Optimal Vitamin D levels put you in a better mood! There’s something called a pineal gland in our brain that sunlight stimulates and produce chemicals called tryptamines- they release endorphins that are natural anti-depressants!
Vitamin D helps our immune system get stronger by increasing our white blood cell count – they’re the cells that fight off germs and viruses preventing us from getting infections!
Vitamin D also keeps our bone strong! And stay strong… We just learned that as we get older we take in less Vitamin D – we need vitamin D to help absorb the calcium from the foods we eat to keep our bones strong. 💪
Are we getting a sufficient amount of Vitamin D in the summer, and should we still take in extra? Depends on a lot of factors!
The color of our skin is one of them- the darker our skin the more sun exposure we need to get in order to make Vitamin D than if our skin were lighter!Â
Also the amount of sunscreen we wear and how effecient we apply it on effects how much sunlight we intake. We get from vitamin D from sunlight especially UVB rays, unfortunately without sunscreen if we expose our skin for too long and burn we increase our risk for skin cancer. But the good thing is we don’t need to burn our skin to get the benefits of Vitamin D. We only need to expose our skin to half the amount of the time it takes for our skin to begin to burn.
So depending on the time of day, our climate and color of our skin will decide how much exposure we get.
What we recommend is wearing a good sunscreen everyday even on a sunny winter day and maintain healthy levels of vitamin D by supplementing everyday with foods that are fortified with Vitamin D like milk or certain yogurts and added supplements like Vit D drops.Â
Walking between 15-30 min a day in sunlight is also super beneficial, not only for the sunlight but for overall better health and maintaining healthy bloodÂ