3 Ways to Boost Your Vitamin D Levels This Winter

(Julie Stewart, Caroline Tien/ SELF Magazine) — When winter hits, the temperature isn’t the only thing that drops: Your vitamin D levels can drop too. If you’re anything like most of the US population, you can’t really afford the dip either: Estimates of how many people are low on vitamin D vary, but it seems like many of us could use more.

Data from the 2011 to 2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows that insufficient or deficient levels are relatively common, peaking among adults ages 20 to 39. Worse, those percentages rise during the cold months, as a 2002 study published in The American Journal of Medicine shows.

Vitamin D is a key nutrient that we can get from our diets or make for ourselves with the help of sun exposure. Not having enough can be an issue, since it does a lot for our bodies. While vitamin D might be best known for working in tandem with calcium to help you build and maintain strong bones, it’s important for many other aspects of our health, playing vital roles throughout the body, much like a hormone does.

As SELF has reported, research suggests that sufficient vitamin D may help protect you from respiratory infections, promote healthy blood sugar levels, prevent pregnancy complications, and perhaps even reduce your risk of developing or dying from various types of cancer. (…)