Vit D - do you add it in winter?

[galya]

We had about a month of thick fog that would not go away. It's affected all of us, we get sleepy, lethargic, experiencing more mood swings and wanting to eat comfort foods. I just realised previous years I switched to cod liver oil for the winter and I still haven't done that. While I am waiting on my order I am wondering does anyone else do that or do you add vitamin D in some other way? Since there are no major food sources of it and the RDA is waaay too low my multi is not really doing it for me. If we get into the whole calcium connection as well, the situation becomes pretty grim in winter. And then if I choose to take it on its own do I add it when I eat foods rich in calcium or does it matter at all? What is the right thing to do?

[andrew_plamondon]

The lethargy in winter is probably caused by less exposure to sunlight which probably affects the amount of serotonin in our brain. Guess what boost serotonin ? Carbs. Or, more recently, light therapy has become something that has proven effects on our mood in winter. Here's a link on seasonal affective disorder which is the same lethargic feeling that you're talking about, but at an other level : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasona...ctive_disorder

[galya]

Look at this and this

Reading around I found this to be intriguing Vitamin D and flu
And a pretty concise overview of what it does for us

[tkinsley]

Sunlight ALSO causes the conversion from inactive to the active form of vitamin D in the skin. It also causes skin cancer... so more is NOT better in this case.

The current RDA for vitamin D is far too low; I'm quoting from memory, here (always dangerous) but I believe that 1000mg/day is recommended with an upper limit of 2000mg/day.

I may be restating Galya's links with the above but I'm at work (obviously multitasking, haha) and this caught my eye. My 0.02, FWIW

Tina