5 Minute Facts - Vitamin D

This is episode 129 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, vitality and peak performance coach, Kari Schneider. Welcome, guys. Look at you amazing humans. Great to see you. Okay, here we go. I don't know, I was on another call, so I'm not sure. I wasn't able to get the some of the questions. But I have some other questions here as well. So let's dive into vitamin D. Fancy, right? Who knew? So here's our five facts on vitamin D. So five facts on vitamin D. Number one, not all levels of vitamin D are created equal. And what I mean by that, they're not created equally. What I mean by that is that when you go to the doctor and somebody tests you for vitamin D deficiency, what happens is that you fall onto a spectrum. And when you fall onto a spectrum, if you're low on that spectrum, the doctor is still going to say that you're fine because you're still within the normal spectrum. And if somebody's performing high performance sports, regular sports, they're a growing athlete, they've lost some weight, any of these changes in body, and that happens to a body, then guess what? We might need more levels of vitamin D for optimal health and optimal immune function. So when somebody says they went to their doctor, they got tested for their vitamin D levels and they were within normal. That doesn't mean a whole lot unless they're actually at optimal levels for performing best in their sport or for optimal health. So that's number one. Number two, vitamin D supplementation is one of the top five most validated supplements in the world. And I'm talking about all of the supplements that are available in the world. Vitamin D is top five as most validated. It's within the top five as the most validated supplement supplements in research in the world. So that's a huge one as well. Number three, your RDI, which is your recommended daily intake, is between 400 to 800 international units. Now, the thing about that is unfortunate because what is being recommended now in research is between 1,000 and 10,000 international units. And I know a few people who take more than 10,000 international units because vitamin D is so efficacious for so many things. So if I am talking to a client or someone who is looking for optimal health, then I will always advise that they are taking more than what the RDI is recommending. So we always recommend taking anywhere between that 1,000 and 10,000 international units for our recommended dosage. The beautiful thing about vitamin D is that it's fat soluble. And what I mean by that when it's fat soluble you can take vitamin D a whole bunch at once and not take it again for another week because it's, it's staying within your system. So it's not water soluble like some other vitamins where you would have to take it daily to get the benefit from it. With vitamin D we could take a whole bunch on a weekend and then not take it till the next weekend. So that's one of the cool things about vitamin D that we can do the next 1 number 4 for our 5 facts for vitamin D is that there are so many health benefits this will decrease. This will prevent rickets, it'll decrease your likelihood for ms, it'll decrease your likelihood for heart disease. It improves your immune performance including fighting off flus, depression, decreased depression. It facilitates calcium and phosphate use in your body. It facilitates our, what do they call their called messenger rna. So it helps proteins in our cells. There's so many things that vitamin D helps with, including depression, improving mood, long term cognitive benefits. So you have to make sure that vitamin D is in the mix and most of us don't get enough. So the number five, which is the really key part here is that anyone who does not live close to the equator, including everyone in Canada, everyone in Canada, anyone in northern US, anyone who is not close to the equator does not typically get enough vitamin D because most of us are not in the sun enough. Especially if you have dark skin or you know, people with dark skin. If somebody's got dark skin and they're in northern or far southern areas, not close to the equator, then that because the skin is processing the vitamin D from the sun and the skin is designed to help prevent too much sun exposure. If your skin is dark then you're not getting as much vitamin D to process the way for us to prevent this. One last thing, high fructose corn syrup prevents our absorption and our usage or our optimal absorption and usage of vitamin D. The US is the number one consumer of high fructose corn syrup in the entire world. And it uses so much high fructose corn sirup that the number two consumer of high fructose corn sirup is half of what the US would consume. That's how much high fructose corn sirup the US uses. So that alone prevents absorption. It's one of the key, it's a, it just doesn't give us optimal absorption for Vitamin D. So that's a key takeaway. So what can we do about this in food? It's very hard to get enough vitamin D from our food alone. But foods like sardines or salmon, that has bones in it, those are great sources of vitamin D. So are egg yolks. Those are great sources of vitamin D. However, it's very hard to get enough from food alone. That's why we need the Sunshine. That's why 20 minutes of sunshine every day is recommended. Well, I don't know very many people who get 20 minutes of sunshine every day unless they're living in Mexico and outdoors a lot. So the 20 minutes of sunshine every day is fantastic. But even in places like that are near the equator, go through rainy season. So a lot of people don't get that outdoor exposure like they ordinarily would. That are just small consistent doses of vitamin D. And that's why supplementing with vitamin D can be so efficacious, especially to boost cognitive long term effects and immune system, immune support and all those great things. So what I recommend is a vitamin D supplement called Thorn. I do not make any money from Thorne. I have no affiliation with Thorn. And it looks like, With a vitamin D K stack looks like this, you can order it on Amazon. It's just drops. Dump it upside down and put the drops in your mouth. Mm mm. Vitamin D. So you can look on the label to see what you might be getting from your vitamins alone, what you might be getting from this and then decide whether you are gonna go somewhere in between the range of 1,000 to 10,000 international units. Because quite literally it is that broad. In terms of the recommendation so far there have been no research studies even with high, high dosage of vitamin D that show any adverse effects. That's why some people, that's why the range is so large and that's why some people take so much. I usually just try to go somewhere between the 1,000 and 3,000 international units per day kind of thing. Okay, so that is your 5 minute facts for vitamin D. I hope that serves you because it's such a powerful, powerful supplement. Anybody and everybody in Canada for sure should be supplementing with that. And even if you are near the equator and not getting outside every day, that is a key supplement as well. So I hope that serves you that way. And now let's open up for Q and A. Okay everyone, before we go into your personal Q and A's, any Q and A's on the vitamin D, the vitamin D specifically, what do you Got. You can pop it in the chat, see what we have there. Does anyone already supplement with vitamin D? Good. Okay, some nods there. Awesome. Perfect. Ok, so bring on your other questions. What else do you have? Because I've got a couple questions here, but I want to see what you have specifically. Who's on. So Brendan, Paul, Gretchen, Cassie, Joni, Charlotte, what do you have for questions here? Vitamin D or anything other? Any other questions as well? Okay, pop them in the chat. I'm going to tell you about a question that came from a client earlier, and this is that this client lifted a whole bunch of weight and they had a metric on their they were wearing a wearable technology to monitor calories, to monitor health, all of that good stuff. And it came away saying they burned about 500 calories and this is a fairly large person. And they were just kind of going, well, how is that possible? I was sure I burned 800 to 1,000 calories. How did I only burn 500 calories? Have any of you felt that way before? When you've put in a lot of work and, and you're thinking, I must have burned so much and then you wonder, okay, well, what the heck, My wearable said I burned 200 calories, or my thing said I burned 300 calories. So those metrics, we can fall into a real deep hole of paralysis by analysis, by going, ok, well, I burned this much here and now I have to take in this many calories here or eat this little here. And it can be really problematic to get to where you want to go because our body is different from day to day, especially female bodies with hormone fluctuations and even male bodies with just caffeine consumption sleep the night before. How we operate metabolically day to day changes. So how many of you have felt one day like you are just really low on your energy kind of dragging along, and the next day you might feel like you have got tons of energy, you maybe had a better sleep, you are operating differently metabolically. And those wearables, your garments, your, all those things, they don't always pick that up. And so it is giving you an estimate based on how much you moved. It's giving you an estimate based on what, what your age and your gender and your weight are. But that could be off by 100 calories to 300 calories day in and day out. So if you're trying to predict how much to eat, to refuel from that workout, it can be a really, a really loose, loose estimate. It's really hard to be accurate that way. There is so, so much sports science out there for so many decades, and yet this is not something that has ever. And Paul can attest to this, I can attest to this. Joni can probably attest to this. Cassie is just like, huh? Because nobody ever would give a high performance athlete the exact diet plan that would ever work. Because no nutritionist could, no registered dietitian could ever understand exactly what, what the athlete was going through day to day. And when they would try to, they would usually miss the mark, they would usually be off by however much and then something would need to be adjusted. So what works better, what we're quite literally doing when we do that? We're cutting our head off from our body. And what I mean by that is that we're trying to analyze it statistically, analytically, with whatever information that's coming at us without checking in with our body first. So what I'd like to suggest in that question that that client posed to me is check in with your body first before you rely on your metrics, because your metrics are going to give you great information. But you know your body best and your body has all of the information accurately that may not be coming accurately from your wearable. Because this technology, the algorithms are getting better and better and better. Heart rate variability, triaxial accelerometers, GPS signaling, all of that is in our wearables. And it's getting better and better and better because we have so many data points from so many humans using them, but it's still not fully understood in everything that we can get. And they're not fully accurate, even on sleep data, even on heart rate data. So to use that only is doing ourselves a disservice from connecting to the rest of our body and tapping into feeling what our body feels. Does that make sense? Got a few nods there. Ok, so do you have questions on that one that I just relayed? And then I'll go into some of the other questions here. Okay, so on the vitamin D topic, if the calcium supplement has 500 international units, I'm assuming you mean a vitamin D. Okay, so the calcium supplement has 500 international new units of the vitamin D with it as well. So there's calcium in that supplement. Plus there's vitamin D in that supplement, I'm assuming, and I take one a day, then just add to it. Yeah, for sure. You can even just add to it on the weekend. You can just get some drops of this, order that on Amazon, pick that up somewhere, and then just add another several drops on the weekend and then you're good. It's really like I haven't had any. I've never seen any research or had any reports of anyone taking too much vitamin D ever. And I know people who take upwards of tens of thousands of units per day and they have patches on their arms to absorb it. And these are friends of mine. So I'm not telling you exactly what number to take, but here's what I am telling you. The recommended daily dosage of four to 800 international units is way too freaking low based on where the research is now for the health benefits for it. So that's why we're doing these kinds of things. Cassie says on the calorie and the nutrition recommendation, they'd have to follow you around every single day and night to find out exactly how many calories you're burning. And Brendan says, are there any benefits to pea protein over a whey or other type of protein? So here's where those two. That's a fantastic question, Brandon, because so many people are considering taking plant based proteins versus animal based proteins. So here's what you're looking at with the whey protein. Whey protein typically comes from three sources where there's the most cows and they usually come from us, Chinese, Canadian or New Zealand cows. That's usually where whey protein is coming from. China, us, Canada, New Zealand. The worst place you can source your whey protein from would be China. The second worst would be US because they don't have the kind of standards for their animals or what their animals consume. They the way that Europe does, Canada does, and especially New Zealand. If you're getting whey protein, your best source would be from Canada or New Zealand, New Zealand being number one. If you're sourcing whey protein to get again, the best whey protein, you're looking at something that's non gmo, organic, grass fed. So those are all. When you consider a cow, you have to consider all of the ways that the cows are fed and treated and all of those things. So top two would be New Zealand and Canada. And you're looking at non gmo, ideally organic and grass fed as well. So then you're looking at a decent price point because of trying to get all those factors met, although there are decent options out there for that. Now the other problem that some people have with whey protein is the fact that it's a milk product. So some people have a harder time digesting the whey from whey protein. Now some people who have difficulty with milk have no problem with whey protein, it just really depends on the human and the bacteria that they have in their gut. So it's person to person. So here's what I would suggest, but here's the thing about whey protein, Brandon, and it's that whey protein is a fantastic source of protein because it tends to be quickly absorbed for us if you can tolerate milk products. So that's why it ends up being a fantastic source of protein. Pea protein has the exact same issues, but on the flip side, some people can't digest some of the fibers that pea protein comes with. So some people have trouble with pea protein in terms of absorbing it. You tend in a pea protein to have to take more actual bulk of powder to get the same amount of grams of protein. Usually I have to take more powder of pea protein or rice protein or soy protein to get the same amount of actual grams of protein as you would in a whey protein. So you might have to have like a scoop that's around an eighth of a cup of whey protein to get say 30 grams of protein. Whereas you take that same amount of pea protein and put it in your shake and you probably have half the grams of protein that you've actually taken. So those are some of the pros and cons. I hope everyone's following what I'm saying there. Do you follow what I'm saying? So those are some of the pros and cons in terms of the actual consumption of it, the quality of it. Again, with a pea protein, you're looking for something that's ideally not non gmo. So you're not getting something that's genetically modified and you're looking at something that most people struggle with some of the flavors. So if you're getting pea protein, oftentimes there's a lot of added either flavoring or sugar. So you might want to watch for what kind of sweetener is in it, that it's either a natural sweetener or it's just be aware that there's going to be some flavoring aspects because pea protein and whey protein are flavored in order to make it palatable. If they don't flavor it, it's usually going to taste like crap. Your other ways, if you don't have any flavoring, you can put in fruit in your smoothie. When you add your protein, then that's going to give you the flavor right there. And that would be the ideal scenario. So I hope that helps. Brendon, other questions here. What else you got? Training related, nutrition related, sleep Anything that is optimizing your health, your wellness, your day to day function. What do you got for me? There was one. I had a client recently. He's a football player and he plays football in the league. And then he also has a job and a new baby as well. And in having the new baby in his life, his routines got thrown off completely. Now, how many of you have had your routines thrown off because of a change in schedule due to Covid? How many of you have had your routines thrown off because of some other thing in life, like a child or moving places or renovations or, you know, all those things so it doesn't matter what it is. Renovations, Covid, new baby, moved, all of those things will throw your routines off. The first place to manage that, going to be here to decide what your new routine looks like. And Paul and I were really thrown with that. Not only with COVID and moving into a new house all at the same time. So if your routine is thrown off in order not to what I would suggest in order not to overwhelm your brain, pick the two, or at most three. So one to three most important things. Instead of trying to revamp a whole morning routine or revamp a whole daytime routine or a whole evening routine, just pick one or two things from the morning and revamp that. So for instance, a healthy breakfast first thing in the morning. Or another option would be more water. If you're going to have a coffee, make sure you're doubling the water instead of just the coffee alone. Keep it as simple as possible. Someone drinks water, Joanna's like, yes, I'm drinking water right now. Keep it as simple as possible initially until that thing is just normal for you. Just like we do in the reset, we create a vitality habit that is easy to do, easy not to do, and you are 80% or more confident that that thing is going to get done, that you can do it for sure. So pick, just get it narrowed down to one or two things before you revamp an entire routine. Especially if you've got a kitchen out of commission, you're packing things, you've got different people at home that you wouldn't ordinarily have. Just pick those small things and start with that. Okay. What else do you have? Another question or two before we hop off? Right. Okay. So Joni says she's a coach and she's on a pool deck a lot. When she's on the pool deck, it's easier to remember to drink water. And then when she's not on the pool deck because of A new lockdown. She has a harder time drinking water because the same cues aren't there. And that's what happens when our routine is thrown off because we don't have the same cues so that water can be there. So here's one of the things that is sneaky for me to do is that I will, if I go to have a meal, I will make sure that I've drinking at least 8 ounces of water before I consume that meal. And the reason is it's not about for me, it's not about not eating too much because I want to make sure I'm getting enough calories in for me. It's about making sure that I'm not being triggered for hunger when it's actually thirst. Because when I have not hydrated properly in the day, I will literally be waking up in the night guzzling water because I didn't hydrate during the day. And honestly, I would rather that we all get up in the night and go pee instead of guzzling water because then at least we know that we've consumed enough water throughout the day because it's so vital for our cellular processes. And considering our cellular processes, think of it like this. If your blood literally gets thicker when we're not hydrated, so our heart literally has to work harder for each beat to get the blood to pump. And all of those cell, every cell lives in fluid. So if we're dehydrated, we are shutting everything down to a slower state that's just not working as well. Thought, here's a question, thought about what time of day to eat, any advantages to certain times. So remember we were always taught three or four square meals a day and that was the thing. And breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Well, more recent research has thrown a lot of that out the window because you really don't have to eat first thing when you get up. Breakfast is not necessarily the most important meal of the day. There's been many, many studies that look at people who ate earlier, ate later, do all the things. What really matters is when you're getting, you get your food in when it's best for you. That's what matters, quite literally. Now we know with time restricted eating, intermittent fasting, you could eat one meal in the day, and that's called they nickname that Omad. Omad. One meal a day. You could eat one meal in the day and fast the whole rest of the time. And if you think back 10 years ago, everybody would have been shaming you for that because that would be an awful thing to do. That's horrible for your health now. It's horrible for performance in sport. So we need to be clear that athletes struggle with this because athletes are taught to fuel optimally for performance and that usually means that they're fueled going into it. They have recovery snacks coming out of it to replenish glycogen, replenish stores that have been depleted and then they have to be refueled for the next practice that might be in that same day. So that's a different beast. But if you're only training once a day, that is 24 hour window is plenty to recover from that training. So when you eat and how you eat throughout is not going to be make or break. So most of us who are training one time a day and we have got 24 hours to recover, then we can eat how we need to and how we want to throughout the day. If you feel best training on an empty stomach, then do it. If you feel awful doing that, then don't. However, if you're trying to break a sugar addiction, then by all means try and go a little bit longer without carbs between times. And we're going to do no sugar in March, so feel free to join us on that as well. Yeah. So the only here's one advantage timing wise. I do want to say this though. Eating right before bed is not a great idea for optimal sleep. So timing your fueling your last meal to be sure that it's two to three hours before your sleep time would be best for your sleep overall. Sometimes even that two hour mark, a small snack, serves people really well so they're not feeling really hungry in the middle of the night or they're sleeping through that. But making sure you're not eating or drinking alcohol or caffeine or anything. But alcohol disrupts sleep as well. So a lot of people will like to drink wine right before bed. And when that happens, it feels great because it's really soothing and drowsy. But then metabolically it wakes you back up about or disrupts your sleep. Even if you don't wake up, it'll disrupt your sleep metabolically about two to three hours later. So. So those would be some things for timing and sleep and that kind of thing. Okay, so great job today guys. Thank you for your questions. I hope those serve you and provide some food for thought in your optimal performance and we will see you soon. Have a good day everyone. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team podcast, you'll love being on on the team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To join, email us@info powerconditioning.com with subject line team. That's info empowerconditioning.com we can't wait for you to be on the team.