Thursday, January 23, 2014

Change in emphasis - sunshine and vitamin D

by Joan Savage

Planting Ahead was conceived as a blog about adapting to major change, inspired by the Mohawks' work on conserving black ash trees. I'm still much about adapting to major change.

In the past five weeks I have been paying less attention to the none-the-less important work of preparing for and mitigating climate change, and more attention to what I need to get healthy, healthy enough to do any useful work.
So, Planting Ahead is still about adapting to major change, and that change begins with me.

This health endeavor has involved reading two books, many hours reading medical abstracts, changing my diet, changing sleep pattern, and experimenting with exposing myself occasionally to UV-B light.  However, I remain open to adjustments.  Just today, my daughter shared a link on redheads, pheomelanin and the MC-1R, which led me a few minutes later to find a rather scary abstract on redheads and melanoma. 

The two books:

James Dowd, The Vitamin D Cure, revised edition
Michael Holick, The Vitamin D Solution

Portal to medical abstracts:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

My experimental source of UV-B light:
Exo Terra Repti-Glo 10.0 Compact Fluorescent Desert Terrarium Lamp

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From Shakespeare's MacBeth

MacDuff:

Such welcome and unwelcome things at once
'Tis hard to reconcile.
Malcolm:
Well, more anon -