I wrote my first blog about how important it is to supplement with Vitamin D3 way back in July 2011. And finally we hear in the news that it is recommended to supplement with vitamin D in the autumn and winter. Oh, hurrah.
Poliquin brand Vitamin D – D3 Excellence – is wonderful. Tiny golden balls of sunlight which can be swallowed whole or chewed. From me it costs £20.50 for 120 x 5,000 IU softgels plus postage. Poliquin also do a higher strength vitamin D3: Mega D3, £23.50 for 60 x 10,000 IU softgels. Contact me for further details.
Let’s be precise about this autumn/winter business: we cannot make Vitamin D from sunlight between the months of October and March. So even if we are naked gardeners and we have a prolonged sunny spell in January, the angle of the rays of the sun is too oblique for us to generate Vitamin D.
Between April and September, we can make D from sunlight – but we do have to be in it for this to happen. Funnily enough, even people who live in sunny countries nearer to the equator can suffer from D deficiency, because seeing bright sunlight through a window will not make us any D; even they have to go outside and expose some skin.
Which, of course is very much a problem in the UK. The number of times I go to eat my lunch outside on a nice summer’s day – only to have a large cloud drift over the sun. At the very end of my lunchbreak, the cloud blows away, the sun breaks out again, and I have to go indoors. During my lunchbreak, I would have made precisely no vitamin D at all. To recommend supplementing only in the autumn and winter, here in the UK, really is a bit daft. Most of us need to supplement all year round. Or we could take up naked gardening, of course.
Another bit of bad news is that as we get older, our natural productive abilities of Vit D go down. Along with everything else, it sometimes seems.
As a summary, low vitamin D levels are associated with depression, skin cancer, SAD, PMS and developing diseases such as rickets and multiple sclerosis.
Also there is the vexed question of the use of suncream. The real point is we mustn’t burn. If we know we burn easily or are going to be outside for a while and have no suntan built up, so we have to use suncream, then source as healthy a suncream as possible. This will involve a trip to a health food shop. We absorb what we slap on our skin, and the regular suncreams contain nasty chemicals that can cause as many issues as sunburn.
The best thing to do is to build up a suntan without burning. If we still have to be outside and the skin is starting to feel hot, cover up.
The best Vitamin D supplement I’ve come across is the Poliquin Group brand. Yes, I sell it. But sometimes I’ve run out and bought other brands. They do not compare for efficacy, no matter how much they cost. The vitamin D pill should contain only Vitamin D3. D2 is poorly taken up by the guts and only there to make it look as if there is loads of D in that pill.
Take a high quality Vitamin D supplement and kiss SAD goodbye!