Transcription
You may have been told that vitamin D levels are really key to maintain at a very high state all winter long. And you might have been told as well that you need to supplement high amounts of vitamin D, like a vitamin D3 pill, uh, in order to maintain this. I want to offer you a different perspective now.
First and foremost, I want to let you know that if you do supplement vitamin D and it's under doctor's orders, do not change this. You have to have conversations with your prescribing physician about stuff like this. But I want to let you know why I don't supplement vitamin D in the winter anymore. It's because I think we've got an incomplete picture as to what the vitamin D receptor and vitamin D does in the summer versus in the winter.
And so, first and foremost, we—I want to say that vitamin D is misnamed; it's a hormone. It is actually a steroid hormone called a secosteroid hormone. And so, when you're supplementing with vitamin D, you're supplementing with a hormone. It's not something I choose to do—do—with any sort of supplements, whether it's melatonin or vitamin D or other hormones like DHEA. I just don't supplement with them because they're part of a feedback loop in concert with other hormones that are meant to be produced in response to environmental signals. Those signals can happen inside the body, and those signals can happen outside of the body. And so I choose not to um mess with those hormone cycles and hormone signals and this beautiful symphony that's at play with them.
You know, some people do. When they start on vitamin D, they feel really good. And so I have used short-term vitamin D therapies for clients who might be struggling with long COVID, or clients who might be dealing with an autoimmune flare of some sort, because it has a steroid effect; it has an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. And so, short-term, there may be a role for vitamin D supplementation. Long-term though, just like any steroid hormones, such as prednisone, which is a medication that can help to lower inflammation quite a bit, but when we're on it long-term, it can really dysregulate so many other aspects of the body. And so that I've seen the same thing with vitamin D in terms of supplementing long-term with vitamin D and um kind of really messing with things like thyroid hormone status um and autoimmune conditions that would feel good at first, but then would actually—it wouldn't actually be beneficial in the long term and could exacerbate them.
And so here's why I think vitamin D isn't necessary to supplement in the winter. When we have adequate melatonin, we have to recognize that vitamin D is made in strong sunlight, in response to sunlight on our skin. And vitamin D3 is made, yes, but guess what—dozens of other metabolites are made as we get vitamin D through the skin. We do not get those other metabolites at all when it comes to just taking a D3 supplement. And taking like 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 is really an unnatural way to—to—to have that amount of vitamin D. The way that we make those amounts of vitamin D is only through sunlight on the skin. There is no food source in nature that would give us that amount of D. And when we get it in food sources, such as let's say liver or or salmon, we get it with other balanced nutrients as well that work well with it, such as vitamin A. And so there's really—I—I think it's reductionist to say your vitamin D level is low, um, it's causing you harm, and so we must supplement a lot to bring it up.
The other thing about vitamin D is that we typically test the storage form of D, not the active form. And so sometimes when clients get both tested, they'll see that their storage form is low because it's being converted into the active form, and that active form is being utilized to help resolve inflammation or resolve an infection, improve immune function. And so um it's an incomplete picture when you get your vitamin D level tested and say, "Oh, you're low." It's a storage form; it's not telling you anything about the active form. And then that active form is just one metabolite of dozens of metabolites. And so, again, an incomplete picture.
Here's the other thing I want you to think of: vitamin D, I consider a hormone of summer, because we can make it in those high-intense UVB windows of light, right? When the UV is strong enough to make vitamin D on our skin, we're meant—we're—we're designed to make a lot of it. I view melatonin to be the hormone of winter. And the reason why—you know, I've talked about melatonin in—in previous um videos already—but what I really think is important with melatonin to recognize with melatonin is that we're supposed to have really high, or more melatonin in the winter, and we're supposed to have more vitamin D in the summer. So it's this balance. If all of a sudden I have high vitamin D all in the winter, I've actually had clients experience things like insomnia, because vitamin D is representative of longer days and shorter nights; that's the exact type of um day-night cycle that we would see in the summer.
Interestingly, melatonin serves many similar purposes as vitamin D. And I believe that the body turns to melatonin in the summer—or I'm sorry, in the winter—in order to support things like our immune function, our ability to regenerate and repair tissue. Um, it really acts as an antioxidant in a very supportive way to calm inflammatory cascades, similar with—similar to vitamin D. It's very supportive; they have a lot of overlap in what they're supportive of and what they can do. And the um the thing that I think really put me over the edge with this was to recognize that there is such a big overlap with them; they're both have hormonal actions that act as an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory; they modulate the immune system; they regulate mitochondrial function; and they've got systemic effects. However, melatonin can also bind to something called the vitamin D receptor. So it's a receptor in the body that's—that helps to promote all of those activities that I just talked about: being anti-inflammatory, mitochondrial activity, immune support. You can stimulate that with melatonin.
And here's what I think is going wrong in the winter: I think vitamin D is meant to go low in the winter because the body is expecting melatonin to go high. And so many of us are not allowing our melatonin to elevate in the winter because we're living in a very bright light environment into the night. And so we're tanking our melatonin as opposed to allowing that melatonin to really build up and have longer amounts of higher and more elevated amounts of melatonin. And so I—I would encourage you to kind of just explore that: maybe it's not about supplementing a really high amount of vitamin D in the winter; maybe it's about maximizing your body's melatonin production. And that happens in two ways: we block the artificial light at night to get the darkness signal to the pineal gland to start releasing melatonin into the bloodstream; and we also expose our bodies to near-infrared wavelengths of light, which is going to—I'm going to talk about in a future video—in order to maximize the melatonin that's made inside of our cells by our mitochondria. And so if we do that in the winter, it's the recipe for health and reduced inflammation and improved immune function all winter long without the need to supplement high-dose vitamin D.
So I haven't supplemented high-dose vitamin D in years now throughout the winter, but I've done all the other things to maximize melatonin, and I have a very healthy winter. Um, it's a beautiful time for me to not have to fear any sort of infections that might come along because I know my immune system can handle them.
So the other only caveat to that is some clients feel really good making vitamin D through their skin all winter long in—using basically what's called narrow-band UV light, also known as a tanning bed, also known as a spry vitamin D lamp. If this is you and you do this and you love this, um, I'm not going to tell you to stop. I'm going to tell you that there's some nuance to it, right? Like you would want to—if there's no UVB light in your environment, say you're in Canada um throughout the winter and there's no UVB light available—you're going to want to do that sometime at least during the day, the middle of the day. So it wouldn't be a smart idea to—to all of a sudden have massive amounts of vitamin D made or UVB light on your skin first thing in the morning or into the evening.
The other caveat to using those sorts of um devices is that you know that narrow-band UV doesn't contain any of the balancing and anti-inflammatory red or infrared wavelengths of light, which is—which is really what we're designed to do when we're—when the skin is receiving from the sun really intense ultraviolet light; it's always being balanced by the nourishing and healing red and infrared wavelengths. And so I have my clients make sure that they use something like a red light therapy panel before or after um being exposed to a tanning bed or a spry lamp in order to support the healing and—and anti-inflammatory um benefits, because narrow-band UVB light is intense, and we need to have the—the uh collagen support and the anti-inflammatory support from red and near-infrared wavelengths of light to be able to heal—heal from it, you know.
Um, so if that's you, that's fine; if you love it—I have my spry lamp just sitting here. Again, it's been sitting here for about three or four years now, and I don't use it in the winter because I find that maximizing melatonin with the darkness and by exposing my body to near-infrared light is the way I can really maximize melatonin. And I can even enhance the—the um—all the—all the things that the vitamin D receptor—I can enhance what they do uh in the body through melatonin. It has—it's not just about um needing to take vitamin D to enhance the vitamin D receptor and its effects; it's about maximizing melatonin. So I hope you can see: vitamin D, that's a hormone of summer; melatonin, that's a hormone of winter. That's why I place a huge emphasis on optimizing melatonin levels all winter long.