The Truth About Vitamin D: Why Many Are Still Deficient (Even With Supplements)

Vitamin D: What We All Seem to Know

[video transcript] This time of year – and I'm talking to you in Fall of 2024 for those in the future – it's cold and flu season. Talk comes around to vitamin D. Everybody seems to know that vitamin D, if you take it, really helps to boost immunity. We saw during COVID that normal doses of vitamin D help to reduce the severity and duration of the virus. And in clinic here in Arizona, we see that all the time as well.

But what is a safe limit? How do you know, and let's get into it.

The Lowdown on "Normal" Vitamin D Dosing: 400 IU and Why It's Not Enough

The government pegs a normal and safe dose of vitamin D at 400 IU per day. It's pretty low, actually. Why do they do this? Because the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) in very high doses, at very high ends, above the range, they get toxic. We get symptoms, and vitamin D is no different. Vitamin D in very toxic ranges really messes with the heart, especially because vitamin D helps to make calcium in the gut. So excess calcium starts to create very erratic beats of the heart in particular. It also causes a lot of other symptoms, but 400 IU is a very, very low dose.

And again, the government is really just trying to keep us safe. It's hoping we get enough in our food and that that little extra will help with whatever we think it's going to help. But where we really see vitamin D in effect is where we see vitamin D deficiency.

Optimal Vitamin D Range: Beyond "Normal"

So the range on a typical lab for Vitamin D 25-OH is between 30 and 100. Ideally, we want to be kind of in the middle to the upper part of that range: 60 to 80. Why?

Microbiome Support: Well, about 50 to 60 is where we see vitamin D exert its effort on the microbiome. It really helps our Lactobacillus, our main microbiota species, at around 55. Vitamin D makes calcium in the gut. We have a microbiome that makes this happen. If they're not activated with Vitamin D, they sit on their shovels and nothing happens to optimize calcium, which we need for bone, heart and overall health.
Hormonal Balance: Then, hormonally (which is a lot of the other patients I see), around 60 to 80 activates progesterone. Why is this important in our stressed-out world? Well, progesterone helps to make either cortisol or it makes sex hormones. So if you are looking at some of my other videos and hearing me talk about stress and the cortisol sink and the pregnenolone steal, well, everything is going downhill to cortisol. So helping progesterone with vitamin D helps to make cortisol. On the flip side, on the sex hormone side, women's periods: we see when we get vitamin D up to that 60 to 80 range, progesterone really can have a little bit more oomph to exert its influence. And so if somebody's having irregular periods, sometimes vitamin D alone is something to kind of pull it back into range

.So those are the important aspects.

Why Are We Still Vitamin D Deficient? (And How to Fix It)

So if we're testing and vitamin D is low (it's under 30) in this day and age... I forgot to mention that we make vitamin D through our skin. It hits cholesterol, which hits D receptors, and we make D. Well, most of us don't go outside much. Most of us are indoors all day working. Many of us slather on sunscreen, especially here in sunny Arizona. I see so many people who come in deficient in vitamin D, but we're just not getting enough sunlight. If you think about our original factory setting as humans, we were outdoors a hundred percent of the time, right? So nowadays we're indoors, so we've got to supplement that vitamin D.

So again, if you're coming in, you're under 30 on the lab range, we've got to dose it therapeutically. And in that case, if you go to a regular Western medicine doctor, they're going to give you a shot once a week, 50,000 IU of vitamin D, and they're going to give you D2. That's not the active form of vitamin D. It'll help some, but it won't help you all the way there. And really, a Western medical doctor will probably take you if you were deficient at like 20; you get the 50,000 IU shot, they're going to get you just over 30 and be like, "Hey, you're in range. No problem." But remember, we want you 60 to 80. That's optimal for vitamin D.

Vitamin D3: Oral Supplementation Strategy

So what do we do orally? This is one of the most reliable things that we see in labs, and it should be controlled by someone like me or your doctor. So, I'm not giving any medical advice here, but one of the things we see consistently on labs is that when you take 10,000 IU of vitamin D, the points go up about a half a point per day, which means if you get a bottle of 60 in 30 days (or in 60 days, you are... doing public math, it's not my strong suit!), in 60 days, your vitamin D percentage will go up 30 points. So if you were at 30, 60 days of 10,000 IU, we're at 60. We're in that 60 to 80 range, and then we move down to a maintenance dose, usually somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 IU based on how somebody metabolizes. And usually that 5,000 or so will hold vitamin D in the range at 60 to 80, and you can carry on.

It's really important again for hormone health, for immunity. It really helps with IBS in the gut. Remember, D makes calcium in the gut, and somebody with IBS with diarrhea is moving minerals and all kinds of things out on a more than regular basis. So this vitamin D can help turn the tide and hold on to a lot of minerals. There are all kinds of conditions it helps for; we'll get into that in other videos.

Get Your Custom Health Solution

If you have a vitamin D deficiency and you need a doctor to quarterback that, and other nutrients, and other lifestyle and diet interventions, check out my website. Check out what I do: naturopathic gastroenterology, hormones for men and women. It's drdanwool.com. I also would love to hear from you in the comments here on YouTube. Go ahead and put that in; we will answer your questions in a future video. In the meantime, again, it's Dr. Wool, "fix your gut, solve your health."