We often talk about eating whole foods and staying active in order to achieve optimal health, but many of us tend to overlook the importance of sun exposure as we age.
This is not entirely the fault of the individual, as many health campaigns, focused on reducing skin cancer, have created a near-phobia of the sun in many people.
As with most things related to health, balance is required. It is not wise to have skin exposed to the sun for long periods in the middle part of the day when burning is likely.
It is just as unwise to avoid the sun altogether, as our bodies rely on the sun’s rays for our adequate vitamin D requirements. Getting out in the sun and soaking up vitamin D is very important for keeping our bodies healthy against many age-related diseases.
For those concerned about getting skin cancer, experts from ‘Cancer Research UK’ state that the amount of exposure it takes for an individual to get enough vitamin D is definitely less than the amount that will cause skin cancer.
Many people rely on foods they eat as their source of vitamin D, and that’s good too, however, dietary sources can barely provide 400 units of vitamin D, whereas exposure to sunlight can easily give us more than 20,000 units per day.
Lack of Exposure to Sunlight
The importance of vitamin D cannot be overemphasized especially as we age.
Many experts have expressed their concern about the elderly who don’t get enough exposure to sunlight every day and are therefore lacking vitamin D. Some stay indoors because their medical condition prevents them from being mobile, others prefer to be outdoors, but are all covered up from head to toe.
Many people in this day and age, young and old, do not have enough vitamin D in their system.
This is why many experts urge people to not be totally covered up when exposing their body to the sun. Even having your forearms exposed for 20 minutes, before the heat of the day sets in, is enough for your body to absorb its needed vitamin D.
Sunshine for Brain and Heart Health
The health of the brain and heart will benefit from exposure to sunlight. This is because they both require vitamin D. Medical studies have shown that people who have Alzheimer’s disease were found to be 70 to 90% vitamin D deficient.
Experts also found that increasing the levels of vitamin D through sunlight exposure, and from dietary sources, helped improve cognitive functioning among the elderly who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and of course in those who didn’t.
Sunshine for the Prevention of Metabolic Syndrome
Vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of metabolic syndrome. Lacking exposure to sunlight is one of the factors attributed to increasing incidences of so-called ‘age-related’ diseases.
One study showed that 94% of study participants, aged between 50 to 70 years of age and who were living in China, were vitamin D deficient and 42% of those people were diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. Similar rates have been subsequently observed among American and British populations.
Osteoporosis
A great concern of aging is that of osteoporosis. Advice in the past has strongly promoted calcium to the exclusion of all else for bone strength. Modern research shows that in the absence of both vitamin D and the mineral magnesium, calcium intake is wasted, as the body cannot utilize calcium for bone growth without them.
Therefore, don’t be afraid of the sun, just be smart about when and for how long when it comes to exposure. Your health depends upon it.
