The Astronomy of Good Health

PLEASE NOTE!  The information in this newsletter is based on my personal experiences and ongoing research.  I'll qualify statements by indicating "my opinion" or "my understanding."  Some opinions are contrary to mainstream medicine so please do not be offended if you disagree or know better than me.  And please don't unsubscribe on that basis!  I'll be done with this topic and back to regular Classical Astronomy soon enough!  All that being said, here's a legal boilerplate disclaimer:

"The statements in this Classical Astronomy Update free email newsletter have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This Classical Astronomy Update free email newsletter is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.  I am not a doctor nor do I play one on television."

Since 2013 I've been studying sunlight and the production of Vitamin D and the health benefits of moderate exposure to the Sun, and experimenting on myself as a guinea pig. This edition will focus on sunlight exposure.  The next edition will focus on establishing a circadian rhythm.  This newsletter has been in my head for a dozen years and am glad to finally write it all down.

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In 2013, fitness guru Joe Weider passed away at the age of 93.  Joe was a promoter of bodybuilding way back in the 1940s.  One of Joe's many claims to fame was bringing 21 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger to the USA in 1968, thereby launching that successful career.  I was one of many young guys back in the 1970s caught up in the weightlifting craze accompanying AH-nold's movie, Pumping Iron.  

The obituary included Joe's health advice to "get plenty of sunshine."  That line struck me.  When I was a kid, way back in Postwar America, our moms always told us to "go outside and get some sunshine."  There was this vague notion that we'd somehow get Vitamin D from the sunshine, and that it would be "good for our bones" and "keep us from getting rickets," whatever that was.  I never gave the subject much thought for many years.  

In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan got skin cancer.  He advised young Americans to not be foolish like he was, and that they should stay out of the Sun.  People started fearing the Sun and hiding indoors, avoiding sunlight like the plague.  People began using "sunblock" where before they used "suntan lotion."  An SPF scale appeared on sunblock products to measure the amount of ultraviolet protection.  There was this silly fad of people lathering ugly pastel-colored zinc oxide on their noses to prevent sunburn.  This trend was driven by media-generated hysteria of heightened solar ultraviolet radiation levels from ozone degradation, an environmental fad of the time that has since gone by the wayside. 

Americans always do everything to extremes, and this also applied to avoding the Sun.  As the sunblock craze ensued, Vitamin D levels in the American population dropped like a rock.  Those young people of the Reagan era who asiduously avoided the Sun are now in their 50s and 60s, and have taught their own kids to do the same.  We have reached the point where widespread Vitamin D deficiency is now part of the ongoing health crisis in America.  

The Solar Spectrum

According to mainstream astronomy, the Sun is a class G-type star, a "yellow dwarf" with a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  The Sun emits much light in the visible spectrum -- wavelengths between about 380 and 700 nanometers (nm).  Violet light is around 400 nm and less, while blue is centered around 450 nm, green around 500 nm, yellow at about 600 nm and red light about 700 nm or so.  The Sun emits a small percentage of energy in the ultraviolet range, wavelengths shorter than 380 nm.  But about 2/3 of the total solar energy emission is in the infrared, heat radiation, wavelengths longer than 700 nm, which heats the globe, drives the weather and beats down upon us a hot summer day.    

While the ultraviolet radiation produces Vitamin D in the body, the entire solar spectrum shown above produces a wide range of health benefits.  Stop and consider that for a moment.  The human body is like a miracle.  It's an intricately designed biochemical machine formed of 100,000 proteins which are the "Lego blocks" that make up our cells.  Each of those proteins are themselves composed of smaller "Lego" configurations of amino acids.  There are 500 different amino acids known in nature but only 22 that are proteinogenic, that form those 100,000 proteins.  

Each human individual is a unique configuration of those 100,000 proteins, more unique than a snowflake, infinitely more complex.  Everyone's genetic attributes come from each of us having various percentages of those 100,000 proteins.  I once read that the human genome can produce 10^20 genetically unique individuals.  That's "10 to the 20th power" or a one followed by 20 zeroes, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000, a number called 100 sextillion, or 100 billion trillion.  The number of possible human beings is more than a trillion times larger than all the people who have ever lived.  If someone can convince themselves that such staggering complexity somehow assembled itself through random forces over billions of years, that is a "faith" in randomness that I cannot share.  As for me and my house, such exquisitely precise bioengineering points to the handiwork of the Creator.  

Here's the kicker that you won't hear widely discussed -- that Creator placed us upon a planet orbiting a class G-type yellow dwarf star having an emission spectrum perfectly tailored for maintaining the complex biochemistry of those 100,000 proteins.  The Sun emits precise packets of light energy at specific wavelengths that enable the chemical reactions for healthy operation of the the human body.  This is a type of natural miracle.   Even if humans are someday capable of interstellar space travel, it's unlikely that they will find another planet orbiting a star having a spectrum so perfectly suited to human biochemistry.  

Here's a user-friendly article that concisely explains how the various wavelengths of sunlight interact with the human body.

Ultraviolet B (UVB ) (295-319 nm) - This is the solar radiation that produces Vitamin D.  A detailed discussion of this subject is given below.  These wavelengths are also involved in the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter related to circadian rhythm, the healthy human sleep cycle, as will be discussed in the next newsletter.

Ultraviolet A (UVA) (320-399 nm) - This is the wavelength range responsible for creating nitric oxide in the bloodstream, which has cardiac benefits.  Nitric oxide is a vasodilator which opens up the blood vessels and allows the blood to flow more freely, thereby lowering blood pressure.  I read that nitric oxide is promoted by the amino acid L-Arginine.  Eating foods rich in this amino (such as beef, dairy, poultry, fish, nuts and legumes) and/or taking supplements in conjunction with sunlight can promote heart health.

Ultraviolet also helps regulate the "microbiome" of the body since "gut health" is all the rage these days in health circles.

Blue light (460 nm) - This shade is the color of the blue sky and is important in regulating circadian rhythm and melatonin production, as will be discussed in the next newsletter.

Red light (650-700 nm)  - There's a lot of buzz these days about "red light therapy" and some are promoting it for many health benefits, from increasing fertility to mitochondrial health.  I'm not versed on this topic and cannot vouch for the claims.  Red light has long been used in astronomy to preserve night vision.  There is lately a red night mode on smartphones that preserves night vision and will not disturb sleep patterns as does blue light.  We'll also mention this is in the next newsletter about circadian rhythms.  

Infrared (longer than 700 nm) - Some articles suggest that the warmth of the Sun helps with nitric oxide production.  Others suggest that solar warmth is necessary to raise skin temperatures to the point where Vitamin D production can occur.  For this reason and others, it's better in my opinion to get Vitamin D from sunlight instead of diet or supplements. It's known that the longer the wavelength of solar radiation, the deeper the penetration into the body.  While UV wavelengths only enter the skin, the longer wavelength infrared can penetrate a couple inches into the body.  This is a warm, comforting feeling while laying in the Sun, even on a hot day.   

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Vitamin D and Sunlight

When I first began researching Vitamin D and experimenting with solar exposure in 2013, many people warned me that I was crazy to deliberately lay out in the Sun.  But I have learned that sunlight is very healthful in moderation, which does not come naturally to Americans.  I've felt healthier over the last dozen years with a regular program of sunlight exposure during the warm season.  And my body craves sunlight during the cold season when the Sun departs from the ice-encrusted shores of the Great Lakes. It'd be great to "snowbird" in Arizona or another sunshiny location for at least a couple weeks during the winter.

There's a lot to understand about Vitamin D.  For one thing, it's not a "vitamin" like dietary vitamins such as the B-complex.  It's actually a hormone, but not a usual sort of hormone produced in the glands of the endocrine system.  Vitamin D is formed from cholesterol in the blood.  That is also something poorly understood.  

If you grew up in America in the last 50 years, you have the impression that food from Burger King is loaded with something called "cholesterol" that clogs your arteries and causes heart attacks.  This is a misconception.  Cholesterol is a sterol, which is an organic chemical compound that has a fundamental role in human physiology.  The basic chemical structure of a sterol is the bathroom floor tile geometric pattern shown in the image below, carbon atoms formed into hexagons and a pentagon with chains of little chemical doo-dad thingies hanging off them.  

Specifically, cholesterol is the type of sterol formed in the liver, hence the name (from the Greek chole (χολή) meaning "gall"or "bile" produced in the liver.)  Cholesterol flows freely in the bloodstream and  into the capillaries under the skin.  UVB solar radiation at wavelengths of 295-300 nm radiates from the Sun and penetrates the outer layers of the skin, enters the capillaries, and is absorbed by the cholesterol.  

The biochemistry of cholesterol is such that a photon of UVB in this narrow range supplies just the right amoung of energy to break a single chemical bond in one of those hexagons in the sterol structure of the cholesterol molecule (offically designated 7-dehydrocholesterol).  A chemical chain reaction ensues where this broken cholesterol molecule flows to the liver for chemical processing and then flows around through the kidneys for further processing where it ends up in its active state, Vitamin D3, or cholecalciferol.  From there, the Vitamin D3 circulates throughout the body improving our health.              

(The above pic is simplified and not chemically accurate but is only intended to illustrate the "before and after" of cholesterol/UVB interaction.)

Let me emphasize again -- this remarkable biochemical chain reaction occurs on a planet 93 million miles away from a G-type yellow dwarf having an emission spectrum perfectly fine-tuned to cause this specific biochemical cascade in a sterol molecule of the human organism.  Cosmic accident or a product of micro-fine design by a loving Creator?  You decide!

Back in 2013 I stumbled upon this 2008 medical journal article which first put me onto this topic:

Benefits of Sunlight: A Bright Spot for Human Health

I have no way of knowing whether this is considered a "quality" study as such things are reckoned.  But I hope it's true, especially this astounding conclusion:

For most white people, a half-hour in the summer sun in a bathing suit can initiate the release of 50,000 IU (1.25 mg) vitamin D into the circulation within 24 hours of exposure; this same amount of exposure yields 20,000–30,000 IU in tanned individuals and 8,000–10,000 IU in dark-skinned people.  

That's a LOT of Vitamin D!  I've been practicing that 3-4 days a week during the warm months, usually between April and October, spending a half hour in the Sun each session, laying on the ground to maximize skin surface area, rolling from front to back.  This is always my best half hour of the day.  This was especially true when we had c0v!d in August, 2021.  It was the healthiest I felt during that entire two-week illness.  And I believe this solar regimen helped alleviate the symptoms and speed recovery.

Though the article above does not menti0n cholesterol, it has an important implication: if the Sun creates 8000-50,000 IU of Vitamin D in your body, it's lowering your cholesterol by a corresponding amount.

I've been operating with this hypothesis but have not yet quantified it with bloodwork.  I've recently started seeing a local preventative medicine doctor and we ordered some springtime bloodwork that indicated low Vitamin D and slightly elevated LDL cholesterol in April, at the start of the sunshine season.  We'll follow up in August to see if those numbers move.  (If you live in the Cleveland area, let me know if you'd like more info about the doctor.)

I invite you readers to participate.  Experiment with Sun exposure. Start out with only 5 or 10 minutes to gauge your tolerance.  Everyone will have a different experience based on your geography, skin tone, health history, and your own unique personal cocktail of 100,000 proteins.    People in the south or the desert will have more intense sunshine than us here on the mist-enshrouded shores of the Great Lakes.  Darker complected people will tolerate the Sun more readily than pasty-faced descendants of northern Europe like me.  

One thing to keep in mind -- this is NOT suntanning!  This is controlled, short duration solar exposure with no sunblock.   A deep tan will afford skin protection and thereby defeat the purpose.  You also can't go out in the early morning or late afternoon.  At those times the Sun is too low in the sky and the sunlight shines through thick layers of atmosphere that filter out the UVB.  You need to be out within an hour or two of high noon, which can be precarious in subtropical latitudes like Florida. Use your judgement based on your own local experience.  Also, there is a seasonal factor.  The UV exposure effect only works when the Sun is at least 35 degrees above the horizon at noon.  This does not happen here at latitude 40 degrees north between the months of October and February when it is too cold anyway.   

Just please be careful!  DO NOT get a sunburn!  That ruins everything.  Ideally, I like to get just enough Sun so that my skin is "al dente," slightly underdone, tingling with a sub-sunburn level of exposure.   Test your Vitamin D and your cholesterol levels at the beginning and again later in the summer.  Your data might help corroborate the hypothesis.  But you'll know whether it's beneficial based on how you feel.

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Health Benefits of Vitamin D

In addition to building bones, Vitamin D boosts immunity and improves mood, and and is beneficial to your skin at short duration exposure, good for treating dermatological problems.  In my own recent experience, I was recently in Mississippi where I picked up some kind of itchy skin rash.  It might have been a poisonous plant or fungus or an allergic reaction.  One daily dose of sunshine dried it right up, even though it was early in the season and too cold for laying in the Sun.

One important benefit is that Vitamin D has anti-inflammatory effects in the body.  There has been an emerging understanding of inflammation as a cause of much disease in modern America.  A lot of the food we eat raises inflammation.  On one hand, our immune system uses inflammation to fight disease and heal wounds, to repel germs, viruses and other pathogens.  But on the other hand our immune system can go haywire and attack the body's own tissues.

When I was a school kid back in Postwar America, we learned that white blood cells in our bloodstream fight infection.  Period.  Since then, they've learned that, yes, we do have white blood cells called leukoctytes in our bloodstream.  We also have white blood cells in our lymphatic system called lymphocytes.  These can mutate into lymphoma, a type of cancer that be Hodgkins or non-Hodgkins.  It's now my understanding that some lymphocytes are B cells and others are T cells.  The T cells can be "killer" T cells that attack foreign pathogens and are assisted by "helper" T cells.   There are also "suppressor" or "regulatory" T cells that protect the tissues of the body from being incorrectly attacked by the "killer" T cells. 

Unhealthy inflammation occurs when the regulatory T cells fail to protect the cells of the body.  This can happen from our diet.  Sugar and all the other fake junk in our food is absorbed into our cells.  The T cells identify that fake junk as a foreign pathogen.  The regulatory T cells give the killer T cells permission to attack the cells, thus inflammation.  Also, fat cells secrete a cytokine called interleukin 6 which is an inflammatory agent.  Overweight people are thus in a constant state of inflammation. 

As I've come to understand (and am still learning), this is the basic idea of autoimmune disease.  Back in the 90s, people were starting to talk about the "autoimmune theory" of diseases like arthritis and cancer.  In the early 2010s I started hearing talk about inflammation.  Nowadays it is established that much disease is "chronic disease" and "preventable disease" caused by inflammation from our American lifestyle.  Americans live indoor lives and eat chemically-laden foods that raise inflammation.  Americans suffer from inflammatory diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer, conditions less common in Third World nations where the people are thinner, spend more time outdoors in the sunshine and eat whole foods.

It is well documented that the American "cold and flu season" coincides with the dark months of low Vitamin D.  Seasonal depression follows in the same gloomy season when Vitamin D levels drop along with everyone's mood, only for everyone to cheer up and become healthy again when the Sun brings Vitamin D in the spring.

Many of the health benefits of Vitamin D have only been discovered in the last 20 years and our knowledge is still growing.  How has the medical establishment responded?  The following revealing passage is from Lies My Government Told Me by Dr. Robert W. Malone:

.... I recently spoke with a scientist and physician who was on a team at the Department of Defense (DoD) in 2006 that discovered a surprising finding while analyzing data from warfighters.  He and his team had been looking for things that could help explain why some soldiers got bad disease from circulating influenza viruss, while others did not....  

This DoD research scientist and his team had conducted a retrospective study that tied higher baseline vitamin D levels to lowered respiratory virus infection and disease (influenza), using a military database to correlate vitamin D levels to flu levels and death.  The DoD believed that if he presented his research to Dr. Fauci, then director of NIAID (National Institututes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), the US goverment might change direction by investing in this line of research and developing corresponding treatment guidelines....

This scientist told me that he scheduled a meeting as assigned and presented his rock-solid data to Dr. Fauci.  He was then informed by Dr. Fauci that US policy is to control influenza in the USA with vaccines, not therapeutics.  End of story.  No funding or support available for future work.    

During c0v!d, it was reported that 94% of c0v!d deaths were in persons with low Vitamin D.  But the instructions given by the US health establishment were to "shelter in place" and remain indoors instead of going out into the sunshine.  It was known in early 2020 that obesity was a serious comorbidity, and that 74% of c0v!d deaths were in overweight persons.  Yet no instructions were forthcoming that Americans should drop 20, 50 or 100 pounds.  C0v!d (and the vaccine) were both shown to produce a highly inflammatory state within the body.  Yet Vitamin D from sunshine is shown to reduce inflammation and even to promote weight loss.  

There is so much we are still learning about Vitamin D and sunshine.  Yet this subject is still mostly under the radar, as with most things to do with Classical Astronomy.  Dr. Mercola has been prominent in promoting Vitamin D.  As mentioned, Vitamin D from sunshine also promotes "gut biome."  There is still a great need to raise awareness on these frontiers of health.  

Attached below are some articles about Vitamin D and sunshine.  Here's some high points from a couple:

Sun Exposure: Beyond the Risks (2019)

Some studies have even demonstrated a reduction in all-cause mortality or cardiovascular mortality in patients with regular and moderate sun exposure.

This short article lists the benefits from Vitamin D in sunlight including relief from arthritis, skin conditions, cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and dementia, all of which have an inflammatory link. It also mentions Vitamin D as helping with psychiatric conditions, indicating the seasonal mood factor. We all know that a gloomy day is depressing and a sunny day is cheerful.  This is a real response to Vitamin D and is not just in our heads.  This is why people move from the mist-enshrouded shores of the Great Lakes to Sun Belt locations like California and Florida.

An Update on the Effects of Vitamin D on the Immune System and Autoimmune Diseases (2022)

This is a lengthy, technical article that delves deep into the points mentioned above.  I didn't understand all the jargon but picked my way along, hope you can too.

Vitamin D has pleiotropic effects suggested by the expression of VDR in lymphocytes and dendritic cells. Many studies are based on vitamin D’s role in various diseases such as autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular diseases and tumors. In autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, vitamin D intervenes in the innate and adaptive immune systems. Animal studies have demonstrated that administering vitamin D or its analogs can influence the occurrence and progression of many immune-related disorders. This underlines that vitamin D can lead to changes in the incidence and severity of various diseases such as infectious diseases, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. 

Vitamin D may also reduce T helper (Th) cell differentiation and proliferation and induce a more tolerogenic immune response than a pro-inflammatory status with induction of T helper-2 (Th 2)-lymphocytes and regulatory T lymphocytes (Tregs), with downregulation of the pro-inflammatory T helper-1 (Th 1) lymphocytes, T helper-17 (Th 17) lymphocytes, and T helper-9 (Th 9) lymphocytes.

Vitamin D inhibits the synthesis of various pro-inflammatory Th1, Th9 and Th22 cytokines and stimulates the synthesis of anti-inflammatory Th2 cytokines. These findings could demonstrate the beneficial effect of vitamin D in minimizing the risk of developing autoimmune diseases. 

Here's some more articles for your leisure reading pleasure:

• What Are the Benefits of Sunlight? (Healthline article, light reading)
• Are you deficient in sun vitamin? The top 10 health risks associated with vitamin D deficiency (Organic Live Food, light reading) 
• Low-dose daylight exposure induces nitric oxide release and maintains cell viability in vitro (Nature paper, 2023)
• Vitamin D-binding protein controls T cell responses to vitamin D (NIH paper, 2014)
• The role of vitamin D in increasing circulating T regulatory cell numbers and modulating T regulatory cell phenotypes in patients with inflammatory disease or in healthy volunteers: A systematic review (NIH paper, 2019)

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More About Cholesterol and Inflammation

I know, this is a really long newsletter!  Hope you've found it useful and thanks for sticking around this far.  Just had some additional thoughts to share about cholesterol which did not fit into the flow of the narrative above. 

Cholesterol is an important precursor for many substances in the body.  The human brain and the neurons in the central nervous system are made of cholesterol.  Just as cholesterol is a sterol precursor to Vitamin D, it is also a sterol precursor to these important human steroid hormones -- testosterone, estrogen and progesterone.  Steroids also have that same bathroom floor tile geometrical structure as other sterols, and differ only insofar as they have different doo-dad chemical groups dangling off the edges.  

I've discovered that testosterone is the secret to good health in human males.  Testosterone (or "T") is important for strength, energy, stamina, vitality, good mood, and mental sharpness in men.  Moreover, T is necessary for building muscle mass and having a toned, fit, muscular body.  T production in the male body tapers off after age 35 and is typically quite depleted by the 50s, 60s and 70s.  This where the perception of the weary, feeble, flaccid, grouchy old man comes from.  That geezer got that way (at least in part) as a result of declining T.  Boosting T in aging men is beneficial just like estrogen replacement in aging women.   

The AM talk radio programs listened to by men in their 50s, 60s and 70s advertise products that promise "relief" from aches and pains.  But the best thing an aging man can do to relieve pain and feel energetic is to focus on diet and exercise to lower inflammation.  A young guy can eat whatever he wants and stay out late and still get up for work the next day.  Not so after a certain age.  The human body is an incredible machine.  When you're young, you can feed that machine Oreos and Doritos and Cap'n Crunch and other faux food-like garbage substances containing highly inflammatory ingredients.  Try putting that same junk in the machine of your automobile and see how far you can drive.  But as we get older, we have operate the machine of our bodies "according to factory settings" and be proactive about health.

Nowaways in my 60s I swim, cycle, walk or lift weights every day.  I consume a lot of fruits and vegetables and other whole foods, fish and rice instead and meat and potatoes.  I only eat dessert on one or two "cheat days" a week.  And I get that half hour of sunshine 3 or 4 days a week in the summer.  I have formulated another hypothesis that I've been testing for the last dozen years....  

Since these vital hormones are all made from the same cholesterol, I believe that the human body prioritizes Vitamin D production over T production in the male body (prioritizing health and survival over reproductive function).  So once a guy's hypothalmic-pituitary-gonadal axis senses that D levels are adequate, it starts producing T.  I believe sunshine thus also boosts T levels while lowering cholesterol.  I have personal anecdotal observations to support this hypothesis.  In my 50s, while regularly dosing on sunshine, I lifted weights and put on a lot of muscle mass, building up my arms and shoulders like a teenager.  Unfortunately, I overdid it (like a teenager) and hurt my shoulder and lost much of the muscle.  But I am always more able to tone up and build muscle in the summer even while training just as much in the winter.  And taking D supplements in the winter does not have the same effect on my own specific 100,000 proteins as sunshine.

Young guys are fit and trim and muscular, running around outside in the summer, getting a great tan, feeling strong and healthy.  Their blood cholesterol is low and their D and T levels are high.  But tired, worn out old guys have pale white legs that haven't seen a ray of sunshine since the disco era.  Their cholesterol is high and their D and T levels are low.  Is there a connection?  Could sunshine make a difference?  

A lot of doctors put older men on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol.  In my suspicion (not even a hypothesis) the problem is not too much cholesterol but that the aging male body does not utilize the available cholesterol for producing Vitamin D and T.  People follow their doctor's medical advice to take such statin drugs so I'm not advising anyone to make any changes.  But it's worthwhile to ponder some points....

Most medical studies are paid for by Big Pharma.  Pharma products are big business for treating high cholesterol, along with diabetes, arthritis, cancer and the other conditions discussed above that have an inflammatory and/or Vitamin D connection.  What if some people can get relief with simple exposure to sunshine?  But these billion-dollar drug companies can't monetize the Sun and won't pay for Vitamin D studies so we can expect the status quo to continue.  

A decade or so ago, a controversial study came out purporting to debunk the mainstream cholesterol narrative.  The study alleged that there was no proven, established link between high LDL cholesterol and cardiac issues.  In other words, there was no "cause and effect" relationship but only a "statistical correlation" between the two -- that patients with high LDL cholesterol just so happened to also have a high incidence of cardiac problems.  There is a maxim in the field of statistics that "correlation is not causation."  I don't have the answers and am in no position to offer advice, except to encourage everyone to do your own homework as you manage your own health situation.  

On a related note, I have wondered whether controlled sunlight exposure would be similarly beneficial to women for boosting estrogen, either as a supplement or an alternative to replacement therapy.  I'd be interested in any reports.  

On yet another note, blood cholesterol is also converted into cortisol, the so-called "stress hormone" responsible for the "fight or flight" response.  I've read that high cortisol levels from ongoing stressful situations can actually boost inflammation and cause the very problems alleviated by Vitamin D.  The same cholesterol that can improve our health can make it worse, depending on our emotional state.  The human body is an amazing chemical soup. 

We can all reduce inflammation by lowering stress levels, from job or family or whatever.  Take vacations and do fun, relaxing things.  I also practice breathing exercises, especially when having certain age-related symptoms.  And I regularly visit my chiropractor, which is a whole 'nother subject.  Everyone should get lots of sleep, which also lowers inflammation.  That will be the subject the next upcoming newsletter, Better Living Through Astronomy, that will discuss the benefits of sunshine on circadian rhythm, the 24 hour diurnal cycle of human health. 

One simple thing you can do to reduce stress is to pet a cat which lowers cortisol levels.  So I make sure several times every day to pet my fuzzy black kitty Shady (a.k.a "Puffsqueak") while imagining my cortisol levels dropping!