By the way . . . Get some sunshine for winter ahead

THE CLOCKS will change this weekend. The good thing about this is come Sunday we will have an extra hour in bed. The flip side is the evenings will close in and in no time at all we will get up to go to work in darkness and return home in darkness.

Each year I tell my patients they should start taking vitamin D once the clock goes back. I am often met with the retort that supplements aren’t needed because their diet is sufficient.

Unfortunately this just isn’t good enough as, when it comes to vitamin D, diet alone won’t fulfil the brief. This so called ‘sunshine vitamin’ is derived in the main from the sky. So it’s a fine balance between sun exposure and supply. Strike it right and you can pave the way for a healthier, happier winter. Get it wrong and it may lead to doom and gloom, sick days, aches and pains and lack of energy.

An estimated 7% of Irish people suffer from seasonal affective disorder or SAD. As the days shorten, their mood lowers, they want to sleep a lot, eat a lot and become anti-social.

SAD is a real entity, not a ‘must have’ ailment conjured up by the medical media. It impacts every thing from a performance at work to personal life and generally hits between the ages of 18 and 30.

Light boxes, medication and talking therapies all play a role in managing it, if you are lucky enough to get a diagnosis. But, as a mainstay of prevention and defence against the winter blues, vitamin D and daylight are your best weapons.

Any morsel of daylight you can squeeze in between now and Christmas is worth exploiting for a vitamin D boost. Thanks to a great summer, most of us will have adequate vitamin D supplies in our systems but we can burn through it pretty quickly in the winter, so it is essential to top up the account. Taking a supplement is a safe bet as you need to take at least 10 times the necessary dosage to deem yourself toxic.

So if you want to be your best this winter then embrace the light when it shines, and start taking vitamin D supplements. I’m confident you will feel better for it.