Sunlight in the Winter

(J) #1

How have any of you gotten sufficient sunlight in the winter?

One of the most unexpected things to take place since my diet change in March is that I actually tan now. Formerly, I hated sunlight, and when I was exposed to it, within 10 minutes, I was burned. Then I peeled. Then I was pasty again. Please do not misunderstand me. I couldn’t care any less about the vanity part of it (having a tan for a tan’s sake), yet, I am thrilled with the fact that my skin absorbs sun now, and I find myself craving the sunlight.

So, back to my question, is the winter sunlight different? If I can brave short sleeves and shorts in dead of winter -and let’s say it’s 30 out- is that going to suffice? I am not much on supplements. Just curious about any of your experiences in this regard.

Thank you in advance for responses/testimonies.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

Like you, I find that my reaction to sun exposure is a lot better, now that I’ve been eating a keto diet for a few years. I can go out in the sun without a shirt or sunblock for several hours without burning (though I still don’t tan, alas!). I think it may be because my cholesterol levels are better, cholesterol being what the body uses to make Vitamin D out of.

I go back and forth about Vitamin D. They put me on large doses of it when I was in the hospital with several broken bones, because I guess it’s supposed to help them knit. I stopped the weekly mega-dose after leaving the hospital but continued on with the daily dose for several years. But none of the surgeons or doctors could ever really tell me whether or why I needed to be taking it, so I eventually stopped altogether.

While we need enough of this vitamin, too much can be toxic, and I have watched a couple of YouTube lectures over the years that are a bit worrisome. It also doesn’t appear that we really know how much the body actually needs. I seem to be fine with whatever level of Vitamin D is in my system, and I’ve decided not to worry about it, unless the doctor does a blood test and thinks I’m deficient.

With a lot of this stuff, there is even the possibility that the body may need less or may use whatever it is more efficiently, once insulin has dropped and is no longer interfering. This is certainly true of Vitamin C and is likely to be true with the thyroid hormones, so it is possible that it applies to Vitamin D, as well.

I’m wondering whether we shouldn’t just assume that whatever our body does on keto is fine, unless we develop symptoms. (Dr. Rob Cywes, the bariatric surgeon in Florida, seems to be talking this way.) A lot of the “normal” ranges were calculated on high-carbohydrate populations, and they may need to be recalculated for people on low-carb and carb-free diets.

(Joey) #3

@jh5899 Short answers:

Sufficient in winter? No.

Is sunlight different in winter? Unless you live near the equator, yes, it’s different.

Longer drawn out response:

We’ve experienced much the same as you describe with sunshine and tanning since cutting out the carbs. My wife and I make it a point to spend 15-20 minutes/daily soaking up the sunshine, weather permitting. No sunscreen. We soak up the energy and feel great.

I’m convinced that carb restriction + Vit D levels + Vit K2 have been instrumental in arresting and even reversing our CAC Agatston scores, indicating reduced arterial calcium plaque volumes. Vit D is an essential part of the overall process of moving calcium to bones/teeth, and carb restriction reduces the arterial inflammation, which is a precursor to arterial calcification.

But where we live, we can only soak up the sun during certain times of the year. Winter is out. So we also supplement with Vit D3 daily throughout the year. The combination of sun + supplementation has produced blood levels (simple annual test as part of our wellness checks) of Vit D levels of between 90-100 ng/mL … well above the deficiency level while still comfortably below levels deemed excessive.

How much is due to sun exposure vs Vit D supplementation? Who knows.

So on your specific question: Getting sun exposure in the winter doesn’t work well for most of the world’s population. At our latitude (about 40 deg N), it’s not much of an option during the dead of winter. Even when skiing in the bright sunshine and reflective snow, I’m still pretty well covered up from head to toe at 10,000+ feet. As a result, we do seem to crave those unavailable rays during those cold winter months.

And yes, winter sunlight is different - because the sun never approaches the same azimuth level in the sky. The further from the equator you live, the more exaggerated is this effect (picture those 6 months of darkness during arctic/antarctic winters), whether you live in the northern or southern hemisphere.

Of course sunshine is the best source of Vit D … it’s a systemic source produced naturally just below your skin (through UV rays) that reaches body tissues in ways that digested Vit D can’t quite match.

If you don’t want to take a Vit D supplement, then don’t.

But if you’re really curious, I’d suggest getting a serum Vit D test at some point shortly after the winter, just before spring, to see if you’ve grown deficient during those winter months. :vulcan_salute:

#4

Most don’t get sufficient sunlight in the summer! Thanks to buildings, clothes and sunscreen. That said, the UV index is bottomed out in the winter, so although it’s bright, you’re not geting as much UV from it so you don’t synthesize the correct amount of Vit D from it.

#5

I never worry about it. I take my usual small walks in winter clothes every day and that’s it. Fortunately our winters are pretty sunny and I can choose when to go out :slight_smile: I don’t think I have a problem regarding that. I definitely won’t take supplements as that’s so much not my style I just can’t without some huge need and I have no such huge need regarding anything.

(But if I am too hot, I undress even in the winter sun, yep, to get more of it. Walking overheats me so I do that, it probably doesn’t work for normal people. Oh and it surely helps when the maximum temperature is, like, 20 Celsius :D. They are rare in Hungary but not extremely so. Even I don’t strip in frost, I merely grab something very cold in my hand to cool it down and don’t need many layers - but zero is a bit of a stretch, usually. But my arms probably can handle it on a longer walk.)

I avoid the sun in summer. Only my need for fresh air can make me going out.
But I LOVE sunshine in winter and seek it.

But it’s just me, my attitude and no problems. I have no idea what I get, what I need… I just feel it good enough.

I burn in the sun on every woe the same as far as I can tell. But it’s normal, keto didn’t really bring noticeable changes in my case - apart from fat adaptation.
I am not super sensitive but 20min on the hottest sun without protection can burn me slightly.
And I get a tan in summer just like most people, probably :slight_smile:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6
#7

It’s winter here. 33 degrees South. Mediterranean climate. When the sun shines I find a place out of the wind and sunbake in my surfing boardshorts. I try to get 20 minutes daily up to 45 minutes. I think the refraction of the atmosphere and the angle of the sun, thus more atmosphere to penetrate will affect the intensity and distribution of the energy waves from the Sun. Did not burn at all last summer. Usually for sun catching I listen to a podcast, just listen to the birds and wind, or flip through and read the local community newspaper. I am still slightly tanned and it’s mid-winter. I’ve just thrown off the worst of a COVID infection. I was supplementing an extra 5000IU Vit D per day during that illness. I know what you mean about ‘craving’/ enjoying some sunshine on skin. My vitamin D level in a test in autumn was 95 ng/mL, at the start of the springtime in 2021 it was 65 ng/ml.

(Allie) #8

I just supplement D3 & K2 over winter.

(Joey) #9

I understand the rationale for limiting D3 supplementation to the winter.
Curious as to why you limit K2 to the winter also?

(Allie) #10

Because I’m prone to calcium related visual migraines… it’s easier to share a link with details :slight_smile:

(Joey) #11

Thanks for the link. Did a quick read and found narrative agreement with much of the research I’ve done on the D3/K2 topic in recent years. Perhaps I missed it but I didn’t spot any passage suggesting that K2 would promote calcium-related migraines … on the contrary, D3 in excess would be prone to release bone-bound calcium into the bloodstream, not K2.

Since K2 (M7/M4) isn’t something we can effectively produce on our own (unlike D3 from sunshine), I’d be inclined to continue K2 year-round, even while curtailing D3 supplementation during sunshine months if you are concerned about too much circulating calcium.

Put differently, I thought K2 was the key to putting calcium into the bones/teeth - thereby getting it out of the circulatory system. :thinking:

(Allie) #12

Exactly that, this part of the article -

This is likely because vitamin D gets the calcium into the blood, then vitamin K tells the calcium where it is most needed.

It’s when the calcium is in my blood that I get the visual migraines, at least that’s what I’ve worked out over the years as since I started supplementing K2 I’ve had hardly any.

(Joey) #13

Perhaps I misunderstood… I thought you said you took D3 and K2 only during the winter. I was wondering why you stopped taking K2 during the rest of the year?

(Allie) #14

I take it year round, K2 each morning and just in winter also D3 & K2 each evening.

(Joey) #15

Ah, got it!

(Bob M) #16

Just ordered two kits to test vitamin D3. I’ll use the first kit to test, then try to get D3 ONLY from the sun, and retest toward the end of summer.

Me: day job, inside at all times; tons of home projects, rarely outside even on the weekend; will try to get 15 minutes/day of sun on the weekends (we’ll see how the weather permits that). Not taking vacation this year, so won’t get a lot of sun at the beach. Avoiding PUFAs for years, but still get burnt every year in the sun, last 5+ years. Go from zero sun to hours, get burnt.

(Joey) #17

Yeah, this is a surefire recipe for skin burn.

Assuming you’re medium-skin-tone-caucasian, it typically takes roughly 15-20 minutes (tops) from the start of the sunny season to slowly build up a healthy tolerance to sun exposure while avoiding burn and improving your skin’s protective tolerance for subsequent exposures - but only if you don’t exceed this daily amount, beyond which you begin to do damage - assuming full on direct sunshine.

Once you’ve built up that tolerance, you can spend increasing amounts of time in the sun without the damage.

Burning skin is never good. Always bad. It both damages skin tissue, and hurts.

Eager to hear how your experiment goes. Never heard of home VitD3-test kits. Interesting.

(Bob M) #18

Here’s the one I’m using, although I’ve done others:

Use a fingerprint blood sample.

So, if you “surf” Twitter enough, you’ll see proclamations from low carb/keto/carnivores that declare they are impervious to the sun. Can stay out hours, never get burnt. Every year, it’s the same proclamation: I’m super white-skinned (say, Irish), yet never burn!!

It’s never “after getting acclimated to the sun, I never burn”; instead, it’s “I never burn!!”

So, while I believe that what Joey writes above is correct, you would not know this by visiting places like Twitter.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #19

My experience has been that after I had been a year or so on keto I no longer needed to worry about sun exposure. My experience in the past was that in my twenties I could stay in the sun for up to eight hours, as long as I was protected by sunblock with SPF 8 or so. (Unprotected, I would burn by more or less the 30 minute mark.) By my fifties, I was using SPF 150 or the highest I could find, and could only be in the sun for 30-45 minutes before burning. Nowadays, I simply don’t worry.

Now, contrariwise, my maximum sun exposure these days is about the four hours it takes to mow the lawn, and while I am in the direct sun for most of that time, there are points where, crossing the yard, I am in the shadow of the trees. But I am starting around 11:30 a.m. (daylight saving time), so I am bracketing solar noon (1 p.m.). I present this for what it’s worth. My ancestry, so far as I know, is Gaelic (Scottish and Irish), Anglo-Saxon, and Briton. Although many of my ancestors came to New England in the 1600’s, I doubt seriously (from various indicators), that any of my ancestors were African slaves or native Americans. (Although I would be delighted by proof to the contrary.)

#20

I turn into a lobster, with SPF cream, whilst out and about with high heat, high noon sun, when holidaying somewhere hot (Cyprus, Spain, Mexico, Israel, Turkey…all been the same, bloomin’ hot).

But, I learned to stay out of the midday high sun…but my face stayed red anyway…well, one is allowed to drink whilst on leave :wink: