The 42nd parallel isn’t just a novel written by John Dos Passos, its the latitude which most vitamin D deficiency starts. On a recent trip to the west coast I spend two weeks in Washington and Oregon. I visited in the last week of September, and I was told how lucky I was the sun was still out.
I visited with a few friends who had lived there for years, I also saw one of my good friend’s who had just moved there from sunny Austin, Texas. The Oregon veterans was not shy to talk about the sun-less winters. Months and months can go by without the sun coming out. Slow, drizzly rains comes down daily and it can get a bit depressing. The number one piece of advice to combat the dreariness of a Portland winter was to just go out in nature. 50 degrees and rainy? Go surfing, go on a hike or just go camping. Don’t let the weather dictate how much time you spend outside.
The second piece of advice was to take vitamin D pills. These pills seemed pretty universal, especially from those people who didn’t grow up on the upper-west coast. Making sure your body had enough Vitamin D is essential. If you can’t get to a sunny spot to soak it up, it is vital to find another way.