With the easing of lockdown restrictions over the summer, many of us took the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, or even take a short break to a hot country to enjoy the sun. Interestingly, the British Skin Foundation suggested that even through the first UK lockdown many were getting more sun than usual, spending more time on balconies, in gardens, outside queuing for shops, or taking exercise.1 So most of us will have topped up our vitamin D levels for this winter.
Did you know that as well as being important for calcium and bone metabolism, vitamin D has important benefits on skin health and the maintenance of a healthy skin barrier? In winter, problems of skin barrier compromise present more frequently to us in our clinics and in our patients. In this article we explore the important role of the ‘sunshine vitamin’ on skin health.
Vitamin D is not a true vitamin. It is more accurately described as a steroid prohormone due to the fact that vitamins are defined as organic (carbon-containing) chemicals that must be obtained from…
