Although Vitamin D is one of the most important vitamins nutrients for good health - yes, just as important as iron - many women are not getting enough. Once considered just a boon to bone health, it has now been proven that Vitamin D offers many more health benefits. So many that it is beginning to be thought of as The Vital Vitamin. According to the Vitamin D council, mental illness is associated both with reduced exposure to the sun and with deficiencies in Vitamin D. And almost everyone is lacking it. Why are so many women low on Vitamin D?

As the human race has modernized, women tend to spend more time indoors and less time in the sun. Vitamin D is produced naturally in the body when we are exposed to sunlight. Added to that, we now must use sunscreen when outdoors to protect our skin health. This is great for preventing skin cancer but sunscreen can block the body's absorption of the UVB rays needed to create Vitamin D.

In fact, the only way to get enough sunlight to produce the rights levels of Vitamin D is to expose 85 per cent of your body in the middle of the day – precisely during the hours we are normally told to avoid. This is really the only way to balance the three different forms of UV rays to get enough of the UVB our bodies need. Light-skinned people need 10 – 20 minutes of sun, while dark-skinned people need 90 – 120 minutes.

It is also important not to shower for an hour after exposure to sunlight. This gives the UVB rays time to react with cholesterol in the skin, producing Vitamin D. You can begin to see why the average modern woman has almost no chance of naturally obtaining the Vitamin D she needs for good health. Running a family while holding down a full-time job outside of home doesn't leave much time for two hours sunbathing in the middle of the day. We have become an Indoors Society.

The incidence of mental illness has risen along with this change in behavior and lifestyle. Deficiencies in Vitamin D can lead to feelings of fatigue. Depression, in particular, is often linked to illnesses that are associated with a lack of Vitamin D. Diabetes, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and rheumatoid arthritis are just a few. Research has found that taking Vitamin D can improve the symptoms of these diseases and those of a number of mental illnesses.

The brain actually contains receptors for Vitamin D and this wonder-vitamin is involved in the synthesis of brain function. It naturally follows that Vitamin D levels in the body would have some bearing on one's mental state. The active form of Vitamin D is thought to stimulate serotonin
production in the brain, which helps to reduce depression. It has also been discovered that Vitamin D might combat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of depression quite common during the winter months, triggered by a lack of natural sunlight.