In order to better understand and make use of my upcoming articles on the “path of vitamin D inside your body,” it is helpful to know more about THE factor that activates the awesome vitamin D hormone.
The sun is the most natural way to get the amount of vitamin D needed for a healthy life, but as I discussed in my previous article “Are you sure your child is getting enough vitamin D from the sun?” there are many factors that interfere with the absorption of sun rays by your skin.
When your skin is exposed to the sun, UVB rays are the ones to ‘unlock’ the reactions that will give rise to the active form of vitamin D inside your body.
UV stands for ‘ultraviolet’ light, and it is electromagnetic radiation (one of the many different forms energy takes). It is, of course, found in sunlight and can not only trigger many chemical reactions (such as the production of vitamin D), it can cause different substances to glow (fluorescence).
UVA and UVB both pass through the ozone layer to reach our skin, but they are significantly different when it comes to their individual characteristics. (For a nice illustrative way to understand UVA and UVB, watch the video above or click here).
UVB Rays
- Responsible for triggering the production of vitamin D in your skin.
- Cause sunburn.
- Cannot penetrate glass or clothing.
- Are only active in very specific times of the year and of the day.
UVA Rays
- DO NOT trigger the production of vitamin D in your skin.
- Don’t cause sunburn.
- Penetrate deeper in your skin than UVB rays and, therefore, are the cause of premature aging, discoloration, and wrinkles.
- They are able to penetrate glass and clothing, and are active throughout the entire year at all times of the day.
In order to fully activate vitamin D for the purpose of protecting us from many diseases, the absorption of UVB rays has to be mostly unhindered by other factors. Since this is very difficult to accomplish on a regular basis, we need to use other ways of obtaining this ‘life extending’ vitamin D hormone.
Unless we take the time to fully understand what vitamin D does inside of our bodies, we cannot even BEGIN to convince ourselves that we MUST make sure to get enough of it on a regular basis.
And this is why I will ‘digest’ for you, in bite-sized and understandable pieces, its path inside our body in upcoming articles.
Once vitamin D is produced in your skin by the action of ultraviolet light from the sun (UVB) it can go down two pathways: Kidneys or Tissues.
Comments