ultimate human hey guys welcome back to the ultimate human podcast where we go down the road of everything anti-aging longevity biohacking and everything in between today's biohacking short is about the single most important nutrient in the entire human body I'll give you a little hint it is the only vitamin that a human being makes on our own if you were to check your bloodstream you'd see that you have hundreds of vitamins in your bloodstream but you're only capable of making one we make this vitamin from sunlight and cholesterol and nearly every single cell in the entire human body has a receptor site for this vitamin you have any idea what this vitamin is it's vitamin D3 coloc calciferol when we make Vitamin D from sunlight and cholesterol but specifically the one that I want to talk about is the most active form of vitamin Vin D3 which is called colic calciferol and vitamin D3 is one of the most chronic deficiencies on the planet it's estimated that about 50% of the world's population is clinically deficient in vitamin D3 85% of the dark complected populations African-Americans Latinos and other dark complected populations are even deficient in vitamin D3 you see the darker the complexion the more sunlight it takes for us to generate this vital nutrient you know that so many people have heard of the sunshine vitamin but I don't think that we quite understand the importance that this vitamin plays in the human body in fact I would argue that it acts more like a hormone than it does like a vitamin it's linked to an entire array of chronic conditions this deficiency is one of the easiest for us to supplement with and one of the easiest for us to fix there's evidence that it helps reduce the severity and duration of covid-19 in fact it also can prevent the development of certain autoimmune diseases I'm going to put that research below there was a very interesting study published in 2023 in January in the helon journal looking at the impact of vitamin D3 and different neurodegenerative diseases and there's overlapping pathologies that are shared by a ton of neurodegenerative diseases such as oxidative stress inflammation protein aggregation where proteins don't fold properly and demyelination demyelination is where the coating on the outside of the nerve is actually eroded and may even expose the nerve you can think of a nerve as a copper wire inside of a rubber sheath and that rubber sheath is called myin and when that myin is eroded or thinned or there's a Nick in that myin or a sar in that myin this leads to a lot of the neurodegenerative pathologies that we refer to as Alzheimer's disease Parkinson's um and and other kinds of neuroinflam Ator and neurodegenerative diseases but as a major kind of neurodegenerative disease Alzheimer's disease has a growing patient population in the world it's actually the main cause of dementia and at present I think about 48 M million people are suffering from dementia and this population is increasing at the rate of 10 million every single year around the world well vitamin D has been shown to ailar rate neuropathological features and vitamin supplementation contributes to a better prognosis according to this study it strengthens the immune system it stimulates the production of te- cells it even helps promote a proper immune response to infections and pathogens including viruses bacteria and fungus that are responsible for all kinds of various illnesses and you know if you remember in during covid there was some evidence that covid-19 disproportionately affected minorities it also um became evidence that vitamin D3 deficiency was one of the second leading causes of morbidity in Co so why would Co disproportionately affect minorities well it has to do with the pigment of their skin so things as as common as influenza the common cold share a commonality in severity with a with a deficiency in vitamin D3 it's been linked to improv brain function further research has linked vitamin D3 specifically with improved overall brain function you know they're vitamin D receptors located all throughout the brain and throughout the spinal cord and vitamin D play role in activating and deactivating the synthesis of neurotransmitters serotonin dopamine and catacol amines as well as nerve growth and repair vitamin D might even play a certain role in preventing cancers epidemiologic research shows that there is a lower incidence of certain types of cancers for people who live in what we call the um the Sun Belt the southern equatorial locations around the world I remember when I was a mortality researcher in the insurance industry we noticed that that the longest life expectancies on Earth tended to be centered closer to the Equator as you got further and further away from the equatorial line life expectancy had a precipitous drop now we couldn't directly correlate this to a deficiency in vitamin D3 but it's very interesting that the research that's coming out now correlates many of these diseases as being serviced by increased levels of vitamin D3 and by servest I mean the severity of these diseases is ameliorated by the presence of higher levels of vitamin D3 you can join me in a 3-day water fast I have one coming up on December 19th 20th and 21st go to the ultimate human.com download the free waterfasting guide join me for the challenge it's entirely free I'm going to stay with you every step of the way we're going to harness all of the benefits from a 3-day water fast and as always that's just science there also several studies that indicate that there's a possible connection between vitamin D and the development of cancer um additional studies on animal subjects have found that vitamin D helps to protect neurons and reduces inflammation within the brain all of these factors likely improves the overall function of the brain helping promote alertness quicker response times I'm going to put a link to a study below that also analyze the effects that vitamin D levels play on a collection of subjects that were performing mental exams the study found that those that had lower levels of vitamin D3 actually performed worse than those that had adequate levels of the vitamin suggest that it actually does improve mental acuity it boosts your mood vitamin D benefits your daily mood especially in the colder darker months this is where the old wives tale about um catching a cold came from there's no such thing as catching a cold in fact there's more more pathogens and and bacteria outside in warm weather than there are in cold weather but why do we why do we associate catching a cold with cold weather because when the weather gets cold we layer up when we layer up our vitamin D3 levels drop when our vitamin D3 levels drop we are more susceptible to common cold so we link cold weather with the association of illness I mean several studies have revealed that the symptoms of Seasonal effective disorder and I used to live in Chicago and I went to grad school there I was there for six years and I learned living in Chicago to believe in Seasonal effective disorder you know there was several months that would go by where you couldn't even see the sun the sky was just this kind of gray Misty um sort of just cold and and gray and you you couldn't even tell how high in the sky you were seeing you couldn't see clouds it was just a misty gray cold and I never believed in Seasonal effective disorder until I would get several months into the winter in Chicago I Liv downtown on Tenth and wildash in an area called the South Loop and several months into the wintertime you definitely felt the effects on your mood all you wanted to do was stay inside and eat pizza and I remember it very um very vividly and now that I'm starting to parse through some of the the research I'm I'm virtually certain that it was linked to my vitamin D3 level um you know seasonal effect disorder has been linked to low levels of vitamin D3 they're associated with lack of sunlight and lack of the production of this vitamin hey guys as you know I do not push products on my podcast or by social media unless I use them in my everyday life this is one of those products most of us have a very difficult time meeting our protein needs and certain protein sources like whey protein and others can be as little as 20% absorbable this is 99% absorbable and it has all of the essential amino acids that the body needs to build lean muscle to recover to improve our exercise performance and most importantly to repair after we have intense exercise so this is called perfect Amino by Body Health it's like I said 99% absorbable it only has two calories eventually the caloric intake has vir for no caloric intake it will not break a fast it tastes amazing you mix it in water I take this literally every single morning if you're working out in a fasted State you have to take a full spectrum amino acid prior to your workout to preserve your lean muscle and make sure that you're 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disorder and the primary symptom is depression and the incidence of depression does rise during the winter months so studies suggest that the decreased levels of vitamin D3 may even impact the level of serotonin in the brain remember that's the hormone that's one of the main Regulators of mood dopamine is the r main regulator of behavior but serotonin is the main regulator of mood by taking a vitamin D3 supplement or increasing your exposure to the sun you could see a significant boost in your mood um it can even Aid in weight loss and weight management um there is another article that I will post alow below um where the research revealed that people who were deficient in vitamin D3 had a greater risk of coming becoming obese and developing complications related to obesity so not only a greater risk of developing obesity but a higher incidence of complications once they were obese um it can lower the risk of rheumatoid arthritis um I posted a seventh study below that found that people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis um a chronic inflammatory disease of the joints often have very low levels of vitamin uh vitamin D um you know rheumatoid arthritis is classified as an autoimmune disease and the immune system reacts to the lining of the joints as if these proteins were foreign substances and this leads to inflammation in the joint which causes the stiffness and the pain and the reduced Mobility so since one of the main vitamin D benefits is to help maintain the immune system and ensure that it's properly function it makes sense that a deficiency in this vitamin could lead to the development of rheumatoid arthritis or at least exacerbate kind of accelerate the time frame for for the onset of rheumatoid so by raising your vitamin D3 levels there's a chance you could reduce the severity and onset of this disease and potentially even other autoimmune diseases it lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes this has been well researched and there is a study below that confirms that there is a link between D3 deficiency and the body's resistance to insulin which is type two diabetes by overcoming insulin resistance you could potentially prevent the development or the further exacerbation of type 2 diabetes you see the cells in the pancreas that are responsible for secreting insulin the beta cells and the eyelets as a result of not getting enough sunlight reduce the secretion of insulin from the pancreas which creates insulin resistance and affects how the body responds to glucose so we know that vitamin D can help lower blood pressure um there have been several long-term studies that have proven that there's an association between low vitamin D3 levels and hypertension and until recently it wasn't known if being deficient in vitamin D actually led to hypertension but a large genetic study that involved more than 150,000 people revealed that low levels of vitamin D in fact cause hypertension in this study uh in particular um those who had the highest levels of vitamin D had lower blood pressure and it was demonstrated that by increasing vitamin D 10% it led to a concomittant decrease in blood pressure of 10% so if you have high blood pressure or you want to avoid developing it um and increasing your vitamin D level might help um it might reduce even the risk of heart disease now some of the studies are non-causal meaning they couldn't link the low D3 directly to heart disease but there's an increasing number of studies that have indicated that deficiency in vitamin D is a risk factor for developing high blood pressure heart disease congestive heart failure um Peripheral arterial disease which is um a condition of the peripheral arteries of the system and even increases the incidence of stroke and heart attack so we know that improving vitamin D levels can help reduce the risk of developing heart disease and the symptoms that are associated with it I'll put a link to that um article below there's a whole series of of clinical studies below that I've tried to summarize in 20 minutes or less so now the question is where do I get vitamin D3 what kind of vitamin D3 should I take how much should I take so guidelines the RDA guidelines are are considered by functional medicine physicians to be way too low um most of them would recommend 5,000 IUS of vitamin D3 minimum that's 5,000 international units of vitamin D3 with um 120 micrograms of K2 or a D3 that contains K2 there's also a version of K2 called mk7 I believe is the version that um is the most bioavailable because if you take vitamin D3 with vitamin K2 it helps calcium that's being transported around the blood deposit into the bone and not into the arterial wall it's very easy to get vitamin D3 supplements you can order these supplements online from a medical grade supplement supplier make sure that your vitamin D3 is a minimum of 5,000 IUS and has a minimum of 120 to 140 micrograms of K2 that's mcgs of K2 and you should be well on your way to having adequate levels of vitamin D3 you should also get your vitamin D3 levels checked when you get your blood work done the D3 levels go from 30 n per deciliter to 100 n per deciliter most functional Medical Practice would say between 60 and 80 is the optimal range that's 60 to 80 nanog per deciliter 5,000 IU should get you within that range I hope you found this podcast helpful um I hope that you take a moment to check out the studies and the links below that I summarized in the podcast today I didn't want to go through all the studies because I wanted to keep this less than 20 minutes I just wanted to get the importance of the single most important nutrient in the human body out into the public domain so people could start to supplement uh with this iCal nutrient and as always that's just science if you haven't had a chance to connect with me on the ultimat human.com head over there now and sign up for my free newsletter and all of the exclusive content