Sunshine for Health

Last week I got my first blood test result back and it turned out that my vitamin D level was 12 (which apparently is in the sphere of severe deficiency). The doctor asked me if I had been living in a cave for years, and I joked that mine was called ‘living with a piano’. On a serious note, I was surprised to hear that and had no idea at all (even though internally I guess I knew that I hadn’t gotten a dose of sunshine for a while). Having two broken toes probably didn’t help this either. So I decided to take sun for 15 or 20 minutes a day, being more mindful of foods and supplements containing vitamin D.

The other side

To be better equipped for this notion I researched the topic of vitamin D, the side effects of its deficiency, and how to get better. Then I discovered that exposure to the sun could lead to skin cancer and overdose of vitamin D could cause problems like kidney failure on the other side of the spectrum. Lack of it is a problem, overdose is also a problem.

A thought

These findings made me think about any decision in life and finding a balance. It is ultimately my choice to find a way of finding that balance. Certainly we all have that intuition if we learn to listen to it. There are always two sides of any situation and we can never be happy if we only worry about the side effects of the path we choose. The key is to be mindful of the two extremes of any given choice, make a decision that we’ll be happy with, and have a system that will tell us that we are not too far off. I can’t wait to get another blood test in about 4 months to see if I am on a better track for this.

What about you?

What is something you are trying to find a balance in? What is your monitoring system that tells you that you are on the right path? I hope that whatever it be, you are listening to your intuition to measure the balance.

Jeeyoon