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Why is Vitamin D important? Don’t I just get this from the sun?

Ideally, your body will manufacture adequate vitamin D (a hormone, not actually a vitamin) from sun exposure. But to do that, you need to expose your skin to direct sunlight for more than the occasional minute per week!

We live in Australia – true. It should be fine – not true. 
Especially in winter.
Most of us spend most of our time indoors or lathered in sunscreen at every opportunity. You do need to be sun-smart, obviously. The lobster look is definitely not fashionable nor healthy. But what you may not know is that NEVER exposing yourself to sunlight, or using sunscreen every time you might expose yourself to the sun, massively reduces the body’s ability to manufacture vitamin D.

Why should you care? Here is just a start as to why (there are more effects than listed here):

Effects of lack of vitamin D:
– lower bone density (such as osteoporosis),
– negatively impacts your immune system (associated with increased infections and longer duration of infection, increased risk of autoimmune disease),
– affects your brain, mood and mental health (depression, anxiety, insomnia, cognitive function, excessive grumpiness – and these are often more prevalent in winter months),
– affects athletic performance (impacts muscle function) and grip strength,
– increased risk of digestive problems (eg inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, conditions associated with increased susceptibility of damage to your digestive system lining),
– increased risk of high blood pressure,
– affects how your body deals with cholesterol and where it puts it (think atherosclerosis).

Do I really need to go on more about how important it is?

Need to work out if a lack of vitamin D may be directly related to any of your health issues listed above?

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