3 posts tagged “vitamin d”
You may have noticed I've been trying to up my Vitamin D levels. It's actually tougher than you would think, if you're a working person (OK, a workaholic person) to get 10 minutes of sun in the middle of the day.
My favorite vegan dietician has a lengthy, info-packed article on bone health at VeganHealth.org, focused primarily on Vitamin D and calcium.
My conclusions: I don't think my desire to improve my Vitamin D levels through sunlight alone, no supplements required, seems realistic, especially during the winter months (November-March).
Bummer.
I've been blogging about my Vitamin D saga over at my health-care blog, Healthy Concerns.
As this post relates, I've been doing the 10-minutes-of-sunlight-per-day-to-generate-Vitamin-D thing all wrong.
Really. Totally wrong.
Sigh.
Also, even I started doing it right, apparently I live too far North for it to do any good from November until March.Looks like, at least during those month, there's no way around a supplement :(
...to admit that the ONE blood test that came back looking anything less than stellar was my Vitamin D results. Apparently I have a deficiency.
Now, before anyone goes all "vegans don't get enough nutrition" on me, my doctor told me that about half her patients have such a deficiency, and even in the San Francisco Bay Area, half her patients are NOT veg*ns.
Coincidentally, a mere few days after finding out I was deficient, I saw a segment on the Martha Stewart Show where they again threw out that number that about half of American adults have such a deficiency. You can read more about that over at my Healthy Concerns blog.
There are two ways to get Vitamin D. Yes, one way is through food, and dairy is a common way to get it. But the other way...and the source of the widespread Vitamin D deficiencies they are seeing...is via sunlight. Just 10 minutes of sunlight a day would be sufficient to have your own body create enough Vitamin D, and most of us don't get that. It's not just that we are leading more indoorsy lives, it's that those of us in the Northern Hemisphere over a certain latitude may get sunrays that are too indirect anyway during the winter months, PLUS we are wearing heavy sunscreens when we do go out. Basically dermatologists and endocrinologists are having a little tug-of-war over our health!
I've never thought a lot about my Vitamin D. About the only source I think I have is my enriched rice milk....which I use on cereal very regularly, but not in copious amounts.
I think I'll have to go for the sunlight approach.
Food or sunlight? How do you get your Vitamin D? And do you even know your levels and whether you have this very common deficiency?
