In the UK, 70 millions days are lost from work each year due to mental health issues – meaning that anxiety, depression and stress-related conditions are the leading cause of sickness absence in this country. To put this in perspective, in 2008, this equated to around £13.5 million. Of course, this may be just one of the many costs of poor mental wellness, but those figures certainly serve to highlight the sheer breadth of the issue – and more importantly, why we should address it as a society.
Well, despite what you may think, we don’t want to eradicate stress completely. Some stress is actually useful!
Research has shown that it can make you more alert, as well as help you to think and perform better in certain situations. However, that stress is only beneficial if it’s short-lived. If it’s prolonged, it can be detrimental to our health – which is why it’s so important that we manage it.
Luckily, there’s plenty of suggested ways we can do that, like:
• Exercise
• Healthy diet
• Mindfulness
• Good quality sleep
• Journaling
ANY MORE?
Funny you should ask that. It turns out that MOJU’s good pal vitamin D is another preventative measure you can throw into the mix. Among its many benefits, maintaining vitamin D levels is thought to lower the risk of depression, anxiety and stress.
WHY?
Well, one Canadian study showed a strong association between circulating concentrations of vitamin D and indicators of mental health. In addition to this, two other studies have also shown that maintaining optimum levels (>50nmol/L) of vitamin D might help with your risk of low mood, anxiety, and depression.
IN CONCLUSION...
It’s still very early days in this sort of research and much more work needs to be carried out to understand it better. That being said, the consumption of vitamin D is a low-risk and cost-effective way of covering not only mental health, but bone health, muscle health and immunity too. For that reason alone, it’s a compound everyone should think about optimising (as well as spending more time hitting up those sunrays of course).