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If you’re like me and you are desperately afraid of needles, then we can agree that getting a blood draw is no walk in the park. Having a needle in your arm while the nurse extracts tube after tube of blood is awful. Even after that stressful ordeal, the nightmare continues when you get your test results back, and you find out that you’re Vitamin D deficient. Like, how? That’s the vitamin you can get by just sitting outside in the sun.
Before, it was out of sight out of mind, and you could gaslight yourself into thinking you already got your monthly dose of sun; once you know your body has insufficient levels of Vitamin D, there’s no going back. Every time you go outside and see the sun, you’ll think of your test results and remember that you should be out there, absorbing the vitamins and UV rays. You probably won’t do it because, let’s be honest, the sunlight burning you alive does not feel good, but you still know you should. At this point, it’s just a mild inconvenience of having the knowledge, but you can still go about your day without changing anything.
However, once your friends find out, it’s over. They’re going to constantly push you out of the lovely shade and make you walk in the sunlit areas. They won’t let you forget that you’re deficient in the vitamin that is the most readily available, although, to be fair, Vitamin D is the most common vitamin deficiency so the sun must not be doing its job properly. Your friends will insist on doing homework outside, in the burning light, instead of in a cool room. They might even try to convince the whole group to eat lunch on the front lawn with no shade to protect you. You’ll have to put your foot down on that one, though.
Sunlight by itself isn’t the problem. It’s the heat and the skin cancer that will surely come out of having first-hand interactions with sunlight. You could put on sunscreen, but that’s a whole other problem. It’s a whole tube of nope. It’s inconvenient, feels weird, looks weird, and is simply a general nuisance to use. There are a few beautiful days in the year when the sun makes you understand why cats love sunbathing, but then there are also the many times when you can feel your skin cells crying out for help. Vampires are pretty smart; sunlight sucks.
Maybe you haven’t experienced this struggle yet, but don’t pretend this has nothing to do with you. Given the previous statistics of adults lacking Vitamin D and the Gen Z determination to avoid touching grass, you’re probably Vitamin D insufficient or deficient. But there’s no need to get a blood test. Remember: out of sight, out of mind. As long as there is no concrete evidence of your deficiency, there is no need for you to change anything…yet.