Transcription
Vitamin D is critically important for your body and your health. In fact, it's so important, it's the only vitamin that your body's capable of producing on its own. It's so important that every cell in your body has a receptor for vitamin D.
In this video, I'm going to share with you how vitamin D affects every organ and tissue in your body. So, if you're suffering from a symptom or a health concern, you're looking to overcome it, vitamin D may be the answer to you solving this health concern. We'll also talk about some of the biggest mistakes around taking vitamin D which would cause it to not work correctly in your body. So, let's go ahead and dive in.
But before we do, I'm Dr. Nick Sarowski and thanks for hanging out with me again in this video. It's a pleasure being back here with you. Let's go ahead and dive in. And first, I want to talk about your brain and nervous system. We're going to go through the organ systems of your body and look at how vitamin D pertains to your health. Also, we'll talk about the top five symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency and how to properly take vitamin D in this video.
Now, your brain and nervous system. How does vitamin D affect it? Well, it's going to support your neurotransmitter production. Now, neurotransmitters are like hormones to your brain. They're very important for how you feel, what your mood is like. Are you happy? Are you sad? But also, are you alive and awake? Are you tired all the time? So, it's going to have an impact on neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin in your body. Vitamin D is also going to enhance cognitive function and your mood. Vitamin D will actually reduce the risk of depression, brain fog, and neurodegenerative disorders. Vitamin D is so important that there's actually vitamin D receptors in the hippocampus in your brain, which is responsible for memory. So, you're going to see that vitamin D plays an important role in prevention and longevity, but also your day-to-day life on how you feel to your cognitive abilities. So, vitamin D is critically important for neurological well-being and your brain health.
Let's look at your muscular system and your skeletal system. Vitamin D is critical here as well. Vitamin D is critical for calcium absorption and bone mineralization. I have so many patients who come to me because I live in the northern United States with a lot of cloud cover who are vitamin D deficient and they can't figure out why they're getting degenerative joint disorders, why that they're getting cavities in their teeth. It's because their bones are weak and they are vitamin D deficient and they have been for many years. And of course, their doctor didn't bother telling them that, right? So this is important to take this information and really implement it in your day-to-day life so that you can have better health tomorrow. Vitamin D prevents rickets, osteomalacia and osteoporosis. Vitamin D is important for supporting muscle strength and also supporting balance and reducing the risk of falls. This is important especially as you age. And low vitamin D is associated with muscle pain and weakness. There's a condition that many people are diagnosed with around me and it's called fibromyalgia. And a big reason people are being diagnosed with fibromyalgia is because they have a vitamin D deficiency and nobody is addressing it. And if you have chronic pain all over your body, you want to take a look at what your vitamin D levels are at. It's one of the top signs of a vitamin D deficiency.
And speaking of the top signs of a vitamin D deficiency, let's take a look at the top five to determine if you're deficient in vitamin D. First on our list is going to be fatigue and weakness like we just talked about, but also frequent illness because what happens is your immune system cannot regulate or function properly without a good healthy amount of vitamin D in your system. You're also looking at bone and muscle pain. Chronic pain is very much associated with a vitamin D deficiency, brain fog and depression. We talked about the brain symptoms and also poor wound healing. If you have one of these top signs, you want to get a vitamin D test and start utilizing vitamin D every day in order to optimize your levels. And if you're looking for a quality vitamin D, I will put a link in the description below to a vitamin D3 and a K2 that I use every day personally and in my clinic.
Now, let's take a look at your immune system. Your immune system is incredibly important, and there's always a war on your immune system in Western medicine. First of all, many people are in an autoimmune crisis. But second of all, there's always some new product out there that is going to magically regulate your immune system so that you never get sick. You notice this happening? And then so much so that in some cases these products are even forced on people. You can't go to work if you don't have it. Kids can't go to school if they don't have it. Right? There's always some new magic way to optimize immune system function, but what it really comes down to is making sure you're healthy and that you have optimized vitamin D. Vitamin D plays an important role in regulating your both innate and adaptive immunity. It also is going to help fight infections, whether it's a respiratory illness or a virus of any sort or even the flu. Vitamin D is one of your biggest defenses against this. It also lowers chronic inflammation in your body, which is important because if you have chronic inflammation and then you get sick, you are always way worse off. And also, it's going to help reduce the risk of autoimmune diseases like MS, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes. If I had an autoimmune disease, I would be really focused on optimizing my vitamin D levels as one of the most important things you could do during this time.
Now, let's take a look at your cardiovascular system. Vitamin D plays a critical role here and most people have a grave concern about their cardiovascular system, right? Every time you go to the doctor, your blood pressure, your cholesterol, there's so many concerns around this and rightfully so because you know what? It's one of the top causes of death prematurely worldwide. Now, vitamin D is going to help regulate your blood pressure and this is doing so by influencing the renin-angiotensin system. I know that's kind of a big word, but you know, I just want to share with you why that happens. It also is going to reduce arterial stiffness and vascular inflammation, which is very important when it comes to the topic of discussing whether or not cholesterol is harmful or good for you. And also, vitamin D is going to help decrease your risk of hypertension, heart disease, and even stroke.
But one of the big questions that we always look at with vitamin D is, well, what are optimum levels for you? Now, I've covered this in great detail in some of my other videos, but I want to briefly mention it in this one because most people misunderstand this. When you go and you get a vitamin D test, you're going to have a score basically from 0 to 100 nanograms per milliliter. Now, when you get this test score back, it could be at 30, it could be at 80. What I always tell people is that the most ideal level of vitamin D is between 80 and 100, with 100 being the goal. Always just think like 100% is the good grade. 100 is your goal with vitamin D. Now, many people are going to the doctor's office and they're finding out that their vitamin D score is like 50 nanograms per milliliter and their doctors say you're good. But the reality is is that's still low for someone who wants to have optimum health. Optimum vitamin D levels are around 100 nanograms per milliliter. And so if you want your immune system and your brain health to function at its peak potential, which I would, right? And I think you want that for yourself, too. Remember that you want your vitamin D levels at the high point, not towards the low point.
Now, as far as supplementation goes with it, this is important. And then we'll get back to the rest of the details as to how vitamin D affects every organ and tissue in your body because I think that this information is going to transform your health in ways you didn't even realize today. So, when we look at taking vitamin D, there's a few things to take into consideration. We want to take vitamin D3, which is the active form, and we want to combine it with K2. If you combine it even with a little bit of magnesium, whether it's coming from a multi or an additional supplement, that's fine as well, and it's going to help with the absorption of it. But one of the big points I want to make is that if you're looking for a daily maintainer, typically 5,000 IUs will help you maintain on a day-to-day basis. But if you're trying to build your levels of vitamin D, around 10,000 IUs is where you want to be. I'll put links in the description to a 5,000 and a 10,000 IU vitamin D that I utilize every day.
Now, let me point this out to you that personally I am taking 20,000 IUs of vitamin D every day. And I'll explain to you in just a second why I'm doing so. I actually have a health condition myself that I'm working to overcome. Now, when you're taking vitamin D, it's important to take it on a daily basis. A lot of times if you go on the internet or you follow traditional Western medicine, you're going to see that they use these giant doses of vitamin D. Just take 50,000 IUs once a week. The problem is is that vitamin D acts as more of a hormone in your body more so than a vitamin. And one of the things I can tell you about helping a lot of people manage their hormones, whether it's testosterone or estrogen or progesterone, doesn't matter what hormone it is, one of the things that is true across the board is that the more that you can create a just baseline balance of these hormones, the better you feel. So you could imagine if you take this giant dose and you have this giant spike of vitamin D one day in your body throughout the week, it's not going to be as effective and you're not going to feel as well as if you were to take it every single day at a decent moderate dose. So therefore, if you want the best results, you want to take it daily and not just one giant dose once a week. And this is where that 5,000 and that or that 10,000 IUs comes in and works like magic. So those are in the description below.
Let's go ahead and look at your gut microbiome and why this is so important here. First of all, vitamin D3 is going to support the gut barrier integrity. Now, I had mentioned to you that I am dealing with some issues in my own health that I'm trying to solve. Recently, I did a gut test and sure enough, I have high amounts of intestinal permeability, which is also known as leaky gut. Well, one of the great ways to help solve issues with your gut lining is high amounts of vitamin D. That's why I'm currently taking 20,000 IUs a day. Now, vitamin D3 is also going to influence your gut microbiota diversity, which is important. And also, when you look at low levels of vitamin D, it's associated with irritable bowel disease, leaky gut, and gut related inflammation. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that anybody I test in my clinic has these issues going on. Almost across the board. So, a lot of times these different gut issues don't actually show up in the way of symptoms, but they do exist. But if you're someone who's dealing with any type of gut issues like bloating or chronic issues like constipation or diarrhea, any of these things, these are symptoms that you probably have some serious gut inflammation in intestinal wall issues. So, vitamin vitamin D is a huge win there.
Uh, pancreas and blood sugar regulation. So, a lot of people don't think that vitamin D plays a role in their metabolic health. Well, let me tell you, it does. Vitamin D enhances insulin secretion from pancreatic beta cells, which is very important for anybody who's dealing with insulin resistance. It will improve insulin sensitivity and also a deficiency in vitamin D is associated with type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance as I mentioned.
Now, it also is going to have an impact on your reproductive system in both men and women. In men, it's linked to testosterone production. So all these men who are getting testosterone replacement therapy and not paying attention to the fact that they have plummeted vitamin D levels, it's just craziness. Okay? And in women, it supports fertility, menstrual regularity, and also healthy pregnancy outcomes. So it's very important for women as well.
Now, from a cellular health perspective and a cancer protection perspective, vitamin D is going to help regulate cell differentiation and apoptosis, which is cell death. Vitamin D is also going to suppress tumor growth in cancer cells. So whether it's colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, vitamin D plays a huge role in suppressing these tumor growth cells. And then also it acts as a cellular gatekeeper, reducing DNA damage, which is very important because we don't want to express bad genes in our body.
From a skin health perspective, this one's very interesting because we have heard how many times since the 80s that if you go out in the sun that you are going to get skin cancer. Now, what's almost hilarious and certainly ironic is that the skin cancer rates have skyrocketed since the 80s and this is when they started telling people to stop going in the sun. Well, from a skin perspective, vitamin D is going to regulate skin cell turnover. Vitamin D will help reduce skin psoriasis and eczema. It also will help with wound healing, reducing oxidative stress in the skin tissue as well. So, your skin health relies greatly on vitamin D.
Vitamin D can come from supplementation, which I currently use, and also is going to come from spending time out in the sun. It's estimated that every single person who wants to have optimized vitamin D levels needs to spend between 30 to 60 minutes in the sun every single day. And that time in the sun isn't wearing a dress shirt with long slacks like I have on right now. It's out in a bathing suit in the sun with the sun hitting your skin. And most of us aren't doing that. So, we need to make sure that we're supplementing if that's not you. Hey, if you're in a position where you can spend that time in the sun, that's awesome. And and that's a great way to get vitamin D. Sometimes people think that uh you're just uh pushing supplementation when you could get it for free from the sun. No, by all means, if you get it from the sun, that is awesome. However, it's not a reality in my life. And I can tell you it's just not a statistical reality in most people's lives. Whenever I look at people in my clinic and work with them and test their blood work, I'm telling you the majority of them have vitamin D issues. I happen to live in a cloud-covered state where it's cold many months out of the year. And that's a huge factor. But still, you want to really pay attention to your reality and are you spending that much time in the sun or not? And if not, you're going to have a deficiency.
Now, your mental health and your mood is also very important here. It kills me how many people are suffering with mental health issues today and not paying attention to vitamin D. So, vitamin D deficiency is associated with seasonal affective disorder, which is so common where I live. Also, depression and cognitive decline. So, let's make sure we're keeping that vitamin D level up. Vitamin D helps regulate genes involved in mood and neurological resilience.
So, as you can see from this video, vitamin D is critically important for every organ and tissue in your body. And therefore, if you want to have optimal health, you need to have vitamin D optimized in your body. It's a low-hanging fruit and an easy way to really improve your health. I put links in the description below to the 5,000 IU and the 10,000 IU. Remember, 5,000 IU is for maintaining. 10,000 is for building your vitamin D levels in your body and increasing your numbers on a lab test. So, hopefully this video was helpful. Send it to a friend who needs this information, who is truly suffering and needs some extra support. This will be very helpful to them. I'm Dr. Nick Sarowski. It's been a pleasure hanging out with you in today's video. Thanks for hanging with me. And let's go ahead and check out this video over here next.