Thu, Nov-06-08, 23:26
|
|
Every moment is NOW.
Posts: 23,064
|
|
Plan: LC (ketogenic)
Stats: 520/381/280
BF: Why yes it is.
Progress: 58%
Location: Ozarks USA
|
|
It really is an issue that because everybody is so hyperactive about any mention of race bringing a danger of racism, that things such as race are seldom addressed in information about health on any level, even though it's obvious there are differences. There is definitely a huge difference in specific regards to SPF, Vitamin D etc. based on skin pigmentation and it appears, even based on where one grows up (eg the S.A.D. effect that impacts people who grew up in sunny climes more than people of the same genetic base who grew up elsewhere).
There are other peripheral issues that relate to obesity and race as well. For example, Jeffrey Fieldman, head Geneticist at Rockefeller U., was pointing out once that the "increase in obesity" is definitely very skewed along racial lines. For example native Americans are going to be larger and more of them obese than Asians. That might seem like a fashion statement until you consider the government deciding some children should be removed from homes and surgically intervened with for obesity. So it becomes a terrible racial issue at that point, where races XYZ are more likely to lose their kids for example.
It also means that because there is no delineation of this difference -- in other words, the public and in particular those groups of people -- don't realize that it is a much bigger health issue -- then there is less pressure to change things that affect it. For example my best local friend is native and they get a version of food assistance that is almost entirely processed white sugar/flour based products. They don't have much money, and they need that assistance, but it mostly means tons of flour and pastas and so on... the government 'helping' with the very foods most likely to gradually kill them. (Slightly slower than smallpox, but...) Even a seemingly small thing like (a) recognizing that carbohydrates are a problem and (b) recognizing that American natives at least most tribes appear to be far more sensitive to this and badly affected by it, could result in them actually requesting they get 'food' as opposed to mostly-stuff-that-poisons-us, which would instantly cost vasssssstly more money. So then it's a political issue as well as a health issue as well as a race issue. Gah!
I'm 14 nationalities so I never know what might affect me. I'm light olive in tone and pass for a white girl except in a crowd of white girls heh, but grew up in coastal southern california so I think that adds to the issues. When I moved to Seattle I was so depressed I was nearly suicidal until a friend sent me some full spectrum lights and I put them in my desk lamp and used them all the time. I started taking Vitamin D a couple months ago but I take it irregularly, 5000iu when I do, once in awhile 2 pills, sometimes none. I feel ambivalent about dosage because there is so much conflicting info.
(There is a whole alternative health segment that relates to the light spectrum which is really very interesting, and which I actually saw results with, with one of my cats some years ago, I mean in a clear enough way that I don't think it was just hope or superstition. I find this interesting because fluorescent lights and especially these new lights that for the sake of brightness remove the yellow spectrum, I think is bad health news.)
|