Hands up if you have been loving being surrounded by sunshine at some point over the last month! There has always been something about that yellow glow in the sky that makes me feel like I can tackle any obstacle put in front of me. Those grey and cold days ….. m’eh ….. not so inspiring. The sun is more than just a feel good factor, it is also a great source of one of our body’s vital vitamins ….. Vitamin D. It turns out there are a lot of us who are not getting enough of it either!
Now, Vitamin D deficiency is never something I really had on my radar, I mean I get that I live in Scotland and lets just say we are not blessed with a year round sunny climate. So, when I discovered I was deficient in Vitamin D a few months back…. my immediate response was
“I told you I needed a holiday…. that is it …. I need to move to Barbados!”.
Dubbed as the sunshine supplement, Vitamin D promotes calcium absorption in the body and helps keep our bones, teeth and muscles nice and strong. I also recently found out that Vitamin D is good for the gut too and can reduce stomach bloating …. hello bikini ! Hello also to Barbara at the back who just woke up at that point!
With few foods being natural providers of the sheer level of vitamin D we need, how can we start to regenerate our levels of this vitamin …. apart from 6 weeks in Barbados? Surely as we are in mid-summer, this means that we are in the safe zone and can soak up the good stuff during the next few months? The answer is yes to an extent, however a couple of things like wearing an spf or air pollution can impede our absorption of Vitamin D. In fact when I spoke to my doctor they recommended that most people in the UK would benefit from supplementing their Vitamin D intake all year round.
I have recently added Vitamin D3 supplements to my diet and was kindly gifted this product from Together Health to try. I have bought products from Together Health before because I like my vitamins in a whole food source which is raw and complete. This makes the supplements easier to absorb by the body. Together Health use carefully controlled low-heat extraction, which helps to preserve all the naturally occurring goodness, like live enzymes and phyto-nutrients, amino acids, trace minerals and other bio-active co-factors.
Together’s Vitamin D3 is made with nutritional yeast and includes natural metabolites which are essential for Vitamin D absorption. Now for the mini science part. I had never heard of metabolites before! Metabolites are created in our bodies when the sun shines on our skin. These help convert the sunlight into Vitamin D and help our bodies to better absorb this crucial vitamin. Always check your Vitamin D supplements contain metabolites.
Not only is this Vitamin D3 supplement completely free of pesky fillers and binders it is also vegetarian, gluten free, wheat free, lactose free, soya free, preservative free, non GMO, colourings free, flavourings free, free from pesticides and herbicides it is also gentle on my stomach.
The Together Health Vegecaps are made from plant cellulose and can be separated for those people who are not so keen on swallowing capsules. I love that these supplements come in a portable pouch …. sometimes it really annoys me the big massive bottles that are only a third filled with capsules and the rest is cotton wool packing!
