If You’re Not Taking This Supplement Right Now You’re Asking for Trouble
You may not be getting enough Vitamin D and if you’re not, that can be a big problem.
Vitamin D is essential for a number of structures and functions in your body but probably its most important role is in immune system function.
When you get low in Vitamin D, your immune system weakens, and you become much more susceptible to colds and flus.
Vitamin D is normally MADE by your own body when your skin is exposed to sunlight (specifically, the ultraviolet rays help convert a precursor in your body to Vitamin D).
But in the winter, we wear more clothes and, therefore, have less skin exposure. Plus, the sun is less intense in the winter since it sits lower on the horizon. And finally, the days are shorter in the winter.
In fact, there is a website that allows you to calculate how much time you’d need direct sun exposure, on any given day, at any given latitude to get enough sun exposure to synthesize your daily requirement of Vitamin D.
Here’s what it says: on the shortest day of the year (December 21), in Calgary, Alberta, with just your face and hands exposed, even if you stood facing the sun from sunrise to sunset, you would only synthesize about 25% of your daily requirement of Vitamin D.
That means each day, you’re getting a little more depleted in Vitamin D. Which may be part of the explanation as to why some people get frequent colds and flus in the winter and their worse ones in February.
It’s not too late to start supplementing with Vitamin D. See the Health Canada web page on Vitamin D for a chart to determine the recommended amount for each member of your family.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/nutrients/vitamin-d.html
As always, with love.
Dr. Colin