Despite being in the heat of summer, change of season is just around the corner. Already it’s getting light late in the morning, have you noticed?
If we still lived in harmony with the natural world, we’d wake up to the sun and go to sleep in the dark so we’d already be having shorter days, later breakfast, longer sleeps. We spend more of summer outside, and more of winter indoors. In the winter we have less vitamin C and less Vitamin D, and we’re only just learning the impact of this.
With both of these vitamins we don’t just want to test ‘within the normal range’, we really want to have optimal levels. Low levels of Vitamin D (even within the ‘normal range’ ) manifest as low immunity, poor bone density, hormonal imbalances, insomnia and depression
Sub-optimal doses of vitamin C can show up as depression, fatigue, iron-deficiency-anaemia, bruising, poor collagen structure like bleeding gums, loose skin or petechiae (small red or purple spot caused by bleeding into the skin).
Strictly speaking, and in a perfect world, any of these deficiency symptoms should show up in the winter; yet how many of them are you experiencing even in the summer months? There are steps one can take to improve these deficiency signs, and while it’s more complicated than it might at 1st appear, here are some easy steps that you can take:
Vitamin D
1. Let your skin experience the sun, without any sunblocks or screens, outside of the hottest hours of the day – early morning and late afternoons, around 30% of your body getting sun for 30 minutes
2. Pasture raised eggs (available in store), specifically the egg yolk, grass-fed dairy (butter, cheese, and yogurt) from La Petite, in our fridge here @ The Good Health Shop, grass-fed beef, mushrooms and cleanly sourced animal liver are good dietary sources of D. A breakfast of 2 eggs with mushrooms sauteed in grass-fed butter and served with grass-fed beef sausage would be the perfect Vitamin D packed breakfast.
3. Probiotic foods like sauerkraut (not pasteurised!), kefir, maas and sourdough bread are great for vitamin D levels
4. Supplements of Best quality D like Coyne’s DLux Spray, or Good Health Products’ sublingual D are great options
Vitamin C
1. Vitamin C and iron are often deficient together, so it’s worth exploring if you have many symptoms.
2. Eat as many fruits and veggies as possible, in all their forms – raw and cooked, and in unique combinations. Modern farming methods have left many foods depleted of nutrients, so we have to eat more than we did in the old days to get the same benefits
3. Don’t drink black-leaf tea, coffee or fizzy coldrinks around mealtimes as they are robbers of these water-soluble vitamins
4. Because vitamin C is water soluble, when you boil veggies you should retain the water for stock or soup wherever possible
Being mindful of the season and adjusting our lifestyles accordingly is not being a bunny hugger or a new age numpty – it’s a vital and necessary adaption to being healthy all year round. After winter is summer again, and we should want to approach the next one with all the vigour and contentedness we’ve accrued in the winter ‘downtime’