Autumn Sunshine and Vitamin D.

June 17, 2013 by cmsgardnerblog 12 Comments

I’m not going to whinge about the weather today. Okay it is a bit chilly, and with two heaters running the gas bill is going to be horrendous, but after what seems weeks of continuous rain and threats of rain we at last have some beautiful Autumn sunshine. I have nothing against rain; I was brought up in a very dry part of the state and I still love the arrival of a great rainstorm. Throw in a bit of hail too and I certainly won’t complain but after a few days I’m more than ready to see the sun again.

I hope all our farmers have had enough–they always seem to want more rain and I’m happy  they’ve had a good dose but we all need a bit of sunshine. It seems odd that Australia has one of the highest skin cancer rates in the world but we also have many people lacking in Vitamin D. Can it be that half the country spends too much time in the sun and the other half not enough?

It’s hard when it’s cold and impossible when it’s raining so I try to make the most of it when the sun shines, by sitting outside with my kindle and soaking up some D. I was never much of a sun-worshipper. I tried, as a teenager, to bake out in the sun and get those lovely brown legs but I became bored and uncomfortable long before I was sufficiently cooked. Not that I never got burnt but that was more likely to happen if I was out at the pool or the beach and it was never a good experience! Our beach was a sandbar at the river but the sand was just as hot there as at any other beach and so was the sun. More often on a hot day I’d be curled up under a tree somewhere with a book. In those days there was no talk either about skin cancer or the lack of vitamins. People in general didn’t seem quite as obsessed with their health as they are now. They just worked hard and ate home-cooked meals and generally got on with things.

I suspect some of our statistics in relation to Vitamin D can be explained by the change in immigration over the past few years; darker skins require more sunshine, apparently, for the absorption of Vitamin D than lighter skins do. The public messages we’ve been getting here are more about the prevention of skin cancer, which may be confusing to people of African origin, for example. Also the population is aging and older people may be less inclined to spend time outdoors. Anyway, I’m not an analyst and have no desire to be–just opening up the subject for discussion. What’s the situation in your country? Is there a similar trend?

On a very different note and with no segue, my historical novel, Inheritance, is free at Amazon for one day only, June 18th, so why not download it and spend some time in the sun? Or curl up under a tree. I always have trouble placing this novel in a genre. It’s partly contemporary Australia and partly 19th century and it might be best described as a novel of revenge but I’ll leave that up to you.

Happy reading.