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Your doctor looks at your vitamin D levels and says, "You're fine. You're in normal range. There's nothing to worry about." But here's the problem. Normal and optimal are not the same thing. And that gap might be the reason why you're still getting sick multiple times a year, why you're still feeling tired all the time, and why you're still feeling low energy and brain fog even though you're doing everything right.
Vitamin D is one of the most misunderstood supplements that people take. So, I sat down with Dr. Jen Song to break down what your doctor's normal is actually missing, the mistakes that make vitamin D ineffective even if you're taking it every day, and how to know if your vitamin D is actually helping you feel better or if something is still missing. If you want to live your healthiest and happiest life, then don't be silly. Subscribe to Lily.
Dr. Sun, what is the importance of vitamin D? I feel like a lot of people hear they should take and supplement with vitamin D, but maybe they don't know why.
Well, vitamin D is basically from sunlight, right? So, we need to be out in the sun in order to, you know, produce vitamin D. And it most people are not. So it's important that we get the vitamin D because vitamin D is basically a hormone where you use vitamin D for skin, your bones, your your immune system, your gut. It it it impacts so many different factors. It's like magnesium. Magnesium impacts like so many different enzyatic functions. Vitamin D impacts everything in our body. It's a fats soluble vitamin. So it impacts your lipids, your cell membranes, everything. So, it's so important that you take vitamin D in terms of overall general health as well as um immune function. And it's most important for people who have things like autoimmune disease where vitamin D is utilized in large amounts. So, those individuals might need 10,000 units per day or 15,000 units per day. So, yeah.
And do you think that everybody should be supplementing with vitamin D or do you think that this is just something you hear about online that's hyped up like take vitamin D, take vitamin D?
Uh, short answer is yes. Everyone should be taking it because most people are deficient. With that being said, there are certain people who will have normal vitamin D levels, but especially here in the Northeast, it's rare. So most people who do not supplement with vitamin D, their blood levels tend to be on the low low end or very low. So for most people, they do need to take vitamin D. The question is how much and for how long and what dosage, right? So vitamin D is essential for immune function and so forth. But I pro I promote the fact that you should test for vitamin D. So you can do a simple blood test that looks at your vitamin D level and the vitamin D range they give I believe on like let's say lab corp is between 30 and 100. Most people are coming in around that 30 or below if they're not supplementing. So what we want to target for is around 60 to 80 nanogs per per deciliter for on the blood work. So what we like to do is say okay what is your number? Okay this is our baseline. We want to get you up to 60 to 80 as quick as possible. And that might be 10,000 units, 20,000 units or 30,000 units per day until we get the to that mark and then reduce down. So the key is to test.
So some people will say blanketly, oh yeah, I take 50,000 units a day. I'm fine. And some people can be. They can take 50,000 units and they need the 50,000 units per day. But there are people who have take 50,000 units a day and their vitamin D level is like 200 something and it's starting to impact calcium levels and so forth. So you got to be very careful with those individuals. But in general, it's pretty safe. Make sure you're taking your co-actors like vitamin K2, magnesium in order to help support proper uh levels of calcium into the bones rather than into the arteries. So certain co-actors are important for vitamin D supplementation, but in general, D3 is what you really want. I would say 5,000 international units are pretty safe with about 90 to 100 in terms of vitamin K2 with the magnesium. You know, that can be anywhere from 2 to 400 milligs per day.
How often would someone want to monitor vitamin D levels to know if they're taking too much or too little?
For most patients, I would say you get a baseline and then supplement appropriately to get to an optimal level. My optimal level is between 60 and 80. So that's where we want to fall. And then modify that dosage so you can maintain that level. But if a safe level is typically about 5,000 international units, uh I don't see many people having issues with that. It's when you get above 15 and 20,000, your levels can be above 100 easily.
And for someone who they get their blood work done and it says, "Oh, you're good because it's above 30." Why are you suggesting upwards of 60 to 80?
So, we were talking about optimization. So people have chronic health issues um autoimmune disease in particular uh you want your vitamin D level because it impacts your immune system uh significantly and happens it helps to dampen autoimmune disease. So I made a video about like in the old days they would use like 300,000 units or 100,000 units per day to put autoimmune disease into remission. However, to use that much could be, you know, create issues with, you know, like I said, calcium and it's unsafe for individuals to do that for a long period of time. So, the ideal numbers really come from the endocrine society where they gave, you know, I think their numbers were like 50 to 70 or 50 to 80. I like 60 to 80 as an optimal level. um just just ensures that you have storage vitamin D that can be utilized and not be depleted when you have autoimmune processes going on.
So some people question why is it that like our ancestors back in the day hunter gatherer man he did not need to take supplements. So why did why would someone think they need to supplement nowadays?
Well the hunter gatherers were out in the sun uh much more than we were right. So, I mean, the ideal recommendation is get your entire body out in the sun for 15 to 20 minutes a day, but who in the Northeast is going to do that? Who in Florida actually does that? Because they stay in the air conditioning. They don't go out and and get in the sun all the time, right? So, there are even people who are day laborers out in the sun all day and they check your vitamin D level uh and it's still low. So, um I I don't know what the hunter gatherers blood levels were back then, but I mean being out in direct sun for an hour is more than enough vitamin D and it's almost self-limiting. So, you get high levels of vitamin D and then your body goes, I don't need anymore. I'm not going to convert it uh to its active form uh and utilize it. So, it just depends.
And I grew up in San Diego and I lived in Hawaii for years as well. and I was tan year round and yet somehow I still when I would get blood work done was like 35 whereas my vitamin D levels and so I can't help but think maybe there's something in the ozone maybe a lot of pollution I don't know something that's like limiting that even if you're getting sunshine maybe you're not absorbing it still in the same way that hunter gather man would have
yeah I mean latitude also and skin color is also a factor in terms of absorption um so and you got to remember there's cholesterol in the skin that actually helps convert it the sunlight into the vitamin And then you also need magnesium as a co-actor uh in the in the liver and the kidneys uh to make it its active form. So uh it's important to make sure your magnesium levels are also good.
A lot of people focus only on vitamin D. But what most don't realize is magnesium is actually required to activate and utilize vitamin D. That's why I take upwards of 400 mg of BOP optimizers magnesium breakthrough, today's video sponsor. Here's the problem with a lot of magnesium supplements, most only contain one or two forms of magnesium in them. When different forms of magnesium do different things in your body, glycinate helps with sleep and relaxation. Malate supports muscle and energy. Tarate helps with stress and heart health, and magnesium breakthrough has seven forms of magnesium in a single capsule, which is honestly rare. And just like with vitamin D, our ancestors spent their days outside in the sun, so they didn't need to supplement with vitamin D. And similarly with magnesium, our ancestors were drinking mineralrich waters. They were bathing in the rivers and in the streams filled with magnesium. They were having crops and foods that were growing in mineralrich soil. Whereas nowadays, due to modern farming, our soil has been stripped of a lot of its magnesium, which means there's less of it in our food, which means there's less of it in us. If I could only pick two supplements that I think everyone should be taking, it's vitamin D and magnesium since it's just so hard to get enough from our food system. And magnesium is one of those things where I personally notice the difference when I don't take it. My sleep gets worse. My muscles are tighter. I am a little bit more restless and anxious. And so to me, magnesium is one of those supplements where the effects are obvious. And if you'd like to give By Optimizers a try and get 15% off your order, then you can use discount code Lilyane at checkout or use the link in the video description by optimizers.com/lycane.
And with um vitamin D, is there a certain time of day you would recommend someone take it? At morning, at night, doesn't matter. And then with with food, without food?
Yeah, for vitamin D, uh it really doesn't matter what time of day. Uh it's better to take it with a fatty meal because it's a fats soluble vitamins. So basic basically, if you're going to take vitamin D, you can take vitamin E, vitamin K, and vitamin A, which are all fat soluble vitamins. So after a fatty meal would be best or if you take it with like MCT oil or fish oil or something that helps it absorb a little bit better. You can take it once a day or you can take it, you know, if you want to take 20,000 today and nothing tomorrow, 20,000 the next day, you can do it that way. You're going to average out your your levels. So if you're taking 5,000 international units, 7 days is 35,000, right? So you can divide that up and do it twice a week if you wanted to. You don't have to do it every single day because it's stored in our system. Uh it doesn't just excrete out like a B vitamin.
And even with things like eggs and salmon being high in vitamin D, if someone's like, I'm just going to eat a ton of eggs and eat a ton of salmon, they're still not going to get enough vitamin D through food.
No, typically not. I don't. But they can have a great diet, you know, carnivore and vitam and you still be on the low side. So, my personal what I personally do with my vitamin D is I take about 5,000 IU every day. But then if I'm out traveling or I notice I'm getting a kind of a stuffy nose or a sore throat or around people who are sick >> for me to prevent getting sick, I actually just load up on the vitamin D and take 10,000 15,000 IU for a few days or upwards of a week just to make sure I don't get sick. And that's just been something like often I think at least in my comment section people will say like, "Oh, who cares about blood work?" And I can agree that we really just care about feeling good. But when my vitamin D levels were lower, I would get sick all the time, multiple times a year. And I thought, oh, it's cuz it's winter or just because, you know, everyone around me is sick. But I'm telling you, I think single-handedly vitamin D in conjunction with eating healthy, but vitamin D really does help me not get sick. And maybe at this point it's placebo effect, but I think it's really I mean important for our immune system. And
yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. You can do a short period of time, but it's just when you're taking it over a long period of time, you want to check, especially if you're in that 20,000 range. Uh 10,000 units tend to be safe for a lot of people, too. But 5,000 is definitely going to be safe. 10 to 20,000 is you're kind of pushing depending. So, you should check your levels. Definitely above 20,000 a day, you definitely want to check what your levels look like. But symptomatically speaking, I've I've had people come in at 120, 150 on their blood work. They feel great, no issues, and they they insist on keeping it there. So, I say, "Okay, great. Then you'll go ahead and monitor uh your regular blood work and make sure your calcium and those things are good."
Sure. My husband just uh actually this was a year ago, but his vitamin D levels were 101, but he was someone who took 10,000 for decades, and we got got monitored every year, and he was about 90 90. and then finally 101. So he tapered down. Um but he finds that with if he does not supplement with vitamin D regularly, like he can notice a difference in his muscle mass on his on his biceps. He's like, "Oh, I'm feeling deflated and not as
good for muscle growth, too.
Yeah. So that that's like my stack would be for me. I do creatine. I'm over 50, so creatine. I do vitamin D, magnesium. Um and I'll take a complex B with methylated forms. Uh those are my Mac basic. And then some fish oil. I left links to Dr. Jen Sung's YouTube channel and contact information in the video description. There's also going to be a part two to this interview where we cover how to clean your brain and prevent things like dementia. So stay tuned for that. And I hope today's video encouraged you to get a little bit more sunshine and pay more attention to your vitamin D levels as they really can impact people more than they realize. But at the same time, if you're going to be spending more time outdoors this summer, then there are definitely some ingredients I'd be paying attention to in your sunscreens. And I researched a ton of different sunscreens to find the best ones. I'll put that video right here and in the video description. Don't be silly. Subscribe to Lily.