My Fundamentals — Vitamin D

Photo by Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

I’ve been taking vitamins based on the recommendations for an average white Canadian male!

Last week I discussed how cold exposure has helped me, but alas, I can’t always be outside. I love Winter but not the gloomy indoor days. Yesterday the sun shined so bright that I sat down on a bench and bathed in its glory as if I was on the beach.

As a visible minority, I had an epiphany which was sparked during all the discussions of race during the social unrest. I’ve been taking vitamins based on the recommendations for an average white Canadian male! I had to deeply identify with my ethnicity to realize this, something visible minorities in 2020 have brought to the forefront more than ever.

Learning from plants, if my pedigree is “tropical” then I need at least 12 hours of sunlight. That may also mean, I need more Vitamin D generally. There is growing evidence that vitamin D deficiency is also related to poorer outcomes with COVID, especially in minorities who are suggested to need more than recommended. I also discovered a study on how vitamin D may help with ADHD.

So during 2020, it felt like I was set up to realize that I’ve been plodding through my life in Canada without sufficient Vitamin D. Thus, I upped the dosage to 4x the amount and within weeks, noticed immediate improvement with mood and sleep.

I haven’t been the best with taking the Vitamin D everyday but so far I’ve been fairly consistent and winter during a lockdown doesn’t seem so gloomy anymore.

Word count: 249
Twitter: @bhavprajapati

My Fundamentals Series — For the indefinite future, I’ll be writing posts about my renewed fundamentals to live by. I’m not making recommendations or providing medical advice, rather I hope the posts serve as thinking prompts. My intention here is to help people review their own life. I trust readers have the agency and wherewithal to take their own action.

Fiftytwo250 (Fifty-Two Two Fifty), a collection of random, recurring, ruminations written with patience for depth and brevity. Each post is written over the course of a week in 250 words or less as a personal exercise of freedom and focus in a time of placid tumult and despair.