Hello and welcome to the nutrition Devo podcast, a show where I help you make sense of the

latest nutrition news headlines and trends and answer your questions about

nutrition. I'm Monica Reinagle and today's listener question is about

Vitamin D and sunscreen. My mother refuses to wear sunscreen, writes this listener, because she

says they are all toxic and they prevent us from getting Vitamin D. What is your stance on this?

Given all the purported benefits of Vitamin D,

you might also have wondered how to balance your dermatologist's advice

to wear sunscreen at all times with news reports about widespread

Vitamin D deficiency. So let's talk about how to thread that needle. It is true

that sunscreen does inhibit the skin's ability to convert

UV rays into vitamin D in the skin. However, it also blocks those same UV

rays from damaging the collagen in our skin, which leads to

wrinkles and from harming our DNA which increases our risk of skin cancer.

So how do we strike this balance? Well it doesn't have to be an either

or situation. We can be judicious about both our sun exposure and our sunscreen

use to maximize vitamin D production

while still protecting our skin. Before we get into the specifics of how to do that

let's take a step back and look at what Vitamin D is and why it's so important.

Vitamin D is unique in a couple of ways.

First, it actually functions more like a hormone than a nutrient, regulating the secretion of other

hormones such as parathroid hormone, and that's one that helps to control calcium levels

in the blood. In fact, Vitamin D is ultimately

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