12 Warning Signs Your Brain Is Starved of Vitamin D

Vitamin Du2019s Role in the Body 0:00

Hey, in today's video, I'm talking about 12 shocking signs of a vitamin D deficiency. And unfortunately, vitamin D deficiencies are very common in our society, and they're at the root of many chronic inflammatory conditions. And that's because vitamin D plays a really key role in keeping brain inflammation under control. So it helps modulate inflammation in the brain plays a very important role in the neurotransmitter production in your brain. So serotonin dopamine right. Making sure that those neurotransmitters Gaba glutamate that they're in the right ratio.

So you can really think sharply and quickly and have great healthy mood. Right. So it's very important. There also plays a really important role in the cytochrome P450 function in your liver for deactivating and detoxifying chemical agents, also for proper sex hormone production producing enough estrogen progesterone, testosterone. So you have healthy libido. Vitamin D is really key for that. Also for muscle strength, mitochondrial function in the muscles, muscle size and muscle growth. Right. Really important for that.

Really important for healthy lean body mass. So healthy bone and cartilage tissue as well. So vitamin D plays a role with so many things in the body. In fact most people think it's more of a hormone. We call it a pro hormone rather than just a vitamin because it plays such an important role. So 12 signs that you may have a vitamin D deficiency one is greater pain sensitivity.

Signs of Vitamin D Deficiency 1:35

People that are very low in vitamin D, little things that would naturally cause pain, or at least enough pain to get somebody's attention, will actually cause significant pain. For somebody with greater pain sensitivity from a vitamin D deficiency. In fact, I remember a lady that came in my clinic years ago. Her vitamin D levels were a seven. Now I'm going to talk about what optimal vitamin D is. It really should be up over 60 nanograms per milliliter. Her vitamin D was really, really low and everything heard her.

Like every time you touched her, she was just always in pain. And I put her on vitamin D supplementation. She came back the next week and she felt significantly better. Like she felt like like a totally different person. And that's because, again, her vitamin D levels were so low, which caused a breakdown in the way that her body, sensed pain. So she had greater pain sensitivity. She had greater a heightened level of sensitization in her nervous system. And once we balanced that, her nervous system got in balance.

Right. And things that shouldn't be painful were no longer painful for her. So, greater pain sensitivity is a big thing. Also, depression and mood disorders. So anxiety and depression really big. This is because, again, vitamin D plays such an important role in keeping brain inflammation under control. And also very, very important role in neuronal activity as well as neurotransmitter function. So if you're dealing with depression, anxiety oftentimes vitamin D can help that. In fact people that are not exposed to enough sun in the winter, you know, we call it seasonal affective disorder, right?

Sad or seasonal affective disorder a lot of times with vitamin D deficiency. Now sunshine itself has a lot more benefits than just vitamin D. But if you get vitamin D levels elevated, you will notice an improvement in your mood right? Your your mood is better, you have less anxiety. You have less, depression. Right? You just it's easier to feel happy because you're producing the right amount of neurotransmitters. Actually a go to for any clinical psychologist that's dealing with anybody with anxiety, depression, they should always look at vitamin D levels.

Unfortunately, so often it's missed. And so that's a big factor here. Also on top of that daytime sleepiness, if you just feel really fatigued every day right. You don't you don't have a cold or flu, but you just feel fatigued. You have this daytime sleepiness. Look at your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D is so important for mitochondrial energy production. If you're feeling fatigued throughout the day, you might have a vitamin D deficiency. Also, if you're getting frequent illness, if you're getting colds, fevers, flus on a frequent basis, you're probably vitamin D deficient.

Vitamin D plays such an important role in modulating balancing the immune system, so it helps to balance histamine and mast cell activation. So when people have out of balance histamine and mast cell activation, they end up with allergies frequently getting ill migraine headaches oftentimes. And also it's very important for T cells. So your T helper cells, your your as well as your B cell your antibody production, it's very important for the formation of those white blood cells and balancing or modulating them.

So if you have autoimmune conditions, if you've got a family history of cancer, you want to make sure your vitamin D levels are regulated because it plays such an important role with immune function. So if you're getting sick often if you have seasonal allergies, those are symptoms. You may have a vitamin D deficiency also a muscle weakness right. If you're just feeling really weak with your muscles okay. Obviously weightlifting getting enough protein is important. But you also may have a vitamin D deficiency.

So that's something to look out for. If you frequently get injured and have fractures. Vitamin D plays such an important role in helping get calcium into the bones, along with magnesium and vitamin K2. Those three all work together to get calcium out of the blood into the bones so you can have good, healthy bone tissue. So if you're noticing that you're getting injured, a lot of soft tissue injuries, frequent fractures, stress fractures that could be a sign of a vitamin D deficiency. Another one is low sex drive.

Also, we know vitamin D plays a really important role in sex hormone production. So vitamin D plays an important role in testosterone estrogen and progesterone. And so for women they need a good balance of all of those including testosterone,

Optimal Vitamin D Levels and Testing 5:50

to have healthy sex drive for men. Testosterone is a big player here for good, healthy sex drive. So if you're noticing just really low libido might be vitamin D deficiency. Also high blood pressure. A lot of people have high blood pressure related to vitamin D deficiency. And this is because vitamin D plays such an important role keeping inflammation under control. And when people are really deficient in vitamin D, they have more inflammation in their blood vessels causing restriction constriction in their blood vessels, causing higher amount of blood pressure, and then finally learning disorders.

If you're noticing that perhaps kids or even yourself just have trouble learning trouble with their memory, trouble focusing trouble with concentration. Again, vitamin D plays such an important role in brain function in Orono cell function. And so it plays a really important role in your ability to remember things. Have a good memory, good recall, and be able to be focus and concentrate. So you may have a vitamin D deficiency. Now if you're getting your vitamin D tested, you want your vitamin D levels to be up over 16 nanograms per milliliter in the medical system.

Their analysis is way off. They look at they'll say, you're very deficient if you're under 20 nanograms per milliliter. In my my opinion, that's extremely deficient. Okay. They will say that you're insufficient if you're between 20 and 30 nanograms per milliliter. And then if you're over 30 that you're fine, that you're in a healthy range. But in my opinion, that's still way too low. I see a lot of these symptoms, even with people that have 35 or 40 nanograms per milliliter levels of vitamin D, you want to get your levels up over 60, 60 to 100, or even up to 120 nanograms per milliliter.

That's fine. That's great. I see people really thriving when they're in that range, 60 to about 120 nanograms per milliliter. You seem to really thrive. A sweet spot for many is that 80 to 90 range. And so the best way to get vitamin D is get regular sun exposure, right. Get out in the sun with as much of your body exposed as possible as often as possible.

How to Raise Vitamin D Safely 7:50

Obviously don't get sunburnt. You want to avoid getting burnt, but if you're able to get out 30 minutes, 45 minutes a day getting as much of your sun. Much of your body exposed to the sun is possible. That's going to really help you. Okay, so that's what you want to do for a lot of people, especially in the winter months, you're not able to do that. And so that's where eating vitamin D rich foods comes in, as well as vitamin D supplementation. So eating vitamin D rich foods is a is not a great way to elevate your vitamin D, but it will help bump it a little bit.

That's going to be things like, pasture raised eggs, grass fed butter. You can also get it in wild caught salmon and then also organ meats like grass fed beef. Liver is going to be a good source of vitamin D, so you can get it from that. Mushrooms have vitamin D as well, so consuming foods like that will help with vitamin D levels. But it's not enough to really elevate it a significant level. This is why I recommend vitamin D supplementation. When you're doing vitamin D supplementation, a good maintenance dose is about 1000 international units per 25 pounds of body weight.

So if you weigh 150 pounds, roughly about 6000 international units a day, you know if your capsule comes in 5000 units, you're probably fine with that. Along with trying to get a little bit of sun exposure, you'd be great. Okay, now if you're very deficient in vitamin D, then I would recommend increasing that. Going to 2000 international units per 25 pounds of body weight. And if you're up at around 10,000 international units a day, it's best to separate the doses. So you could take, for example, 5000 twice a day to get to 10,000.

Or let's say you need to get 20,000. You could take 10,000 twice a day, okay. And that will help optimize your vitamin D levels if you're feeling really ill, right. If you have a cold, fever or flu, your body is going to use up more vitamin D so you can increase your dosage. In fact, I'll have people take 50,000 international units a day for, let's say, 3 to 5 days to help them get over the cold, fever or flu again in divided doses, doing 2 or 3 rounds. Right. So let's say they did 60,000 and they did 20,000 international units in the morning, 20,000 midday, 20,000 in the evening, or they did 25,000.

I use twice a day. So that getting it, more frequent in the day can actually help with increasing the dosage and supporting your immune system. So if you're able to split it up, that's great. You always want to take vitamin D with food because it's a fat soluble nutrient. You're going to absorb it better when you're consuming it with meals. So that's another principle that you want to follow, right. And so again, when you're looking at your 25 hydroxy vitamin D, you want it up over 60. That's always what you're looking for.

Now there's another thing that you can look at. It's your 125 hydroxy vitamin D. In order to actually get vitamin D to work in the cell, you need to make sure you got enough magnesium, get any need to make sure you have enough vitamin A, and you got to make sure you have enough zinc and that your body's not toxic, right? So if you're really, really toxic, if you're in a moldy home,

Cofactors, Absorption, and Final Advice 10:50

sometimes you're not going to actually get the vitamin D absorption in your body. So the great thing about vitamin D rich foods is you have all the cofactors, you've got vitamin A, you've got zinc. You also have vitamin K2 as well on board and magnesium. And so all of those really work together with vitamin D for optimal absorption. And so your pasture is egg yolk for example. You've got magnesium, you've got zinc, you got fat soluble vitamin A retinol. And you have got vitamin K2 right in there.

So eat some egg yolk, eat wild caught salmon, eat grass fed butter. That's going to have a lot of these co-factors. They're going to help support your vitamin D absorption and utilization in the body. Now again, if you have deep seated let's see Epstein-Barr virus cytomegalovirus. If you're very EMF sensitive, if you've got a high toxic load, that may hamper your ability to fully absorb vitamin D and convert it from 25 hydroxy vitamin D into 125 hydroxy vitamin D. And so in those cases, you obviously want to help to, support your detoxification process and support your overall immune system.

But all those other co-factors I talked about vitamin A, zinc, there also antiviral. So they help to reduce Epstein-Barr activation, cytomegalovirus activation. They're actually help protect you against things like, electromagnetic frequencies. Right. Which will help with your overall vitamin D utilization in the body. So that was a little bit more advanced there at the end. What I want you to really focus on right now is just optimizing your vitamin D levels. Get it up between your 25 hydroxy vitamin D, between 60 and 120.

You're going to feel better if you do that. Try to do it with sun as much as possible, but also eat the vitamin D rich foods and take vitamin D supplementation when you need to. When you're not able to get good, high quality sun exposure. If you do that, you're going to feel better and you're going to be able to function and thrive in life. Hey, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out my channel, browse the various videos that I've done on similar topics, and also make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit the bell button.

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