Click Here!Archive for February, 2010
Sunshine On Your Health
Author: John
Lately, vitamin D is showing up in the news more often. It used to be the ho-hum vitamin that you got from drinking your milk and playing out in the sunshine. Apparently, this vitamin is much more important to our health and has many previously unknown attributes that can enhance your holistic wellness. Vitamin D is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight. Many factors including season, skin coloration, cloud cover, smog, and sunscreen affect UV ray exposure and vitamin D synthesis in the skin, and it is important for individuals with limited sun exposure to include good sources of vitamin D in their diet.
As civilization and the industrialization enabled humans to work indoors and wear more clothes when outdoors, these cultural changes reduced natural production of vitamin D and caused deficiency diseases. In many countries, foods such as milk, yogurt, margarine, oil spreads, breakfast cereal, pastries, and bread are fortified with vitamin D2 and/or vitamin D3, to minimize the risk of vitamin D deficiency. In the United States and Canada, for example, fortified milk typically provides 100 IU per glass, or a quarter of the estimated adequate intake for adults over age 50. Fatty fish, such as salmon, herring, catfish and sardines are natural sources of vitamin D. Other natural sources include: fish liver oils, such as cod liver oil, whole eggs, cooked beef liver, and UV-irradiated mushrooms. In the United States (U.S.), the 100% Daily Value used for product labels is 400 IU/day.
Posted in health and wellness | 
Tags: health and wellness, holistic wellness, men over 50, nutrition, women over 50 | 
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