2 weeks Ago By Jesse Ritka
FARGO — As we get closer to the Winter Solstice, the temperature isn't the only thing dropping. The sun is getting lower in our sky and that may be affecting your health. The sunshine is something that we don’t get to soak up as much in the late fall, on average roughly half of November and December are cloudy days.
But it’s not just the clouds keeping the sunshine from reaching our skin. ADVERTISEMENT Enrique Tobias, Family Doctor at Sanford explains, “As we get we getting into the winter season, and we are in, you know, the location we are. Of course, we get less exposed to sun.
” The angle of the sun is important: the sun's rays have more atmosphere to travel through to reach us when the sun is lower in the sky, making it harder for us to get vitamin D in the upcoming months. Since the fall equinox, the sun angle has dipped below 45 degrees and will reach its lowest angle around 20 degrees by the winter solstice. And even if you do get outside during the shrinking window of sunlight, our skin isn’t taking in the UVB rays.
Dr. Tobias adds, “We are using more coverage. We're using more like jackets, scarf, you know, being less time outside, so we're less exposed to sun.
” Dr. Tobias explains why vitamin D is important to our body, "Most of the time, the most important function we know is absorption of calcium, and of course, to make your bones strong.” If we don’t produce enough vitamin D, we cannot get calcium from what we consume so our body will take the calcium from our bones.
“In kids, we have really malleable bones if you are severely deficient. But in elderly, of course, the deficiency of vitamin D are linked to fractures,” Dr. Tobias says.
But we can get vitamin D in other ways during the late fall, winter and early spring Dr. Tobias advises, “If you do five to 30 minutes of sunlight, that takes you around 200 units of like vitamin D. Overall, we need around 600 so you still need some, some supplementation.
If you can, of course, eat foods that are have a heavy amounts of vitamin D, like fish, like salmon, trout, sardines.” But don’t just rely on supplements and Vitamin D packed food, getting outside, especially on blue sky days is highly recommended by Dr. Tobias, “Getting that extra sun is good, of course, for your mood, and also good for to synthesize vitamin D.
”.
