The New York Times published this article a couple of days ago on the snowballing body of scientific evidence coming out regarding the extreme importance of Vitamin D in the human body. I’ve touched before on the link between Vitamin D and Type 1 Diabetes, so most of this wasn’t news to me (but may be to you, and is well worth reading). What was news to me, though, was this little tidbit:

“The rising incidence of Type 1 diabetes may be due, in part, to the current practice of protecting the young from sun exposure. When newborn infants in Finland were given 2,000 international units a day, Type 1 diabetes fell by 88 percent, Dr. Holick said.”

If you read my other post then you know that Finland is the country with the highest rate of Type 1 Diabetes, which makes a lot of sense from the Vitamin D perspective because they get no freaking sunshine up there at the top of the world.  So all we had to do was ignore every baby book and our pediatrician who told us 1) not to take her in the sun before 6 months old, and 2) then to always slather her with suncreen, and we could have prevented this? Drive a stake through my heart, why don’t you.

Now, of course, we know it’s almost certainly not as simple as all that. She needed a genetic component. She probably also had a viral component. Still – they dropped their rate by 88%.  Instantaneous death by mommy guilt. Somebody put me out of my misery.

Why did this  happen? What kicked it off? Why do some kids get diagnosed at 2 and others not until they are 10 or 15 or even (as is becoming more common), in adulthood? These are questions with no good answers.

The first thing many people ask me is who else in our family has Type 1. Answer: no one.  Most people believe that Type 1 is a purely hereditary disease. That is so not true that in fact most of the Type 1 families I have met also have no one else in their family with Type 1.

The reality is that Type 1 has a genetic component but it’s only partly responsible. It may even be only a smallish piece of the puzzle.  Viruses look like good candidates right now, as do environmental factors. The viruses and the environmental factors may very well be be interrelated. And require the presence of a certain genetic component. Type 1 is a complex disease.

This website does  a beautiful job of collecting the major hypotheses and theories out there, as well as associated studies and information. I was particularly interested in the studies relating latitude with incidence of type 1. For example, Finland has the highest incidence of Type 1 of any country in the world. It turns out that, in either direction, as you approach one of the Earth’s poles, the higher the incidence of type 1. Closer to the equator = less incidence. It can be seen dramatically in Australia; the North end of the continent (closer to the equator) has a lower incidence of type 1 than the South end (closer to the pole). Weird, huh?

This ties into the Vitamin D hypothesis. Studies show that higher levels of Vitamin D have somewhat of a protective effect against Type 1. This correlates with living in an area that sees more sunshine. Likewise, low levels of Vitamin D have been found in diabetics.  Similar studies have been done with Omega-3′s.

Needless to say, Ellory can now hardly see her plate for all the vitamins piled in front of it at mealtime.