter, it's impossible to produce vitamin D from the sun if you live north of Atlanta because the sun never gets high enough in the sky for its ultraviolet B rays to penetrate the atmosphere. "


Hmmm... MS is more frequent the farther you get from the equator?

[tkrik]

Interesting article. I had a doctor once tell me that since I have MS my body has a harder time processing vitamin D. I don't know how true that is or not. My vitamin D was low and I was given a prescription for it. I also made sure I got plenty of sun time in the spring/summer. So far, things have been going well and I haven't had a problem since.

And, growing up, I was outside all the time (with the exception of days when it was raining or snowing). So, I'm not 100% sure about the whole vitamin D theory. I do believe it is a factor but I also think that more people would have MS. If I look at my immediate family (10 kids), we all grew up together in the same places, had the same diet, were all active and outside all the time, etc. and I'm the only one with MS. If sunlight was a big factor, I would think one of my siblings would have MS as well. Take that further in to my extended family, I'm still the only one with MS despite the fact of where we lived and sunlight. Again, if sunlight was a factor, you would think one of my cousins would have MS. As far as we know, no one other than myself has MS (this includes my grandparents, great grandparents, etc.) all of whom lived north of Atlanta.

[lefthanded]

Check out this world map of prevalence of MS worldwide. link

[TheSleeper]

tkrik, I have 3 brothers, all within 7 years of my age, and they were the ones that had inside jobs. I am though the only one that had Mono, and it was shortly before strange things started happening.

[Mariel]

Lefthanded, I don't see the map of MS prevalence.

Dr. Swank and many others have documented that MS occurs more frequently in northern climates. What is the reason? Could be the Vitamin D theory. Also, MS occurs more frequently in the "native" populations of Scandinavia and the British Isles than among the Mediterraneans, but this has probably changed by now, since people move around much more than they used to, so it may not be a racially inherited disorder. I have several people in my family dx'd with MS, always the ones in the Pacific Northwest of America, but the matter is blurred in my case, since I am not sure if our ailment was/is MS plus Porphyria, Porphyria solo, or MS solo--all of these possibilities suggested by doctors over the years. My grandma had "it", and her sister's nine children seem to have produced only one known MS diagnosis, but I did not know the whole family well. The families were estranged over religion, which is a most unfortunate thing. I would know my cousins and second and third cousins if it were not for this. The one dx in my grandma's sister's children was in a man who died young by drowning, soon after his MS dx, so who knows if he would have had a more complex dx if he had grown older. I almost died of drowning when I was near his age, but was rescued...I became paralyzed in the heat while swimming in a deceptively deep creek.
Now I have to avoid sun like the plague, due to Porphyria, which is hard in my sunny climate, but I cover head to toe with Solumbra cloth clothing. I take Vitamin D3.