Susitna Writer's Voice 6-22-25 StarDate Susitna, by Kathleen Fleming

In this StarDate Susitna for the longest days around the Summer Solstice, Kathleen Fleming veers off into a long discussion of Vitamin D, and can we in the far north get any D from sunshine??? 

Congrats! you found the full unabridged too-long SDS that is mostly about getting Vitamin D from sunshine. I am the creator of the show, Kathleen Fleming.  I have no medical background and had limited time to research and synthesize whatever info I could find about Vitamin D for this episode.  And even though it’s 5 minutes longer than my “limit”, there’s so much that wasn’t included, like: people have more access to D at high elevations due to less atmosphere, clouds block UV B, go ahead and take the supplements you forgot the last couple days since D is stored in the body, etc.  You should, of course, talk with your health care provider for specific, accurate, up-to-date information.

Here is the website, from Alaska Public Media, of the radio program I referred to, Line One: Your Health Connection, from 2009.  The hour-long show is all about Vitamin D, as Dr. Holick understands the issues, with some discussion of access to D in Alaska.

https://alaskapublic.org/line-one/2009-11-23/line-one-vitamin-d

Here is the web address to a nicely thorough and easy to read article “How to Rely on Sunshine for Vitamin D”.  This Sunshine Calendar graphic (below) is part of that article.  I don’t know why they think the best sun months in the North are June July and August, since the sun in most of May is higher than the sun in most of August.  In the small square segment of this chart (top of page) you can see that I’ve altered the color of the “suns” to make it closer to what I believe to be accurate.  Other than that, it’s a pretty helpful visual aid, in a general rule-of-thumb kind o’ way.