Celebrating the summer season is full of delicious food, wonderful adventures to the beach, and lots of new adventures with loved ones. However, that doesn’t mean all your adult responsibilities can stop! One of the essential ones that you should keep in mind is your health. You’ll want to remember to hydrate, eat right, and make time for testing Vitamin D levels. Why? Take a look below to learn.
Is Vitamin D deficiency common?
There are a lot of surprisingly common vitamin deficiencies out there, and Vitamin D deficiency is one of them. If you look at the entire year, you’ll notice that winter is a more typical time for deficiency in Vitamin D. This is because there is less sunshine, and people spend less time outside in what little sun there is.
However, you can still be deficient in Vitamin D even in the summer season, which surprises many. While you can get all the Vitamin D you need from sun exposure, many still don’t meet the daily recommended levels. But some do. This is due to how they plan their time outside.
So, how do you know which one you are? Realistically, it comes down to prioritising testing Vitamin D levels and knowing exactly where your levels are. That’s the first step to changing your diet if needed.
Vitamin D and summertime
Let’s start with the basics of Vitamin D and its different relationship with each season. As you may know, Vitamin D is also known as the sunshine vitamin. We get most of our Vitamin D from the sun through exposure to it in the summer season.
Most of us should be able to absorb enough Vitamin D from the sun to meet our daily recommended levels. This assumes a lot of things, though. You eat a Vitamin D-balanced diet, for one. And, you get raw exposure to the sun. This is done by going in the right kind of sun for a certain amount of time, with no sunscreen or protective clothing. As you can imagine, this can be a bit challenging to get right each day. As well you should know how to tell if you have enough sun exposure.
The other component is that Vitamin D can be used naturally to help manage anxiety symptoms. If this is the case, regular sun exposure may be enough for your daily health recommendations but not for anxiety treatment.
Why do you need to test your levels?
As mentioned above, most GPs recommend that children and adults supplement Vitamin D in the winter. This helps keep their intake level consistent in the recommended range. So, why continue in the summer?
Vitamin D is recommended because it helps prevent bone deformities and painful bone conditions in children and adults. These conditions, and their potential health complications, are still just as possible and common in the summer, so the need to supplement doesn’t change.
The sunshine’s ability can step in, as mentioned above. However, children and adults should still take in a consistent amount of Vitamin D daily to get the health benefits it offers. If you are Vitamin D deficient, you can be at risk of weakening your bone health, for example. If you are, in fact, using Vitamin D for a mood boost, you may also have mood swings or a low mood for no noticeable reason.
What if planned activities are indoors all day? What if it rains for a week straight? Can you still know that you and your loved ones are getting enough Vitamin D through diet? Keeping on top of that means a lot of research and math. Even if you do all that, the only way to determine if someone is deficient in Vitamin D is by determining their 25 (OH)D levels.
Why not make it easier by testing Vitamin D levels using quick, at-home tests that use those levels and will help take the guesswork and stress out of it? That way, you’ll know whether you do or do not need to add in an extra dose of Vitamin D supplementation!
Take charge of your summer
Taking time to understand the need for consistent Vitamin D levels, and learning the simplest ways to make it happen, will help you shrug off the stress and enjoy your summer season. The need to protect your family will be front-of-mind all year long, and that doesn’t change just because the days get longer and your routines switch to summer mode.
Since your health, and that of those you love, will always be a priority, this information will help you take charge and stay in control of your health, stress, and, most importantly, your summer.