You may be hearing a lot about this vitamin lately and I just wanted to clear a few things up. If you currently aren’t supplementing vitamin D, finish reading this and rush out this minute and buy some. This is a super cheap supplement, but well worth it’s weight in gold. If you live north of LA, you need to include a vitamin D supplement since you don’t get enough through sunlight. When
the sun hits our skin, 7-dehydrocholesterol, which is a form of cholesterol, converts to cholecalciferol to form Vitamin D3. (Okay, I’ll fess up, I researched this and can’t actually SAY those words!).
In other words, our skin is able to produce vitamin D when we are exposed to the sun. We need arms and legs exposed for 10 minutes without sunscreen. As you know, in our northern climate, sun exposure isn’t tops on our ‘to do’ list, so go get your supplement. Keep in mind that children should also be supplementing vitamin D. If you drink skim milk, the nutritional analysis will say that it is Vitamin D fortified, but Vitamin D is a fat soluable vitamin, so may fat free milk may not be the best way to ingest it.
Here are a few benefits of vitamin D:
• Helps keep your bones and teeth strong as it promotes calcium absorption and bone building in the body. (Many women are concerned with bone density. If you are Vitamin D deficient, you will have trouble absorbing your calcium and bone density is possibly at risk.)
• Vitamin D helps regulate immune system activity and prevents prolonged inflammatory response in the body.
• Helps prevent Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis and cancer.
• Regulates the growth and activity of cells in the body.
• Vitamin D deficiency can be linked to obesity, heart failure, rickets diabetes in children, and certain types of cancer in the body.