I don’t know about you but I often find that my colitis symptoms are almost non existent in summer but get slightly worse in winter time – I get achy, tired, and some stomach ache. I also have a tendency to feel a bit miserable.

I’ve also noticed that more people visit my blog in the winter, which makes me think that something must be going on. Now I think it’s probably because there’s not much sunshine around in winter and this is connected with Vitamin D production in the body, because as we are exposed to sunshine our  bodies synthesize Vitamin D naturally from the UVB light rays.

Also there may be that there are some other factors in sunlight some other light frequencies that do us good. A lot of people suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) syndrome in winter which is associated with the lack of light, and is often treated with light therapy. There is also statistical evidence showing that autoimmune disease occurs less the closer you get to the equator where there is more and stronger year round sunshine. Seeing as Ulcerative Colitis is thought to be an autoimmune condition, It makes sense that a lack of sunshine may make things worse. Possibly even leading to a flare up.

So anyway all I really want to know what we can do to help ourselves in the winter time to feel better ! I seems that we may be low on vitamin D in the winter, so I guess topping this up should help.

One way of increasing Vitamin D in the body is to supplement with vitamin D3 but there are complications with taking vitamin D3 in that it’s a fat-soluble vitamin and there is a possibility of toxicity arising if you take too much – now you can protect against this by having a blood test which will analyze your levels of vitamin D3 and then you can work out what you need and keep retesting so that you then know that you have safe levels, but this seems a bit complicated and time consuming, as well as probably being expensive.

Another alternative in Winter time is to go to tanning salon. You need to go to one which has sun beds that emit UVB rays, the UVB rays will stimulate Vitamin D production. This seems like a logical course of action if you live somewhere, where in the winter there is not much sunlight.

But the best way to top up on vitamin D is to get outdoors in the sunshine, in the summer you probably only need about half an hour of sunlight a day to produce the vit D you need, but in winter if you live somewhere where the days get shorter & colder the light is not so intense, so you need to spend more like an hour outside in the sun.

A study at Pennsylvania State University on Mice showed that there is a connection between Vitamin D deficiency and Ulcerative Colitis. Vit D deficiency was shown to worsen Colitis symptoms, and also treatment with Vit D for only two weeks brought about an improvement.

Vitamin D deficiency is also known to be more common in people who have inflammatory bowel disease. There is also research showing that Vitamin D helps in other autoimmune conditions like MS and Arthritis.

So why do people become deficient? Well we primarily produce our own Vitamin D from sunlight and the further you live from the equator the more likely you are to become deficient. There is also a correlation between incidences of Autoimmune diseases and the amount of sunlight people get.

Therefore more sunshine is a great idea, but in winter we need other ways to get it.

Oily fish are a good source of vitamin D, and you can take supplements as well. Apparently we need about 30mcg a day and if you eat a few portions of oily fish a week and get some sun every day for half an hour that should give you about 15mcg. Therefore supplementing with 15mcg of Vitamin D a day seems to be a good idea.