Note: The text below is a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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The importance of vitamin D is becoming quite a topic these days. It’s always been understood that we need enough sun. And yet, I’ve had people come in here who are lifeguards who had vitamin D of 10. The range in the United States of America for vitamin D is 30 to 100. And the lifeguards had 10. And I mean, that’s one example, but I’ve had tons and tons of people come here, “But I ride my horses all the time, and I’m always outside, and I’m always walking around,” so on and so forth. “I spend my whole day outside. I’m a roofer,” and so on, and those types of things.
So vitamin D is now starting to be understood beyond that, beyond just, “Okay, get out in the sun and get some vitamin D.” Low vitamin D can be an indicator. In my practice, as soon as I see low vitamin D that far below the lab range, I’m thinking autoimmunity right away. Why? Because vitamin D works together with another antioxidant to strengthen something called your T regulatory cells. And these T regulatory cells are cells that, ultimately, their primary focus is to stop your immune system. When your immune system is killing a bacteria or a virus because you got a cold, at some point something’s got to stop it. It’s like the virus is killed. Something’s got to tell the immune system to stop killing it. This part of the immune system does that.
But the more important part in my practice of what the T regulatory system does is, once a person’s developed autoimmunity, it works very hard to stop your immune system from attacking that tissue, whether it’s your thyroid or whether it’s tissues from lupus, or Sjögren’s, or MS. Whatever it is, high doses of vitamin D strengthen that regulatory system and make it more difficult for you to have that attack.
I say high doses of vitamin D. There’s a lot of controversy on that. And so, the ranges that I like to see my patients in is above 80. There was a recent study out from Israel not that long ago on people who got COVID. Sorry, on people who did not get COVID. And I’m not sure of all the parameters that they evaluated, but of all the parameters that they evaluated from the immune response and immune cells, and the activities of daily living, et cetera, the only thing they came up with was that people had high levels of vitamin D.
Why would vitamin D at high levels, what are considered high levels in this country, at high levels have to do with not getting COVID? When you get vitamin D up into an area of 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, and a lot of doctors will say that’s too high. When you get up into that range, vitamin D becomes antioxidant. It becomes what it is, a sterol, a steroid, which means anti-inflammatory, and it becomes antiviral.
I’ve seen it have good effects in people who have Hashimoto’s and also have either chronic Epstein-Barr virus, or cytomegalovirus, or HHV-6 virus. These viruses tend to hang around. If you have autoimmune problem, you get compromised, and all of a sudden you start getting all these thyroid symptoms. And a lot of times, depending on the patient, just high doses of vitamin D, they will dampen that inflammatory response and dampen the Hashimoto’s thyroid symptoms.
So vitamin D is, again, it’s also a steroid at that level, and it’s also an antioxidant. Why do I keep saying high levels? I treat people from the four corners of the globe, as we used to say. And so, Canada, our range is 30 to a hundred. Excuse me. The last one that I just saw from Canada, their range was 50 to 200. 200. Our high range is a hundred, theirs is 200. I’ve treated people from Southeast Asia where their ranges were 95… 95 was their low-end range… 95 to 235. And I have a colleague who teaches functional medicine who claims that he has treated people from a country where the range was a hundred to 300. I don’t know if that’s fact or not, but he’s a pretty credible guy.
So the ranges have not been established. It’s interesting to me that all the other countries have higher ranges. I can conjecture why that is. I’m not going to go into that though. There are a lot of parameters in this country as far as supplements. And you look online and pretty much every supplement I use somewhere online says, “This hasn’t been investigated, or this is anecdotal,” or whatever. Some of the things I’m doing have been around for 5,000 years and they’ve worked for 5,000 years. And vitamin D is one of them.
So is vitamin D as important? You’re seeing more and more studies lately talking about vitamin D and helping your hormones, and vitamin D and helping brain function, and vitamin D with depression. And you’re going to keep seeing this. Why do I know that? Because we use it in our practice and we see the things that are now becoming studied by vitamin D.
So vitamin D’s a very, very important part of your vitamin maintenance supplement protocol, your personal protocol. When I’m done with my patients, I don’t have my patients on a lot of supplements. I might use a lot to get them there, along with diet and lifestyle changes, and these types of things. But once they’re done, there’s a handful of supplements that I recommend, especially for the autoimmune patient. Vitamin D is one of them.
I will tell you, I take a handful of supplements. I have five autoimmune problems. I’ve had other things going on. And if I don’t feel like taking my supplements that day, and there are days where I don’t feel like taking my supplements, I always make sure I take my vitamin D. Always. Because I’ve seen it to be that important in my practice relative to my patient population. So I think that’s a good general summary of the importance of vitamin D.