Happy Summer Solstice, Happy Summer SUN Time!!
Vitamin D is essential for our body's functioning... every cell of our beautiful bodies! Vitamin D is actually a hormone. We know what happens when hormones get low or out of whack; this has far reaching effects on the whole body, mind, and soul. Think PMS!
Another Hormone D issue that was brought to my attention as a public school teacher: cognitive issues around low Vitamin D levels. A student was having great difficulties understanding and following simple instructions and directions and was found to be quite low in Vitamin D. Get your kids out into the sun (skip the sun screen, just be wise about skin type and sun time). Kids who are labeled with the ADD / ADHD diagnosis? Maybe they just need some sun and natural Vitamin D! (100% whole food diet would be very healing as well but that is another blog post!)
We must remember that this hormone, Vitamin D, is an important part of our hormonal feed back loop. All hormones, all body chemistry, work in harmony: a synchronized symphony of wellness! When one hormone is off (low levels in the body) this affects all other hormones, cognitive functions suffer, our immune system suffers... our whole body suffers.
Here is your beautiful hormonal system: a feed back loop system!
So, where am I going with this Vitamin, hormone D information?
Get out in the sun people! We are at the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.
Live it up, get naked in the sun! (I just love this woman's post on being comfortable in our skin, in our nakedness!)
Funny Naked story: When 25, I went to Germany with a dear girlfriend. We were invited to a bath house. Now I had not a clue, at 25, that Europeans were so freely naked. (I should have figured this out by the male attendants wandering about the female locker room, cleaning and restocking towels.) Anyhow, we walk out of the locker room in our bathing suits. The gentleman who brought us to the bath house says: "You can leave your bathing suits on if you want to but you are going to be the odd one out and will be stared at."
I had my bikini off, lickety-split, and thrown into the wooden cubby on the wall before he finished speaking. My girlfriend hung onto her bathing suit straps with a death grip. Finally, she was convinced to remove it. After a couple of hours of hot tubs, pools, steam and dry saunas, cold pools, and sun rooms we were asked to head for the bar for a beer. Here is where my girlfriend said: "No way, not sitting at a bar, naked, drinking beer!" I found this to be a fine invitation, having grown up swimming naked in various locations up and down the St. Regis River and drinking beer around bonfires which inadvertently led to naked dips in the moonlight.
Naked beer drinking in Germany? Sounded fine to me!
Sorry Mom, I know you did not bring me up this way!
Find a space where you can shed as much, or all, of your clothing and let the sun love your body.
Skip the sunscreen, it interferes with Hormone D creation!
I do recommend:
- Hat to cover the face, no need to add more sun time to aging the face's skin (our faces get plenty of incidental sun time!)
- Keep it nourishing skin time, not "sun-burn" skin time
- Take awesome, natural care of your skin, in or out of the sun!
Love your skin, love your hormone D level, love the sun, love yourself!
Happy Solstice, Paula
PS I made certain my boys got naked sun time every day.
Shhhh, don't tell my boys I added their pictures!
