Sunshine and Vitamin D

Sunshine is one of the important natural Vitamin D producer, plus the food or supplement we are taking. Today most people try to avoid the sun out of fear for skin cancer, but what is the true behind this story?

Vitamin D has many health benefits and the role of Vitamin D deficiency in increasing the risk of common and serious diseases like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. There is also a guideline to follow to the amount of sun we can be exposed for all skin types to get the amount of Vitamin D without risking to damage the skin or getting skin cancer. In the same time it is important to increase the intakes of food to support Vitamin D like milk, orange juice, cereals, and oily fish to satisfying the body requirements.

Every time our skin is exposed to the sun it undergoes a three daylong process to transform the sun light into Vitamin D and than transport it to the liver and kidney were it than becomes the role of regulating calcium and phosphorus metabolism. Vitamin D promotes the absorption of these two minerals and influences the process of bone mineralization. Without Vitamin D the result will be rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults.

Rickets is a bone disorder, which has been known since 500B.C, but was first time described in London about 300 years ago. In the eighteen-century Industrial Revolution in England were most kids who suffer from rickets were living in crowed slums, Industrial smoke and high building which sunlight were shout out. Because rickets were spread out so fast, the blame went out for bad home environment and poor hygiene, and the doctors brand this condition as a disease of poverty and darkness.

In 1824 they found out that the long known folk medicine of cod-liver oil was an important treatment for rickets. At that time the medical profession could not explain how it works and with that it lost it favor for treatment. Until 1922, E.V. McCollum at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland found that after destruction of all Vitamin A in cod-liver oil it still retained its rickets-preventing potency. This proved the existence of a second fat-soluble vitamin carried in liver oils and certain other foods. The so-called calcium depositing, the Vitamin D-binding protein transports Vitamin D3 from the skin into the circulation.

As you see, it is very important for us to enjoin the sunshine on our skin, but also the intake of the right food and supplement to support our body with the right level of Vitamin D for a healthy body.

Are you taking the sunshine, right food and your Vitamin D supplements? Or do you suffer and have some health issue?

Gudrun Smith
Shaklee Independent Distributor
210-279-4317