Instead of taking Vitamin D pills when no sunlight is available in the appropriate wavelength, you may want to consider eating more culinary mushrooms as a better method of obtaining Vitamin D during the winter: mushrooms are full of fascinating compounds, are strongly cytoprotective, and have beneficial effects on mood and cognition. Compounds such as ergothioneine, a (currently little-known) super-antioxidant specific to fungi that accumulates in tissue, especially the brain, vital organs, and bone marrow, and is so important for health that humans have evolved a specific “ergothioneine transporter” in the gut in order to better absorb the molecule; see also the chitin monomer n-acetyl-glucosamine, which appears to be extremely important, or perhaps even rate-limiting, for myelination and re-myelination of axons… these are but a few among thousands of beneficial compounds in a serving of mushrooms, amounts depending upon the species.

I know people don’t like it when I bring this up but be careful with lions mane. Please don’t take it with anti-depressants because it can cause serotonin syndrome and you should likely avoid cooking with it since there is no way of knowing the dose you will end up getting (usually in a culinary setting it’s under-extracted, but you only need to fuck up once to rot your brain).