I miss the sunshine

As I look out my window and write this, I wonder, out loud (I have dogs and I swear they understand me lol) what did we do to deserve such a shitty winter?  We have been absolutely slammed with a killer polar vortex, not once, but twice and so much snow that even skiers are getting sick of it….and before all of this deep freeze we were nailed with a freezing rain storm that left many people without power for days.  We’re Canadian, I thought everyone liked us, but apparently we have pissed off Mother Nature and she is taking it out on us with fury.  It is as if we cheated on her with a younger hotter weather girl and she is exacting her revenge, and I love winter!

 I’m serious, I actually love winter and all of the things it brings.  I grew up skating on a backyard pond and playing hockey until the coyotes started to howl and even then we didn’t want to come in.  We (my brother and I) were fortunate enough to have large hills to toboggan down or use our crazy carpets (a thing sheet of flexible plastic with two holes for handles…and, yes, it was bloody fast.  Think of the Olympic sport, the Luge, but without helmets), we would even play summer sports outside because we had so much fun in the snow.  I even enjoyed shovelling the snow as a kid (I know, bullshit, right) and still do to this day.  There was always just something so magical about winter and the snow to me…but, I woke up this morning (at my usual time of 4:30am) to get ready for my first clients of the day to find another few inches of snow on my car and no end in sight to the snowfall and I thought, “when is this shit going to end?” 

After getting home from my morning sessions I wasn’t sure if I should start shovelling to keep on top of it or just wait for the storm to subsided when my 11 year old son said, “I love all this snow!” to which I responded by saying, “good, then you can shovel.”  I know, “what an asshole.”  I don’t want him to dislike winter; I want him to love it as much as I did/do, so I will have to find a way to make it up to him when he gets home.

I’m sad, it actually makes me sad to think that about winter, so I decided to take a deeper look as to why I feel the way I do and the answer jumped out at me…I’m NOT getting enough Vitamin D, even though I go outside often (usually to shovel) to walk or play with the dogs, to bring in firewood, the sun just isn’t shining or breaking through the constant cloud cover that we have been having.  I don’t ever remember suffering from seasonal depression in my life, but I find myself at the onset of it and need to drastically increase my Vitamin D level, so I braved the onslaught of snow and went to the health food store (it isn’t far from my house) to purchase Vitamin D drops to increase my levels and am going to be booking a time at the tanning beds to get some more artificial Vitamin D.  Don’t get me wrong natural sunlight is way more beneficial for you, but as sailors will tell you, “any port in a storm.” 

There are far more benefits from getting enough Vitamin D then just feeling rundown or having seasonal depression such as: weight management, respiratory health, skin health, reproductive health, healthy moods, eye health and proper digestion.  For more info on benefits and recommendations please read http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/04/why-this-vitamin-is-better-than-any-vaccine-and-improves-your-immune-system-by-35-times.aspx.  Dr. Mercola has quite a few articles on his site that you may enjoy as well.

So, if you are like me and suffering from a lack of sunshine and want to get a “fake and bake” do yourself a favour and make sure you go to a tanning studio where the beds are producing UVB light and if you are going to take a Vitamin D supplement then go with D3.  Ideally you would like to get 8000 IU’s daily (that is an average of course and each person is different), but don’t try and get it all at once especially if you know that you are down – meaning don’t go for a 20 minute tan because your ass will burn, that isn’t a metaphor, your ass will actually burn, be responsible and put some sunshine back into your smile J

 

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