SUNLIFE TIMES
Keeping YOU in the know....
Volume 25 May 2011
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Sunlife is on FACEBOOK!
Tanning Tax...why?
Congress’ decision to place a 10 percent luxury tax on indoor tanning, passed in July 2010 to help fund the U.S. Health Care Reform Act of 2010, will actually raise the cost of health care reform by $3.3 billion to U.S. taxpayers.
“The tax on tanning will raise an estimated $1.7 billion over 10 years, which is $3.3 billion less than Congress said it needed from the 5 percent tax on Botox injections and elective plastic surgery,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. “So in trading down $3.3 billion, we assume that additional cost will be borne by taxpayers to pay for health care reform.”
The 10 percent tax on tanning was placed into the Health Care Reform Act in a back-room deal engineered by Botox suppliers and the dermatology industry to remove the “Botax”. The deal was struck after heavy lobbying of Senate Democrats by the American Academy of Dermatology Association (AADA), the American Medical Association and California-based Allergan Corp., the manufacturer of Botox. The trio succeeded in shifting a 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery procedures, which offer no known health benefits, onto the tanning industry.
“This back-room deal was brokered by the dermatology industry with senators without any due diligence nor any input from tanning retailers,” said International Smart Tan Network Vice President Joseph Levy. “The deal traded an affordable tax on purely elective cosmetic surgery for wealthy Americans and wealthy doctors for an onerous tax that will hurt middle-class women, will force women-owned businesses to close and will cost the country thousands of jobs.”
Vitamin D Updates
UV, melanoma relationship "a myth" says dermatology pioneer
There is no compelling evidence that sun tan parlors have induced a single melanoma. - Dr. Bernard Ackerman, founder of the Acker man Academy of Dermatopathology, who strongly opposed the American Academy of Dermatology's position that indoor tanning and melanoma are related. Ackerman - honored by the Academy with its highest honor, the designation "master dermatologist" for his life contributions to the field - believed Smart Tan's position on melanoma was more accurate than AAD's. "The tanning industry... has every right to accuse the American Academy of Dermatology, The Skin Cancer Foundation, and the AmericanCancer Society of "scare tactics" when it comes to the issue of melanoma," Ackerman wrote.
Ackerman's endorsement of Smart Tan's position was without any relationship whatsever. "We never even met Dr. Ackerman," Smart Tan vice president Joseph Levy said. "He criticized anyone in dermatology who had any kind of relationship with any industry - and he never had a relationship with the tanning market other than to day that Smart Tan's position on melanoma was more accurate than the American Cancer Society's or the American Academy of Dermatology's."
Vitamin D might be just as important as vaccine to prevent effects of H1N1 swine flu, researchers say
The world's leading vitamin D experts say that raising your levels of "the sunshine vitamin" this winter might be the best way to help your body naturally raise its resistance to all forms of the flu virus - including the H1N1 swine flu virus.
That's the message vitamin D advocate Dr. William Grant wants you to take to the bank.
" I'm a little hesitant to say it will reduce your risk of being infected, but it certainly will reduce your risk of dying from the complications, such as pneumonia, if you are infected," says Grant, founder of the sunlight Nutrition and Health Research Center - a vitamin D research and advocacy group.
Grant is concerned that epidemic vitamin D deficiency in Canada - 97 percent of Canadians are vitamin D deficient in the winter due to Canada's northerly latitudes and relatively weak sunlight 4-6 months of the year - means that Canadians could be more susceptible to flu virus in the winter.
Grant points to research suggesting:
The groups most affected by the H1N1 swine flu virus have been those most likely to be vitamin D deficient: pregnant women, obese people, those with type II diabetes and children with neurological disorders.
-Getting enough calcium will help prevent osteoporosis and bone mass loss, but only if you get enough vitamin D, which facilitates the absorption of calcium.
-Vitamin D experts no longer consider the goverment's recommended daily allowance for D to be enough - it may well be 5-10 times greater.
-The average beauty magazine today hauls in more than $1 million and issue in "sun scare" advertising.
No wonder they tell you to overuse sunscreen.
-Vitamin D is called "the sunshine vitamin" because 90 percent of all natural vitamin D is produced when skin is exposed to UVB in sunlight. That's why sun care messages should key on preventing sunburn - not telling people to avoid the sun entirely.
-Women who get 1,100 units of vitamin D daily reduce their overall cancer risk by 60-77 percent according to a 2007 Creighton University study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
People With Low Vitamin D More Likely To Die
06/25/2008
New research shows that patients with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D were about two times more likely to die from any cause during the eight years following the initial testing than those with the highest levels. The link with heart-related deaths was particularly strong in those with low vitamin D levels.
The study, led by Austrian researchers, involved 3,258 men and women in southwest Germany. Participants were age 62 on average—most with heart disease—whose vitamin D levels were checked in weekly blood tests. During roughly eight years of follow-up, 737 died, including 463 from heart-related problems. According to one of the vitamin tests they used, there were 307 deaths in patients with the lowest levels of vitamin D versus 103 deaths in those with the highest levels. Counting age, physical activity and other factors, the researchers calculated that deaths from all causes were about twice as common in patients in the lowest-level group.
The study results appear in the June 23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Lead author, Harald Dobnig of the Medical University of Graz in Austria, says the results don't prove that low levels of vitamin D are harmful, but adds that the evidence is just becoming overwhelming at this point.
It also can't be determined from this type of study whether lack of vitamin D caused the deaths, or whether increasing vitamin D intake would make any difference.
Low vitamin D levels could reflect age, lack of physical activity and other lifestyle factors that also affect health, says American Heart Association spokeswoman Alice Lichtenstein, director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University.
Still, she notes that the study is an important addition to an emerging area of research. "This is something that should not be ignored," Lichtenstein says.
Dobnig adds that, while scientists used to think that the only role of vitamin D was to prevent rickets and strengthen bones, now we are beginning to realize that there is much more to it. Exactly how low vitamin D levels might contribute to heart problems and deaths from other illnesses is uncertain, although it is has been shown to help regulate the body's disease-fighting immune system, he says.
Earlier this month, the Archives of Internal Medicine included research led by Harvard scientists linking low vitamin D levels with heart attacks. And previous research has linked low vitamin D with high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, which all can contribute to heart disease.
Edward Giovannucci of the Harvard study says the new research provides the strongest evidence to date for a link between vitamin D deficiency and cardiovascular mortality.
Source: MSNBC
Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to higher rates of breast, colon and ovarian cancers.
Ninety percent of vitamin D is made naturally through sun exposure to your skin.
Sunlight and/or vitamin D aids in relieving depression, chronic pain and lower backpain.
Sunlight and vitamin D help to control heart disease, blood pressure and multiple sclerosis and increase muscle strength.
Sunscreens are over-used today - they should be used to prevent sunburn, but not to block regular sun exposure.
Dr. Marc Sorenson, Author Solar Power