Now I don’t know that I would call these “secrets” as they seem more like “untraditional uses of household products”, but secrets is so much shorter and easier to say. It’s things like:

• Hemorrhoid cream on under-eye bags
• Apply whisked eggs to hair to make it shiny
• Whitening toothpaste to get rid of fake tan on palms
• Hairspray sprayed into face to fix make-up
• Toothpaste on spots to reduce redness
• Sleep on back to avoid wrinkles
• Lemon juice to whiten tips of nails
• Cucumber on eyes to reduce puffiness
• Legs shaved with hair conditioner to soften hairs
• Bed socks filled with moisturiser for soft feet
• Talcum powder brushed through hair to remove oil
• Pinching cheeks to give a natural blush
• Nail polish in fridge to keep fresh
• Lipstick on cheeks when you run out of blusher
• Toothpaste on insect bites
• Lemon juice to lighten hair
• Spray hairbrush with perfume
• Heat up eye lash curlers before using them
• Cold teaspoons applied to eyes to make puffiness go down
• Mix a drop of serum with foundation to make skin look glowing
• Drink milk every day (*this is bizarre?)
• Drink two litres of bottled water everyday

What do you guys think? Do you do any of these “bizarre secrets”? I know I see at least 5 or 6 things I do on the regular, but maybe I’m in the minority. But I know I’m not alone, right?

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See, I went in for my long put off Well Woman Checkup last week and besides being told, “Hooray, you’re 40! You’ve earned a Mammogram!”, I was told that I was “extremely Vitamin D deficient”. As in, on a range of 30-80, with 50-70 being optimum, I have a 10. So, basically, almost none.

My doctor apologized and said “We’ve been telling you to take precaustions with the sun, but apparently we are doing *too* good of a job”. Of note, the American Association of Dermatology doesn’t want you getting your Vitamin D from the sun anyway. Shocking! Not so much. Anyway, it seems that Vitamin D deficiency is on the rise, too – to where possibly 70% – 80% of the population are deficient. Most scary is the large amount of children that could be affected and having issues growing up.

Personally, after reading about the variety of things that Vitamin D deficiency can affect (*aches, pains, hair loss, mood, etc) I think I can possibly attribute a lot of things that I thought were random & unrelated to this root cause. Like, hair loss? Easily explained away by all of the different products I try stressing it out. Difficulty remembering things? I multi-task like a fiend. Plus, my attention span has dwindled down to 140-character bytes. Dozing off to sleep at my desk in the afternoon? What? My job’s boring. Hip aches? I’m a big girl, duh, I’m going to be achy, right? Oh, one of the things is that Diabetes & Vitamin D deficiency have a link. “They” can’t determine which influences which the most, but the tie is there.

Well, my Dr has put me on a 50Kul/wk for 12 wk megadose regimen to jump start my absorption & prescribed me 1K/day FOREVER (<-her CAPS). Also, to help reduce any potential bone loss due to the lack of Calcium (*what little I take in) absorption with the deficiency, she wants me to start incorporating more activity in my lifestyle, which I am now doing by walking on a regular basis (*to help ward off that diabetes/vit d link, too). And when I walk, I tweet (*okay, really, when *don’t* I tweet?), so I’ve started using the hashtag #VitD4Me to kind of track my tweets having to do with what’s going on with this.

So, long story longer, I want you to make sure that when you go in for your annual Well Woman Checkup (*which I know you do faithfully), that you will get your Vitamin D levels tested. If only to reassure you that it’s all good, or maybe to try to explain away that mysterious “something” going on with you. I’ll tell you this – a month ago, I got tired at just the thought of walking a mile and yesterday I walked 3miles – *before work*. Who am I?!?

Now, tell me – have any of you been diagnosed with a Vitamin D deficiency? Did any of even realize that it was/could be an issue? I didn’t, but let me know if you did.

This came from a (shall remain publicly nameless) beauty blogger that has been active for over 3 years & has over 4,000 twitter followers, so, they aren’t a newbie or someone that people haven’t discovered, yet. They are someone with a voice that can, and is, heard far and wide. I think that is what stung so badly – they actively promote beauty, yet they project an image of one that appreciates beauty in a narrowly focused vision, which is a damn shame. While we may not always agree what is “beautiful”, we all should know that we can, and do, impact other people with our opinions and actions. All it takes is encouragement to spread joy, no matter what we see. Please take the time to continue to foster that thought, instead of knocking something because it’s not what *you* would like to see. Especially on this “International Women’s Day”.*Edit: As of this morning, before this post, the quoted tweet was deleted. I’m going to hope that they reconsidered what they said, instead of just not wanting to deal with the possible pushback from people seeing it.