How Vitamin D Changed My Life!

When I look at the statistics versus what's in the news, this is blowing me away. There's a lot of huge misconceptions and a lot of people are not doing the right stuff since 2010 and previously and past 2020, the numbers are still terrible. There's still huge deficiency. There's almost no improvement with how much media attention we're getting vitamin T toxicity. The mistakes. Should you take vitamin K2, magnesium, calcium, boron, omega-3 fatty acids? How does it affect your heart? Your arteries? Does sunshine actually give you vitamin D? This is crazy. When I did this video a couple of years ago in the news statistics showed, Hey, huge deficiencies. But now as I'm reading this, all the mainstream articles, the news sources, the clippings, they don't really cite scientific sources, but they're like, Hey, deficiency is not that bad. Be aware of toxicity. Don't get toxic levels. This kind of blew my mind because initially when I did my studies, there's almost no reports of toxicity and the studies don't seem to show that. And I thought maybe I'm going crazy. Maybe everybody started taking vitamin D and deficiency levels dropped to like the 20% because initially when I did this, it was like 70%. But no, for example, overseas on the East in 2021, they did a study looking at all the Asian countries, China, Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan, and the average rates were about 70% deficient, even in those warm weather countries where they should be getting a lot of sunlight. This article found that 68% of people were deficient ranging from about the low twenties to the low nineties. Another one. What about America? A systemic review was done in 2023. This was a huge review. Great study. This looked at 308 studies over 81 countries at 8 million people or so. And they found that people were still very deficient. I'm going to go over this later, how we measure deficiency, but essentially 30 nanomolars per liter. Of blood is considered to be vitamin D deficiency. This study found that about 77% of people in North America are deficient on vitamin D. These are real numbers looking at real people with real studies. And they found between 2000 and 2010, the deficiency levels maybe dropped a couple of percentage points to now in the 2020 range between 2010 and 2020 with all the info getting out there, these deficiency levels have not really decreased over time. And they found that countries and states such as Michigan or Canada, where they have winter months, 1.7 times higher, the deficiency rate, the darker your skin, the more melanin, the worse you are at absorbing UV light. And the worse you are at producing vitamin D those rates were in the 80% for deficiency. Females were more deficient than males. Now the benefits of vitamin D vitamin D is probably the number one vitamin for bone health. It helps absorb calcium from the intestines leads to strong, healthy bones and prevents bone loss. So the older you are, the more beneficial vitamin D is immune support. This is crazy. Vitamin D is thought to be the single most important hormone for helping your immune system. By some people, adequate vitamin D levels are proven to be associated with decreased risk of infections and improved immune function. One crazy fact that I heard is countries within 200 miles of the equator do not have a flu season. Yeah. They still get things like malaria or vector borne diseases, you know, carried by mosquitoes, that kind of thing. It's not the viral flu. So your immune system theoretically could be stronger in that case because you're closer to the sun. You're getting more vitamin D cardiovascular health, vitamin D levels are associated with less heart attacks, improved blood vessel functions, less inflammation, less blood pressure, cancer prevention, high vitamin D levels associated with less types of certain types of cancer, and another important one, mood and health vitamin D receptors are found in various areas of the brain and there's lower depression, better mood. This has been proven across a lot of studies and autoimmune conditions. This is one I've talked about a lot in the past, but me as a foot and ankle surgeon, I deal with a lot of bone problems, a lot of immune conditions, a lot of inflammation. There's a lot of studies on specifics like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and more and muscle function. Vitamin D is very important for muscle function, health function, strength, reducing the risk of falls, reducing the risk of fractures. If you're older, you definitely have to make sure you're not vitamin D deficient, very important in skin health, wound healing, inflammation. It is absolutely insane to me that probably the most studied hormone and vitamin is so looked down upon and the rates are not improving. Deficiency rates are just as high now as they were 10, 20 years ago. Maybe I'm missing something, but the studies show that it's not getting any better. Popular science articles in the news, in the media are basically downplaying the fact and saying not to take too much. Potentially, should we be scared of these things? Should we still have a deficiency? I'm going to go over all the science, the specific studies. Let's talk about very important supplements to our overall health that are related to vitamin D. Vitamin K2 is different than vitamin K1. This is also known as minoquinone. It is a fat soluble vitamin that plays a crucial role in many processes such as calcium and bone health, but it differs from vitamin K1. K1 focuses more on the clotting cascade, so forming blood clots. If you get a cut, vitamin K2 focuses more on other factors. There is no specific dosage recommendation for vitamin K2 given by the government, but there is one for vitamin K1. You don't want to overdo it on vitamin K1 if you're on blood thinners, for example. Our standard recommendations for K1 is 90 micrograms per day, on average, 90 to 120 micrograms, but for K2, no official recommendation. But most of the studies I'm going to go over, they recommend up to 120 to 200 micrograms of K2. Now that's micrograms, not milligrams. And what you want to get is either MK4 or MK7. MK7 is the longer acting component of vitamin K2. You can get vitamin K2 through diet, but supplements can help as well. Benefits of vitamin K2, bone health. Vitamin K2 is essential for the activation of something called osteocalcin, a protein that binds calcium to bones. This is critical for bone density and preventing osteoporosis. Essentially vitamin D puts calcium into your bloodstream and vitamin K2 takes that calcium and puts it into your bone and organizes it in your bone. It's important for your cardiovascular health to prevent arterial calcification. So it takes that calcium out of your arteries and focuses it into that bone where it should be. And there's a lot of great studies how vitamin K2 lowers calcification. It's generally considered to be extremely safe because it's found in a lot of our meats, our foods anyway. While vitamin K2 is involved in blood clotting, it's different than vitamin K1. Vitamin K1 is actually involved in the cascade, whereas K2 affects warfarin itself a little bit more. Vitamin K2, rather than working on the clotting cascade, works on osteocalcin and the matrix GLA protein into depositing calcium into your bones. The most common vitamin K2 foods are natto, a Japanese dish, which is very rich in K2. It's also found in cheeses like gouda, edam, liver, egg yolk, meats. So sausages, for example, chicken, pig. So it's found in a lot of those meat. The more grass fed that meat, the more K2 you're going to get. As our society changes and we have less natural, less grass fed meats, we have less K2. That's where the supplementation can come in. And you want to get about 120 micrograms to 200 micrograms per day. That's the recommendation in most of these studies. Vitamin K2 and vitamin D are both involved in calcium metabolism. So vitamin D puts it into your bloodstream from outside sources, and K2 puts it into your bone and other areas. Works on your muscles, works on your heart, works on your arteries. There is evidence that suggests K2 and vitamin D3 are in a synergistic relationship, and that can help with all of the things we've talked about. The second most important component of vitamin D is magnesium. Vitamin D and magnesium are two essential nutrients that are interrelated in several different ways, and they're critical. We used to get it in our water supplies. Now our water's filtered, so it's not really coming in there. Our food is now processed. We're getting more processed food, less magnesium in it. Deficiency rates are said to be between 60 and 90 percent. So not only are we vitamin D deficient, but we're now magnesium deficient. And you need both of these for it to work. Magnesium works on calcium and vitamin D in these ways. Number one, magnesium is important to calcium homeostasis in the parathyroid gland. So the parathyroid gland releases hormones that essentially tell your calcium to go low or high. That's the parathyroid hormone. And magnesium deficiency can disrupt this balance and affect your bone health. Potentially, magnesium is also involved in the activation of vitamin D in the body. Specifically, magnesium dependent enzymes are necessary to convert vitamin D from its inactive form to its active form and is required for various physiological processes. Inadequate magnesium can potentially impair the conversion process, lowering your vitamin D even more. And here's where they work cooperatively. Vitamin D and magnesium are both essential for bone health. It helps with bone mineralization. A balance between these nutrients is essential for optimum bone density and preventing osteoporosis. Muscle function and health. Both vitamin D and magnesium are essential for proper muscle function. Inadequate levels of either can lead to muscle weakness. Cardiovascular health. Magnesium and vitamin D both important in cardiovascular health. High blood pressure. Improving blood vessel function, heart rhythm, blood pressure. And I kind of mentioned vitamin K2 is important to lower the calcification in your arteries. Immune function. So vitamin D, very important. Your immune function. Magnesium as well. Very important. Mood and health. Both vitamin D and magnesium help with mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. I have comments all the time in my videos. The magnesium video specifically how much better people sleep and how much mood there is by correcting some of these deficiencies. The third one is omega three fatty acids. We're kind of getting carried away here, but this is very important and the science proves it. There is a synergistic relationship between omega three fatty acids and vitamin D. Their combined effects work on numerous pathways together. When taken together, studies show they work synergistically to improve better bone healing by calcium absorption and depositing that in the bone. You add vitamin K2, works even better. These are all natural things that should be in our body and in our food anyway. This is not some type of synthetic product that you're putting into your body. Be careful with your omega three fatty acids, though. Some of the supplements out there have low percentage of the actual omega three. So you're eating a lot of fat in these pills, but say only 10% of it is actually omega threes. You want to make sure your omega threes are at least 50% of the pill and zinc and boron. So these are trace elements, but zinc levels have been shown to convert vitamin D to the active form. So it's needed. A deficiency can impair your vitamin D and boron. While it's not a direct interaction, it can contribute to your overall mineral metabolism and bone health. You just want to get a multivitamin. You don't have to go crazy with these extra ones. What's something practical? Well, realistically, rather than taking a million different pills, you can get your vitamin D3 and K2 together. I link some of my favorites below magnesium. You can supplement that with powders, some pills and omega threes. You have to take those separately. I link some of my favorites below. These are the main ones. Realistically, outside vitamin D, K2, magnesium and omega threes. Really, all you need is a multivitamin. You don't have to go crazy and get 800 different things. These things are just proven to be so important, even though it does cost a little bit. Relatively, the cost is almost nothing by comparison to getting sick for a week, two weeks missing work. And it happens to all of us in Michigan here. We all get sick. We all get the flu. Vitamin D dosage. The Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine, essentially want to prevent toxicity. So they set the maximum daily intake, which seems kind of low, according to the studies. What about vitamin D toxicity? This is known as hypervitaminosis D or vitamin D toxicity. When I look at the studies, this is exceptionally rare, but it is a very serious condition that occurs where there are excessively high levels of vitamin D. Even when people take millions of units per day. And there is one study where somebody took millions of units every single day in a supplement. Let's take a look at all the studies and see if we can find this epidemic of toxicity that I read about in the newspaper all the time. So toxicity doesn't really come from the sun or the diet. Now, I'm going to say this. If you spend all day out in the sun, realistically, in half an hour to an hour of sunlight, if you're in a pair of shorts, for example, you're making a thousand or more units per hour, probably much more. And if you're out there like half the day, a full day, if you work outside, how much vitamin D is your body making? It is making probably 10,000 plus or more per day. Your body is built to handle that. It's hard to really correlate that in the studies. Wouldn't it make sense that if we spend all day outside, especially near the equator, that our body could handle the vitamin D? Realistically, does taking a thousand units in pill form create a toxicity in something that's already in our body and could be made in high amounts? Something to think about. It's hard to address this with a study, but studies kind of bring up the same question. Our bodies are meant to deal with this type of overload of vitamin D. The main consequence of vitamin D toxicity is buildup of calcium in the blood, and it can cause things like vomiting, nausea, possibly kidney stones. So Hathcock in 2007 conducted a study and they found that intakes of 10,000 to 15,000 units per day of vitamin D3 did not cause any toxicity in a healthy adult in any of the numbers that they looked at. However, just to be safe, legally, they recommended about four to five thousand units per day. If you're taking more than 10,000, there is really no issues. In 1999, a study by Vieth reviewed available evidence and said doses of 10,000 per day for several months were unlikely to cause any toxicity in any of the studies they could found. The author actually concluded at the end that you could safely take 10,000 units per day without any significant risk. In 2008, Jones examined vitamin D toxicity and found that any of the toxic cases usually only happen with extreme doses well over 40,000 per day. There was a case study in 2001 by Kalkia that basically had a 42 year old man, but he was taking almost 200,000 units every day for over two months. He developed some toxicity, but when he stopped, he went back to normal. Sanders in 2010 found that supplements containing 500,000 international units in the form of injection didn't necessarily improve bone fracture risk because those were very high doses. It's almost like it messed up your body's hormones. So this caused fluctuations in blood calcium. So you don't want to take 500,000 units. No one's saying to go crazy with that. In 2018, another study was done by Polish researchers. Doses exceeding 10,000 units per day for an extended time period did not really lead to any toxicity. People vary. Genetics differ. We all have different health conditions. It's not guaranteed for anybody, even though this is what the study showed. Essentially, once you stop doing it, everything reverses back to normal. The big number one mistake is we are still deficient, even though it's popular now to say, oh, don't supplement. Don't take stuff you don't need. Our deficiency rates when checking the blood levels are still low. 78% of people in North America are deficient. According to that large meta analysis, looking at eight million people, we are still short. We're not getting enough vitamin D. We're not getting enough vitamin K2. We're not getting enough magnesium and we're not getting enough omega three. Those are the four things that our body is designed for. Great immune health, bone health, heart health, mood, depression. Unless you live outside near the equator and go outside every day for 60 plus minutes, there's a good chance that your levels are not where they need to be. I read this great book by Dr. Holick. He is probably the foremost vitamin D researcher in the world. He's including all the toxicity malpractice cases, all the research he recommends we all take between 2000 to 10000 units per day. And also magnesium, vitamin K2, omega three fatty acids. The official recommendations are about 600 to 800 international units. I personally take between five to 10000 per day, especially in the winter. I try and get outside as much as possible, get as much sun. So the numbers are absolutely shocking to me. It almost seems like there's a concerted effort to downplay the deficiencies. But what's the downside? This is safe. The toxicity levels aren't really true unless you're really going crazy. The benefits are unbelievable. And look at the prices of vitamin D. Yeah, they're not free, but they're unbelievably cheap. It is crazy to me that the deficiency is still so high. So I'm going to keep making videos on vitamin D. Hit me up if I missed anything. Tell me if I got anything wrong. I love hearing your opinions. Tell me if that works.