Vitamin D... go getcha some!

I'll be back to post about our trip, and some tasty holiday recipes (allergen-free, of course!), but in the meantime, my fellow blogger Blythe just posted something on your little friend Vitamin D that I think needs to be as widely circulated as possible.

I will begin dosing up on Vitamin D as soon as I am physically able to get to the store and pick some up! My pediatrician had recommended that I start giving Eowyn a vitamin D supplement since breast-milk can easily be deficient in this. That didn't make sense to me; why would the food God provided for our children be chronically deficient in an essential nutrient?... unless it's deficient because the mother is deficient. I realized that this latter option is a distinct possibility, especially in America where we're too modern to eat healthily. A little research on my part turned up lots of articles on the issue... apparently I wasn't the only one wondering. Yep, sure enough: the only reason your breast milk would be Vit D deficient would be that YOU are Vit D deficient... not rocket science. 15 minutes of daily sunlight is enough to get adequate Vitamin D levels, if you're able to go outside that long each day. In the winter this is harder, but thankfully our bodies stockpile the vitamin to use when sunlight's scarcer. I'd intended to start supplementing and eating vit D rich foods (I don't count cow's milk that's been artificially enhanced with it), but hadn't had a chance before leaving on our trip... I wish now I'd started then-- maybe we wouldn't have gotten the flu in the first place!

The best source of Vitamin D is sunlight. Our bodies produce the vitamin in our skin. But if you think you're probably deficient (like me), and it's a bit late in the year for sun tanning, here are foods that contain it:

-- oily fish (salmon, cod, sardines, mackerel)-- we should all be taking cod liver oil anyway; but check to make sure the oil hasn't had the vitamin D "filtered out"!!! Get pure oil, not refined.

-- beef liver (I doubly hate that I couldn't take my frozen raw liver with me when I was in Canada!)

-- spring butter

-- sun-ripened mushrooms (many are grown indoors, so watch out for that)

-- shrimp, cooked any whicha way

And if you go the supplement route, which is probably how I'll have to in the short-term, make sure you're getting a naturally-derived form of vitamin D3, not a synthetic version (usually vitamin D2--less effective & useful to the body)! I'll be taking 2000 IU a day from here on out until the summer! Please pass this info on vitamin D & the flu to everyone you know, especially those at risk for it, like pregnant & nursing mothers, infants, small children, and the elderly! Or TEACHERS!

--Christina