Founders of Google have shown very strong interests in improved health
- Sergey Brin: 50% chance of getting Parkinson's disease ( 30-75%)
- Brin has donated $132m to create DNA database of 7,000 patients and to support work on treatments for the condition
- Larry Page has a rare nerve disease that affects his vocal chords and Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
- Both Brin and Page have long been fixated on how to use data analysis to predict and track disease.
Google spun-off Calico with moonshot chance of curing Cancer in next 20 years (Sept 2013)
- Note: Curing Cancer would extend the average lifespan by 3 years
VitainDWiki suggests that Calico should also invest in restoring Vitamin D levels
- Strong indications that Vitamin D can prevent Parkinson’s Disease (Brin)
- Hashimoto's thyroiditis (Page) does decrease levels of vitamin D
- Vitamin D might be able to treat Hashimoto's thyroiditis - research (funded by Page/Calico?) is needed
- Doubling vitamin D levels should increase lifespan by 2 years
- which should also extend the quality of the life by perhaps 10 years
- Improve productivity of Google employees Workplace Wellness and Vitamin D
- Fewer days of sick leave
- Able to concentrate better on the job (when not sick)
- Fewer problems during and after pregnancy
- Decreased flu and colds
- Improve global health and wellness, just as Google improved global information access
Some candidate Calico funding:
- Large Intervention trial to double Vitamin D levels – and observe the outcome
- Note: A doctor found that when approximately doubling the vitamin D levels of all of his patients that they decreased office visits for all reasons from 4 per year down to just 1.
- Restore vitamin D levels of some (Google?) employees & families and observe difference in sick leave, performance, etc. This could be a Random Controlled Trial
- Trial of benefit of UVB lighting (which increases vitamin D levels) on health and productivity
- Note: UVB lighting experiment in a grade school classroom found better attendance, decreased increase in body fat, better test scores, and 5X fewer cavities
- Selectively install widow panes which are transparent in UVB – which creates vitamin D
- Monitor sick leave of employees working near these special windows.
- Focus on low-hanging fruit – improve the vitamin D levels of employees who are in groups which are vitamn D deficient
- Pregnant,
- Stay indoors most of the time (virtually all programmers?)
- Darker skins (Asians, Indians, African-Americans) Global Google – many offices where dark skin in the norm
- Many Google offices are far from or very near to the equator (less UVB, darker skin)
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See also Vitamin D Life
- Propose not just Vitamin D monotherapy, will also use Magnesium, Omega-3, and other cofactors
- 2200X more problem from no UVB than too much UVB - WHO 2006
- Death rate 2X higher if low vitamin D - 180,000 adults, not just elderly – May 2012 which has the following chart