How many times have you been told to stay out of the sun or wear your sunscreen? In reality, this may be bad for you, especially for women. I’m not saying that you should go lay out in the sun all day, but you should get out for short periods of time every day. Is it vitamin D I am talking about. It takes direct sunlight for your skin to absorb the recommended daily amount of this vitamin.

Many studies have already shown that vitamin D deficiency can result in weak bones. New studies are now showing that the deficiency can be connected to cardiovascular risk. According to Dr. Thomas J. Wang, of Harvard Medical School, “Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, above and beyond established cardiovascular risk factors,” said Wang. “The higher risk associated with vitamin D deficiency was particularly evident among individuals with high blood pressure.” More on his report can be found in an article at Science Daily.

More disturbing is a recent study showing 70% of U.S. children are deficient in vitamin D. “We expected the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency would be high, but the magnitude of the problem nationwide was shocking,” said Dr. Juhi Kumar of Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center. The blame lies in poor diet and lack of being outdoors. When children are outdoors, they use sunscreen which, blocks UV-B rays and compounds the problem. The body uses UV-B sunlight to convert a form of cholesterol in the skin into vitamin D.

According to Kumar, “Just 15 to 20 minutes a day should be enough. And unless they burn easily, don’t put sunscreen on them until they’ve been out in the sun for 10 minutes, so they get the good stuff but not sun damage.” This will create 3,000 IU’s of D. Recommended you get at least 2,000 IU’s per day. To read more about this study, check out Live Science.

Some facts about vitamin D:

1. Vitamin D prevents osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, schizophrenia and even effects diabetes and obesity.
2. It is pretty much impossible to get enough vitamin D from your diet or supplements.
3. Vitamin D is crucial for calcium absorption. Without it, your supplements are useless.
4. Rickets is a bone deteriorating disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.
5. Seasonal affective disorder is attributed to a lack of sunlight exposure.
6. Symptoms of vitamin D deficiency are muscle weakness, aches and pains which causes doctors to misdiagnose it as fibromyalgia.
7. The risk of diabetes and cancer is reduced by as much as 80% with limited exposure to sunlight 2-3 times per week.

Allergies, simply put, are your bodies way of telling you something foreign has entered your body. This foreign substance can be from the environment such as pollen, from food or from chemicals. Your body, in turn, will react in a variety of ways including runny nose, headache, sneezing, rapid heart beat, skin reactions, intestinal issues or more.

Rather than reaching for drugs, many are seeking natural remedies. But listen to Dr. Bassett when he says, “natural” does not necessarily mean safe or effective, and people may have unintended side effects. Check with your doctor before trying any natural remedy, especially if you are pregnant or nursing”.

Some suggestion from Gayle Povis Alleman, M.S., R.D., who holds degrees in both alternative and conventional nutrition include:

1. Omega-3 Fatty Acids: A German study found that people who ate foods high in Omega-3 fatty acid had the least allergies. You can get this important supplement by eating fish like salmon or tuna or in nuts like walnuts or you can get the supplement at any health food store.

2. Vitamin C is a natural antihistamine. This helps to reduce nasal secretions and inflammation.

3. Flavonoids also have antihistamine properties and work well with vitamin C. Flavonoids and vitamin C can be found in berries, plums, citrus fruits, peppers, spinach, and broccoli.

4. CoQ10 is an immune booster and counters histamine.

5. Magnesium (Citrate) is known as the anti-stress mineral. Stress contributes to allergy symptoms.

6. Calcium (Citrate) helps to reduce histamine production.

It seems that those wonderful poppy seeds come from the opium poppy. Even baked into a muffin or topping a bagel can cause the drug to show up on your drug test. For that reason, the federal government raised the threshold for opiates in testing done for work. It used to only take 300 nanograms per milliliter to fail the test. Now it takes 2,000 nanograms. You’d have to eat about a dozen poppy seed pastries to fail the test now.

You do have some control over your dreams if you are aware that you are dreaming. This is called lucid dreaming, but only about 10% of us can do this. When you can deliberately change something in your dream or change the direction of your dream you have controlled your dream. If you are not in that 10%, you are doomed to follow the dream through to it’s end.

Dreams only occur during REM or light sleep. This is when your brainwave activity is still fairly high. Once you hit deep sleep (about 75% of your sleeping time), your brainwaves slow way down and you don’t dream at all.

Many people think that their dreams have some hidden meaning. I once dreamed I was having issues about my teeth. I read that this meant I was having to deal with a difficult business decision. It so happened that I was trying to decide whether or not to bail on a losing business. Wow, I was impressed. My dream was so accurate. But if you think about it, don’t we all have to deal with business decisions nearly every day. In realty, the dream meanings you read can be interpreted differently by anyone. Kind of like your horoscope. It’s kind of fun though. If you interested in knowing the meaning of your dreams, check out the Dream Dictionary.