Last week, I blogged about a report in Scientific American Magazine linking Vitamin D deficiency with Autism because of the rising number of autism cases in two communities of Somali immigrants who had moved from their equatorial country, with plenty of sunshine, to northern latitude countries.

You can read the Scientific American Magazine report at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-and-autism and click here to read my blog post on it. This week, I have decided to dig a little deeper into the vitamin D theory.

Now, many people have pointed out that these Somali communities would also have faced other changes too, not just lack of sunlight. For example, their new environment may be more toxic (pollution and heavy metals), the vaccination program in their new countries may be different, their diet would have changed etc. So I’m not sure how this preliminary study was able to rule out these other factors and make vitamin D deficiency the missing link.

However, whatever we think about this report into vitamin D deficiency and the Somali communities, there are many scientists out there who do think that vitamin D is a factor that should not be dismissed and that needs to be taken seriously.

Vitamin D – Is it a Plausible Theory?

The Vitamin D Council is an organization run by John Jacob Cannell, MD, a doctor with a special interest in clinical nutrition, and it aims to educate and inform people about vitamin D to prevent vitamin D deficiency, and the illnesses and conditions which are caused by a deficiency.

Cannell points out that at the same time that we are experiencing a vitamin D deficiency epidemic, we are also in the midst of an autism epidemic – can the two be linked? Yes, Cannell believes that sun avoidance is the…