I’ve been diligently collecting information on vitamin D these past few months in order to better guide you with your health and fitness.
Because in today’s landscape all you can do is inform yourself.
And then it’s on you to follow through.
To take care of your health and fitness.
To train hard, smart, eat clean, and get enough sleep.
To push yourself out of your comfort zone.
To cultivate discipline and focus.
And to make tough decisions, faster.
See, when your immune system is compromised due to lack of nutrients (vitamins & minerals), unhealthy food, lack of sleep and exercise, it can’t cope when a stress like a flu or virus is introduced into your body (and this is especially true if you have other health issues).
The immune system subsequently panics and unleashes something called a cytokine storm which is the equivalent of a machine gun firing in all directions because it is desperate to get rid of the threat. This essentially happens when the intruders are winning, and it is so powerful and so unfocused that the cytokines attack and kill its own cells and tissues.
So how can we take action to improve our immune system?
We start with looking at your Vitamin D intake.
“Vitamin D deficiency is at the root cause of almost every disease, including and especially cancer. That’s because vitamin D isn’t a vitamin, it’s a powerful hormone your doctor didn’t learn about in professional school, other than that too much is toxic.”
– Dr. Joel Gould
The Modern Epidemic
Vitamin D impacts the immune system.
- That’s a powerful and concise statement.
- So why aren’t you supplementing with vitamin D daily?
- Why isn’t your doctor suggesting this for you as well as testing your vitamin D levels?
- Why aren’t we doing this when most people are vitamin D deficient?
- We’re deficient in a hormone that impacts the immune system and studies are even showing that 80% of covid-19 patients are being linked with a vitamin d deficiency.
We’ll discuss some specific results and numbers of this study later, but for now, let’s talk about the Canada’s vitamin D Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA)
As you’ll see from the video below that’s not enough to really make an impact…
See, you can have far more vitamin D in your system than is being recommended because:
- We aren’t getting enough sunlight to bring us up to evolutionary levels
(the type of levels where we were outside all the time and not wearing as many clothes, sunglasses, sunscreen) - We are not getting enough vitamin D to regulate the gut microbiome
(which regulates sleep) - We aren’t getting the sleep we need anymore
(if you’re not sleeping, you’re not repairing)
Instead we are living in a permanent winter of vitamin D year round keeping our bodies on a “human power saving mode”.
So what should your vitamin D levels be?
This image below gives you a good idea based on useable vitamin D in your body measured in ng/ml.
Now let’s go back to the results from that Covid-19 study above where 80% of the patients tested deficient…
When we look at the results from this study, we can see that these individuals were effectively in human power saving mode below 20ng/ml (13.8ng/ml) and even the controls were in jeopardy of having compromised levels at around 20.9ng/ml.
But we want to get much higher than 20ng/ml. This is how increased Vitamin D can help you in disease prevention.
The current Canadian recommended daily intake of 600IU per day is going to really struggle to deliver the disease prevention benefits above because we’re not looking at the world through a straw. Much like almost everything else in life, there’s other variables to consider.
Because Vitamin D needs to be activated in your body for it to be used by your body.
When we take vitamin D3 it needs to be activated by the liver into the usable and measurable form in your body known as Serum 25(OH)D. Unfortunately the foods we commonly eat like sugar, processed carbs, inorganic pesticide ridden food and industrial seed oils containing omega 6 destroys the enzymes that activate Vitamin D.
So the net effect is we get even less in our body…
And getting less useable vitamin D in your body leads to premature aging and missing out on the anti-inflammatory pathways called autophagy as evidenced in this study.
SO WHY ISN’T EVERYONE BEING TOLD TO TAKE MORE OF THIS TO STRENGTHEN OUR IMMUNE SYSTEMS?
I’ve been taking significantly more Vitamin D3 than the recommended intake for a few years now. I take 5000IU per day in the summer and 7000IU per day in the winter. I have not been sick with the flu or fever or anything like that during this time.
Now let’s bring it all together…
If you’re concerned about your health right now, you need to limit your consumption of alcohol and sugar. It’s weakening your immune system and suppressing the activation of vitamin D in your body.
If your ready to start supplementing with vitamin D and are interested in learning more, many of the resources in this post were sourced from the book The Modern Epidemic by Dr. Joel Gould. Dr. Gould is one of the leading advocates of vitamin D supplementation and you can download a free ebook preview of his book here: www.modernhuntergatherers.com
Here is a prescription for supplementation from The Modern Epidemic below:
Committed to your health and fitness,
Josh Saunders, BS, CSCS
BEFIT
P.s. I am not a doctor and have obtained this information from my own personal research on literature presented by doctors in a fight for your health. I do highly recommend you begin supplementing with vitamin D and if you have any concerns, please consult your physician and/or request a blood test of your current vitamin D levels.