Vit D - A Ray of Sunshine for Your Bones

Vitamin D - sunshine vitamin?

This Summer hopefully many of us will be enjoying the hot weather and spending lots of the daylight hours outside and getting lovely sunshine on our skin. Most of us have heard of the sunshine vitamin! Vitamin D3 is a hormone as well as a vitamin and it is synthesised in the skin whenever we are exposed to sunlight. ?

Vitamin D is associated with the feel good factor and a lack of it contributes to SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder.?Vitamin D is especially important for healthy bones and kidneys. A healthy thyroid maintains calcium levels in the body and Vitamin D is used in this process too. We have cells that use vitamin D all over the body, from the skeleton to the lungs, the reproductive system to the heart and the pancreas to the skin… ?Our immune system uses Vitamin D directly which is why people who get frequent infections should have their D3 levels checked and optimise them, especially in preparation for Winter, and always under the guidance of a health professional.?

The recommended daily amounts of Vitamin D are 400 IU (international units) for children up to age 12months, 600IU for ages 1-70 and 800IU for over 70.?This level of intake will possibly prevent deficiency but that really depends on your genes. Some people can only use around 10% of the Vitamin D in circulation in their body so this would represent a very low intake for them and a mimimal intake for the rest. In functional medicine we work with optimal health parameters, that means the levels that give you great health, not the levels that keep you just out of the deficiency range. We test for Vitamin D levels in ng/ml and traditional ranges vary between countries. In general?30ng/ml may be considered normal however ‘standard’ blood levels aren’t optimal blood levels and for most people this is still deficiency.?Functional medicine teaches us that 60-90ng/ml is good and more optimal and less than 60ng/ml should warrant supplementation of around 5000iu a day (please supplement only under the care of a health professional) with a maintenance level of 2000iu once the body is in a sufficient range of over 60ng/ml.?

Vitamin D deficiency in the Northern hemisphere is increasingly common and especially with the rise in the use of sunscreen, there have even been recent recorded rises in rickets which is a condition that arises due to severe deficiency in Vitamin D3.?Vitamin D has been shown to be protective against skin cancer so some sun exposure without using sunscreen is essential for your health and if there is a risk of burning, it’s better to cover up rather than use toxic sunscreens, some of which have been shown to contain the cancer causing agent benzene. You are better to follow the rule of not putting anything on your skin that you cannot eat since all chemicals are absorbed into the body and will add a burden onto the organs of detoxification.?

Kinds of Vitamin D?

There are different kinds of Vitamin D. In humans the important ones are D2 and D3.?D2 (Ergocalciferol) comes from plants and D3 (Cholecalciferol) comes from animal sources. D3 is also created in our body on exposure to sunlight. 10% of our Vitamin D comes from food, the rest is synthesised by sun exposure (or supplementation). D3 is the important and most bioavailable form of Vitamin D - this means it can be most easily used by our body. D2 is often what manufacturers fortify juices and milks with as it’s a lot cheaper to produce but this is not very easy for the body to use and a lot of it simply passes through the body unused. It can be considered a gimmick when foods say they are fortified because often the versions of the vitamins that are being used are not in a form available for the body.?

Which foods should you eat??

• Cod Liver Oil?
• Salmon?
• Swordfish?
• Tuna Fish?
• Sardines
• Beef Liver?
• Egg Yolks?

Including three to four portions of Vitamin D3 rich foods will boost your immune system, keep your bones stronger and sharpen your mental faculty plus there are many more benefits.?

Above all, make sure that while you get sun exposure, you have light Summer wear with long sleeves and long legs/long skirt so that when you have had your fill of the sun, you cover up and protect your body from over exposure and burning. Using coconut oil or carrot oil as natural sunscreens can be helpful as they are both food for the body and nourishing and they have an Sun Protecting Factor of around 8SPF - not very high but some natural protection and they work very well as an after sun lotion too.?

Enjoy your holidays and soak up your Summer Vitamin D3?