About 3 years ago I dealt with 6 months of chronic fatigue. It was awful. It was caused by an extreme deficiency in Vitamin D. But in Canada, only a specialist can ask for a Vitamin D test as part of a blood test without it costing the patient money, and so it took 6 months before a specialist tested me.

Vitamin D is known as the sunshine pill. Sunlight provides your body with Vitamin D. But we don’t expose ourselves to enough sunlight in the northern hemisphere, and winter is approaching with shorter, darker days ahead. I take 5,000IU (International Units) of vitamin D3 daily. I call it my ‘sunshine in a pill’. That’s a higher dose than most people take, but it works for me.

40-50% of North Americans have a deficiency in Vitamin D. There are possible links to this deficiency and MS – (Multiple Sclerosis). Chronic fatigue does not actually have a significant correlation. My deficiency was at less than 5% of what it should have been and the specialist said that another person at that level might show it in completely different ways than me.

But here is my public service announcement: Winter is coming, you will be exposed to less sunlight. Get a little sunshine in pill form and start taking Vitamin D.