Vitamin D Update 2023
Supplements Can Be Important
I am always surprised in my readings to see people repeat the old notion that taking nutritional supplements won't increase your quality of life or increase disease resistance. The idea is that you will get all the nutrition you need from your food. This may be true for some lucky folks. Some people break all the rules and still live a long, relatively healthy life.
If everyone had that kind of physiology, I would find something else to do with my time instead of learning about health and how lifestyle choice and dietary supplements can improve your chances of a good life.
Good Health Can Be Work
It is obvious now that it doesn't matter how many studies show that certain supplements can reduce this or that disease tendency, the media will mostly report that supplements are a waste of time and money and that if you really need help, trust the drug companies.
Vitamin D is Cheap and Easy
I want to spend a little time talking about vitamin D. This is a relatively cheap supplement and should be on just about everyone's list of important things to have in their daily regimen.
I mention glutathione in many of my blogs because we are reminded on a daily basis that most people are unaware that glutathione even exists much less what it does. I am including some links to some glutathione blogs.
Glutathione As Protection Blog
Glutathione Deficiency and Correction
The reason I bring it up here is that Vitamin D acts to help activate the glutathione pathways. Therefore even if you are working at improving your glutathione levels but ignoring vitamin D, you are still not getting the benefit you need. Just a quick note that we are all exposed to the herbicide Roundup and this interferes with vitamin D making low D an almost certainty without adequate supplementation. You can read more about this by selecting the link below.
Health Consequences of Roundup Herbicide - Short Version
Most Need 5,000 to 10,000 IUs per Day
You should also be aware that the 400 IU's of vitamin D in prenatal vitamins is woefully inadequate. Just 20 minutes of whole-body exposure to the sun causes a jump of up to 20,000 IU's within 24 hours. We have been recommending 5000 IU's for healthy people and with this information we will have to raise the recommendation to 10,000 for adults with any inflammation, muscle pain or allergy. This amount of supplementation can usually get your blood levels to a healthy level. It is a good idea to check this at least once a year to know your actual vitamin D status.
Vitamin D and Cervical Dysplasia
Most women have at least a basic knowledge of cervical dysplasia that can be a precursor to cervical cancer. Cervical dysplasia refers to abnormal cells and is rated as CIN1 to CIN3 with CIN3 showing more than two-thirds of the cervical epithelium with abnormal cells. Dr. Alex Vasquez has commented that studies have shown that vitamin D to be more helpful than placebo in returning cervix cells to normal. In the vitamin D control group (50,000 IUs 3x/week) had an improvement rate of 85% vs 54% in the control group. This is just one study but illustrates nicely how a simple, inexpensive treatment can help a lot of women.
Vitamin D and Breast Cancer
A fair amount of attention has been given to breast cancer and vitamin D levels. It is fairly clear that keeping your D levels up can provide a high level of protection against developing breast cancer or surviving if breast cancer appears anyway. If you search pubmed for Vitamin D and breast cancer you will get over 2000 results.
Breast cancer is not just one thing so many factors do come into play for each type and the patient genotype too. Keeping D levels up is simple and much cheaper than any cancer treatment. My thinking is that if taking your vitamin D will decrease your chances of contracting cancer by even 20%, it is well worth it.
In summary, vitamin D will help activate you glutathione, an important component of your detox system. Adequate vitamin D levels have shown to help reduce cervical dysplasia and breast cancer, probably in part by increasing the effectiveness of glutathione.
Supplementing with vitamin D is easy and relatively cheap.