Posts Tagged ‘Vitamins’

Thanks to medical advances that have cut the death toll from infectious diseases, babies born in Canada today can expect to live better than 80 years—nearly 30 years longer than those born a century ago. But that medical victory has given us another battlefield: chronic disease. One-third of Canadians live with chronic health conditions, and the proportion goes up as we age, with nearly half of those 65 to 79, and 59 per cent of those 80 and older living with high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. So years have been added to our lives, but can we add life to our extra years?

Ancient Greeks used to pray to Apollo, the sun god, to stop epidemics and cure diseases. Turns out they weren’t far wrong: sunlight is vital to human health, as modern Canadians have learned to our cost. For a whole generation—on doctors’ advice—we have slipped on shirts, slapped on hats, slopped on sunscreen and shirked the sunshine to avoid skin cancer. We have cut back on eggs and milk to reduce risk of heart disease, and we have curbed our appetite for cod-liver oil, mackerel and wild salmon. We have cut ourselves off from the sources of vitamin D. Result? It is estimated that [...]