23 Surprising Benefits of Vitamin D and Consequences of Low Vitamin D

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on 23 Little Known Benefits of Vitamin D. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, we're going to talk about what vitamin D is, the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, the benefits of vitamin D and sources of vitamin D. Now, if you are a mental health counselor watching this or you're just used to this channel being about mental health stuff, you may be saying, what does vitamin D have to do with mental health? Well, a lot, surprisingly so. As we go through this, you'll start to see some of the connections. But it's important to recognize that vitamin D is associated with a variety of inflammatory conditions. We know that inflammation is associated with mood problems and sleep problems. Vitamin D is associated with sleep problems and it's associated with hormone and neurotransmitter regulation, specifically serotonin. So let's get into the presentation. Vitamin D is also known as calciferol. Just kind of putting that out there, not super important. However, what is important on this slide is the fact that the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the general population in the U.S. 41.6%. 41.6%. Now, when you start learning about all of the things that vitamin D impacts, you're going to start to see a connection between why we might be becoming such a sick society and having so many more problems. Not to say that vitamin D is just going to fix everything, but it is one of those things that can be adjusted, that can help improve health, mental health and quality of life. Causes of vitamin D deficiency well, vitamin D is synthesized by the skin in sunlight. This is the vitamin we think of. When we think of seasonal affective disorder. We think of people not getting enough sunlight, not getting enough vitamin D as a result. Well, that's not the only way we get vitamin D, but that's one of the ways. However, as people get older, their skin thins. And when the skin begins to thin, it is not as effective at synthesizing vitamin D. Similarly, people with darker skin pigments are also less able to effectively synthesize vitamin D and people in higher latitudes. And they found that the latitude 35 degrees and above, which is roughly Chattanooga, Tennessee, the southern border of Tennessee north, experience many more months of UVB radiation deficiency, if you will, than those that are in more southern latitudes. Obesity, another cause of deficiency. When the skin synthesizes the vitamin D, that's all well and good, that doesn't change based on obesity. However, vitamin D is fat soluble, so they hypothesize that the vitamin D gets trapped in the adipose tissue, in the fat tissues, and is less bioavailable in the body. Smoking contributes to vitamin D deficiency. Gastric bypass contributes to vitamin D deficiency, as do inflammatory bowel conditions. Some of the vitamin D is absorbed especially in that upper small intestine. And if that is inflamed or bypassed completely, then the body may have more difficulty absorbing. Even if the vitamin D is there, the body may not be able to absorb it and use it. And people with kidney disease also have more difficulty with vitamin D deficiency. Now, I put vegan on here because most of your sources of vitamin D, with the exception of sunlight, are from animal based sources. However, there are vegan foods out there that are fortified with vitamin D, fortified with vegan sources of vitamin D. So being vegan doesn't mean you are necessarily going to have a vitamin D deficiency as long as you're paying attention and making sure that you're eating foods that are fortified or talking with your doctor about supplementation. So let's talk about the benefits of vitamin D. And y' all know I get really excited when I start diving into PubMed and finding all the connections between things. So of course I got excited putting this presentation together. We know most people know that vitamin D, as well as calcium are involved in maintaining bone health and preventing osteoporosis. So that's not one of the little known benefits of vitamin D that is probably the most prominently known. Other physical benefits of vitamin D include muscle strength. They found that in people, both athletes and children in the studies that I looked at who were provided supplemental vitamin D to make sure that their vitamin D levels were adequate or even a little bit super therapeutic, tended to have more muscle strength, especially in the lower half of the body. Now why it's in the lower half is more than in the upper half. They don't really know, but they did find a definite correlation. Cancer, they found a strong correlation between vitamin D levels and the prevention of cancer. Now again, vitamin D is not going to prevent all cancers, but it is one tool in the toolbox that may be helpful, especially for estrogen receptor positive breast cancers, prostate cancers, colorectal cancers, those were three that stuck out to me. So cancer prevention is another benefit of adequate levels of vitamin D. According to the National Institute of Health, vitamin D also can benefit and help prevent cardiovascular disease. Now, a lot of the research I was finding in PubMed is kind of iffy on that. However, National Institute of Health put it out there, I'm sharing it with you. It Definitely. And I'm going to jump down here a little bit. It definitely improves risk factors such as cholesterol levels. So risk factors for cardiovascular disease. It hasn't been as reliably shown to improve the outcomes of cardiovascular disease, but it definitely can help improve risk factors for the development of cardiovascular disease. Multiple sclerosis and type 2 diabetes are also improved through the management of vitamin D levels. Immunity they found, and you probably heard about this a lot over the past couple of years, but this is something we've known about for quite a while. Vitamin D is integrally involved in our immune system. Low vitamin D is correlated with a lower immune system, with more infections and so on and so forth. Now I keep saying correlated. What does that mean? Correlated means we see low vitamin D more frequently in people with these conditions. It doesn't necessarily mean that vitamin D caused it. There's a correlation and there may be some causative aspects that they're trying to ferret out. But what we're really looking at here is just the data that shows that, okay, if you look at people, for example, with multiple sclerosis, they tend to have much lower levels of vitamin D than people who don't have multiple sclerosis. Wonder why, what's going on there? And vitamin D is also super important for helping to regulate sleep. It improves sleep quality and regulates sleep partly because it's involved in the production of melatonin. Vitamin D is necessary to break down tryptophan to make serotonin and to break down serotonin to make melatonin. So vitamin D is involved in both, you know, junctures in the process. So vitamin D is really important. That's another reason that vitamin D is associated with mood that we'll just talk about in a few minutes. Vitamin D is also associated with autoimmunity. And people who have autoimmune disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune thyroiditis, often have low levels of circulating vitamin D. So low levels of vitamin D have been associated with flare ups of autoimmune disorders, kind of coinciding with that. We know that autoimmunity, it involves inflammation. But even in people who do not have autoimmune disorders, vitamin D has shown to have some anti inflammatory properties to it. Bonus. Now some other interesting features that you might, might not have thought about. Vitamin D helps to increase testosterone, improve semen quality and sperm and sperm motility in biological males. So we've seen a lot of studies coming out over the past few years about a reduction in semen quality and a reduction in fertility and people questioning what might be going on with this. It also coincides with an increase in people spending more time inside on video games, in indoor jobs, etc. And that coincides when we spend more time indoors, we're outside less getting less sunlight and we tend to have lower levels of vitamin D. Is that going to solve all the problems? No, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying it is an interesting factor to consider if somebody is having difficulty, if a biological male is having difficulty with fertility, to take a look at that vitamin D level. That's one of those things that might be able to be tweaked to improve the person's situation. Vitamin D is also important for estrogen synthesis and regulation. Now remember I said higher levels of vitamin D, they're looking at using vitamin D supplementation in people with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. And some of the studies I read quite honestly went over my head. So I didn't get too far down into the weeds. But the take home from the studies was that vitamin D is essential for the functioning of the gonadal system of the reproductive system in both biological males and biological females. It's essential. As I mentioned a minute ago, vitamin D regulates serotonin synthesis. If you don't have vitamin D, then tryptophan is not going to be able to be broken down into serotonin. So you're going to have people who are getting plenty of the raw byproducts, but their body can't efficiently do anything with it because they're missing parts. It's kind of like trying to put together a piece of furniture you got that just doesn't have all the parts with it. And interestingly, I know I keep saying interestingly, I was just fascinated by a lot of this hearing, elderly children and people with diabetes. The three studies I looked at all showed very robust evidence that hearing loss correlated strongly with low levels of vitamin D as well as low levels of calcium. But, so that's another interesting fact. And remember, calcium and vitamin D work together in order to maintain strong bones and maintain neurological functioning, affective, emotional, cognitive benefits of vitamin D. They found that vitamin D levels, low vitamin D levels are associated with anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorders, the development of dementia and Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and adhd. Conversely, supplementation or regulation of vitamin D levels seems to improve symptoms in these different conditions. Now, with adhd, the studies that I looked at indicated that it was much more effective if vitamin D was also co administered with omega 3 fatty acids. Not that I'm prescribing that. I'm not recommending that. But it is an interesting data point to discuss with your physician. Vitamin D is fat soluble. It's not one of those vitamins that if you take too much of it, you're just going to pee it out. And that's not great anyway because it's still hard on the kidneys. Vitamin D is fat soluble, so you can get to toxic levels. The tolerable upper intake level for vitamin D, according to the USRDA, is approximately 4,000 IU for adults. The USRDA further says that for people between the ages of 1 and 70 years old, the recommended daily allowance is 600 IU per day. Now, I know a lot of people take way more than that and that is something to discuss with your doctor whether taking what we call supra therapeutic doses or excessively high doses is beneficial or counterproductive to your goals. You also get vitamin D. You know, you get it from the sunlight and we can't really adequately measure how much we're getting from sunlight on a regular basis, so we just kind of have to guess. Best sources nutritionally of vitamin D include fortified milk, dairy and cereals. You want to look for things that say fortified with vitamin D. You want to read the nutrition labels to see if it's fortified with vitamin D. A lot of your whole grain cereals are also fortified with vitamin D. Interestingly, orange juice, I don't drink orange juice, so, you know, I didn't know this, but a lot of orange juice is also fortified with vitamin D. Now that came about more recently and my guess is because they noted that 41 point something 3 or 6% over 41% of the population was vitamin D deficient. So they started fortifying more things. Tuna and salmon both have high levels of vitamin D. Salmon has more than your recommended need. More than 600 IU in one serving. Tuna doesn't have as much, but it does have a fair amount of vitamin D in it. Cod liver oil is high in vitamin D and pasture raised egg yolks. Pasture raised means these are chickens that have been able to get out and eat bugs and forage and do that sort of thing. They're not eating just a straight, pure carbohydrate or grain diet that has very little nutritional value, quite honestly. And the final way to get vitamin D is sunlight. Now, a lot of us are concerned about sunlight because we don't want to get skin cancer and we know it contributes to, to premature skin aging and all that. Kind of stuff. 10 to 30 minutes of sunlight three times a week is all you need, allegedly, to get the amount of vitamin D you need to maintain your health and your well being. So I want you to think about how much time do you spend walking from your house to your car, from your car to your office, from your car to the store? You probably spend 10 to 30 minutes per day outside, walking around, checking the mail, doing those things. It doesn't have to be 10 minutes all in one shot. One little tip from Oregon State University was to look at your shadow. If your shadow is the same height or shorter than you, then that is an efficient time for your body to be getting vitamin D during the day. If your shadow is longer than you, then you're probably not getting enough of that UVB radiation to synthesize sufficient amounts of vitamin D. Now the caveat to this. Remember I said you need to be in. If you're in more northern latitudes, then you may have more Difficulty getting the UVB radiation from the sun. November through April, north of 35 degrees latitude, which is roughly Chattanooga, Tennessee. Even during the day, they say we do not get enough UVB radiation to effectively synthesize the efficient levels of vitamin D with the guideline of 10 to 30 minutes three times a week. I'm not recommending. By no means am I saying, okay, go stay outside all day long without sunscreen. No, absolutely not. What I'm saying is November through April, you may need to pay more attention to your intake of vitamin D through nutritional means and not solely rely on sunlight year round. People that are north of 40 degrees latitude, and I didn't look at that, but my guess is that's up around Canada will not get enough UVB rays year round to synthesize enough vitamin D. So I thought that was another interesting little data point. So it does depend kind of on where you live, how much time you're outside and when you're outside. Remember that's shadow that we're looking at first thing in the morning. Your shadow is going to be longer than you. The sun has to be pretty high in the sky in order for your shadow to be the same height or shorter than you Vitamin D receptors. Oh, and before I even get there, it occurs to me that children, when they go out for recess, are often going out for recession. They're getting that 10 to 30 minutes of sunlight at least three times a week. And that's another reason that we really do need to advocate for children to have outside time every day because it helps with their growth. It helps with their neurological development. It helps with serotonin synthesis and mood and a variety of other issues. So that can also be another argument that you use for not restricting recess time anyhow. Summary Vitamin D receptors are found throughout the human body and involved in nearly every bodily system. Vitamin D deficiencies have been correlated with a variety of health and mental health problems. In most situations these disorders occur in the presence of of a vitamin D deficiency and imbalance of other vitamins or minerals like calcium or omega 3s. So again we can't just say vitamin D is the magic elixir. No, but we know that it is probably a component of a good healthy elixir. Although 40 plus percent of people are deficient, Vitamin D is fat soluble and does have upper limits of tolerability. So you don't want to go out and just start taking mega doses of vitamin D. Goldilocks principle Remember, too much can be just as bad as too little. Supplementation should always be discussed with your doctor.