Vitamin D

“Trip off this. They're doing food records of these GLP users. 99% of them are below vitamin D. 99%. 99% of them below potassium. Now keep in mind, 60 to 70% of everybody is below vitamin D. You take a GLP, it's 100% almost.”

“Yeah. So I go every six to eight weeks. I take a shot. I go to my naturopath. Okay. Your vitamin D levels got checked? Yes. They were low, but they're good now. Okay. So you're taking vitamin D. Okay. Yeah. So that's, I just wanted to make sure we do that. So, and you're a young guy when you competed. Any history of PED use, any testosterone, steroids?”

“Eric Naputi, who's running a company, vitamin D. Eric had great data on vitamin D. It turns out vitamin D, there were seven clinical trials showing it actually helped prevent COVID-19.”

“And I take vitamins every day. And I take a bunch. I take all kinds of, I take vitamin D. I take A, K2. Bring it on. I take it all. And I'm very healthy. And I think it's part of that. And I'm a firm believer in supplementation.”

“Same with astragalus. So doing high doses of that, high doses of probiotics, and then a lot of vitamin D and zinc. And so really bolstering up and strengthening your own immune system. And then from there, there are supplements to take to fight Lyme, like one called Japanese knotweed.”

“And specifically maybe related to the microglial cells. Yeah, I will put a huge vote in for vitamin D. Who knew? I mean, It might be one of the cheapest supplements out there these days. Cholecalciferol. Yeah. And why?”

“It's the only vitamin that human beings make on our own. So you got to think, wow, if we don't need to eat, drink, or breathe to make vitamin D, you know, we just need some cholesterol and some sunlight. Cholesterol. I'm oversimplifying about that. No, that's not. You know, that's basically what you need.”

“There are vitamin D receptors on microglial cells. Let's start there. That's wild. And I'll backtrack a little bit because these days people are understanding their genetic profiles and learning that they may have polymorphisms or variations in their vitamin D receptors.”

“or variations in their vitamin D receptors. So it's for all of you who get your genetic material printouts, look for changes in the VDR”

“and you might need to consider a higher dosage of vitamin D, or as you well said, perhaps get a little bit more sunlight. Sunlight is a pretty effective way, but we wear clothes generally outside.”

“Most of us do. Some of us don't, or some people don't. But that said, I don't want to say that everyone should take vitamin D as a supplement out of hand. Get your blood level checked. If you're already between 60 and 80 on your levels, then by all means, you're doing great.”

“Whatever you're doing seems to be working. Maybe you're getting your vitamin D from sunlight, from food, from your multivitamin or wherever. But if it's not, and I'm talking now to most of your, maybe not your audience, but most of the general population.”

“and it was several thousand people. They followed them for 16 years. At the beginning of that 16-year prospective analysis, they measured their vitamin D levels. At the 16-year point, they brain scanned them for tau protein.”

“Let's get back to the vitamin D study. So the vitamin D levels were looked at in juxtaposition to measuring P tau in the brains of people using a special scan.”

“Right. Higher vitamin D, lower tau in the brain. Do I think that's important and therefore supports the idea that we should make sure our vitamin D levels are where they need to be? You bet I think that. Again, that's not what the study allows me to say from a science perspective, but my personal view, which is, I guess,”

“what all of our views are, is that you bet you need to maximize or optimize rather your vitamin D level. It's that important. It reduces inflammation. Vitamin D receptors on those microglial cells make their way to the nucleus and transcribe genes that are doing good things.”

“So I'm all in. Okay. So creatine, vitamin D, vitamin D3, anything else that is lots. Well, we got time. Third hour. We'll do the third hour. And I'll bring this up because an interesting study published about two months ago challenged the wisdom that omega-3 supplements, fish oil in particular, was good for the brain.”

“And there are people that we will talk about perhaps off camera for whom we need to know their homocysteine levels and vitamin D levels and all the things right now. I mean, we talked about the microbiome and all that, all well and good. These other things are very powerful levers and will allow us to really make headway.”

“You want to find a deficit and then supplement, right? So, even with vitamin D, you know, most people probably are deficient, so they benefit from it, but there's no point in really doing it unless you're deficient for most things. And I think with omega-3s, it's similar. You want to get your daily allowance, if you will.”

“I have lots of women in childbearing years that are excessive producers of insulin. And their vitamin D is low, their estrogen is low. They have hair loss on the top of their head. They have skin tags throughout their body. Or maybe the first sign was they had PCOS. Okay. All of these are a sign that insulin came in and it's too high in their body.”

“fat. And estrogen, testosterone, vitamin D, they're all a derivative of fat, of cholesterol. And they are, they're put into the fat cells. If you biopsy an obese woman and say, can I see, is there any vitamin D hidden in there?”

“So that's two. Vitamin D. Vitamin D. 5,000 to 10,000 IUs per day. People be like, oh, you don't know that. You need to blood test. You don't want to over. Okay, don't take 25,000. But most people are underdosing vitamin D.”

“vitamin D that are discussed. For instance, hormone health. Like I can see my blood's getting better when I take 5,000 as opposed to 3,000 IU of vitamin D, and I'm not changing anything else.”

“And you can take it anytime same day. Is that five? That's five because I threw garlic in there. No, because we said it was magnesium bisglycinate or threonate. We said omega-3. We said vitamin D. And then I said alpha GPC would be my preferable thing to nicotine or prescription stimulants.”

“We know that. But also I'm making sure that I'm not deficient in any minerals or vitamins. And so I'm taking in things like vitamin D, vitamin C as well, and some nutrients that I know I can become deficient in. What do you think is happening inside of your body after from day four until day 14?”

“and topical vitamin D, of course, a lot of supplements, including vitamin D, high doses, and red light therapy. Yes, good. It has improved so much. Yes. But I want to know from your point of view, which one of all of these that I've done has been the cause of this improvement.”

“for these exact reasons. Vitamin D has a similar profile of inaccuracy. The other issue with that, then simply, let's say you're buying it from a high-quality source, you're dosing it too much and you're taking it too late. So, take it earlier than you think before bed so that your body has a chance to break it down before the next morning.”

“The easiest, most technical way to get to say it is it's an acute phase reactant, meaning it will change in response acutely to inflammation. Some markers will go up and some will go down in response to that, like D, like vitamin D goes down. If what? If you. In a stressed environment.”

“scanned. I'm not concerned about an acute emergency. The two things on here that I thought were shocking to me are my vitamin D levels and my omega levels, which I was told were deficient. Yep. I thought I was smashing it with those two because I think I was living in LA at the time.”

“Kind of lower end of that number is 40. That might actually be fine. I think I heard you say something about vitamin D. Again, I don't want to butch your words if this wasn't what you said, but you kind of make the assumption that most people are deficient. Yeah, it is true. Why does it matter? So vitamin D is a nice microcosm of overall health.”

“There's two things: correct physiology, performance enhancement. Totally separate categories. Correct physiological deficiencies are, in your case, your vitamin D. What is low? What is high? What is off track based on blood work, right?”

“for muscle growth or endurance or what are you taking right now? Zero. Zero. Vitamin D? Like this week? No. No. Summertime. I live in the forest. Omega-3? Nope. Why? I got full control of my diet and we get a lot of fish right now.”

“and then other types of blood work, what if somebody is massively deficient in zinc, or vitamin D, or even iron, I mean, or omega-3s. And so being able to get the right testing done, I think to know, hey, what are the tools that are going to make the biggest difference? For instance,”

“is we run a really, I like to run a really expansive micronutrient panel because you know this, if somebody's vitamin D is in the tank, but even more, and again, some people check for that, but if your zinc or magnesium is in the tank or folate, your body has a very hard time healing.”

“not only looking at MTHFR- Oh, yeah. But COMT and AMO and VDL, like I found out that I don't convert vitamin D well. So, and I don't convert omega-3s well. Yeah. And so, like, it very much- Yeah. Changed the way I supplemented. And when I was able to get the blood work genetically in an advanced panel, I'm telling you, again, and it's like, Gary, I already know what to do, generally speaking.”

“So you're supposed to be taking care of yourself. You're supposed to be eating vitamins and nutrients. And how many more people would have survived if they had just did that? How much lower would that death rate have been if they had promoted the use of vitamin D along with K2 and magnesium, all these different things like people need to exercise?”

“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?”

“critical nutrients for, uh, related to cognitive function and risk of dementia. Um, the ones that we have the best evidence for, uh, vitamin D, iron, omega-3 fatty acids, uh, the B vitamins involved and the B vitamins involved in methylation. So particularly B12 and folate also potentially B6 and riboflavin, although that might depend a little bit more on, on the individual.”

“So the best advice, if you have access to it, is to test your levels. Test your vitamin D levels. Test your hemoglobin and iron levels. Test your omega-3 levels. Test your homocysteine levels, which is a marker of B vitamin status, which we know is a risk factor for cognitive decline dementia as well.”

“Well, that's exciting. Memory is everything. So how long are we talking? Like, let's say, you know, you started a vitamin D supplement six months ago. You have the same window and you start in that window. You have that, you know, entry point, the date.”

“what other sorts of nutrients are important during development? You want to have adequate vitamin D. Vitamin D helps with testosterone. Testosterone production helps, again, with bone mineralization and stature. After an age of about 25, and there's not a strict cutoff, but up to about an age of 25, optimizing your growth hormone and IGF-1 helps with bone density and bone growth.”

“to have its impact on cells. Okay, so vitamin D3, I'm guessing you're talking about vitamin D3 specifically when you say vitamin D, and then boron 5 to 12 milligrams per day, right? And then what are some of the other things to optimize testosterone that are in supplement form? We can talk about things that affect the steroidogenesis cascade. So we could touch on Tongkat Ali.”

“sunlight. And listen, most of us live in such a dark bunker with very little sunlight. So we then have to take vitamin D. So because we live outside of our true nature, I'm wondering if actually we do need to take some supplements because we're not going to heal. We are going to heal.”

“So you go for fruits in the morning, you put them right beside your fruits. Okay. Yeah. What other goodies do we have in here? Vitamin D for sure. D3 with a K2. 4,000 I use minimum per day, I would say. Most people should be taking that. They call it a vitamin. It's not really a vitamin. It's more of like a per hormone or a pre-hormone.”

“Again, inflammation, cognition. Every day? Every day. Every day. Every day. I went to the doctor and he said I was deficient in vitamin D and omega-3. So those are. You know how many people, even if you live in a sunny, I can't tell you, I've had patients who live in Florida, let's say, where it's, you think that you're getting a lot of sun exposure because the temperature is”

“vitamin D. I take MNN or NAD, and then glutathione. My dad was always a massive glutathione guy.”

“They're never seeing the sun, and they all start getting rickets. Late 1800s. Is nutrition a factor in that? Vitamin D. It was all vitamin D. At first, they thought maybe it was vitamin A. But it turned out... That was how vitamin D was discovered, was some doctors figured out that it could solve rickets in kids.”

“So they started recommending vitamin D pills, which I think are still, like, the number one supplement in the world. I take it. So then they did all these clinical trials to prove that it would help. Huge, huge clinical trials. Tens of thousands of people. Follow-ups that... Went for many years. None of them showed a benefit.”

“Yeah, that could be. Like, yeah, I'd be curious. Yeah, I think vitamin D by itself, the body has a problem absorbing it. It's like, there's a lot of things like that. Like, zinc is like that. You need an ionophore to absorb zinc. So you take it with quercetin.”

“But D from the sun has always been known as the best way to get it. For sure. The best way to get vitamin D, the most effective, the healthiest way, is through sun exposure. Yeah. So here it is. That's how the design's supposed to work. Perplexity says vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, build strong bones and teeth, support muscles and nerves, plays a key role in immune function.”

“Calcium for bone health. So please put in what are the benefits of vitamin D taken with K2 and magnesium. See if it says that. Because this is what my doctor, who is a vitamin specialist, recommends.”

“Potential benefits of the combo. Better bone support, heart and artery protection, more efficient vitamin D use. Okay. Okay. So the doctor. Is correct.”

“But sun exposure. Let's put that in. Does vitamin D taken on its own have any health benefits? Let's see what it says to that. Because I'd never heard that, that D on its own was not effective at all.”

“it didn't seem to have any of these benefits that they were seeing in people who naturally had high rates through sun exposure. It says, yes, vitamin D on its own has several well-proven health benefits, especially for bones, muscles, and immunity.”

“Wait a minute. People who had high levels through sun exposure. Yeah. Because your natural level of vitamin D is sort of a direct meter of how much sun exposure. Right. But this is natural level. You're not talking about supplementation. Right, right. Okay. So that was why people who had high levels of D without supplementation have lower rates of all, like every disease you can think of.”

“One of the things a friend of mine who's a doctor said that he... When he was working in New York City in the wintertime, he would find people with undetectable levels of vitamin D. Yeah. And he said it was a particular problem with people with darker skin. Because if you have darker skin, you're gonna get less vitamin D from the sun for whatever exposure you do get.”

“Yeah. That's a really bad formula. Like, yeah. If you have dark skin, you need five to ten times as much sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D. Oh. So, you're really... If you have really dark skin, you're kind of designed for a very bright, you know, tropical environment where you're...”

“the damage that you could get if you get burnt. Turns out you're right. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense that your body produces vitamin D through it. It makes you feel so good. And yet somehow or another is bad. I think it's like many things, very nuanced. And so I'm really happy that you did so much work on it.”