Planning on spending extra time in the sun with your eczema warrior this summer? There is a ton of benefits to spending time in the sun – especially for children with eczema!
Eczema and Vitamin D
An experiment looked at whether or not deficient or insufficient levels of vitamin D correlate with the severity of atopic dermatitis (AD), which is a type of chronic and inflammatory eczema. This particularly study looked at 37 children and the severity of their atopic dermatitis. Ultimately, the data collected from this study suggest that vitamin D deficiency may be related to the severity of atopic dermatitis and the researchers advocate the need for studies evaluating the use of vitamin D as a potential treatment in patients with AD.
So what does this mean for you and your little one? GET OUT IN THE SUN!
Sun Exposure and Atopic Dermatitis
Another study investigated the effect of sunlight during the summertime and assessed the seasonability of atopic dermatitis in 43 patients with mild to moderate atopic dermatitis. Ultimately, the data from this study concluded that 74.4% of the patients affected by mild to moderate atopic dermatitis had complete resolution of symptoms during the summertime, while 16.3% had some improvement, and 9.3% had no modification of symptom severity.
Long story short, spending some time in the sun during the summer with your little one might improve their symptoms!
How to Get Vitamin D from the Sun
Exposing your bare skin to sunlight is the most natural way to get vitamin D. You don’t need to spend a ton of time in the sun to get these benefits either, especially in the summer time! For a fair skinned person, this could mean just 15 minutes of sun exposure. For a dark skin person, it could mean a couple of hours to get the same level of vitamin D production. The amount of vitamin D that your body produces from sunlight depends on:
- the time of day – ideally the middle of the day
- where you live in the world – the closer to the equator, the better
- the color of your skin – darker skin requires more time in the sun
- the amount of skin you expose – more exposed skin means more vitamin D production