Is vitamin D vital to our health or is it simply much ado about nothing. Shakespeare jokes aside just how much has emerged about this question in the last year?
Vitamin D is readily available in natural form during the Summer months but our bodies are unable produce it when the sun is low in the sky. Big Pharma tells us to slather on the sun screen or stay in the shade because the sun causes skin cancer and Naturopaths tell us to get out in the sun and take supplements when the sun is refusing to come out to play.
Is there any real science to back up either side? The unfortunate answer is that there is very little creative science going on because Big Pharma has a stranglehold on research.
If we look at one simple statistic that has slipped past censorship, for every person who dies of skin cancer, 384 die of vitamin D deficiency. Personally I will keep on sunbathing because I don’t like those odds.
Applied research isn’t the only way to gather information because all physicians can observe and report on their experiences and we can build a picture with those observations. That is the way the Community Assembly works, we add all the little bits of information together and come up with the complete works of Shakespeare.
Discoveries about vitamin D before 2022
There are 17 different cancers now associated with low vitamin D levels which means that just optimising time spent out in the sun between 11 am and 1 pm with no sunscreen, and by exposing as much of the skin as possible, is fantastic for our health. We just have to be careful not to burn our skin before we have given our tan time to become our protector.
Daily vitamin D3 supplementation, without any other therapy, is also effective for the treatment of psoriasis. In cases such as burn trauma vitamin D3 has a significant healing effect.
Recent discoveries
Less known is vitamin D's anti-inflammatory potential, which makes it useful for supporting optimal health throughout our lifespans. One clinic is using a vitamin D-focused anti-inflammatory regimen to successfully manage cluster headaches (not the same as migraines because there are no triggers). It involves a high loading dose of 600,000 to 800,000 IU of vitamin D3 spread over six to 12 days, followed by 10,000 IU per day.
Supplementation
If we live closer to the North Pole than 40 degrees North or closer to the South Pole than 40 degrees South, in late Autumn, Winter and early Spring we need to take supplements. It is when our bodies are lacking in nutrients that we see flu and colds in the colder months primarily because our repair mechanism is short on vital supplies such as vitamin D.
Just as an aside what is the difference between flu and a cold? If it is before January 1st then it is flu, otherwise it is a cold and forget about COVID 19 as it is a flu or a cold by any other name.
It's best to optimise our vitamin D levels via sensible sun exposure, but if this isn't an option for us then daily vitamin D3 supplementation is necessary. There is no one-size-fits-all dose because many factors influence blood levels.
White body fat
Body weight is one factor and people who have a high BMI need more vitamin D, however, as yet we don’t know why. For the moment a BMI of 25 or less is being counted as normal but muscle mass has a significant role here and everything points to white fat increasing the requirement for vitamin D3 supplementation.
Vitamin D3 supplementation must also be balanced with other micronutrients nutrients namely vitamin K2 (to avoid complications associated with excessive calcification in your arteries). You can easily get the right amount of vitamin K2 by eating one egg a day (organic of course) but cheese, butter, liver and chicken can also keep your levels up to where they should be.
Ionofors
Ionofors help to transport micronutrients across a cell’s membrane and so increase effectiveness. Quercetin is a well known ionofor for zinc but recently it has been discovered that magnesium is an Ionofor for vitamin D3. It has been recorded that 400mg of magnesium will boost the vitamin D3 uptake by about 30% and reduce the need for vitamin D3 supplementation from 10,000 IU to 7,000 IU per day.
Effects on DNA
To get an idea of the magnitude of vitamin D3's importance, roughly 10% of our genes respond to the active form vitamin D3.
From ancient times, when people around the world had reverence for the sun, to the use of solariums to treat illness in the early 20th century, we have come full circle in understanding the biology and the complexity of this process. Vitamin D is made in the skin (remember the advantages of
cholesterol) and goes through various metabolic processes to arrive at a point where it's influencing DNA.
In a study published in
Scientific Reports, Michael Holick and colleagues found that varying doses of vitamin D3 led to broad changes in gene expression. In the following figures 'upregulate' means that the genes are excited by supplementation and 'downregulated' means that activity is reduced as in inflammation.
- 600 IU per day — upregulated 86 genes and downregulated 76 genes
- 4,000 IU per day — upregulated 188 genes and downregulated 132 genes
- 10,000 IU per day — upregulated 800 genes and downregulated 489 genes
Remember that the use of magnesium would reduce the 10,000 IU per day to 7,000 IU per day. IU stands for 'International Units.'
That good feeling that you get from being out in the sun is not coincidence. It is your body telling you something important.
John Gilbert MD (AV), MCHI, SAC Dip, FGAV, MBCS, MIET, C.Eng., LCGI
Co-founder of the Community Assembly of the British Isles
Community Assembly Facilitator
Community Peace Constable
Community Light Brigade
