All it takes is 15 minutes a day

A new exercise program? Teeth whitener? Self-help program? What can you do to improve your life with just 15 minutes each day?

Would you believe being outside in the sunshine, without sunblock for a quarter hour?

That's the amount of time required for your body to produce your daily requirement of Vitamin D from sunshine. A study released this week indicated that 70 percent of children in the United States aren't getting enough Vitamin D.

You baby boomers out there can recall when Vitamin D was added to milk to help combat rickets, a condition that results in abnormal bone formation, due to a lack of calcium in the diet, as well as a vitamin D deficiency. Low vitamin D levels are also associated with a higher risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and a host of cancers.

That's why we always had to finish our milk at every meal, remember?

Well, it seems that we need to go "back to the future" to help our children and grandchildren develop strong bones and ward off a host of other diseases later in life.

Yes, it's time to drink milk at meals again, and more importantly -- get outside and play! As childhood obesity rates climb, it is in everyone's best interest to allow kids to once again be kids.

Is there a more perfect time than summer to get out and play in the sun for 15 minutes a day?

Sure, sunscreen should be used if young people are out in the sun all day. But the benefits of 15 minutes of unprotected exposure to the sun far outweighs the risks.

The world has changed a great deal in the nearly five decades that I have been alive. Many of the changes have been good, some have not. Technology, meant to make our lives better, has been a double-edged sword.

Our lives have been made easier, but these quality of life improvements have, I believe, come at a high price.

When will we allow our children to have the same experiences we had growing up? In the day during the summer, we would ride our bikes all over town, play pick-up games of baseball and basketball or go swimming. Evenings were spent playing outside until dark and even after with a game of kick the can.

We did all these things and many of us stayed out of trouble. It is a dangerous thing to generalize and I am sure there were a fair share of troublemakers, but for the most part, we did not have trouble with the law.

We didn't dare misbehave, because our parents had a network of other adults that would spy on us constantly. We all knew that if we misbehaved, the adults that witnessed the crime would dole out justice on the spot, then report the infraction to our parents where we would get a second, more severe, punishment.

That's just the way the world worked back then.

The system, like any other, had its flaws. Every neighborhood had an elderly person that was a target of pranks or one that was universally feared (some rumored to have taken unruly or slow children captive, never to be seen again), so each of us had to weigh the risks of our actions against the possible consequences.

Like generations before us, most of us survived childhood to become productive members of society.

These studies should be a wake up call to all of us. We need to encourage children to play outside, with all adults becoming responsible and accountable for their behavior and safety. The long-term benefits far outweigh the short-term inconvenience.

And, after all, allowing children to play outside will teach them the importance of developing friendships, the value of exercise, and, if given half a chance, your imagination can create more fun than an electronic device.

There's still a few weeks of summer to get started...

As always, I welcome your comments. You can reach me by email at tstangl@lemarscomm.net, telephone 712-546-7031, x40 or toll free 1-800-728-0066 x40.

Thanks for reading, I'll keep in touch. Feel free to do the same.