3 ms·

Good anecdotal evidence. But how much sun exposure have you been getting over that period? That is, total light reaching sub-dermal layer, net of sunscreen, s

• megaman22 9y ago
  Well, it was December in New England, so it was dark when I left to go to work, and dark when I left to go home, and too far north for even the noonday winter sun to help produce any vitamin D.
• tathougies 9y ago
  Not the OP, but my vitamin d was also low, and was exacerbating my auto-immune thyroiditis. I ended up needing 10k/day to maintain levels and keep the antibodies in check. For me at least, no amount of sunshine will help. We live in the north, and I have dark skin. I almost always wear shorts/short sleeves and walk about two hours outside in the morning and afternoon (walk to and from work). Never wear sunscreen, don't tan, etc. At a certain latitude, if your ancestors were from the tropics, there's a point at which no amount of sunshine will suffice. I used an online 'calculator' (so can't vouch for its accuracy), but it basically said that at my skin tone i needed about 2 - 4 hours of sunshine in the summer months at my latitude and 16 hours + in the winter. This may be possible in the summer, but there's not 16 hours of sun in the winter at all, so there's no way this is going to work. On the other hand, my wife is white, and gets much less sun exposure and wears sunscreen, and her vitamin d level is noticeably higher when she gets sun. Mine... not so much.