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Autism Linkages To Vitamin D

Vitamin D

We should all know how important it is, but … an alarming number of people that I have spoken with do not realize how important it is for our health and well being.

It is likely that many of the diseases that we consider to be diseases of the developed world are due at least in part to decreasing vitamin D. These diseases include heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and diabetes. And it turns out that the levels of vitamin D that you need to prevent those illnesses is much higher than the level you need to prevent rickets, which is why in the vitamin D community we think that there is a widespread vitamin D deficiency, even though we really don't see rickets very often.

In the US, there are several diseases such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes that are much more prevalent in black people than in other ethnic groups. This could very well be due to lower levels of vitamin D, because darker skinned people need to spend much more time in the sun to generate adequate vitamin D.

They're doing some research at the university of Minnesota on autism linkages to vitamin D linked to the Somali population in Minneapolis.

Apparently there isn't even a word for this condition in the Somali language but it has been appearing in the Somali community there at an alarming rate. While it does sound plausible that a rise in autism coincides with a decrease in vitamin D, what with the advent of indoor entertainment, but of course we all know correlation != causation.

I think the Somali population could prove to be a very interesting control group.

I'd be interested in more study with maternal vitamin D status as a risk factor for autism in children as well. There is some thought that autism might be due to maternal antibodies attacking the fetus, causing problems during brain development.

As you can see vitamin D does a whole lot more than prevent rickets, though. Vitamin D regulates a whole bunch of stuff including blood pressure (it inhibits the Renin enzyme which regulates the body's mean arterial blood pressure), the immune system, hormonal activity (including insulin), and many other important biological processes.

A lot of people just think spending time in the sun is enough, but like most things it is more complicated than that.

In other words more exposure to solar radiation.

It turns out solar radiation correlates with skin tone at a strength of about 60-70%. There is another explaining factor that is also very important.

Vitamin D in your food.

One control group that was studied for vitamin D levels … Inuits. They live very far north, yet they have darker skin than many Europeans.

Why?

It's because the Inuit diet is very high in fish which have substantial amounts of Vitamin D, while most white Europeans and Americans are often Vitamin D deficient due to our diets. Hence we have lighter skin despite having more solar radiation.

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Genghis Khan the Green Eyed Ginger

This is just speculation, hearsay and lack of real evidence. But I thought that I would use it as a topic today to post about. Mainly because this is something that people tell me all the time. In part, it is an attempt to make conversation, they want to connect with me. Or hit on me. It is usually the latter when I am out clubbing; regardless of how often I hear it, it always came across as suspicious. Though I am naturally a skeptical person; especially when the motivation behind the statement is only a pretense to get close.

About Genghis & Me

I should say, while history is of interest to me, Genghis and I have never gotten close. It would be a stretch to say that I know much about it at all, though I am interested in the region. Just not his exploits. This will not be a history lesson, nor are all of my facts, checked and doubled checked. So take information revolving around him with a grain of salt. Wikipedia has a lot of good primary sources for this information. The question of where a group of people came from, sadly, isn’t really a direct and certain answer, as it is unknown how the migrations of other peoples to the region exactly affected the genetic composition of the ethnicity.

Red Hair, Green Eyes

Having any of those traits was at the time of Genghis Khan uncommon. He came form Temujin, and there are few surviving accounts of what he actually looked like. Some claim he had red hair and blue/green eyes, yet you should be skeptical. Why? There are Uyghur with these vary traits living there now. Yet, Ugyhurs with red hair and/or very light eyes are generally a result of the fact that they were not the original inhabitants of Xinjiang, the area in which they mostly currently reside. Tocharians held the area before the Uyghurs, and they were an Indo-European people who had a tendency towards light hair/eyes (see Tarim mummies). The closest modern relatives to the Tocharians are of course the Afghans and Pashtuns, but in China the, Uyghurs would be most closely related to Tocharians, not the Mongols. It’s not uncommon for Afghans to have light eyes and hair. There’s no real evidence to suggest Genghis Khan had green eyes and red hair. It’s not an outlandish claim since there are a good number of Mongols with lighter hair and eyes but this gives people the wrong idea.

They infer that these traits must mean there are “white” Mongols. There aren’t. They just look like Asian people with green or blue eyes, just like how white people don’t look “Asian” just because they might have dark hair and eyes. They share a similar culture, language, and history with the other Indo-Iranian peoples in the region, which is important to note considering that Tocharians traditions would have otherwise been more prevalent. Of course, there could be some modern day relationship between the two ethnicities, but the Tocharians, for the most part, did not live in that area, but more towards the Tarim Basin. This is evident in genetic testing that has shown relations between the modern Uyghur peoples and Europeans, which can easily be read about here. So, in short, the Tocharians weren’t related directly to the Afghans, as they are Iranian. For more information on the Iranian migrations, look here. Of course, I am only referring to “descendants” in terms of ancestors with the most effect on the modern population; if we want to go thousands of years back, there is evidence that the entire region of the Indian subcontinent was inhabited by peoples who shared a common, non-Indo-European genetic background. If you go back far enough, the Afghans becone Proto-Indo-Europeans, people of the Indus Valley Civilization, and the inhabitants of the BMAC, but on the other hand we all have diverse ancestral backgrounds, some untraceable, within us. I hope this has given some clarification about what I was trying to say.