What If We Got Sunlight All Wrong? The Truth About Vitamin D & Chronic

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor Hyman Show. You really could make a dramatic difference by just getting people's levels of vitamin D up to forty five nanograms per milliliter. And that would literally lead to four hundred thousand fewer premature deaths a year. That is no joke.

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one on one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive, for live q and a's exclusive content and direct connection. For real time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health.

You can also explore my curated doctor trusted supplements and health products at doctorhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple podcasts and tap try free to start your seven day free trial. Finding safety with sun exposure is important, so you do it right. You don't overdo it.

And but you kinda need the sun for many reasons because of our hormonal systems, our circadian rhythms, vitamin D, which is critical for our health. And and I do get why people are a little worried about sun exposure. I mean, according to Byram Working Group or EWG, more than two million Americans get skin cancer every year, and half of those who live to 65 get at at least once. Now these skin cancers that are basal cell and squamous cells are not fatal. They don't spread.

They're there can be disfiguring. My grandmother had a big one on her scalp, which was terrible. She never wanted to get it treated, and it was kinda nasty. But, basically, the squamous and basal cell cancers that you get on your skin are linked to sun exposure. Melanoma, not so much, and that can occur in non sun exposed areas and be a little bit of a different animal.

Now the other thing about sun exposure is particularly on your face. It's gonna cause something called oxidative stress, and and that leads to inflammation. And oxidation is kinda like your car resting or an apple turning brown in the air, but it's really the same thing that happens on your skin. You get wrinkles. So the wrinkling is from the oxidative stress from the sun.

You see people who sort of been in the sun a long time, they get kind of wrinkly, leathery skin, and and ladies who, you know, wear parasols have this beautiful porcelain skin as they get older. So, know, your face is something you definitely wanna protect. But, also, we're supposed to be out in the sun. And so staying out in the out of the sun or overlying on sunblock actually can cause issues because vitamin D is critical for mood, for energy, for thyroid function, for cancer protection, for immune function, preventing infections, even COVID. And, you know, it it's a problem if you don't get enough vitamin D.

And the problem is most of us don't get vitamin D because we don't live out and work outside anymore. Most of us are inside most of the time. And we get deficient in this really important vitamin called vitamin D. And the truth is that, you know, probably eighty percent of Americans are in deficient or have insufficient levels of vitamin D, levels that don't protect them optimally from the things that you wanna have vitamin D protect you from, whether it's osteoporosis or depression or cancer or to boost your immune system so you don't get things like the flu or COVID. I mean, if you have a high vitamin D levels, your reduction in flu is seventy five percent.

That's more than the flu vaccine. So it really is a powerful nutrient. It's very safe at the recommended doses. It's easy to take. There's no side effects.

It's very cheap. And it's such an incredibly important vitamin for optimizing your health in every way, including longevity. So let's talk about vitamin D a little bit. Now people think they should be avoiding the sun to get not get skin cancer, but vitamin D actually protects you against skin cancer, believe it or not, and reduces the risk of melanoma dramatically and many other cancers, not just not just skin cancer. It actually reduces overall mortality by seven percent.

So just having good vitamin D levels reduce the risk of death by seven percent. And vitamin D, you know, we used to get from sun running around naked, hunting, gathering. And, also, if we were living in colder climates, we would eat fish, wild fish, like, herring and sardines and mackerel. And these these fatty small fish have pretty high levels of vitamin d. Also, mushrooms.

So if you're foraging and going for mushrooms, there's a lot of like porcini mushrooms have the highest levels of vitamin D, but it's still hard to get enough. We're not getting these foods anymore. So, you know, we saw such a with the industrial revolution, this incredible advent of, rickets and vitamin D deficiency. And it's one of the, you know, major areas where we've seen a public health improvement by getting awareness of vitamin D. Though it's been fortified in milk, milk doesn't necessarily have vitamin D.

It does actually doesn't have vitamin D. It only has vitamin D it's added in to the milk. So if you think you need vitamin D to get your I mean, milk to get your vitamin D, that's not actually true. You don't you don't get a vitamin D for milk only because it's added. Now most of the problem with vitamin D is that doctors don't understand how to diagnose it.

They might even order the wrong test. They don't know the right treatment. They don't know the doses. They don't understand its importance. And they see the reference levels on lab tests, which are typically like twenty nanograms per deciliter.

Now that is ridiculously low. And I think if you look at what's optimal, it should be over 45 or 50. And so many, many people are in this sort of borderline area of less than 20 or 20 to 50, where they do they do need more vitamin D. Now most doctors think, oh, you don't have rickets. You you don't have vitamin deficiency, or your your number's, like, you know, 20 or 30.

You're fine. And they're actually wrong. And the question is, what's the dose you need to not get rickets? It's probably like thirty units a day. It's not not what we need for optimal health.

What we need for optimal health might be more like five thousand units a day. I mean, even the, government's upper limit is, you know, four or five thousand a day is a safe dose. You're not gonna get into trouble with that. Some people are, you know, very good at absorbing it. Others aren't.

Some people need actually up to ten thousand units a day. There was one study where they gave, healthy young adults ten thousand units of vitamin D for three months, and there was no toxicity from that. Now, you can get toxicity if you take a lot more. I mean, and it can cause a problem. But it's it's far lower than that, you know, we we we think.

And in fact, your level has to be over 250. Even though the reference range on the labs is up to a 100, you know, it doesn't really get become toxic until about two fifty. So the real question is, you know, how much should we be taking on a daily basis? And I think they're depending on you and your vitamin D level, your sun exposure I mean, I have a friend who lives on the beach and goes out surfing every day, his vitamin D level is about 45, which is pretty good with no vitamin D supplementation. But I rarely see that unless she's living in Mexico on the beach all the time.

But if you if you if you aren't, you probably need between two to five thousand units a day of vitamin D. You know, what's really concerning is when you look at the data, you know, it's eighty percent of us who are insufficient or deficient. This is either frankly deficient, let's say less than 30, which is now the reference range on most labs, some still say 20, and those who are between twenty 50. So I think that's important because vitamin D deficiency is linked to many cancers, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression. We call it seasonal affective disorder or SAD, Fibromyalgia.

I mean, you know, people have muscle aches and pains. These are often from low vitamin D levels. Bone loss, obviously osteoporosis, even autoimmune diseases. Multiple sclerosis is found in much higher levels in northern latitudes and where there's low vitamin D. And so vitamin D is really important for everything, including autoimmune disease.

And it's really not hard to do. I mean, you really, you know, could make a dramatic difference by just getting people's levels of vitamin D up to forty five nanograms per milliliter. And that would literally lead to four hundred thousand fewer premature deaths a year. That is no joke. There was one study that showed that if your vitamin D levels were low, you were seventy five percent more likely to end up in the hospital or in the ICU from COVID.

If your if your vitamin D levels were over 50 from one big Israeli study, there was no death, like zero. Now that may be not true if you keep doing the study and it may be a little bit bigger, there may be occasional deaths. But the point is here that vitamin D is highly protective. So, you know, I think, you know, we probably should have a vitamin D mandate in this country. Now when my patients get their levels up, they feel better, they have more mood improvements, they their muscles recover better, their thyroid works better, their energy's better, their their whole system works better.

And so it's a really important thing to make sure you get. So how does your body, like, make vitamin D? Now we obviously never had to take supplements when we were hunting and gathering and evolving because we're outside most of the time. And and, in fact, 80 to a 100% of the vitamin D that we need is created because of exposure to the sun. And and when you get, a little bit of a sunburn, you know, we call a, minimal erythromal dose, which means basically the dose that makes your skin a bit red, you know, when you get a sunburn, that might produce between ten to twenty five thousand units of vitamin D in our bodies, which is great.

The problem is most of us don't get that kind of sun exposure. And a lot of times, we use a lot of sunscreen, which is not necessarily bad. Well, it depends on which sunscreen you're using, but, they block a lot of the benefits of getting vitamin D. So you might be out in the sun but using sunblock and then not getting vitamin d. Now if you live in a northern climate, you're for sure not getting enough sun and vitamin d, especially in the winter.

And you're probably not eating a lot of the, you know, porcini mushrooms and baccarat herring and cod liver oil. Right? Also, the other problem is as we get older, our our skin does not convert the sun into vitamin D in the way that we did when we were younger. So the average 70 year old creates only 25% of the vitamin D that a 20 year old does. Also, depending on your skin color, if you're have dark skin, if you're African American, you basically will produce far less vitamin D, and you need a lot more sun exposure.

So most African Americans are very deficient in vitamin D. I'll also recommend that that everybody supplement. Now yeah, I I think it's one of those basic supplements that everybody should get. It makes such a difference, and you should have a level between 45 to 75, let's say. And the only way to know what that is is to test.

You need to test and find out what's going on. And and you can guess, but you you often will be off. Some people need two thousand units. Some people need five thousand. They need ten thousand units to get their vitamin levels up to, you know, the ideal level.

And and you can do that through your doctor or, you know, I cofounded a company called Function Health. You go to functionhealth.com. You can join the wait list and get testing that actually helps you to get your actual levels, to know what you're doing, to check it over time. I think if you use the code young forever, you can get in and and actually get off the wait list. So try that and see how you how your vitamin d levels are, but it's important to know.

And and and and often doctors say, oh, don't worry. Just take just take the vitamin d, but you really wanna know what your levels are. Also, if you wanna get, you know, sun exposure, the best is ten to two in, obviously, the summertime, ten to two 10AM to 2PM, full body sun exposure for twenty minutes. That that one I mean, you can cover your face or put some luck on your face, but you really wanna have full body exposure. I mean, it only works in the summer and only works if you live, you know, below Atlanta.

So I recommend taking vitamin d and probably two to five thousand of vitamin D three. It's important to take vitamin D three, not vitamin D two. Most doctors will prescribe vitamin D two, which is unfortunate, but make sure you get the right vitamin D. And, again, it depends on your age, your your genetics, where you live, how much time you're in the sun, time of year. But if you're, oh, in the summer, I don't need it.

But it's actually not true you need it during the summer unless you're out there all the time. So check your vitamin D levels and find out what's going on. Now what about, protecting yourself from skin cancer? That's important. Right?

You wanna make sure you don't get skin cancer, particularly on your face. So I think, you know, if you wanna go out in the sun, great. Use sunscreen on your face. If you wanna you're worried about getting a sunburn and you're really out there a lot, you can use high SPF sunscreen. But, know, you're gonna get vitamin D from your supplements, so you should be okay.

The high SPF, you know, it it kinda gives people a sense of security that you can go out there and just burn up. But, you wanna be careful. You don't you don't wanna do that. You wanna make sure you just, you know, moderate your sun exposure, avoiding the high high ultraviolet radiation exposures that you can get from prolonged sun exposure. So, basically, use sunscreen.

And also, by the way, you wanna use sunscreen that doesn't have crap in it, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So over the counter sunscreens are fine, but but they're often full of crappy, harmful ingredients. EWG found 80% of the 1,700 products they looked at that were sunscreen had inferior sun protection or had, like, really weird ingredients like oxybenzone or other parabens. I had a woman once who was in my practice, and she had super high levels of toxins in her urine from parabens. And she's like, a super health nut.

And I'm like, what are you what are you doing? What are you exposed to? What plastics or chemicals? She said, oh, well, you know, I use a ton of sunscreen all the time every day. And so she had high levels of these toxic petrochemical plastics in her urine that were coming from the sunscreen.

A lot of it wasn't getting out of her body, so it wasn't great. Also, you should be worried about sunscreen with vitamin A. If you use vitamin A, it actually can make make the skin cancer more likely. So I would be particularly careful of that. But the bottom line is choose, you know, good average low SPF sunscreen.

Don't rely on it for total protection. Cover your face mostly. And and and and you'll you'll be able to act go out and enjoy the sun. So what are the seven strategies I use to get, you know, safe sun exposure? Well, don't don't be afraid of the sun on your vacation.

Don't obviously get overexposed. Right? Because, you know, getting overexposed doesn't just ruin your vacation and give you a sunburn. It can lead to long term issues with skin damage and skin cancers and more wrinkles, which nobody wants. So try to get at least twenty minutes of sun exposure every day.

It's first thing in the morning ideally, which is the morning sunlight helps trigger your brain to release chemicals and hormones like melatonin. It kinda resets your circadian rhythms. It helps mood, healthy aging. Use sunscreen, but only when you need it. And particularly use the safe sunscreens.

You can check out Skin Deep, which is a database from database from EWG, and it's great. Be proactive about protection. So don't, you know, overdo it. Right? Try to get shade, umbrella, tree, you know, hat.

I mean, protect your clothing. That's fine. If you want to don't get skin cancer, which I don't wanna get. Make sure you cover up. Sunglasses are important.

You don't actually get, obviously, sunburn in your eyes, but you're you get cataracts from prolonged sun exposure without UV blocking sunglasses. So that's important. Don't get burned. Burning is really bad because that leads to more risk of skin cancer. Choose a skin cancer that has optimal UVA protection.

Don't do tanning beds. Get vitamin d, which will help reduce your risk of skin cancer. And, you know, there's good evidence that it's some block prevents squamous cells, but not necessarily basal cells. So make sure you get skin checks, get your skin checked for cancer on a regular basis every year, make sure you get a good dermatologist to look at it, and they can get things when they're early. And and they're really not a problem.

You don't die from skin cancer, except melanoma, which is not necessarily sun related. Also, again, make sure you check the ingredients. You don't want to have parabens, petrochemicals, lead, toxins. They all get absorbed in your skin. Go to the EWG website, ew.org.

You can look at the sunscreen guide, the skin deep guide. Also, stay hydrated. You know, drinking out caffeine, having alcohol on the beach, makes us dehydrated, and and that can actually, just make you feel crappy and and, and not make your vacation fun.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Let's take take sunscreen, for example. This is something, you know, summertime blowing against skin cancer, then putting on sunscreen in it. And and is it is it okay? Like, what should we be doing, and how do we figure out what's going on? I mean, a lot of the sunscreens also have compounds that destroy reefs too.

There's, like, reef damage to the coral reefs. So you're not, like, killing yourself, but you're on the reefs.

Dr. Cindy Geyer
Right. Well, there's a lot of the chemical sunscreens like Abobenzone, I believe they know all of the names of them, the chemical sunscreens, and many of those are potential endocrine disrupting chemicals as well. The flip side is, Mark, I'm one of those people who grew up in the South, had more than my share of sunburns, had my first skin cancer when I was 37. So I also wanted

Dr. Mark Hyman
to

Dr. Cindy Geyer
down the skin aging and wrinkles and skin cancer. So we kinda have to say, how do you get the protection you want without putting yourself at risk? I personally am a real fan of the zinc and titanium, the mineral based sunscreens or even just a hat covering your skin, staying out of the sun in the middle of the day. I mean I think there's a lot of other things we can do that are gonna be safer for us and safer for the planet. One of my favorite one stop shopping places to learn more about safety levels and which either skincare or sunscreens, and one of the things we do or don't want is the environmental working group and I know you've been a big supporter of their works for years.

I think they were some of the pioneers really raising awareness. What I love about them is they have a safe cosmetics database that you can search by type, so you could search sunscreens or you could search by brand, plug in your favorite brands and see how it rates to others on their list.

Dr. Mark Hyman
As a fat soluble vitamin, vitamin D needs to be absorbed with fats from our diet and then stored in our body, in our fat tissue, in our liver similar to other fat soluble vitamins like A, E and K. This episode will help you understand the crucial role that vitamin D plays in our health and why maintaining adequate levels super important. Now vitamin D is best known for its critical role in bone health and in immune system function. It enhances calcium absorption, is really important. That's how calcium gets in your body with the help of vitamin D.

And that's why a deficiency in vitamin D leads to bone deformities and things like rickets in children and osteoporosis in adults. But vitamin D does so much more than just support our bones. It's a powerhouse for our immune system. It helps fight inflammation. It helps reduce the risk of all chronic diseases which we suffer from, from obesity, type two diabetes, to heart disease dementia, and autoimmunity.

And I could go on and on, mental health, depression, I mean, list goes on. Now it even plays a role in lowering the risk of autoimmune conditions and reduces your risk of infection. And this is really crazy data, but the COVID pandemic highlighted the importance of vitamin D and immunity with many studies showing that low levels of vitamin D increase the risk of severe infection, hospitalization and death. In other words, if your vitamin D was low, you were more likely to end up with a severe infection in the hospital or die. Now beyond bone health and immunity, vitamin D has a lot of jobs, including thyroid and many, many other things.

It affects the expression of over a thousand genes. It's more like a hormone than a vitamin. And it supports the brain really critically by aiding in cognition, helping with memory, mood and depression. And it also helps protect against really bad things like neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Vitamin E is also critical for hormonal balance, fertility and gut health.

Literally everything, okay? Everything. Vitamins are not like drugs that have a single action on a single receptor with a single effect for a single disease. Vitamin D and other vitamins are what we call pleomorphic. They have many, many, many effects in the body and that's what makes them so amazing and they're very safe and effective and they have no side effects because they're the things your body uses to do its job.

So you just need to have optimal levels, not overdose obviously, but the optimal levels. Now despite its importance, many people are really deficient or insufficient in this vital nutrient and they miss out on many of the protective benefits. So let's explore why vitamin D deficiency is so common and how it impacts our health and also what we can do to ensure we're getting enough of this essential vitamin. Now we all hear about the benefits of vitamin D but what exactly is it and what does it do in our bodies? Well as I mentioned, D is a fat soluble vitamin, which means it must be absorbed with fats from our diet, like other fat soluble vitamins like A, E and K.

And it's stored in our body's fat tissue and liver. So let's sort of dive into bone health and immunity, are the most well known effects, but there's many, many more. Vitamin D is obviously known for its critical role in bone health and in supporting immune function. And how does it work? Well, it enhances the absorption of calcium, which is why deficiency is linked to all kinds of bone deformities like rickets and osteomalacia, which is bone softening, and osteoporosis in adults.

In fact, if you wanna do a cheap vitamin E test, you just stick your thumb on your shin and push in hard. And if it hurts, you are likely either insufficient or vitamin D deficient. So just try that now, but not if you're driving. Okay? In addition to bone health, vitamin D is a super powerhouse when it comes to supporting our immune system and fighting inflammation.

And that's why having sufficient levels is associated with low risk of so many chronic diseases that are all inflammatory diseases, things like obesity, type two diabetes, heart disease, and so forth. And also diseases like autoimmune disease, which includes multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, type one diabetes. But that's not all. Vitamin D is also a key player in reducing the risk of infection. In fact, your vitamin D level is adequately elevated, I mean, it's in the high normal range, not like what the reference range is, but optimal levels.

Your risk of getting the flu is seventy five percent lower. That's better than the flu vaccine, guys. So this is really cheap, really inexpensive, and it's really safe. It also helps support our immune system, and it protects us from just getting sick and cold. And I I get my vitamin D levels up, I never get sick.

I really I don't remember the last time I had a cold because I just take my vitamin D every day, and it just does its job, and I'm good to go. Now it does this by modulating the production of immune cells and immune molecules or messengers like cytokines. It regulates T cells and B cells. T cells are your immune cells like your lymphocytes and natural killer cells. B cells make antibodies.

And these play a critical role in our innate and adaptive immune systems. The ancient immune system, which is the innate immune system, has been there forever and is sort of a general all purpose, but not specific immune system. And the adaptive immune system is really the specific targeted immune system that sort of makes laser guided bombs. Like you get antibodies to COVID, well, that's a target against COVID. That's what your immune system does.

Now the COVID nineteen pandemic shined a very much needed light on the impact of vitamin D on immunity. We learned from countless studies that low vitamin D levels increase the risk of severe infection, hospitalization, and death. And this is just scratching the surface. Like, if you look at the data, was quite striking. It was out of Israel.

If your level of vitamin D was over fifty nanograms per deciliter, we're gonna get talking about what the level should be. Well, that that's probably the optimal level. If your level is 50 or more, your risk of death from COVID was zero. Like, That's amazing. And if your vitamin E levels are low, you are seventy percent more likely to end up in the hospital, end up in the ICU, or die from COVID.

Now what else does vitamin D do for the body? Well, it's an incredibly powerful vitamin. It affects, as I mentioned, over a thousand genes. We're gonna put all the links and the references of everything I'm saying in the show notes, so don't worry. Now most people agree it's actually more of a hormone than a vitamin.

It impacts all kinds of cellular functions across all of our organs and tissues. For example, the brain uses vitamin D to support cognition, to mood and mental health. You've heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD or to Winter Blues. Well, that's vitamin D deficiency, folks. That's why they say use a UV light cause UV light makes your body make vitamin D.

But you can also just take vitamin D. It also protects against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. It also plays a role in hormone health and fertility and our gut health is also affected by beneficially modulating the gut microbiome and enhancing overall digestive health. And just more, there's just more. It's a long list.

I think this could be a ten hour podcast. There are whole books written on this, but I encourage you check out Michael Hollick's work in his book. He's quite good on this topic. And, Robert Heeney. They were both really profoundly deep vitamin D researchers.

So if you wanna get geeky on it, you should go check that out. Now the problem is that, many people are deficient or insufficient. The difference is what's the reference range of the lab versus what's the optimal range, right? So if you take a bunch of Americans who are all working, living inside, who put on sunblock all the time and who don't really get much sun exposure, the quote normal level in the population of vitamin D will be on the low side, like 20 or 30. That's not the optimal level.

What if we're all running around like hunters and gatherers in our loincloths and out in the sun all day and we're getting all the vitamin D we need? We'd probably be like 50 to a 100 Lifeguards who are sitting out on the beach all day, they get levels of up to 250 and it's safe for them. That's just from the sun, not from taking vitamin d supplements. So when you're insufficient or deficient, you're missing out on all the protective benefits. Exactly how many people are really deficient?

Now hang on your hats, folks, because I think it's about a billion people. Now the reference, the references are in the show notes, but a billion people, that's a lot of people. In The US alone, seventy percent of people have suboptimal levels, which is a lot of people. That's, you know, seven out of ten people. And I think partly that's probably why COVID hit us so hard, aside from the fact that we're all metabolically unhealthy and have chronic disease, which didn't help.

But all that partially is linked to vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency. Now this widespread deficiency highlights just how important it is to ensure that we're getting enough vitamin D for optimal health. So what are the symptoms? How do you know if you're deficient? Well, there's some clues, right?

You might get sick a lot. You might have muscle aches or joint pain. In fact, one of the things that, vitamin E deficiency can cause is fibromyalgia or muscle aches and pains. Not just soft bones or painful bones or aches, but actual painful and impaired muscle function. You might have a history of a fracture, osteoporosis or brittle bones, That can be a clue.

You might have things like depression or anxiety or mood or memory issues. Maybe you'll have also hair loss, fatigue, hormonal balances like PCOS. In fact, vitamin D is so critical for thyroid function. Without vitamin D, you can't actually bind the thyroid hormone to the receptors on the nucleus of your cells and do what it's supposed to do. And so you end up with poorly functioning thyroid.

So the list goes on and on. Now, if any of these symptoms sound familiar to you, you might wanna get your levels checked. In fact, scratch that. Everybody should get their vitamin D level checked. Just baselines like your blood pressure or your blood sugar or your cholesterol, you gotta know your vitamin D level.

But for some silly reason, I don't know, because maybe nutrition is considered a poor stepchild of medicine, vitamin D is not included in your regular routine lab test. So you're probably gonna have to ask your doctor for it. Now this is partly why I started, Function Health. Now this is a company I cofounded, is a health platform that allows people to get access to their own lab data. We test vitamin D and lots of other biomarkers, over 110 biomarkers to give you a full picture of your health.

We look at nutrients, not just vitamin D, but lots of nutrients, hormones, cardiometabolic health, and we can see where you're out of whack. We see that sixty seven percent of people are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level for deficiency disease, not the optimal level for health. So when we broaden the aperture and we look at what the optimum levels are, it's probably like ninety percent or more. Now conventional medicine just doesn't look at this. They look at biomarkers in isolation.

They don't do a full workup of your hormones, your lipids, your autoimmune markers to get a deeper look at what's going on beneath the surface. So this is really why I co founded Functional Health, to help you get access to your own lab data. So to get your vitamin D levels checked and start becoming the CEO of your own health, just go functionhealth.com/mark to skip the 300,000 person wait list and learn more. Alright, so let's talk about vitamin D and diseases. What chronic diseases are associated with vitamin D deficiency?

Now there's this really important concept that I learned from Doctor. Robert Heeney, was one of the leading vitamin D researchers. And he wrote an article, you can look it up, we're gonna put it in the show notes, called long latency deficiency disease. And let me just explain this for minute. These are nutritional diseases that don't occur in the short run but occur in the long run.

For example, if you are vitamin d deficient in an acute way as a child, you get rickets. If you have chronic low levels of vitamin d, not enough to get rickets, but you might need thirty units a day to not get rickets. You might need five thousand units a day to not get osteoporosis. You might need more than ten times the dose. And in in the case of vitamin d, the long latency deficiency disease is osteoporosis or it could be even things like heart disease or cancer or diabetes or dementia, right?

These are long latency deficiency diseases. They develop over a long period of time due to chronic nutrient deficiencies, not just vitamin D, but all kinds of nutrients. Now these might not show symptoms right away, but over time they lead to serious health issues like osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, cancer. So maintaining adequate levels of your nutrients is really key for long term health and disease prevention. So let's discuss a few of these chronic diseases and their association with these suboptimal levels.

And I'll go through the reference ranges. I'll explain all that in a minute. But I want you just to get, this is, no, no, there's a reference range, which is what's normal for a population. If you're a Martian and landed in America today, it's normal to be overweight, right? Because 75 of us are overweight.

It's not optimal, it's just normal. Which is a statistical calculation based on two standard deviations from the mean in the population. It has nothing to do with those optimal or biological optimization. It just has to do with what's normal in a population, right? So vitamin D helps protect against cancer, which is a big one.

It does this by regulating the growth, the fission and killing bad or damaged cells. We call this apoptosis or programmed cell death, basically where cells sort of have a self destruct button, which is good. You don't want your old decrepit cells around. You wanna get rid of the old ones and recycle the parts and build new ones. It also enhances immune function and helps reduce inflammation, is decreasing the likelihood of all sorts of things, including cancer, which is an inflammatory disease.

And because of this, not having enough vitamin D is associated with certain cancers like breast, prostate cancer, ovarian and lung and pancreatic cancer and even skin cancer. On the other hand, that means that adequate levels of vitamin D are associated with protection, which is supported over and over again in the research. For example, a study in 2018 found that women with vitamin D levels of over sixty nanograms per milliliter, and just to be clear, most reference ranges on labs out there are twenty or maximum thirty nanograms per milliliter. And we're talking about double that, right? At least double or even triple that number.

If they had a level over 60, which is where I think most people should be, they had an eighty two percent lower risk of breast cancer incidence compared with those who had a level of under twenty nanograms per milliliter. That's a big deal. In another study, breast cancer patients who had a higher vitamin D level at the time of their diagnosis had a significantly lower risk of death related to their cancer than those with lower levels. So even if you get cancer, your likelihood of dying from it is lower if your vitamin D level is adequate. I'm just talking about COVID nineteen, but I'm telling you, this isn't anything, any infection, any virus, any bacteria, whether it's the flu or a cold or COVID nineteen or monkeypox or whatever the latest and next variation of a virus that we have to deal with, the next pandemic, you gotta get your vitamin E levels up.

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