When I was a lass, I wasn’t slapped all over with sun cream, there was no factor 50, we were just plonked on the beach to bake. When I was a teenager, I wasn’t provided with sun cream, we just, yep you guessed – baked.

I don’t ever remember burning, even in the summer of 76; we just spent time out in the sun and enjoyed ourselves. Then the oils hit the market and everyone used the lowest factor oils to grab the best tan they could. Its only about 19 years ago when I gave birth to my first child that I became interested in sun protection – he was born with Jaundice and after spending a week in hospital under the lights, we were allowed home and I was told to get him out in the sun. But the big names had already started their campaigns to let everyone know that the sun was actually dangerous to be exposed to, so on went the factor 20, which was the max you could buy back then.

His jaundice went and as well as the cream, over went the sun canopy and he was kept out of the sun as much as possible. It was what you did. And it’s what people have been doing since.  Then came all the horror stories about skin cancers and people started to cover themselves and their kids even more.

Being fairly dark skinned myself, as are my three children, it never occurred to me that actually the chances of me getting a skin cancer was pretty rare, getting burned by the sun isn’t nice though and so I continued to use a particularly high factor. Then I started spending less time in the sun – who wants wrinkles anyway?

Anyway about 2 years ago, maybe more I started to gain weight, great, middle aged spread, just what you need – at the same time I started to feel incredibly low – nothing new there, I have been up and down like a yoyo for years – aren’t we all?? Now looking back, I think that its possibly the past 5 years that I have felt not quite right but at 43, well, it just doesn’t feel acceptable to feel approximately 90!

So started the many trips to the GP, many many trips and if anyone has a medal for hypochondria it has to be me because that is how I have been made to feel, after all, how many people can present with such non specific aches and pains as I for so long?

So, after feeling crappy, I bursts into tears in the GP’s office, out I come with anti depressants BUT I didn’t  actually feel depressed, next time it’s with sleeping tablets, I have had intermittent bouts of insomnia, then I started with oedema, ahhh the old hormones. Then it was this, then it was that then it was the other. It got to the stage where every time I walked into the GP’s surgery I would reduce to tears and its true, I couldn’t cope, more anti D’s.

Then came the mood swings, then came the extreme anger, urine infections, carpal tunnel, severe pains in my feet, plantar facistis that one was, and and and.

I remember walking into see a female GP and me telling her that actually I felt like I could punch someone – by this stage I was doubting my own sanity and the brain fog I had put down to just having a baby, the fact that she is now 7 put doubt on that one BUT as I feel worse and worse and am being given no solutions, well you do anything to find an excuse for these feelings and disabilities.

The one big thing that was getting me down was the weight gain though and the fact that when eating a normal healthy diet I could gain 5 LB in a week, I’d starve for a week and could lose a few LBs but then it would just pile on – so taking the GP’s advice after being told that I must be eating too much food and not exercising, I came home and ate less food and exercised more and got bigger and bigger – I gained 3 stone but if I told you that over the past 2 years I must have lost at least 6 stone, that will tell you that I have actually gained much much more.

So when I realised one day that I could no longer jump off of a small wall or even run a few steps and that the job I do that should leave me with muscles like swartzenigger was becoming so incredibly difficult I knew there was something wrong., I couldn’t lift even a few kilos, if I squatted down to get summat out of the oven I had to get my husband to get me back up again, it was awful.

Went to see a new GP and splurted it all out in tears, then she asked me when had I last been abroad, well that would have been 2 years ago, and then she asked me what my origins were, well despite being dark skinned I am all English, no doubt there is some genetic links to some foreign blood going back through the ages but where was she going? Then she said, I think you are Vitamin D deficient – what?? I laughed, how could anyone in the year 2010 be Vitamin D deficient???

Away went the blood, three weeks later the results were back, not only am I deficient, I am chronically deficient. Not only that, my bone density has been greatly compromised and I am now at risk of breaking, this may not be reversible and I live in fear of a fracture which frankly terrifies me because it rules my life.

I was told that it could take up to 4 months before I start to feel any better, I am taking Vit D and calcium, have been away for a week abroad and I am still feeling rubbish, still in pain, I have lost a stone and a half in a very short time – who’d have known that Vit D deficiency can cause your thyroid to stop functioning properly??

Anyway I started to think back over the years and I realised that what I thought had been mild SPD during the winter of my third pregnancy had been in fact the symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency, then I realised that actually I’d been mildly deficient on and off for at least 10 years, never really getting my levels back up high enough to be well for very long. It’s true; I had felt better in the summer months but never really well. Then it occurred to me that whilst I’d been deficient during pregnancy, There would have been no Vit D or very little in my breast milk – would that explain the break to my baby daughters tibia and then the even more severe break to her elbow, which had several breaks resulting in her now being deformed for the rest of her life and the possibly other fracture that showed up on X ray but I didn’t even know had happened??

So then I did some research and realised that due to my dark complexion, in order to get enough D, whilst living in the north of the UK, I’d have to spend at least 2 hours in the sun a day to get the Vitamin D that I require. Then  I looked at the food that contain Vit D, hmmm eggs, well I was told to avoid eating too many eggs because of my High BP and high cholesterol which, isn’t caused by an unhealthy diet but caused by something to do with something related to the deficiency although I really don’t understand all that. It is also found in some margarine, not something I eat a lot of due to fighting with the weight gain, some kid’s cereals, nope, not part of my diet and after that, not really a lot contains D.

So if you are pale skinned, you are more likely to absorb Vit D in much less time but not if you are plastered in high factor sun creams,  are part of a religion that covers up or spends little time out of the sun or are dark skinned. And when I was told that it was highly unlikely with my skin tone that I would ever develop a melanoma, well I got this ill and for what??? Lining the pockets of the sun cream companies??

So, when it occurred to me actually that I needed sun to function, for my body to work as it should do, to be pain free, to be happy, I actually felt quite angry that whilst the people, be it the sun cream companies or the News, gave me only one side of the story – actually I had seen all the warnings about the sun on the news, but no one had talked about Vitamin D deficiency and all the effects that this lack can bring.

Today I am limping, today I am exhausted, today I am struggling to stand up, I am in pain and I am almost three months and one foreign holiday into my treatment, and I am still feeling incredibly ill, yep there have been improvements but it will be such a slow process to get my levels to the minimum.  I am feeling less depressed but then I am also taking anti D’s still – my choice, not the GP’s she knows how ill I am feeling and so she allowed me to take them for a while until my levels are up and the dopamine levels in my brain improve.

I can’t even start to list all the symptoms that I have suffered, just mentioned a few but one thing I now know, I can never see the sun as dangerous again, yes I will protect my skin with sun creams but only in certain areas to prevent burning, never again will I coat my kids in sun cream, they will be exposed because they need to be, I will never allow them to burn but gone are the days of factor 50, I used factor 15 on my 7 year old on holiday, just on her shoulders and areas that have not had much exposure and that was just for a few days, in the UK, she is thrown out into the garden and plays with no sun cream. Foolish??? I no longer think so.

Artcile written by Anne Summers