Too hot to handle

To go out in the sun to get the vitamin D essential for good health or to stay in the shade to avoid skin cancer? Ruth Laugesen tries to make sense of an increasingly controversial dilemma.

13th November, 2010

An oddity of human disease first piqued epidemiologist Robert Scragg's interest back in the early 1980s. No one's sure why, but winter is the killing season for cardiovascular disease. In most countries, 30-40% more people die from heart disease and strokes in winter than in summer. For Scragg, it was the start of a decades-long interest in the role of vitamin D in protecting the body against a range of illnesses. Scragg and many other researchers had a hunch that lower vitamin D levels in the body during winter could be the reason for higher mortality from cardiovascular disease. The ...

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