Dr. Cory Rice goes over 5 things you probably don’t know about vitamin D and explains why vitamin D is such a crucial tool in the treatment of diseases like diabetes, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, and even Covid-19. Learn why an estimated 1 billion people are vitamin D deficient and what this means for their health, and what they can do about it.
- Vitamin D was discovered in the 1920s, around the same time as vitamin A. Vitamin A, D, E, and K are all fat-soluble vitamins which makes understanding how the body uses them crucial to preventing some of the most preventable diseases.
- The first misconception is that vitamin D is not a vitamin at all, it’s a hormone in how our body uses it. Our body converts vitamin D to another form of itself after sunlight hits our skin, and moves that substance through the bloodstream to other organs.
- If you have suboptimal hormone levels, much of the time that can be the result of having suboptimal vitamin D levels.
- The first thing you need to know about vitamin D is that almost every vital organ in the body has vitamin receptors. This means that vitamin D helps regulate many of the organs in the body.
- In the past, our ancestors spent their days outdoors and exposed to sunlight. The opposite is true today, we spend most of our time indoors or covered up from the sun. An estimated 1 billion people have low vitamin D, including 70% of our children.
- For most people, their main food sources of vitamin D are fish oils and dairy, but those sources don’t provide the optimal levels the body needs.
- Vitamin D has been studied in cancer, autoimmune disease, type 2 diabetes, depression, heart health, and neurodegenerative diseases.
- Autoimmune diseases in particular are very common, and vitamin D can be a crucial method of improving outcomes of autoimmune disease sufferers.
- If your serum level of 25-hydroxyvitamin D is below 20, you’re considered deficient. If it’s below 30, you’re considered insufficient. Levels between 30 and 80 are adequate. Unfortunately, 70% of Americans have levels below 30, and 28% are below 20.
- A randomized, controlled study done on Covid-19 patients in Spain showed that vitamin D reduced the risk of admission to the ICU 25x. In other words, vitamin D eliminated 96% of the risk of ICU admission. These results have changed the game in the vitamin D community and show that it can be a potential tool in treating Covid-19.
- Other observational studies done in the Philippines found similar results. Lower levels of vitamin D seemed to correlate with a significantly higher level of mortality.
- Hormone D3 goes down as we age. Serum levels between 40 and 60 are associated with longer telomeres and white blood cells. We know that suboptimal D3 levels are associated with age-related disease and since the number one risk factor for any chronic illness is age, so anything we can use to slow down the aging process could prevent many diseases.
- Vitamin D, being fat-soluble, means that it’s important to take it with fat. When consumed with fat you get optimal absorption.
- The optimal hours of the day to absorb vitamin D from sunlight are between 10am and 3pm, no matter where you are on the planet. Another thing to realize is that if your shadow is longer than you are, your vitamin D absorption rate falls to 0.
- The more obese you are, the harder it is for you to use D3. Fat acts as a magnetic bucket and prevents vitamin D from being released into the bloodstream.
- Some people have a vitamin D receptor polymorphism. The results in their receptors not working very well and is very common in people with Hashimoto’s disease. For those people, they need to consume much higher levels of vitamin D to reach adequate levels.
- In the next 20 years, 1 in 3 people will be diagnosed with diabetes. Right now, 1 in 3 people have insulin resistance, which is the first sign and step to getting diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. Studies have shown that vitamin D3 can repair the negative cascade by improving insulin resistance.
- Vitamin D3 can also affect gene expression. It’s been found that vitamin D3 regulates up to 5% of the human genome. Improving vitamin D levels affected the expression of genes that have biological functions in more than 160 pathways linked to cancer, autoimmune disease, and cardiovascular disease.
- What about vitamin D and liver disease or kidney disease? Patients with chronic liver disease have malabsorption so they can’t absorb vitamin D very well and may need much higher doses. Kidney disease patients can’t activate vitamin D so they may need both forms of vitamin D.
- What is the difference between sunlight vitamin D and supplemental vitamin D? Mainly bioavailability. 100% of the vitamin D3 that is made in the skin is bioavailable, with supplements only 60% is bioavailable.
- What is the difference between D2 and D3? D3 is produced from sunlight exposure. D2 is produced within mushrooms after they are exposed to sunlight.
- Studies show that D3 is more effectively converted into its active form within the body.
