The truth about Vitamin D

Vitamin D is a hot topic in my clinical practice.

Not enough attention is placed on the importance and impact that Vitamin D has on the human body. In case you didn’t know, vitamin D is not a vitamin at all, but a hormone. It is mostly produced in the skin, as a response to sun exposure. It can also be absorbed from the foods you eat and as such is considered a nutrient — just another essential piece of a healthy balanced diet. It plays a critical role in immune modulation, regulating mood, and keeping bones healthy and strong — which is most significant for women over the age of thirty, when their bone density begins to decline.  

However, Vitamin D  insufficiency and deficiency is common in the United States.

Why does this happen? Well, persistently low vitamin D levels are often the result of poor disgestive absorption due to low functioning gastrointestinal systems, or, it can also be an inherited gene mutation. Inheriting this gene can potentially put a person at risk for accelerated bone loss, commonly referred to as osteopenia or osteoporosis, auto-immune diseases like multiple sclerosis, and certain cancers, such as colorectal cancer, prostate and breast cancers. It’s a good thing to test for if you can’t seem to get your Vitamin D levels up, regardless what therapeutics you try.

How do you test your Vitamin D levels?

It’s just a simple blood test! Traditional medical doctors are testing vitamin D more often, but I encourage you to take charge of your health and ask for it to be tested, especially if they don’t. The test itself is called a Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], so you can ask for that one by name.

More specifically, we are looking for D3, which is the main form of Vitamin D in the blood.  When you are ordering supplements online, always make sure to be supplementing with D3. Anything else won’t get your levels where they need to go and sometimes can even aggravate inflammation levels. Lots of imposters out there in the supplement world, so read your labels, folks!

What are my desired levels? 

Unfortunately, there is no consensus among medical leaders about what optimal Vitamin D levels are. The ranges on a blood panel are 30-100, and anything above a 30 is considered normal. What i try to focus on is not what is “normal” but rather what is “optimal.” Optimal values may not be communicated in a routine visit, so it’s another think to keep on your radar and ask for. In my practice, I like to see women with vitamin D level's in the '60s or '70s. At these levels, people start to notice an impact on their well-being and health. Trust me, you’ll feel the difference.

What foods contain Vitamin D? 

It can be challenging to obtain an adequate amount of Vitamin D from the diet, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Most food sources of Vitamin D are not found in the standard American diet. You have to look towards foods like salmon, sardines, egg yolk, and other nutrient dense foods, typically from an animal source (pasture raised animals, to be more specific). If you are going to take a supplement, regardless of whether you are working on it in your diet too, I recommend beginning supplementation at 5,000 IU, a big jump from the RDA levels of 400 IU.  No joke.

How can I get started? 

There are a lot of Vitamin D supplements on the market. If you don't have any absorption issues or perhaps an unknown genetic mutation, standard D3 is fine. Other formulations have vitamin K1 and K2 in them; the addition of vitamin K basically super charges Vitamin D, and makes it more bioavailable, so if you can find it, it’s a good mix to look for. 

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