Hey Athletes! Want to learn how you combat sun exposure in the winter? Then listen to this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything!
Episode 44 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: How Do You Combat Sun Exposure In The Winter?
This week’s question is from Steven. He asks about sun exposure and how to adjust for the wintertime. Jerred and Joe dive in and talk about how to adjust for the change in weather and potential supplementation for Vitamin D.
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Jerred
Transcript:
Jerred Moon
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage mathlete podcast Jerred. Moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney
What is up Jerred?
Jerred Moon
Much man doing Ask me anything. You don’t jump right into it,
Joe Courtney
obviously.
Jerred Moon
Alright, so this is Steven M. And all Well, today’s aim is just long. It’s long. They’re long, but I’m gonna read the full question because I feel like context is important.
Joe Courtney
We’re getting more backstories now.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, the questions have gotten longer, which is fine. I, you know, context actually really, really does help. So if you guys submit a question which you can do at garage, gym athlete, comm slash ama, just submit your question. A book doesn’t help. But context does help. So this is from Steven M. He says, I have a question about sun exposure. I grew up in Pennsylvania and the fall and winter and spring is pretty gloomy and low on sunlight. I lived in Colorado for six years. And it was amazing. It was bright and sunny virtually every day, I noticed a huge difference in how I felt physically and with my mental health. My family and I moved back to Pennsylvania last January, with the shutdown in March and being home all summer, I was outside every day. And I felt great. Since going back to work at the end of August, I work in education, I’ve noticed a huge shift in my sun exposure and how I feel physically and mentally. Now that we are deep into the fall and heading towards winter, there’s little to no sunshine. Do you have any recommendations around using a sun lamp slash light box? Any recommendations for brands? sizes, exposure time? I’m doing a ton of research. But any insight from you would be greatly appreciated. So that is Steven M’s question. Joe have anything on a sun lamp or sunlight?
Joe Courtney
So first of all, so he’s talking about Pennsylvania, I grew up in Maryland. So weather’s similar, there’s a little bit colder, they get a little more more snow than we do. But yeah, winters can be gloomy, somewhat, but compared to Colorado, yeah, Colorado is pretty awesome. It’s kind of like San Diego to where they like 360 days of sunlight or something ridiculous. So it would be amazing. They were it was amazing when I was in San Diego getting some old time. But kind of ba is fairly normal weather for most of the other the rest of the States and around the world. Anyway, I’d say natural sunlight is always the best. You just kind of have to pick whenever those days come out. You know, even in the winter, there’s going to be sunshine at some point. So you just have to and it’s I wouldn’t worry about it, getting it every day. But it’ll it’ll just feel you know, if you have three, four or five, gloomy days in a row, because you mentioned the mood. It’ll just feel that much better. Once that sunny day comes around and you go outside and take full advantage of it. If anything, move around your workouts, we always say that you can move our workouts around any days you want. And in the winter and when weather is a factor that’s becomes a big reason why workouts are moved around is because of the weather, whether it’s Hey, today’s a sunny day I was supposed to lift but maybe I should do this run day outside take full advantage of it type of thing. Just taking that sort of holistic approach to trying to shift your days around getting the best as you can for that and also just lights in general in your house or in your in your work. You can get certain I wouldn’t say a sunlamp like, I guess I don’t know if those artificially deal with vitamin D or is is just to trick the eyes into the sun for mood. But I would like bright brighter lighting, net solar or natural warmer lighting around your space could help you can get ones that have certain certain facts like that as well.
Jerred Moon
Some good tips, man. Yeah, I know. You know I used to train just outside was in the military. Where I left my last like two and a half years of where I was stationed. The gyms were just outside. And so I trained a lot outside and then when we moved to Texas, my first home gym in Texas when we move back, if you’ve seen some older videos and stuff, Joe, you’ve been there, the gym basically was outside, I almost didn’t use the garage. Like the garage is kind of just a storage unit for my stuff that I’d pull out and exercise outside. And that was great. But then when we moved to North Carolina, North Carolina, the weather kind of sucks to you know that I think it’s just this East Coast especially northeast. my in laws live up in New York and just man I kind of hate it. I feel your pain. Like I just hate that that gloominess. And so being outside like Joe said, I think is a huge, huge deal because I also agree that you should just try and get natural sunlight as much as you can. And I’ve even noticed it because Texas has a lot of sunny weather like we have relatively good weather and good temperatures. You know, it gets really hot in the summer, but doesn’t get super cold in the winter. But I’ve been in the gym so much this last house and this house, I mean, like actually in the garage, because I just haven’t had as much of an outdoor setup that I’m like, I have to actually think about them. And maybe it’s just take this barbell outside, so I can get a little bit more vitamin D or sunshine. So do take full advantage of those days, you kind of be mindful about if you can go for that run outside, or can you throw a squat stand outside when the weather is good, and it’s a little bit Sunny, but there is certain points of the year and you know, a certain parts of the earth where the sun’s not even powerful enough to give you enough vitamin D. And that’s where I think I’m going to kind of bypass this lamp situation. I don’t have any brands recommendations, I do know that basically when like a tanning bed has UV light. And that light actually will help your skin produce vitamin D like it. It’s just like getting it from the sun. There are obviously dangers, with tanning beds and these lights as well. So keep those things into consideration. But I know people who use tanning beds, like in the northeast for very limited amount of time, like they’ll pay for a membership to go do that, but they’re not trying to get a tan. And I think there’s a big difference in this health like skin consideration, you know, people who are going to tanning beds every single day, because they want their skin to be brown like leather or whatever, you know, they just want a super strong tan is one thing, and it’s probably dangerous. But if you’re going like hey, I’m gonna go once or twice a week for eight to 10 minutes. If you have fair skin just to get the vitamin D and a little bit better, you could do that. And so these personal ones you’re buying, I don’t know, maybe look into a membership, but the biggest thing I would suggest is get a blood test and actually see where your vitamin D levels are at. Because if you have low vitamin D levels, it’s going to affect a lot. So vitamin D is a hormone that controls a lot of different things in your body. And one very obvious factor, if you have low vitamin D is your can very easily show depressive symptoms. So you don’t want to be depressed. And it also takes a while to build up vitamin D in your system. It’s not like if you’re low in vitamin D, and you get a vitamin D supplement and you start taking it for like two weeks, you’re not going to be okay. It takes several months for it to be for your vitamin D stores to get depleted and also takes several months for you to build them back up. And I’ve noticed this through actual bloodwork, you know, every time I do bloodwork with my doctor, he checks my vitamin D levels, and it’s like, Damn, that’s a hard number to move. Like it’s a hard number to move in a short amount of time you have to it does take a long time. So vitamin D supplementation is something I consider possibly very minimal UV light usage. Be careful. Like I said the precautions you have to do your own research, they’re not something I would really not something I would do I you know, I normally I would just supplement with vitamin D and then get as much sun as I can at other parts of the year. But very important. Get your vitamin D level checks, vitamin D levels, check and know where you’re at. Anything else, Joe?
Joe Courtney
Yeah, I mean the circle back to the levels. When I was living in San Diego, my gym was literally located outside. So at least four days a week, I was spending an hour outside working out and I had some small like Canvas shades. And then the butter running was all in the sun and just being out there. And we just like to sit out in the sun anyway. And I got my blood test levels done. And I was still like within normal range, but on the lower end of normal range. So most people are somewhat deficient in vitamin D. So supplementing is really good to do, especially if you’re not a dairy eater drinker.
Jerred Moon
Yeah, and you’d be surprised like so I have very fair skin, which is which kind of sucks for the sun. But the positive is I can get a large amount of vitamin D very fast. And even when I’m intentional about vitamin D, like going outside, 20 minutes, shirt off, whatever in shorts, middle of the summer, I still it’s still very hard for me to build up those levels just because it’s a difficult thing to do. If you’re if you’re low, I was a little bit low. I was like you the last time I checked, I was like within normal limits, but low. And I’d like to get a lot higher. I’m actually about to get blood test done here in a couple weeks and see see where I’m at headed into the winter months here. But yeah, get it done. Check it out.
Joe Courtney
Yeah. All right, guys.
Jerred Moon
That’s it for this one. If you want to ask a question I mentioned in the beginning I mentioned it again, go to garage gym athlete.com slash ama, you could submit your question with context and we can give you our best response. If you are listening to this on podcast, five star review, positive comment really helps to show out on YouTube. We’re doing some cool stuff. Now. I pulled the question up on the screen. That looked awesome, right? That was a cool feature. I was not easy to do. So just give us a little thumbs up and, you know, maybe positive comments, subscribe to the channel. We’d really appreciate it but that’s all we got for this one, guys. Thanks for listening or watching