vitamin d - why you need sunlight

Sunlight’s good for your skin and critical to your overall health and well-being.
Get enough of it, and you’ll actually reduce your risk for a wide range of cancers. What sunscreens are very good at is blocking UVA rays. Yet even that presents a problem, because your skin needs exposure to UVA rays to make vitamin D.
That’s a huge problem, because vitamin D is a vitally important nutrient that insures healthy function in just about every system in your body.

Vitamin D’s also the most potent cancer fighter in the world. A report came out of a Nebraska university showing that vitamin D has the potential to lower the risk of all cancers in women over 50 by 77 percent. 1 And in a study published in the journal Anticancer Research last October researchers found that sunlight – about 20 minutes a day for fair-skinned people, and two to four times that much for those with dark skin – can reduce the risk of death from 16 types of cancer, in both men and women. Sunscreens rob you of all these health benefits.

Need a Bit More Sunshine in Your Life?

A recent study has found that men with vitamin D deficiency have more than double
the normal risk of having a heart attack. In fact, in the study, men with vitamin D
levels below 15 nanograms per millilitre had 2.5 times the risk of having a heart
attack or dying - even after controlling for all other possible risk factors such as
hypertension, obesity and high lipid levels.

The body produces vitamin D in response to sunlight exposure. That means that those
of us who live in less sunny climes are at a higher risk of deficiency of this
important nutrient.