Now that we’re eagerly anticipating more sunshine and longer days, we can also look forward to another wonderful perk: more vitamin D production!

The more time you spend in the sun, the more vitamin D your body produces, but, we often have to think about alternative ways to get the necessary daily dose during colder or gloomier days of the year.

Understanding the importance of vitamin D as well as its most crucial sources can help you tweak your diet and your lifestyle to make the most of this wonderful micronutrient.

Your ally in battling and recovering from COVID-19

So far, all kinds of remedies and supposed health hacks have surfaced as possible options for recovering from COVID-19. However, only a few actually have a substantial impact on your ability to improve your immune response, and one of them is regular vitamin D intake, responsible for keeping your immune system strong.

If you want to improve your body’s recovery rate and your ability to prevent any viral infections to begin with, make sure your body can produce enough of this crucial vitamin every day.

Chronic illness prevention

Leading a happy and healthy life starts with prevention, as you already know so well from the various topics we’ve covered thus far. But there are so many little choices to make every day, that we tend to miss one or two, and that often includes our micronutrient intake. Vitamin D is not one you want to skip in your diet!

Vitamin D has the potential to reduce your risk of many chronic illnesses, especially when paired with other healthy habits. From inflammatory bowel diseases, heart disease, all the way to diabetes, vitamin D helps your body reduce the chances of developing many debilitating conditions.

Keeping your mood and energy in check

We’ve all likely experienced that feeling of the winter blues (or seasonal affective disorder), and the lack of sunlight can be linked to lower mood or having less energy on a daily basis. Naturally, to be productive and feel good, you need to focus on the nutrients that can elevate your energy, one of them being vitamin D.

In fact, vitamin D has been shown to have the potential to reduce the risk of depression, as well. That said, it’s important to combine other healthy choices such as regular exercise, sleep, and proper nutrition, with managing your vitamin D intake.

Healthy foods and supplements

Since your body prefers sunlight for getting your daily dose of vitamin D, it’s not as simple to replace that exposure with just any food source. The bioavailability of food-based vitamin D isn’t always up to par for your needs, which is why diversifying your diet is a good choice. Add foods such as fatty fish like salmon, as well as mushrooms, eggs (with yolks), and liver.

But a supplement such as the Vitamin D containing 10,000 IU per softgel and combined with vitamin K2 can make all the difference. It improves your vitamin D absorption levels, helping you maintain the needed daily intake no matter the time of year. Vitamin D is measured in the blood as vitamin D25 and should be in the 60-100 range (80 being ideal), so taking a healthy supplement will let you sustain your daily needs.

Sunlight is your best companion

Even though it’s not summer just yet, it’s important to know that sunlight is your best natural source of vitamin D. But, you need to stay sun-safe no matter the season, so it’s crucial to choose when and for how long you stay in the sun.

It’s often enough to aim for anywhere between 10 minutes to 30 minutes of healthy sunlight exposure several times per week. So, avoid scorching hot times of day and make sure you wear protective lotions if you’re outdoors any more than the half an hour your skin needs to produce ample vitamin D.

It seems like such a minor step in your self-care plan, taking care of your vitamin D needs. And yet, it calls for smart choices every single day, and it should support your overall plan to stay resilient year-round. Give us a call and schedule a consultation for a more in-depth plan based on your specific needs and functional medicine can help you improve the quality of your life immeasurably.