How to boost your Vitamin D levels?
Vitamin D is a steroid hormone as the body can manufacture it (via exposure to UVB radiation from sunlight) as well as absorb it from food. So in the dark winter months when safe sun exposure is impossible without going on holiday, your can become depleted in Vitamin D. (see signs). So I want to explain how can you boost your vitamin D levels?
Probably the simplest way it to take a vitamin D supplement, I would recommend D3 as this is the most natural form of vitamin D. In addition vitamin D is found in the following foods.
- Sardines
- Wild caught Alaskan salmon
- Egg yolks
- Cheese
- Beef livers
- Butter
- Breakfast cereals fortified with vitamin D
- Yoghurt fortified with vitamin D
However it should be noted that it can be difficult to optimise your vitamin D level just from food sources.
Vitamin D is well known to prevent osteoporosis and promote strong bones and teeth but its role in disease prevention is probably less well known. So in the next few blog posts I want to look at its role in disease prevention starting with the immune system.
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Start eating prebiotics to reduce stress levels
When we are under pressure, stressed or anxious our bodies react, for some people this means they develop tension in the neck & shoulders, for others they get butterflies in their stomach or their digestive system becomes more sensitive. Stress messes with your they bacteria in your gut and creates a viscous circle that makes stress and anxiety attacks even worse. While we are all familiar with probiotics or good bacteria which you can buy in tablet form in health food shops or are added to yogurts. What you may be less familiar with are prebiotics which are the "food" for the good bacteria in your gut. Prebiotics can undo the impact stress has on the gut. They are found in plant fibers like
- raw chicory root
- raw Jerusalem artichoke
- raw garlic
- raw leeks
- raw asparagus
- raw and cooked onions
A light bulb moment
As someone who from time to time stuggles to digest wheat or more specifically gluten which in the past has created holes in my intestine walls (leaky gut syndrome), I was interested in a recent piece of research. Like a lot of people if I eat too much wheat or gluten then I start to bloat and get digestive issues. Researches have discovered that the reaction that some people have could be caused by fructans (the sugars in wheat, barley and rye). The researchers from Monash University (in Austrialia) suspected that the sugar cold be the real cuplrit because people with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) still have some of the symptoms even after following a strict gluten free diet. In a 2013 research project, they noticed that the symptoms of people with gluten intolerance didn't change whether they ate food that was rich in gluten or not. They took 59 people with gluten intolerance and gaven them a different cereal bar to eat each week. Although the bars all looked the same, one contained gluten, another fructans and the third had neither ingreditant. The fructands bar increased bloating by 15% and gastrointestinal propblems by 13% and neither the gluten bar nor the one without either ingreditant had any effect. If frutans are the real problem then people with a gluten intollerance could use soy sauce as its low in sugars. While this research is interesting. For me its a bit of a light bulb moment. The reason is that I find that I can eat organic sourdough bread and I tollerate this much more. Organic sourdough bread has gluten but due to the backing process it sis very low in fructans. Reference http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(17)36302-3/abstract
