Meditative Monday: The Sunshine Vitamin

Welcome to the first Meditative Mondays post!

(Small rant) It appears that I inadvertently changed the settings of privacy on my facebook where I linked to this blog. Blargh! When technology fails me, I'm not a happy monkey. (End rant)

I really want to research more about vitamin D. Here's some cool information I do know about it. 

Did you know that it's not a vitamin, it's a hormone! Did you know that through sunlight our bodies transform cholesterol (I need to check if it's all or just HDL or LDL) into vitamin D. 

Here's something else interesting, there's a link between vitamin D deficiency and PCOS! Well no surprise since it's a hormone, right? This article (

‎http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/769614) states that 67-85% of women with PCOS are vitamin D deficient! That's a big amount. It got me wondering, which came first, the chicken or the egg? So here's another important piece of advice for cysters (and everyone too) who are following me, increase your vitamin D intake. The other is get your vitamin D levels checked (I plan on doing so at my next GP visit). 

Vitamin D affects so many aspects of our health, and when we have winters that span for about half the year, and we run from the house to the car and from the car to work/store/etc. and when the majority of our bodies are covered (to avoid frostbite) our sunlight exposure is decreased exponentially. Which in part lowers our vitamin D that then affects our overall health. 

Before I return the focus to me, one last interesting fact about vitamin D. If you have darker skin (like myself), you have higher melanin level. The higher melanin is designed to protect the skin from burning. (Yay, for not burning during the summer months!) However, that also means that your body requires longer exposure to the sun in order to produce vitamin D. Which means that for those of us with darker skin we need to take more than the recommended 1000 IU. (Be very careful not to take too much though, taking 50,000IU daily for 3 months is toxic, to be on the safe side do not exceed 10,000IU). I've been taking about 3000-4000. Please be aware that this is not applicable to vitamin D from sunlight but only for supplements.

So that was a bit more thorough than I intended but I might revisit this with more details and further research (specially if there's interest). 

As for me, I'm ... content, I'd be a lot more happy if this snow would melt (I need some sunlight vitamin D)! I want to start a vegetable garden this year (for the first time) and to be honest I'm terrified. Time will tell if it works out. I'll keep you posted. 

Tune in on Thursday for the first Toothy Thursday recipe post, and it'll be spicy!

Wishing you all the best in health!