“are really linked to the gut microbiome. And we could go into that. But one of the interesting things I learned was, was vitamin D is a hormone. There was a mistake made in calling it a vitamin. Well, I'm very curious to learn about all of this. And also, you've come up with this protocol called the Right Sleep Protocol. Can you walk me through it?”
“humans. And the reason why they don't know it is because there are no drugs that duplicate acetylcholine. There are no drugs. But ultimately, what we found out together was that vitamin D makes the enzyme or the protein that makes a certain reaction happen that makes acetylcholine.”
“that button. Thank you so much. So explain to me, your assertion is that vitamin D is fundamentally linked to a lot of the sleep disorders and deficiencies that we see. How can you prove that to me? I think I would prefer to give you these two examples.”
“But I did vitamin D levels and B12 levels in a group of about 500 patients between September and December of 2009.”
“vitamin D and sleep, and there are no hits. And then I put in vitamin D in the brain, and I wind up going to articles by a guy named Walter Stumpf, S-T-U-M-P-F, who's been writing about vitamin D for 30 years, who has actually published that there are vitamin D receptors in this little stripe along the back of the brainstem that, paralyzes us. Like, he knows the name of this nucleus.”
“the low 30s and below, is there a vitamin D level, not a dose, but a brain or a blood level that I can measure that might make them sleep better? That would be phenomenal. Should we go down this vitamin D road?”
“You have shown that there are vitamin D receptors all over the nuclei that should be running this. Has anybody written about sleep and vitamin D? And he says, no, but it makes perfect sense. It's the hibernation hormone. What else would you do? You sleep longer. And it turns out that when our D goes very low, our brain actually forgets how to sleep.”
“our brain actually forgets how to sleep. That's the easiest way to describe it. That gal that I showed you, she had not only vitamin D, but she had vitamin C. She had vitamin C. She had vitamin D deficiency as the primary deficiency and with secondary deficiency, we're going to talk about, but your brain just becomes completely scattered. And it's what it's supposed to do because the D”
“hormones. D is a hormone. I think that's an important point, which is a lot of people think of vitamin D as some kind of, well, we think of it as a vitamin, but you're telling me it's a hormone. It's the most bizarre thing I've ever run into in medicine. It's really bizarre. Which part?”
“So, they could be having too much or too little. No blood levels are taken. So, you're saying that it should be personalized, the amount of vitamin D. Absolutely. Any hormone that you take, if you compare, that's why the endocrine society is so important. They know, in 2004, when they gave the final recommendation for the doctors and practice,”
“that one didn't work. And then we do this one. And then we do this one. Okay. I'm ashamed that I looked at it that way, but that was my training. So I thought vitamin D was going to fix everything. Within the next six months, my patients start to come back and say horrible things like, my joints ache all over.”
“with burning in her hands and feet. Two women, same month, they have nothing in common except they both have headaches and they've been doing vitamin D with me for two years. And they say, they want to know, is this related to that vitamin D that I've been taking? And now I'm very freaked out because I'm afraid that what I've been doing,”
“that I've made them use more of the B vitamins. So let's just pause there. So you're saying that by asking your patients to take more vitamin D, you're saying that the body has also started to use more B vitamins, which means that by taking more vitamin D, they're now deficient in B vitamins.”
“it. It turns out if you've been taking D for two years, you've actually worked your way into a place where your body has been using more Bs and you are now very profoundly deficient.”
“Yeah. Because I had assumed that D was going to fix everything. Vitamin D. Vitamin D was going to fix their belly, and it didn't. There were several things that did not get better. One, their IBS didn't get better. Two. They didn't lose weight.”
“Oh. Oh. These were all described as bacterial growth factors. I have assumed that vitamin D was a bacterial growth factor because Walter talked about, the GI tract having all sorts of receptors for vitamin D. And so I assumed that the bacteria that lived inside us needed vitamin D to be normal.”
“our cats and dogs that we keep inside. So to summarize for me, what is the link between vitamin D and the B vitamins? It turns out that all the Bs come from the microbiome. Yes. Okay. I understood that. In order to have the correct microbiome, we are actually commensal organisms with our microbiome.”
“So let's bring that into focus. The D by itself did not correct the microbiome. So when I took 5,000 of D between 2020 and 2023, and I took it for three years because my doctor told me it was okay But in 2025. I started to have rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. The D did not correct my microbiome it was okay.”
“She's been taking 30,000 a day for four years. Her D level has stayed the same. It's in the 60s. She's doing a great job of keeping everything the same. That really means that her body is using 30,000 IUs of vitamin D a day for four years.”
“the ones that was on D by itself for two years. If you have been on D for two or three or five years in the past and have developed B vitamin deficiency states, then you will have to go back on D with the B50 and you will do that for three months.”
“So if you look back to that person who was 75, who didn't get sick until they were 75, their skin production, even though they're still out there with their truck farm and still raising their own food. Their skin production rate of vitamin D goes down, and this is probably true for every animal.”
“I hypothesize, and it's important to say this as a hypothesis, that the parallel epidemics of abnormal sleep and abnormal intestinal microbiome are linked to one another through vitamin D deficiency. Proper supplementation doses of vitamin D plus all eight B vitamins appears to return the intestinal”
“So essentially you're saying that if you can return the body's vitamin D and B levels to normal, then the body will kick back up and start producing everything it needs. But I guess the scientific consensus, at the moment, is saying that there's not a link between vitamin D and a vitamin B. Well, it's saying that vitamin D does not cause a vitamin B deficiency. Correct.”
“Then, in the second step, for a period of usually, three to four months, you're still taking B12 if you were B12 deficient. You're still taking vitamin D and you're adjusting your vitamin D dosing based on recommendations, based on your D levels that you're doing every month.”
“If there's not much wrong with you, I think that's the better path, frankly. Supplementing with vitamin D is not the same as being outdoors. Okay, explain that to me. It's not the same. What do you mean it's not the same? How is it different? Because my doctor did a blood test recently, and I did two blood tests.”
“There is a lot of literature about, by a gal named Stephanie Seneff, who says that the vitamin D that we make on our skin is sulfated, which is different than the vitamin D we're taking as supplemented, and it has a different behavior in the body. Number two, it turns out there's a lot of literature that shows that vitamin D is not”
“So, I still recommend that supplementing with D is not the whole answer. Supplementation in and of itself is not what we want. What we want is our kids to be outside much more.”
“You must have coenzyme A to make melatonin. So the things linked to vitamin D are everything from bone disorders, autoimmune diseases, mental health, brain disorders, cardiovascular, metabolic issues, immune infections, and then certain cancers. I imagine at this stage in the conversation, the audience are very much looking for like actionable advice.”
“And you don't have to be in direct sunlight. You have to be in direct sunlight to make vitamin D on your skin. But you should limit the amount that you do so you do not burn your skin. And it's important that UVA, if you're going to go to a tanning salon, if they're using UVA, you are not making vitamin D from that.”
“So you don't have to be in direct sunlight. So if I'm out a window and I can't see. I can't see the sun and it's overcast. Am I still making vitamin D? No, you can't make anything through the window. Okay, so I go outside. I can't see the sun because there's clouds. I'm still making vitamin D. Maybe.”
“When it's thick, dark and overcast or dense storms or clouds that can block up to 70 to 90% of UVB rays. On these days, it's incredibly difficult for your skin to produce any meaningful amounts. Vitamin D. You know, these like lamps that they put on desks and stuff. Can you get vitamin D from that?”
“holy crap, no wonder she's tired. Okay. This is really, really bad. And this is invisible, absolutely invisible to the rest of the physicians because she looks perfect. So I do a B12 level and a thyroid test because I have no idea what to do. And the B12 is profoundly low, low enough that it shows...”
“a B12 level in a headache patient since I've been doing headaches as a part of neurology, which is a large part of neurology. I then start to give B12 recommendations and I do B12 blood tests on all the patients who I have in my little stable. I've done these sleep studies in them.”
“But I did vitamin D levels and B12 levels in a group of about 500 patients between September and December of 2009.”
“some things here that say people are very frequently both low in vitamin D and vitamin B12 at the same time, and this is because they share the same root cause, like a poor gut absorption, aging, or a restrictive diet, not because one vitamin is destroying the other.”
“the B vitamins are very biologically intertwined, both in their intestinal production and cellular use. This suggests that B vitamins, aside from B12, were not meant to be used individually, and returning to restorative sleep with normal supply of the building blocks of cellular repair”
“supplementing B12 if your B12 is at a certain level, below a certain level, taking B50 for three months, and then taking a multivitamin. And that is until your body says, gee, I might need more Bs.”
“stepwise visual assist here. The first three months, if your B12 is low, you will take B12 as a separate supplement. And keep in mind, there's a lot to be learned about multivitamins. For instance, many multivitamins say multivitamin on the front, but they actually have the equivalent of B50 in them.”
“Then, in the second step, for a period of usually, three to four months, you're still taking B12 if you were B12 deficient. You're still taking vitamin D and you're adjusting your vitamin D dosing based on recommendations, based on your D levels that you're doing every month.”
“that I've made them use more of the B vitamins. So let's just pause there. So you're saying that by asking your patients to take more vitamin D, you're saying that the body has also started to use more B vitamins, which means that by taking more vitamin D, they're now deficient in B vitamins.”
“And they live. It turns out that the eight B vitamins were first described as bacterial growth factors. They are chemicals that one bacteria is able to make, and it pushes it out of itself into the environment.”
“But here I am back again with one big question. These two women with the burning in their hands and feet, why did they get B vitamin deficient? If the Bs come from the food, they've had the same diet all along.”
“our cats and dogs that we keep inside. So to summarize for me, what is the link between vitamin D and the B vitamins? It turns out that all the Bs come from the microbiome. Yes. Okay. I understood that. In order to have the correct microbiome, we are actually commensal organisms with our microbiome.”
“Taking vitamin D supplements will not drain your body's B vitamins. Let me read my title. Vitamin D deficiency changes the intestinal microbiome, reducing B vitamin production in the gut. The resulting lack of pantothenic acid adversely affects the immune system, producing a pro-inflammatory state associated with atherosclerosis and autoimmunity.”
“the parallel epidemics of abnormal sleep and abnormal intestinal microbiome are linked to one another through vitamin D deficiency. Proper supplementation doses of vitamin D plus all eight B vitamins appears to return the intestinal microbiome to normal in three months. Reinstating the normal microbiome not only treats IBS symptoms, it returns the supply of vitamin Bs to their natural daily doses.”
“good for us, not unnecessary. They are good for the person who needs them, and only until the normal source picks up again. Both sleep disruption and pain can be caused by large doses of B vitamins once the intestinal microbiome has returned to normal. So it's not the case that the B vitamins are very biologically intertwined, both in their intestinal production and cellular use.”
“of Pantothenic Acid. God forbid it's another vitamin. So I happen to have developed over the same time period, this weird buttock pain. I can't sit down to talk to my patients at the end of the day because my butt hurts.”
“book. It says pantothenic acid is a chemical that makes this thing called coenzyme A. Coenzyme A is responsible for making cortisol. I think, I don't think that's causing this burning, but this is something I need to know about.”
“cortisol is big in sleep. We talk about cortisol all the time, the timing of it. And it's huge in inflammation. I go to the vitamin store. I find pantothenic acid. The book says 400 milligrams is the right dose. So I pick up the 400 milligrams and I go to the B complex. I find something called B100, which means there's each one has got a hundred milligrams or a hundred micrograms.”
“400 milligrams of? B5. So pantothenic acid is called B5. All the patients who come back say, okay, were you trying to kill me? This 400 milligrams here, I got so agitated, I stopped it after two days. I felt like I was crawling out of my skin and I couldn't sleep at all. If you block B5, you get insomnia. That means it has power in sleep. D has power in sleep.”
“What you'll see here is B50, which is 50 milligrams of each, but all eight B's, has 50 milligrams of B5 in it. It turns out if you've been taking D for two years, you've actually worked your way into a place where your body has been using more B's and you are now very profoundly deficient.”
“but they haven't been described as B vitamin deficiency states, which is bizarre, but that's the historical point. All of the literature says B5 deficiency doesn't exist because it's in every food. Now, I'm reading that literature and it says thiamine, which is B1, has a poop bacteria source and a food source.”
“oh, ah, ah. And she said, you know, I broke it in half and I'm taking that and I feel great. What you'll see here is B50, which is 50 milligrams of each, but all eight B's, has 50 milligrams of B5 in it. It turns out if you've been taking D for two years, you've actually worked your way into a place where your body has been using more B's and you are now very profoundly deficient.”
“microbiome. It actually made me deficient. I'm going to give you the drug for rheumatoid arthritis. I'm not going to picture it as, oh, you need B50. So you gave B50, but then didn't they have another problem? Most of the time, what happens after the B50 is everything comes back to normal. The GI tract corrects.”
“job. Okay, so they're going to produce B50. They're going to make that. Let me summarize that. So by giving them B50 for a short period of time, you're kind of jumpstarting the gut microbiome.”
“on D with the B50 and you will do that for three months. And then you will stop and you'll go down to a much lower dose. That's a multivitamin. One of the things in the background that we haven't talked about yet is”
“supplementing B12 if your B12 is at a certain level, below a certain level, taking B50 for three months, and then taking a multivitamin. And that is until your body says, gee, I might need more Bs. This is a diagram, and you have a beautiful, stepwise visual assist here.”
“of B50 in them. They have 50 milligrams of all these B vitamins. In fact, if you go to an expensive vitamin store, they put up the doses of Bs.”
“It can. Have you tried that with patients where you said you've not? One of the reasons why these are effective, the fermented foods, okay? Fermented food means you're eating rotting food.”
“much more and to include these fermented foods now on this point of being outside much more some people live in cloudy places you know i spent a lot of my life living in places like london in”
“more aggressive. Either change your diet and do fermented foods and change to a meat and plant diet and you're going to have to watch what your body does. And if you're not able, and my claim would still be the sleep that you have should still be your best measure of whether you succeeded in what you'd like to do.”
“but we want to try and do it through diet first and fermented foods. And then the other thing is sunlight plays a big role. You're smirking again. You're doing a fabulous job. Oh, you're so sweet.”
“So what's the advice here? Some people believe that you should use incandescent bulbs on the lamp that's on your desk. What's an incandescent bulb? It gives you rays of light. Like. LED is an electron-producing light source, which the government has suggested that is better than incandescent lights.”
“It's very difficult to buy incandescent bulbs like the bulbs that we used to use. Now you'll get halogen or LEDs, and they do not give off infrared light energy.”
“So an incandescent bulb is the old school glass light bulbs, the kind Thomas. Edison used to use. Yeah. It creates light by running an electrical current through a metal filament until it gets so hot that it glows.”
“So yeah, those incandescent bulbs are harder to come by these days. But yeah, my fiance, she's a big fan of them and she's trying to fill our house with them. Yeah, she's right. So is there anything else, you know, also I've got these prebiotics here, prebiotics, probiotics, a lot of people say that you should take prebiotics, probiotics.”
“The people with sleep apnea have a fat tongue. It gets in the airway and they need to wear, one of these things over their face at night that blow the air up their nose. She put on the CPAP device. She came back two months later. Her headaches were gone.”
“And now her sleep is also abnormal. And she had a few headaches in high school, but now she has daily headache too. So there's a five-year span here where I'm doing CPAP masks and sleeping pills. And those are some of the stories. And it's not just limited to women, but I especially want to point out that women are more effective because they have the babies.”
“the formal recognition of sleep medicine and the intervention of the CPAP machine diagnosed millions with obstructive sleep apnea, sparking a surge in clinical treatments. The medicalization transformed into a cultural crisis by the 2000s as sedentary indoor lifestyles starved us of natural daytime sunlight.”
“the brain's master internal clock and suppresses daytime melatonin, which establishes a definitive biological countdown. for deep sleep at night. Deprived of this anchoring cue and bombarded by a 24-7 hustle”
“saying, yes, it's true that the pineal gland makes melatonin and that that's part of how we get to the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., but it's also true that vitamin D has receptors in the brainstem. That means that we are at the edge of about a big change where some of these ideas that we talked about today that are very deep and very...”
“It's both the melatonin pipeline starts in the gut, manufacturing the calm down chemical is in the gut, and the cortisol alarm system is linked to the gut. The trickiest part of the microbiome-sleep connection is that it is a bidirectional loop.”
“bacterial growth factors, D, and now I'm giving B100, and I'm giving a large dose of all eight Bs. Remember that give all eight? That means by accident, I have actually given eight bacterial growth factors that are necessary for bringing the poop bacteria back to the normal human makeup that it's supposed to be, that it has always come to be spontaneously.”
“Then we do the B100. And then it's frigging awesome. She starts to lose the pain that she had down her leg. The burning in her hands and feet goes away. Her sleep gets much better. Now, she's into year three and four of what becomes the right...”
“needs it. And she's always checking her D levels. Then she goes on B100. She happened to be one of the ones that was on D by itself for two years. If you have been on D for two or three or five years in the past and have developed B vitamin deficiency states, then you will have to go back on D with the B50 and you will do that for three months.”
“being her normal self again. And did she have to come off the vitamin B? She only took it for three months. And then she did a multivitamin. And then eventually, almost everybody needs to be... Off the multivitamin completely. It is my belief that if all of this happens spontaneously in every other animal on the planet, then we shouldn't have to take supplements either.”
“a separate supplement. And keep in mind, there's a lot to be learned about multivitamins. For instance, many multivitamins say multivitamin on the front, but they actually have the equivalent of B50 in them. They have 50 milligrams of all these B vitamins. In fact, if you go to an expensive vitamin store, they put up the doses of Bs.”
“But yeah, my fiance, she's a big fan of them and she's trying to fill our house with them. Yeah, she's right. So is there anything else, you know, also I've got these prebiotics here, prebiotics, probiotics, a lot of people say that you should take prebiotics, probiotics. Have you tried giving them to your patients?”
“Kind of gross when you think about it as being poop bacteria, but that's what it is. Okay. Now, what prebiotic has that's different is that you feed the bacteria and they feed you. That's really what happens. What I love about this is there are different things that they're feeding the bacteria.”
“The book says 400 milligrams is the right dose. So I pick up the 400 milligrams and I go to the B complex. I find something called B100, which means there's each one has got 100 milligrams or 100 micrograms.”
“And billions around the world have a sleep problem, but no one's treating it. And the usual sleep treatment is behavioral, like blackout curtains, go to bed at the same time. But that is not something that's helped the people who wind up with me. They've tried all that already. And I've taken care of 28-year-olds who just had a stroke.”
“Absolutely. It's typically, you know, put on the sleep mask and close the blinds and make sure it's cold in the room. So this is incredibly interesting to me. Let me add one more thing so I don't forget. You and Matt Walker talked about chronotypes.”
“It's very difficult to buy incandescent bulbs like the bulbs that we used to use. Now you'll get halogen or LEDs, and they do not give off infrared light energy. So an incandescent bulb is the old school glass light bulbs, the kind Thomas.”
“I've got some yogurt thing here, I've got, I can't even pronounce that. Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut. And I've got some kefir. Why don't I just have all this stuff, which is great for my gut microbiome and then go outside and spend the morning in the sunshine, getting up, improving my vitamin D levels.” Under review
“vitamin D, it disrupts my magnesium production, and the magnesium production is having an impact on vitamin B? And could it be the case that it's something else? Yes, of course.”
“better find out. And a woman walks in with a book that's called The Pain-Free Promise of Pantothenic Acid.”
“has a poop bacteria source and a food source. B2, poop bacteria and a food source. All of them come from the poop. What do you mean come from the poop?”
“our skin and we can actually have salmon. The salmon has vitamin D in it. That's the salmon's vitamin D. It's not our vitamin D. It's like saying you eat salmon, you get salmon estrogen.”
“have sleep trackers when I was seeing all these things that were happening to Madeline and Natalie. I would listen to what they said about their sleep. I imagine a lot of people click on this conversation because they are struggling with sleep or they have a partner or friend, or maybe just because they want to optimize their sleep a little bit.”
“And now her sleep is also abnormal. And she had a few headaches in high school, but now she has daily headache too. So there's a five-year span here where I'm doing CPAP masks and sleeping pills. And those are some of the stories. And it's not just limited to women, but I especially want to point out that women are more effective because they have the babies.”
“made at the same time. Okay. They are not being taken with that pill of vitamin D3. That is a separate literature that's just gotten really some attention in the last 10 years. There are all these other things that prevent inflammation, that do things to your skin, that were actually being made by the sunlight that you're being exposed to.”
“I've got some kimchi, which is good for the gut microbiome, I've heard. I've got kombucha. I've got some yogurt thing here, I've got, I can't even pronounce that. Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut. And I've got some kefir. Why don't I just have all this stuff, which is great for my gut microbiome,”
As referenced on air, with the quote and the moment. Reported, not evaluated.
“I wind up going to articles by a guy named Walter Stumpf, S-T-U-M-P-F, who's been writing about vitamin D for 30 years, who has actually published that there are vitamin D receptors in this little stripe along the back of the brainstem”
“The weird part is this is written about beautifully by Walter Stumpf. And because he has a whole belief system that tells what you should expect, he's also published many articles. The first article is in 1982 about brainstem.”
“The articles that she references are from the 1950s in this creepy lab next to the creepy experiments on prisoners before it becomes illegal. They published this article saying if you block panathenic acid for two weeks, you see four things.”
“The articles that she references are from the 1950s in this creepy lab next to the creepy experiments on prisoners before it becomes illegal. They published this article saying if you block panathenic acid for two weeks, you see four things.”
“There is a lot of literature about, by a gal named Stephanie Seneff, who says that the vitamin D that we make on our skin is sulfated, which is different than the vitamin D we're taking as supplemented, and it has a different behavior in the body.”