To maintain a healthy and balanced diet we need a whole host of vitamins and minerals. Each one helps several of our bodily functions and a deficiency in any one area can cause damage across the board. It’s important to remember how delicate we are as organisms, we live in a precarious balance and any singular slip could send the whole house of cards crashing down around your ears.
A fantastic example of this is vitamin D which is most commonly absorbed from sunlight. Vitamin D is important for a number of reasons on its own but without it the body can’t process calcium. Without calcium the bones start to weaken and things like osteoporosis can set in.
Vitamin D can be tricky for vegans to get enough of because its primary sources in food are egg yolks, salmon and full fat milk. In countries which don’t get much sunlight at certain times of the year like Scandinavia and Iceland, it can be really difficult to get enough vitamin D. In these cases the only solution is often dietary supplements. While these are great for topping up with they’re not entirely effective as a lot of the vitamin is wasted and simply not absorbed by the body .It’s better to get your vitamins from food because the foods that contain the vitamins generally contain other active ingredients which allow the breaking down of that vitamin by the body.
The best way to get a nice dose of vitamin D is to get out in the sunshine and bask a bit. Use sun cream if you must but try and use lower factors so as to not deflect too much of the vitamin from entering your body. Sunlight is a massively important factor in your health and wellbeing and you should get out there and enjoy it whenever you can!
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