Achieving good health when you work shift work can certainly be a tricky thing to achieve. And considering I’ve spent over 17 years of my life working crazy and irregular hours – I certainly have a good appreciation of just how hard it really is.

So today’s post is a little personal, but I want to share it with you because it might just save your life if you work shift work.

You see a visit to my doctor last week was a real wake up call. A real wake up call on the importance of sunshine – or more importantly getting enough Vitamin D.

Now I want you to know that I don’t just go and see any doctor. I see a doctor who specialises in Nutritional Medicine and one who focuses on finding the cause of your illness first. And considering he has a 12 month waiting list – I certainly give him my undivided attention when he talks to me about my health.

So when my recent blood tests revealed that I was low in Vitamin D – dangerously low, he really did get my attention.

Because shift workers are prone to vitamin D deficiency . We tend to spend more time inside during the day (a lot of that time can be sleeping if you work night shift) – which means less exposure to sunlight. And this is not good because your body needs a certain amount of sunlight to be able to obtain enough vitamin D.

And here are some interesting facts:

* Rates of breast, prostate, ovarian, and colon cancer are lower in people with more sunshine exposure.

* And there are 2,200 sunlight-associated cancer deaths yearly in the U.S versus 138,000 for the above-mentioned cancers.

You see the world has become obsessed with skin cancer (and rightly so), but if you were to rewind the clock back hundreds of years ago – there was no such thing as sunscreen and people didn’t spend most of their lives under a roof and between four walls.

So make the effort to spend more time outdoors in the fresh air and sunshine because your health – or more specifically your levels of vitamin D, really does depend on it.