MelanSol® All Natural Sun Care15

The Vitamin D / UV Calculator

Sunlight with its UVB rays is essential for good health. It is the main source of vitamin D, which is absolutely necessary for the absorption of calcium for strong bone reformation to occur. Lack of sunlight or the use of improper sunscreens (sun blocks) may lead to vitamin D deficiency.

Scientists at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research have devised a

Vitamin D/UV-calculator

That will take all those factors into consideration and estimate how many minutes of exposure you need for your skin (without any sunscreen) to produce 25 mcg (micrograms) (the equivalent of 1,000 International Units) of vitamin D. You would be advised to stay in the sun with your arms and legs exposed (not your face) for 10-20 minutes between the hours 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. (Dr. Holick and Dr. Weil).

Latitude – Longitude - Elevation

To find out LATITUDE, LONGITUDE and ELEVATION (Surface Altitude) go to Google Earth (numbers at the bottom of the screen).

The calculator asks for Latitude N and Longitude E. If your Latitude is S, enter for example -39. If your Longitude is W, enter for example -76. US Cities are always Latitude N and Longitude W (for the W put therefore a “–“ in front of the number).

You’ll also need to enter the time of day “Nature of exposure” you are going out in the sun, expressed as UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). Here is a converter that will convert local time into UTC. The calculator uses a 24 hour clock, so hours from 1 PM to midnight are expressed as 13 to 24. You may just check ”Around midday”.

The calculator also wants to know the thickness of the ozone layer. You may just setting this one to”Medium”.

Be sure to click the radio button next to the entries. They are often not automatically selected when you fill in the values.

Keep in mind that the exposure times given are considered enough to maintain healthy vitamin D status. If you are starting out with a vitamin D deficiency, you might need more.

Ask your doctor to find out your Vitamin D level.