Vitamin D is Absolutely Necessary to Sustain the Vitality of Life
Vitamin D is responsible for influencing over 2,000 genes and 160 biological pathways. There is a major difference between minimum blood levels to optimum blood levels, and doctors often don't test for it.
2/28/20265 min read
Vitamin D is Absolutely Necessary to Sustain the Vitality of Life
Most people don’t get enough. Especially people who have dark skin, or are overweight, or live up north, or hardly ever go out in the sun.
You could get some vitamin D from eating egg yolks, fatty fish, porcini mushrooms, or having cod liver oil. But other than that, the only way to get enough is through sun exposure or through supplementing with Vitamin D3.
Vitamin D is technically a hormone rather than a vitamin and is responsible for influencing over 2,000 genes and 160 biological pathways. It is also critical for immune function.
It acts as a steroid hormone
It helps increase the neurotransmitter Dopamine
25% of Americans had Vitamin D levels below 20 ng/ml
41% of Americans had Vitamin D levels between 20-30 ng/ml
34% of Americans had Vitamin D levels at 30 ng/ml or above
This means that 65% of Americans have levels below 30 ng/ml
This is well below the recommended optimal level
This means that most Americans are deficient
The cause? Think about it… Many of us are inside all day, going to school, working our careers, avoiding the cold in the winter, avoiding the heat in the summer, or always wearing sunblock during the summer, which blocks necessary UV rays to provide Vitamin D synthesis. Even when we travel to and fro, we’re in our cars behind tinted windows that block more UV light.
The recommended standards for vitamin D blood levels of what is considered healthy is not accurate.
Just because you’re in the “green level” of the “average” range does not mean your levels are good. It just means you’re not going to have your bones wither away by rickets. That’s it.
20-30 ng/dl in the blood is deficient, even though it is “technically good” according to the doctor’s or lab’s acceptable range.
Average does not mean optimal. Just because 75%+ of Americans are overweight or obese, and are the “average,” that does not mean it is healthy or optimal.
Doctors typically don’t check for vitamin D levels. You could even go to the ER for serious health problems, but they will often send you away with saying all your bloodwork was fine (because they never checked for vitamin D levels). Meanwhile, you may feel like you’re dying.
You could tell your doctor that you’re depressed, anxious, fatigued, and have bone pain, vertigo, brain fog, and insomnia (all symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency), yet they won’t check for vitamin D. Instead, they just put you on antidepressant or anti-anxiety drugs.
Other symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency may include: messed up menstrual issues, heart palpitations, pre-diabetic blood sugar issues, difficulty breathing, muscle aches and weakness, frequent illnesses, mood swings, back pain, slow wound healing, dizziness, weight gain, and hair loss.
Different people will experience different symptoms. It also depends on how low their levels are.
Chronic low levels of Vitamin D can lead to: Bone degenerative diseases, heart disease, autoimmune disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer.
Note that certain diseases and medications can also cause Vitamin D deficiency.
Of the 8 years of medical education doctors get, they only get taught a few hours on nutrition. They treat symptoms, not the root problems. Their solutions are often more drugs rather than better nutrition or necessary supplementation or preventing future diseases. In my experience, a good pharmacist knows a lot more about the human body than a doctor.
With the advancement of AI assisting medical students in learning, people are learning to think less and less for themselves, and the future of the medical practice is going to get even worse. Right now, and even so much more in the future, doctors will lack the critical thinking skills to question, analyze, compare, and contrast things. Instead of doing thorough research, they will just trust whatever the medical establishment tells them like drones.
Recommendations:
Blood levels of 65-100 ng/ml.
Maintenance dose of 5,000-10,000 IU daily, especially during the winter. You can forego the supplementation in the summer if you wish, provided you get enough sunlight. But if you stop supplementing, you may forget to start again once winter starts. So, you could take a lower dose in the summer and a higher dose in the winter.
If your levels are low or you think they are low, some labs will allow you to order a blood test yourself. Or, you can ask your doctor to order it.
Order the 25(OH)D test. This one tests for Vitamin D storage in your body.
Once you figure out what your blood level is or if you forego the blood test to just guesstimate your blood level, input that value into a Vitamin D loading calculator online like this one:
Typically, you’re looking at 25,000 IU per day for twelve days, and then 10,000 IU per day thereafter to sustain and continue to raise Vitamin D levels.
Over-supplementing with Vitamin D is extremely rare.
Take Vitamin D in the morning with a fatty meal, as fat aids absorption since Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin.
Take it along with magnesium glycinate or magnesium citrate to help activate the Vitamin D.
Take it along with Vitamin K2 to direct calcium into the bones rather than the arteries.
Alternatively, try getting magnesium and K2 from the foods in your diet.
How essential magnesium and K2 are essential to supplement with Vitamin D is debatable and may vary from person to person. But try to at least have a healthy range of foods in your diet that have important vitamins and minerals.
If it is summertime, you can go out in the sun from around 10 am to 1 pm for about 20-30 minutes. If you have dark skin, you will need significantly more time in the sun. The more skin exposure to the sun, the better. This can be okay to replace supplementation. Just don’t get sunburns, as that increases your risk of skin cancer.
If you’re worried about skin aging, worry about your internal health more. Also, you can take Vitamin C, Omega-3, astaxanthin, Vitamin E, and other antioxidant-rich foods and colorful fruits and vegetables to protect your skin against sun damage.
As far as supplement brands, I view these brands positively: Smarter Vitamins, Viva Naturals, Double Wood, Sports Research, Garden of Life, Now Foods, Solaray, Codeage, Ancient Nutrition, and Vitacost (vitacost.com).
Overall, supplementing with Vitamin D3 could be life-changing. Some people are severely deficient for 10-20 years without knowing it all had to do with Vitamin D, and the years of life that were robbed from them simply because they did not get sufficient sunlight or were never informed by their doctor because it was never tested. Or, it was tested, but the doctor did not have the wisdom to know that the blood levels should be higher. But in the modern technological age that we live in, supplementation is becoming increasingly important and necessary for optimal health and to prevent serious diseases later on in life. Some people may even have food, drug, or alcohol addiction or depression and anxiety simply because they’re not taking enough vitamins and minerals. Taking care of our physical health is a vital aspect that can sometimes be ignored by psychologists, psychiatrists, pastors, counselors, and rehab centers, as they can often forget how interconnected the body is with mental and spiritual health.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. This is for educational purposes. You assume your own responsibility for health decisions and risks. Various other factors could influence recommendations.
Informational videos you can look up:
The Truth About Vitamin D & Warning Signs Your Body Is Deficient | Dr. Mark Hyman - YouTube
VITAMIN D: Your Missing Health Link? 2024 - YouTube
Your Body Is BEGGING for Vitamin D!!
Other source for statistics:
Millions of Americans are Vitamin D Deficient - Who is Most at Risk? - GrassrootsHealth
Related article I wrote about increasing immunity and treating the common cold: