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Latitude Pots Poll


What is the latitude (not longitude) of the town you live in  

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Hi Everyone,

It's been awhile since I did a poll. This is a good one so I hope everyone will participate. I thought of this because it's believed that POTS may be an autoimmune disease. And I once saw a very famous autoimmune doctor on youtube give a lecture about autoimmune disease and the future of research and treatments. He said that a huge study was done to confirm that autoimmune disease is more prevalent the further away from the equator people lived. No matter further south or further north. That got me thinking. A lot of autoimmune immune diseased people are low vit D and so are a lot of us. So I watched another famous vit D doctor/researcher give a lecture on youtube and he says that in certain climates over 35-40+ degrees away from the equator the sun no longer makes vitamin D during certain cooler months. He tested that theory in Boston where he works and during the winter a person could not get vitamin D from the sun.

So I'd like to Poll our community here and on Facebook and see if we can get maybe 300-500 person poll. Since everyone doesn't know their latitude by heart I found an interactive website for you to look it up and answer the poll.

http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html

Thank you for participating!

Rich

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Rich,

Interesting topic and poll. Thanks for sharing the link and your research this far. . living in Buffalo certainly makes this something that I'd like to hear more about as you keep looking more into it. Do you have the link on the doctor who you watched present this topic on youtube?

Something interesting occured to me when reading this, Buffalo has one of the highest MS rates in the country, and I know it's not considered an autoimmune disease but rather immune-mediated, however, they are constantly looking into environmental factors to see why it occurs here at the rate it does. I understand the curiosity!

Hope you are well,

Sarah

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I do understand the autoimmune basis that your are talking about, and I can say that a lot of people with other diseases have low vitamin D levels, also. (I'm part of other disease groups). I guess in general, people are not outside, walking to shop in town or hanging clothes out to dry, etc. We(other normal people) modern people jump in our tinted-window vehicles and drive everywhere, and we all either stay indoors doing technological things or work inside. For myself, I cannot tolerate any heat, so I get very little sun. I can say that I am worse now than when I began with POTS, possibly due to that fact of less sun. I tried vitamin D over the years, and could not tolerate them. FINALLY, this summer, I am able to better tolerate them and am trying to get my levels up.

I also believe the sunscreen movement really had an effect on our vitamin D levels. I understand it is to prevent skin cancer, but I can say I didn't have any older relatives in my extended family that grew up from the 1910s get melanoma. And of course, they all spent a lot of time outdoors. We did have a few basal cell carcinomas removed, but that is taken care of with dermatology checkups.

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Regarding this poll, we do want to just make sure that members understand that this poll is "public". That means that your user name will be seen along with your response.

At this time, access to DINET is only possible for registered members, however in the past it was accessible to anyone using the internet, and that status could change in the future.

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I will try to post the videos soon. Also keep in mind that UVA rays cause cancer and the uvB rays do not and and they are what creatrs vit D. There are also special uvB lamps that only create vit d. Also the vit d do tor said that most of the skin cancer is in places that are not even exposed to the sun. He said all we basically need is 15-30/day. He have an app that is free that i downloaded and ot tells you what times of day u can get vit D and based on the uv index how many IU/min it makes

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Interesting topic. I've moved from the States to the north of England -- and have never been so pale in my entire life, or felt so rotten! I know there's reasons for my illness that have nothing to do with low vitamin D levels, but I don't think it helps. Apparently there's very high levels of MS in Scotland, and again the theory is that it's connected with the lack of sunshine.

p.s. I take virtually no vitamin D supplements but that answer wasn't available on the poll. I try to eat lots of vitamin D rich foods, as I don't tolerate the supplements well at all.

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I live in Florida. I was spending about an hour to 2 hours outside daily before I got sick. My vit.D level was fine, I had only low iron.

Now it's a different story as I have heat intolerance. I try to spend 20 minutes a day in the sunlight, taking short walks in the morning. Some days it's too hot, even in the morning. During the summer I can do maybe an hour a week, total. I have to go shopping and take walks after sunset. Last time I checked, my vit. D level was low. I take a supplement, 1000 IU of vit. D and a multivitamin (also has some vit. D).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Targs I updated the poll.

Also I am seeing a trend of mostly 30+ from the equator. Also I was to emphasis that during certain hours of the day, even if it is very sunny, that there are not UVB rays to help make vit D. For me right now after 4:50pm I couldnt make vit D. Even if I sat out in the sun from 5pm-7pm. Or 8am-9:30am.

Here is a link to the vit d doctor from Boston. I didnt watch this video but he has a lot of them.

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I'm in the 44-45 latitude and get on average about a half-hour per day (the time it takes to walk to and from my vehicle at work). I've only recently started taking Vitamin D (it hasn't even been a month) but have had POTS for about 3 years (or 1 1/2 if you only count since actual diagnosis). They did a blood test to see what could be causing my severe leg cramps (among other symptoms) and found that my levels were in the single digits. It'll be interesting to see if the supplements help and what the poll results end up being.

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Even though low vit D is related to many illnesses including autoimmune the science is still not out on whether it's the actual vit D contributing. There could be benefits from low dose radiation the sun's rays provides one example. Someone told me their holistic doctor told them the indirect sun light in the eye helps regulate the thyroid or pineal gland activity. Not sure if there is truth to that. All zi do know is that I feel way better in the summer, despite my severe heat intolerance.

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I'm the same, Rich - I feel so much better during the summer. I don't have heat intolerance - spent some time in Maryland last summer and was outside gardening in 90+ degree heat. However, if it's 50-ish degrees, damp and windy (as it always seems to be here in northern England!), I'm chilled to the bone, nose streaming and utterly miserable. It really makes me think it's allergy or histamine related, and that whatever sets me off thrives in the damp and cool conditions but not in the heat!

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  • 1 month later...

Before my POTS diagnosis I was first shown to have very low Vit D. My level was 5 which was the lowest my Dr. had ever seen. I am still low now but better since I took 50,000 vit d daily for months. I still take 2000 daily, when I remember, lol. I have never been one to sit in the sun as I feel crummy being in the heat. Also, I live in the north (46 lat.) where it is pretty hard to get sun or even be outside because its too cold in the winter. I also have an office job which really doesn't help.

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It's an interesting concept...but I think this site may self-select and seriously skew your results.

An English speaking site will attract English speakers. For example, England is between 50 and 55, so is the whole of the island of Ireland. The mainland US between 25 and 50. The most inhabited parts of Canada lie in between 42 and 55. About 85% of Australia is between 20 and 50, New Zealand is between 37 and 47, and South Africa between 20 and 38. (I had way too much fun with that map you gave us!) That covers all of the lats people selected, with a trend toward smaller numbers in the lesser populated areas.

Also, and I don't mean this in a derogatory sense, but POTS is more of a first world problem. I'm sure that people have it in 3rd world countries, but those people might not be able to go to the doctor. In countries where there's 1 doctor per 100,000 people, no one is going to care if you're not actively dying. And most of those people who do have it probably don't have access to the internet. Or speak English. :)

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