What you need to know about safe sun

Just 15 to 20 minutes with your limbs exposed will keep your vitamin D at adequate levels, which is important for your overall health. While you want to spend time in the sun, avoid extreme heat, which, in contrast, is quite dangerous for your heart.

• You can't overdose on vitamin D from the sun, and that is the best source.
• More than 90 per cent of the vitamin D in our bodies is made in our skin when it is exposed to the ultraviolet light in the sun's rays.
• Once our skin has absorbed enough UVB rays to make vitamin D, the conversion process shuts down. Not much is needed to achieve the desired effect.
• As little as 15 to 20 minutes daily with your arms, hands and legs exposed will keep your vitamin D at adequate levels.
• That is why some doctors now recommend spending 15 minutes toward midday outdoors without sunscreen (except on your face), several times a week — unless your skin is very fair and burns during even brief exposure.
• If you are black, Asian or Indian, your skin might not be as efficient at absorbing the UVB rays that trigger vitamin D production, and you may need twice the time in the sun.
• If the recommended time is up and you plan to be out longer, put on plenty of sunscreen to protect yourself against the sun damage that can lead to skin cancers.

• By getting enough vitamin D from the sun in the spring, summer and autumn, you will enter the first weeks of winter in good form.
• But from then on, you must rely on eating the right kinds of food that contain the vitamin in your diet (and perhaps a daily supplement) until spring — and sunlight — return.