Summer is just beginning, and with summer comes the beach, pool parties, or a variety of other outside activities. This means spending time in the sun and trying our best to protect our skin from the harmful UV radiation that it emits. Wearing sunscreen is important but lets face it, we are all human, sometimes we forget to apply, sometimes we don't apply often enough. This leads to sunburns.
Today lets take a look at an article published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology titled "Oral vitamin D rapidly attenuates inflammation from sunburn: an interventional study." This article is available for use under a creative commons attribution license, as such all material from the article will be appropriately credited.
Sunburns
A sunburn is a radiation burn (in this case the radiation is ultra violet light), when the ultraviolet light hits your skin it penetrates into the cells and actually induces changes to their DNA. It results in a variety of deleterious DNA lesions including thymine-dimers (when two stacked T's (thymines) actually form a chemical bond to one another). These forms of damage wreak havoc on cellular DNA replication processes and will stop DNA polymerases (the replicative ones, not certain specialized repair enzymes) in their tracks.
If you have a little bit of damage, the cells have the necessary enzymes to conduct a repair mission, restore DNA replication to normal functioning and continue on their merry way. However if there is just a whole crap ton (to use a very scientific term) of damage (from longer sun exposure) they can't fix everything. When cells can't fix the errors, which spells trouble and can lead to a whole host of potential issues (including cancer). Our cells are programmed to kill themselves in this situation, thus they begin the process of doing so, called apoptosis. The cells killing themselves results in an inflammatory response, and this inflammatory response is what we all know of as a sunburn.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D actually does not refer to just one compound, rather a few (D3([Cholecalciferol)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholecalciferol), D2(Ergocalciferol and the less important D2 which is actually a mixture of D2 and the compound Lumisterol). The D vitamins are fat soluble compounds with a whole host of important biological functions including calcium shuttling, bone development and influence on inflammation levels [2]. Vitamin D is only a vitamin by technicality as our bodies are able to synthesize all that we need from 10 minutes daily exposure to the sun [3].
What Were The Researchers Studying
Due to the recent finding that a single dose of vitamin D3 was capable of rapidly decreasing inflammation in a mouse model for chemical skin injury [4] the authors hypothesized that it could be used to reduce the inflammation of a sunburn. So they designed a proof of principle double blind clinical trial to test this hypothesis [yes @lemouth, the sample size here is also small, only 20 people ;)].
In their study the participants received either a placebo or a high dose of vitamin D3 one hour after they were blasted with enough ultra violet radiation to cause a “sunburn” though in this case the sun was not used… so it was more of a lab burn? This sounds like a great study, I wonder what the participants were asked… “Come participate, will give you sunburn for $$$.” Regardless, the results might interest you.
What Did They Find?
They blasted the participants skin with UVB radiation, then waited 48 hours and took a look at the skin redness. In the figure below you are seeing 4 spots on a participants arm where they were blasted with increasing amounts of UV radiation (from left to right).
What you can make note of from the figure above, is the last group on the right, for the very high dose of vitamin D3. The top set is a control where the participant did not receive the vitamin D, and the bottom is where that same participant did. You will notice that there is significantly less redness (especially at lower amounts of UV) in the bottom set. This indicates that a high dose of vitamin D did have an effect in reducing the inflammation from the sunburn. (For this result the authors report a P value of 0.02, where they were concluding statistical significance for any P < 0.05)
In addition to visual queues, the authors also took a look at the amounts of proteins that are expressed in inflammatory processes. These were 'Tumor Necrosis Factor-α (TNF-α) and cytokine inducible Nitric Oxide Synthetase (iNOS).
Here they were looking at the expression levels of these proteins based upon how much mRNA was being generated (remember mRNA is the instruction sheet telling the cell to make a protein, more mRNA = more protein generated, because there are more instructions floating around). What we can see here is that both of these proteins involved in the inflammatory response are reduced in expression levels as the amount of vitamin D supplemented goes up.
Other Important Observations
- The overall cellular gene expression profile for those receiving the high (200,000 IU) dose of vitamin D3 was very different from the placebo group.
- NOT all participants receiving higher doses of Vitamin D3 showed a response. As a result the authors classified the participants into two groups (Responders and Non-responders)
- Non responders had very different gene expression profiles then people who did respond better to the vitamin. They expressed a lot more proteins which are pro-inflammatory (IE lead to and participate in the inflammatory response).
Brief Conclusions
- The authors here have illustrated evidence that a single high dose of vitamin D3 administered one hour after sun exposure helped to alleviate the inflammatory response associated with sunburn.
- The administration of the single high dose of the vitamin did not negatively alter the participants calcium levels.
The simplicity and safety of high dose oral vitamin D3 treatment, combined with its rapid and sustained therapeutic efficacy, suggest that these proof-of-concept findings may ultimately be translated to routine clinical use once larger studies are performed on diverse populations of subjects.
The results reported here are interesting and do hold promise for future research.
Should I Self Medicate With Vitamin D After Sun Exposure?
NO, this data is not sufficient to justify self medication.
It is just some interesting science that I hope you enjoyed learning about.
# Sources
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022202X17315580
- https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/
- http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/heart/articles/2008/06/23/time-in-the-sun-how-much-is-needed-for-vitamin-d
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26288355
All Non Cited Images Are From Pixabay.com or Flickr.com And Are Available Under Creative Commons Licenses
Any Gifs Are From Giphy.com and Are Also Available for Use Under Creative Commons Licences
If you like this work, please consider giving me a follow: @justtryme90. I am here to help spread scientific knowledge and break down primary publications in such a way so as to cut through the jargon and provide you the main conclusions in short (well compared to the original articles at least!) and easy to read posts.
That is one way to start a conversation, haha.
I realize this was a double blind clinical trial but the results are intriguing.
Do you have any thoughts on why the gene expression of the non-responders was different than the responders group?
Genetic variations leading to a differing response to vitamin D supplementation is a previously identified phenomenon.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23935129
So that part isn't surprising, however as to why this genetic difference occurs between people? That I don't know. More information is probably out there in the literature that sheds some light on it somewhere. I haven't looked though.
Great research i love your post however did you know that tomatoes are goid for sun burns and skin issues. Yes by eating lots of it.... Do a research let me know if you enjoyed that
I did not know that. Apparently eating a bunch of tomato paste resulted in about an spf 1.3 for the participants in a 2012 study.
Amazing post, thank you for posting this valuable information !!
Thank you for your comment.
I found this writeup very interesting, making good research like this will go along way solving some problem we are having,i have upvoted you already and equally following you. I am looking forword to woking with you and a lot of people that have good content and need people to support them.i am always there for them.
Thank you!
Your welcome, i realy enjoy the writeup, feel free to let me know whenever you have a post, so that i can enjoy the pics and equally upvote you as usual
Firstly, Shame I hope the participants where rewarded well because those sunburn spots look mighty painful!
I do find articles like these so informative, I only realized last year how important vitamin D3 is to our body's
I hope they were paid too! I wouldn't want someone to give me a sunburn for nothing (I mean I understand for science...but still, it's physical harm.)
Yes haha for sure..
Nice and very educative...keep it up...upvoted and following...I shall send quite a lot on health...follow me too for ur informed comments
Thank you for reading :)
welcome @justtryme90
do check my blog as i sent first into post along with a nice joke
will appreciate if you upvote and comment...plus follow..tks
Animation is excellent
Thanks man :)
Thank you for sharing this! Vit D3 is very important but we shouldn't forget about using sunscream also! xX Karolina
Well of course, sunscreen is imperative.
Great post master of biochemical, be fancy with your article @justtryme90
Thanks man :)
welcome @justtryme90
You can get vitamin D from the sun? or from fruit or vegetables. taking vitamins to me like trying to run mac software on a windows computer. it won't understand what it is and is pretty much useless to the body. Why not use what nature provided. cool article but
Vitamin D is naturally produced by our bodies from exposure to uv light from the sun, and a bit of processing in our livers.
Vitamin D supplementation does in fact work, uptake is okay. However it is only necessary for specific cases. Your analogy isn't any good in this case.
Cheers.
Please excuse my bad english, I'm not a native speaker.
Interesting information, and this is curious, because I've done little research on the internet myself about vitamin D because according so many sources, a deficiency of Vitamin D can reduce significantly on testosterone level (researched this because I was looking for options of how to increase testosterone level naturally so I could have better perfomance and results in the Gym) so if you discover you have an Vitamin D deficiency, you just could supplement yourself, OR, make sure you eat food that have this vitamin and make sure YOU GET ENOUGHT (not too much) sun exposure, because sun is the main source of Vitamin D of the human being. So I don't know, is just curious if sun gives you vitamin D, why would you use this vitamin to counter attack the overdose of sun. I'm not a scientist nor doctor or anything, but my broscience knowledge (Hahaha) tells me something is weird in this statements. Could somebody enlight me?
The sun doesn't give you the vitamin, the absorbtion of UV light by 7-dehydrocholesterol (found in our skin) results in its conversion to Vitamin D3. Also this doesn't counteract a sunburn (the damage has still occurred) it is just reducing inflammation.
this is good to know.. As long as the Vitamin D supplement does not go completely through your system. Some vitamins do go though the system and out the rectal without breaking down and being effective. Thanks for the post. upoted,
Vitamin D3 is both fat soluble and it's uptake through supplementation is good.
I just feel like I need to put some Aloe Vera on somebody. Maybe I am messed up.
Lol, You're not messed up. You've just got some unique fetishes :D
UV light action on the poly isoprenic core of vitD
There is more than one isoprene?
SORRY MY BAD
I wasn't criticizing, I just only see one :)
Great information - thanks so much for sharing!!
Thank you for reading :)
Glad you enjoyed the post.
I highly recommend Vit D3 as a supplement. Most of us are not out in the sun enough. I take 5000 units every day. It's good to see a Dr just to get your levels tested though. Unlike Vit C it is not water soluble. Vit D3 is actually a hormone they just didnt know it when it was discovered.
Yep :)
Good post!
Thank you!
justtryme90 am a microbiologist
and a biology analysis porocrdurs ing
any thing to talk about
oh, I did not know about how important is this vitamin, I mean, this is soo usefull! jaja.. thanks! Up vote it!.
Could you help me in the same way? <3
Thanks for reading and your comment.
thanks to you for share it!
https://steemit.com/goodlife/@antoniomontilva/10-advices-to-have-a-good-life plz an upvote is really appreciated! <3
You should probably check the list of people who voted on it before begging ;)
ups haha
This is true!!
I read about this yesterday!
http://www.newsweek.com/vitamin-d-may-help-treat-sunburns-626845
Newsweek did a really good job with with summary (I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as they are professional journalists.. but I usually find their writeups to be a mixed bag with incorrect interpretations, this one is true to the scientific publication), they even focused on a part of the story that I chose not to cover. Interesting.
Yeah, but your research is a bit more thorough, but alot of people are talking about it. I take my vitamin d with K2 and some magnesium with calcium. Came across this article last year. kept it in my bookmarks! https://riordanclinic.org/2013/10/vitamins-d3-and-k2-the-dynamic-duo/
I love your posts!
It's an interesting result, so I can see why.
The vitamin K thing is weird to me because our gut bacteria synthesize it. I find it surprising that people have a deficiency.
It could also be a matter of food and quality of water.
Sure, yeah.
Great information. The sun is not my friend! As a fair-skinned redhead, I can appreciate it!
My girlfriend too has been kissed by fire. I am all too familiar with the sun's hatred of her skin haha.
Wow I never even knew ... will share with my buddies
In fairness, this article only came out a few weeks back, so its new information :)
This post received a 4.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @justtryme90! For more information, click here!
Thanks @randowhale, you're the best.
I have spent many years researching on impact of Sunlight on the human body. After recieving my Medical degree i started working with a non profit based in Kerala called Sooryayog foundation. Its work was to help increase the understanding of Sungazing , Sunbathing , Sun salutation, Sun mantras etc . Heliotherapy , Chronoastrobiology was all part of it . In this period i got to teach thousands this art of Sun gazing and Solar kriyas . I also learnt a lot in that period . I came on this particular book https://www.amazon.com/Sunlight-Could-Save-Your-Life/dp/0960426817
by Zane r kime .
There is a chapter of Sun burning in which he says that he would help people with recurrent sun burning by changing their diets. A diet which is rich in fruits and vegetable is the best prevention to Sun burning.
Further there is an important function of the Eyes which involves Sun gazing . Sun gazing done at sunrise and sunset triggers a peculiar hypnotic response alongwith relaxation to the body . The process also helps in improving eyesight of myopics and hypermetropics . I think i will write a separate article for this.
Sounds good :)
Hey! I had no idea about this. I love your posts, thanks for the useful and fun information ☻
Hey, great post! We would like to feature your article in our weekly newsletter. Keep up the good work, and let us know if you have any concerns.
Join us on the science-trail Discord
very interesting post, thanks for sharing, following you :-)
Thank you, returned the favor. :)
as always...very informative post @justtryme90! Curious to see further findings, always looking for ways to prevent sunburn in sunny Florida, skin cancer in no joke
This won't prevent sunburn (IE cellular damage), but it may help you deal with the inflammation after the damage is done.