Lighter Skin In Europeans due to agriculture?

[KD]

its fairly impossible for any person today to get enough vitamin D from food. We can assume that the Inuit had less problems with D then similar non sun exposed westerners but its possible they did not have sufficient vit D for maximum health.

dark skinned people have adapted in areas of large amounts of sun exposure and those removed from those situations need more exposure at peak hours and in warm climates to get enough Vit D. Light skinned people have an easier time in a modern instance because they can get such absorption in shorter time but it still has to be at peak hours and in a certain climate zones (not the north). Historically all light skinned people have been deficient in D as you can't absorb D in Northern climates in much of the year.

[PaleoPhil]

dark skinned people have adapted in areas of large amounts of sun exposure and thus removed form those situations need more exposure at peak hours and in warm climates to get enough Vit D. Light skinned people have an easier time in a modern instance because they can get such absorption in shorter time but it still has to be at peak hours and in a certain climate zones (not the north).

Oh, oh, KD! I sense a textual whipping from Tyler in your future. I salute your courage and chutzpah!

[KD]

heh

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no one knows what amounts are truly best but we do know in nude sunbathing your body can take in at least 20,000 or possibly 30,000 IU per day sunbathing in peak hours and also that the body doesn't naturally assimilate toxic amounts of vitamin D. (Although it might be toxic to supplement with any more than 5-10000 IUs. or as a caveat: in general :/)

Once your body gets enough, it will basically stop producing any more but we know it can absorb at least that much.

I don't know much about seal blubber but the high ups on the given lists (which list a bunch of different numbers...none of them high) are things like mackerel and salmon which both yield around 3500 IU of vitamin D per kilo

Its generally thought that even when its sunny, UVB doesn't penetrate when the trajectory of the sun is not right which means when it is too far off on the horizon or in winter months.

[TylerDurden]

If vitamin D intake, diet and sunlight can be ruled out, then there would presumably be at least one other factor that would explain why Somali women in Sweden have reportedly lower levels of vitamin D than Swedish women, yes? Do you have one to propose?
Might be possible? Are you saying that their ancestors were probably all just as light-skinned, going all the way back to the first hominid?

  I am not disputing that Somali women have lower levels of vitamin D due to their skin-colour blocking off sunlight. I am heavily disputing the ridiculous notion that they would develop a lighter-skin-colour simply by living in a more northern climate for just a few generations or just for a few millenia.

As for the Inuit, I did not state that they were always light-coloured skin-wise, though that might well be possible. I simply meant that the genes for light skin were present in their DNA throughout history/prehistory, as shown by the fact that the ancestor-ape of all humans had pale skin. That is, of course, not the same thing.

[TylerDurden]

its fairly impossible for any person today to get enough vitamin D from food. We can assume that the Inuit had less problems with D then similar non sun exposed westerners but its possible they did not have sufficient vit D for maximum health.

  This is the sort of nonsense routinely spouted by the vitamin-supplement manufacturers in order to get more customers and is, of course, quite illogical. Usually, they refer to vastly excessive required RDAs for a particular individual, as claimed by some kook within the medical or scientific community etc.. Linus Pauling was a classic example, a Nobel prize winner who went on and on about how supposedly humans needed far more vitamin C than previously suggested(he recommended 5-10 g of vitamin C a day, whereas mainstream nutritionists advocated only 60 mg a day!). Here's some info on the negative consequences of Pauling's claims:-


http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html

It simply does not make any sense at all that nature would not provide all the necessary nutrients that a human body needs. Sure, Man has devastated the environment etc., but since animal foods are complete foods, just having access to wild or grassfed, raw meats and some raw plant foods means one gets plenty of vitamin D or any other nutrient. If one has access to raw shellfish, then one is getting far more than one needs of vitamin D  etc.

[KD]

 This is the sort of nonsense routinely spouted by the vitamin-supplement manufacturers in order to get more customers and is, of course, quite illogical. Usually, they refer to vastly excessive required RDAs for a particular individual, as claimed by some kook within the medical or scientific community etc.. Linus Pauling was a classic example, a Nobel prize winner who went on and on about how supposedly humans needed far more vitamin C than previously suggested(he recommended 5-10 g of vitamin C a day, whereas mainstream nutritionists advocated only 60 mg a day!). Here's some info on the negative consequences of Pauling's claims:-


http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html

It simply does not make any sense at all that nature would not provide all the necessary nutrients that a human body needs. Sure, Man has devastated the environment etc., but since animal foods are complete foods, just having access to wild or grassfed, raw meats and some raw plant foods means one gets plenty of vitamin D or any other nutrient. If one has access to raw shellfish, then one is getting far more than one needs of vitamin D  etc.

and where are these guidelines coming from as to what is enough? what is the quanity of shellfish and frequency and how much vit d does this yield in comparison to 30,000 IU?

you come at all this stuff backwards. What does the fact that people try to sell the importance of isolated nutrients or supplements have to do with scientists and health professionals almost unanimously agreeing that the main source of vitamin D production is through the sun. If people thrive on levels of upwards of 30,000 IU which is physically impossible to get with food, all you are citing is your opinions on to what is adequate levels based on some fairly distorted conceptualization of both how and what nature should provide...without actually looking at the research and evidence of what advantages higher levels (unobtainable with food) provide. unlike C, D represents a full range of factors that are easily noticable when intake is increased at high levels..preferably through sun exposure and not supplements (food is not in the equation)

whats even silier is you use this to prove a basic premise that can be easily hashed out.  

barring sun or other ideal intake, when someone takes vitamin d supplements their skin darkens without exposure to sunlight..takes times spans shorter than 6 months.

If someone is deficient in D they will appear pale-r no matter if they are getting some access to sun or shellfish  because they are vitamin D deficient as they would not be pale skinned if they had adequate vit-d.

Trying to reverse this and say this whole easily visible and provable theory is wrong because people should be able to get enough from some wild animal foods is not science.

[TylerDurden]

The vitamin-D/sunlight advocates also hugely exaggerate, suggesting that we need far more exposure to sunlight than is actually necessary. Again, it doesn't make sense that humans need to be exposed to sunlight all the time. Indeed only minor access to sunlight is required:-

"A person requires only 15-20 minutes of exposure to the sun, three times a week to manufacture the body's requirement of vitamin D." taken from:-

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/symptoms-of-vitamin-d-overdose.html

So, even if one only exposes a small part of the skin throughout the day, one gets enough vitamin D. No need to expose one's whole body to sunlight all day, year-round or whatever nonsense.


Another factor which debunks the whole vitamin D/skin-colour notions is that different ethnic populations have different ways to synthesise vitamin D. For example, from wikipedia:-

"Possible ethnic differences in physiological pathways for ingested vitamin D, such as Inuit have, may confound across the board recommendations for vitamin D levels. Inuit(ie on modern diets) compensate for lower production of vitamin D by converting more of this vitamin to its most active form" taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D

http://www.springerlink.com/content/valm37nutf4m2xfh/

Your claim that 30,000 IUs is OK as an extreme, is, of course, wrong:-

"Acute overdose requires between 15,000 µg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 µg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over a period of several days to months, with a safe intake level being 250 µg/d (10,000 IU per day)." taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D

http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/1/6.long


Never heard of this supposed claim that taking excess vitamin d without sunlight darkens the skin. Searching online doesn't show any such claim re various different lists of symptoms re taking  excess vitamin D. Sounds highly dodgy.

[KD]

The vitamin-D/sunlight advocates also hugely exaggerate, suggesting that we need far more exposure to sunlight than is actually necessary. Again, it doesn't make sense that humans need to be exposed to sunlight all the time. Indeed only minor access to sunlight is required:-

"A person requires only 15-20 minutes of exposure to the sun, three times a week to manufacture the body's requirement of vitamin D." taken from:-

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/symptoms-of-vitamin-d-overdose.html

So, even if one only exposes a small part of the skin throughout the day, one gets enough vitamin D. No need to expose one's whole body to sunlight all day, year-round or whatever nonsense.


Another factor which debunks the whole vitamin D/skin-colour notions is that different ethnic populations have different ways to synthesise vitamin D. For example, from wikipedia:-

"Possible ethnic differences in physiological pathways for ingested vitamin D, such as Inuit have, may confound across the board recommendations for vitamin D levels. Inuit(ie on modern diets) compensate for lower production of vitamin D by converting more of this vitamin to its most active form" taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D

http://www.springerlink.com/content/valm37nutf4m2xfh/

Your claim that 30,000 IUs is OK as an extreme, is, of course, wrong:-

"Acute overdose requires between 15,000 µg/d (600,000 IU per day) and 42,000 µg/d (1,680,000 IU per day) over a period of several days to months, with a safe intake level being 250 µg/d (10,000 IU per day)." taken from:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_D

http://www.ajcn.org/content/85/1/6.long


Never heard of this supposed claim that taking excess vitamin d without sunlight darkens the skin. Searching online doesn't show any such claim re various different lists of symptoms re taking  excess vitamin D. Sounds highly dodgy.

all you do is search around the internet for corresponding bullshit from quackwatch sites. why is "buzzle.com" an authority over people that have had experience with low and high levels of vitamin d? and assumption on minimums. Give up arguing stuff you have to search around about and get your D tested and get back to me and tell me if this even represents what even any of your sites you present as adequate from the seafood that you eat and whatever peak sun exposure you ever get.

everyone that has proper vit d has full healthy non-pale complexions. Even the palest Irish people at my CF gym. things like pale skin and sunburns (which are not actual burns from the sun) are marks of unhealthy humans despite being part inheritance of ethnic origin.

people that have adequate d and are healthy do not burn in the sun and have a regular complexion year round regardless of origin and can change such in short periods within their own lifetime with proper nutrition and cleansing through the skin. Meanwhile the converse is true which is people with healthy inheritance of dark complexion given improper materials and being highly toxic can become very pale in their own lifetime. Many Puerto Ricans and Sicilians in New york for example.

Of course the Inuit compensate largely for this through dietary means. Your theories ironically sound more and more creationist..but I do believe that people can move to certain environments and have substitutes that allow them to survive..as many people can still live to be 100 on improper vit D...has nothing to do with optimal human health or the topic of people losing or gaining pigmentation though D which is a scientific fact.

I already said that 30,000 IU might not be necessary. I said that no one knows what the levels is but that the body does not synthesize unnatural or dangerous quantities form the sun. The body has some ability to store D which is possibly why these levels are able to be high, but it was never meant to get D from food in absence of regular sun exposure. The idea that humans always had maximum access to all their nutrients is likely false, but as you say the environment is different, making little of that important.

all these comments about what makes sense or not..you are really just speaking about subjective poor reasoning..and then trying to apply these things that science and experience deems basically obvious.


basically lack of quality sun and poor diet causes people to be pale even more abundant food sources of D prior to modern civilization. fairly simple

03:14:45 pm

Also..you are aware one needs sleep for proper absorption of all minerals right?

[TylerDurden]

First of all, at least I am able to refer to sites which debunk your claims. All you do is make vague, mostly unproven generalisations of no import. Quackwatch has some interesting info, whether you like it or not, and, unlike you, is willing to cite studies. And the links I cited re vitamin D excess did not merely talk about assumptions - 1 of the links specifically referred to past studies done on actual symptoms of vitamin D excess and thereby extrapolated from that what the safe limit was, making your claim of 30,000 IU utterly meaningless as a figure.

As for your weird insistence that I measure my own vitamin D levels, that is truly moronic. For one thing, my own measurements are irrelevant to the discussion since my own individual circumstances re diet/location re climate are going to be quite different from anyone else's. Also, I find this obsession with self-measurement re calorie-measuring/measuring blood-pressure/cholesterol-levels a sure sign of orthorexic behaviour, given that much of the science behind such measurements isn't fully understood(such as all the various arguments re cholesterol).

Also, the quip re time is somewhat lost on me, as it isn't 3 in the morning where I am. Time isn't the same all over the globe, you know....

[KD]

how is asking you to measure you vitamin d "weird" where you are insisting one can get this stuff from food in contradiction to all other reports? No one believes this to be true. Even if the level needed is one 10th of 30,000 IU you'd have to eat 1kg of seafood daily.  You already said the only reason you believe this is that one should be able to get this stuff from food, even though all people agree that you have to get this from sunshine or supplementation.

If you choose to make your own decision based on this crap fine. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone has to supplement or any other thing... only the fact that food cannot supply adequate d for optimal human health. If someone has pale skin and burns in the sun..they arn't getting optimal D from food or supplements or regular sun exposure and/or is toxic... and this is regardless of race or background.

The problem is you said it was impossible that peoples skin changes based on vitamin D. This is a false statement. I already supplied all the information necessary to go against that claim.

people that have adequate d and are healthy do not burn in the sun and have a regular complexion year round regardless of origin and can change such in short periods within their own lifetime with proper nutrition and cleansing through the skin. Meanwhile the converse is true which is people with healthy inheritance of dark complexion given improper materials and being highly toxic can become very pale in their own lifetime. Many Puerto Ricans and Sicilians in New york for example.


I already said that 30,000 IU might not be necessary. I said that no one knows what the levels is but that the body does not synthesize unnatural or dangerous quantities form the sun. The body has some ability to store D which is possibly why these levels are able to be high, but it was never meant to get D from food in absence of regular sun exposure.

The 30,000 IU is a level that is taken in by the sun exposure (not supplements) is not necessarily a lower or upper limit, just that the body will not uptake toxic levels via the sun. This level or higher might only be necessary for keeping up adequate levels in winter months.

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BTW: why is like every post on this board lately 'edited by Tyler Durden'.? There doesn't seem to be many actual edits
I don't think you intended on it..but you just erased my latest edit.

[miles]

KD is bi-winning.

[KD]

KD is bi-winning.

Sunshine is the closest thing I got to tiger blood.

[TylerDurden]

how is asking you to measure you vitamin d "weird" where you are insisting one can get this stuff from food in contradiction to all other reports? No one believes this to be true. Even if the level needed is one 10th of 30,000 IU you'd have to eat 1kg of seafood daily.  You already said the only reason you believe this is that one should be able to get this stuff from food, even though all people agree that you have to get this from sunshine or supplementation.

I did not state that it was necessary to get all one's vitamin D from food, just some of it, the rest from sunlight. By the way, your figures  are wrong as usual  . If one goes by the usual RDA standards, then only 600 IU of vitamin D is needed each day which is a fifth(!) of the 1/10th of 30,000 IU that you've  given as an example of RDA standards:-


http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/

So, by the above standards, only roughly 200g of seafood daily would be needed without any sunlight at all - plus a little sunlight and less such food would be needed etc.(That is, of course, assuming that even your 1kg figure is even remotely correct  ). Clearly, asking you to give your own measurements re vitamin D levels would result in "inaccurate" results!

The problem is you said it was impossible that peoples skin changes based on vitamin D. This is a false statement. I already supplied all the information necessary to go against that claim.

No, you just gave vague, unsupported generalisations re New Yorkers and other nonsense.

[KD]

At a certain point I would expect people would understand that there is both an esoteric knowledge and a science that goes deeper than what NIH and other sources report. The RDA prescribes a level that produces a 100% sure chance of deficiency by the same medical establishment. What I trust time and time again is whether myself and people that I know personally get get results or failures doing a particular thing..and then i got back and see if there is some kind of science or precedent. It turns out for this issue. the science is so over the top that pigmentation is factored by Vit D.


like most things..maybe I see it as obvious as I no longer ever have pale skin or suffer sunburns in any summer sun if i've eased in to the spring sun after a deficient winter.

 I don't see what googling sites is of worth when people can do that on their own time but...

"Human skin color is primarily due to the presence of melanin in the skin. Skin color ranges from almost black to white with a pinkish tinge due to blood vessels underneath.[1] Variation in natural skin color is mainly due to genetics, although the evolutionary causes are not completely certain. According to scientific studies, natural human skin color diversity is highest in Sub-Saharan African populations,[2] with skin reflectance values ranging from 19 to 46 (med. 31) compared with European and East Asian populations which have skin reflectance values of 62 to 69 and 50 to 59 respectively.[3]

The natural skin color can be darkened as a result of tanning due to exposure to sunlight. The leading explanation is that skin color adapts to sunlight intensities which produce vitamin D deficiency or ultraviolet light damage to folic acid.[4] Other hypotheses include protection from ambient temperature, infections, skin cancer or frostbite, an alteration in food, and sexual selection.[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color

As far back as the 1960s, the biochemist W. Farnsworth Loomis had suggested that skin color is determined by the body's need for vitamin D. The vitamin helps the body absorb calcium and deposit it in bones, an essential function, particularly in fast-growing embryos. (The need for vitamin D during pregnancy may explain why women around the globe tend to have lighter skin than men.) Unlike folate, vitamin D depends on ultraviolet light for its production in the body.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/text_pop/l_073_04.html

As hominids migrated outside of the tropics, varying degrees of
depigmentation evolved in order to permit UVB-induced synthesis of
previtamin D3. The lighter color of female skin may be required to
permit synthesis of the relatively higher amounts of vitamin D3
necessary during pregnancy and lactation.
Skin coloration in humans is adaptive and labile. Skin pigmentation
levels have changed more than once in human evolution. Because of
this, skin coloration is of no value in determining phylogenetic
relationships among modern human groups.

http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/chem/faculty/leontis/chem447/PDF_files/Jablonski_skin_color_2000.pdf

[TylerDurden]

All the above is mere hypothesis and guessing, on a scientific level.

Just to put one more nail in the coffin:-


 160g smoked mackerel      12.8

from:-

http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/nutrition/vitamins/vitamin_d.htm

So, from the above, smoked mackerel(which is more processed than raw mackerel so presumably has higher amounts of vitamin D) has only 12.8 mcg of vitamin D per 160g(15 mcg being equivalent to 600 IU, the recommended RDA level). So, I was dead right re my above post.

As for the comment re tanning, scientists don't generally view tanning as being all that healthy for a person. It is known to cause premature aging of the skin, a decrease in the immune-system, and more wrinkles. Not too effective as a protection measure, to put it mildly.

And you still haven't provided any decent info to support your claim that peoples' skin somehow magically darkens in an instant  in tandem with vitamin D deficiency or lightens dramatically in an instant once vitamin D levels required are reached. If the change is mostly due mainly to genetic changes as stated above in 1 excerpt, then my case is proven.

[PaleoPhil]

...I happen to follow the blog of one of the most ardent promoters of the sexual selection hypothesis (so ardent as to be quite controversial) and even he does not make the extreme claim that vitamin D has been completely debunked.

But he (Peter Frost) has released another blog post that makes the case even more strongly against the vitamin D hypothesis, as some of the counter evidence was finally released and found wanting (and suspiciously aided someone in advancing their career in probably politically correct circles), and Frost understands this stuff better than I do, so it's looking more and more like Tyler was right and that we can't add vitamin D to the sexual selection hypothesis, as interesting as it might have been, so kudos to Tyler on this. While Frost seems to accept that most of the whitening was relatively recent--possibly as recent as 11,000 years ago--the vitamin D hypothesis requires an even more recent lightening:

When Europeans turned white
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-europeans-turned-white.html
Beleza et al. (2012) generally confirmed Norton’s preliminary finding but found evidence that Europeans had lightened through a 2-stage process. Around 30,000 years ago, not long after entering Europe, the ancestors of today’s Europeans and East Asians lightened in skin color through a new allele at the KITLG gene. But the real whitening came much later, between 19,000 and 11,000 years ago among ancestral Europeans only, through new alleles at TYRP1, SLC24A5, and SLC45A2. This finding strikes down the two leading explanations for the whiteness of European skin:

1.     As modern humans spread north from Africa and into higher latitudes with less solar UV, their skin had to lose pigmentation to maintain the same level of vitamin-D synthesis. Europeans therefore began to turn white once their ancestors entered European latitudes some 40,000 years ago (Loomis, 1970; Murray, 1934).

This explanation might account for the initial loss of pigmentation circa 30,000 BP, when ancestral Europeans probably became as light-skinned as Amerindians. But it cannot explain the much greater loss of pigmentation more than twenty thousand years later.

2.     Some writers, like Sweet (2002), have suggested that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming increased the body’s need for vitamin D (because cereals contain phytic acids that immobilize calcium and phosphorus within the body and because a high-meat diet seems to reduce vitamin-D requirements). In Europe, however, this transition began only 8,000 years ago and did not reach northern Europe until 7,000-3,000 BP. ...

White skin was not climatically advantageous. It was visually advantageous, as were two other unique color traits....

White European skin evolved relatively fast during the last ice age, specifically from 19,000 to 11,000 years ago. This was also probably the same time frame for the evolution of European hair and eye colors. Anyway, that’s my bet.

These color traits—white skin and a diverse palette of hair and eye colors— are not adaptations to a cooler, less sunny climate. They are adaptations by early European women to intense mate competition, specifically a shortage of potential mates due to a low polygyny rate and a high death rate among young men.

On the other hand, while the sexual selection hypothesis is the primary hypothesis, it has not yet been able to conclusively explain everything (see http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genetics/pigmentation/kenny-melanesia-blond-2012.html, for example), so there seems to possibly be something else at work too. Unfortunately, I forget what the other hypotheses were at this point that Frost hasn't already essentially debunked. LOL Mysteries are fun, though, so maybe I'll look into it again some day, or just wait for Peter Frost or John Hawks or Tyler to provide the answer. 

One thing I don't recall seeing an explanation for, but maybe I'm just forgetting, is how could lack of polygyny account for most of the whitening when the Celtic peoples were supposedly very polygynous, like most or all pastoral societies, yet are some of the whitest? Frost mentions that red female hair is more highly valued in Celtic culture than other societies, though still less than blonde (http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html), but that doesn't seem enough to counter the polygyny on the face of it. Perhaps the so-called "Celtic" peoples were mostly pre-pastoral hunter-gatherer monogamous societies, perhaps pre-Celtic, counter to the current trend of scientific opinion? There is a minority of scientists who think this.

It's pretty refreshing that someone like Frost can make some politically incorrect hypotheses and provide rather strong evidence and even partially (though not fully) defend Rushton and not yet get pillaried, though maybe he just hasn't hit the libtards' radar screen yet.