The Crucial Role of Vitamin D in Prenatal Health + What Your Doctor Might Not Tell You

When it comes to pregnancy and postpartum, it is hard to sift through what we should and should not be telling our clients; however, when it comes to Vitamin D, the research is clear – Vitamin D plays a crucial role in the health of our pregnant clients and their infants.

Today, Lynn Schulte, PT is joined by Jen Aliano, the Executive Director of GrassrootsHealth, as Jen dives into the incredible data on the critical, yet often overlooked, role of vitamin D in pregnancy, chronic disease prevention, immune function, and overall health.

Learn how vitamin D deficiency is contributing to poor health outcomes—which are often completely preventable. Join the conversation and connect with GrassrootsHealth to learn more about what can be done to raise awareness about the research behind the essential needs for Vitamin D.

✨Episode Highlights:

• Vitamin D & Pregnancy
• Why Deficiency Is So Common
• Breastfeeding & Infant Health
• Racial Disparities in Deficiency
• Immunity & Chronic Disease Prevention
• Testing & Individual Needs
• Policy Action – Capitol Hill, Sept 10

🧾 To Get Involved and Interview Links:

• Donate and learn more: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/a-major-opportunity-is-knock
• Link to Testing: https://daction.grassrootshealth.net/tests/
• Watch the Dr. Carol Wagner YouTube Video: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/vitamin-d-deficiency-the-canary-in-the-coal-mine-the-indicator-of-suboptimal-health-in-pregnant-women/
• Watch the Dr. Hollis YouTube Video: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/behind-research-exclusive-interview-dr-bruce-hollis/
• Watch the Dr. Weiss YouTube Video: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/blog/lessons-learned-rct-prenatal-vitamin-d-asthma/

About Today’s Speaker

JEN ALIANO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF GRASSROOTSHEALTH

Jen Aliano, MS, LAc, CCN, has been working in the field of nutrition since 2004, with over 10 years of experience in vitamin D research and education specifically. She is currently the Executive Director of GrassrootsHealth, a non-profit public health promotion and research organization supported by over 40 international senior vitamin D scientists and experts. GrassrootsHealth has been running the world’s largest public health intervention study – the D*action field trial – to solve the vitamin D deficiency epidemic, while focusing on promoting optimal health worldwide through nutrient research, education, and advocacy, with a primary focus on the role of vitamin D.

Website: https://grassrootshealth.net

Email: jen@grassrootshealth.net

Have a comment or question about today’s episode? Message Lynn on Instagram or Facebook, or Email Lynn.

To learn more visit: InstituteforBirthHealing.com

Visit Institute for Birth Healing to learn more about how to care for the pregnant and postpartum body: CLICK HERE

Transcript

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this podcast episode. And today I am delighted to have with me back again, Jen Aliano.

Jen is the Executive Director of Grassroots Health. And she and Dr. Bruce Hollis were both on the Birth Healing Summit this year talking about vitamin D in pregnancy.

And this is such an incredibly important topic that I wanted to have Jen back on for the podcast to help us all understand the importance of vitamin D in pregnancy and also hear about about what Jen and her.

Researchers and scientists are all up to, so that hopefully we can all support them in getting this out into the world in a bigger way.

@1:08 - Jen Aliano

So welcome to the podcast. Welcome back, Jen. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me back, Lynn.

@1:14 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah. So real quick, Jen, tell it, how did you get into this? How did Grassroots Health come to be, or how did your involvement start?

@1:22 - Jen Aliano

Sure. Okay. Well, Grassroots Health was founded by Carol Baggerly in 2007 and basically started due to her personal experience with breast cancer and breast cancer treatment.

And through a series of other diagnoses, found the relationship between vitamin D and breast cancer.

@1:48 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And was introduced to Dr.

@1:50 - Jen Aliano

Cedric Garland, who's here in San Diego at UCSD, who has been publishing, or at that time had been publishing, about vitamin D and cancer for decades already.

And he was only one of a good number of vitamin D researchers who had been publishing findings on vitamin D, and not just cancer, but also prenatal health outcomes, autoimmune disease and other diseases, a lot of chronic diseases, respiratory illnesses, you name it, had been publishing their findings on it for decades, but the word wasn't getting out.

And so Grassroots Health was founded to help get that word out, basically to be the marketing arm for vitamin D research.

And so it started out as a home-based study where you can measure your vitamin D level at home, do an online questionnaire.

Back then, it was really difficult to get your doctor to test your level, and it was really hard to get a direct-to-consumer blood spot test.

So that was one way to create awareness, which, you know, you'll, I'll talk about a little bit more, but you have to know your vitamin D level.

To know if you're getting enough. And so it was started as a study. And then based on all of the data we've gathered, we've published at least 16 different papers in collaboration with our scientists.

We've got a panel of over 50 international vitamin D scientists and experts from around the world that we work with.

@3:19 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@3:21 - Jen Aliano

And I'm one of my colleagues likes to call me the gateway person for anything vitamin D.

@3:27 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I love it.

@3:28 - Jen Aliano

That's how grassroots health was started. I started with grassroots health about 13 years ago. My background is actually been in nutrition since the beginning of 2000.

And I had a acupuncture and holistic health practice where I focused on fertility and prenatal health. Um, and so as a practitioner, I was very well aware of nutrition.

Well, when I, uh, when I was pregnant. With my babies, I had two babies, now they're not babies anymore, they're 18 and 17, as of, you know, in two weeks he turned 17, but with my second one I had preterm labor, and was put on bed rest, a lot of complications after he was born, and we, with all the blood work we had done, they actually measured his vitamin D level, and I think it was 11.

So we started supplementing him when he was a baby, and I had no idea the reason he was deficient was because I was deficient when I was pregnant with him, and so coming across grassroots health was the first time that vitamin D crossed my radar as, oh my gosh, and this is very strongly related vitamin D deficiency to preterm labor and preterm birth.

@4:57 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Wow. And Jen, were you living in.

@5:00 - Jen Aliano

I in California at this time, too. Yes, and I was outside all the time.

@5:06 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Were you using sunscreen during that time? Okay, so is our use of sunscreen really negating the effect of getting the absorption of vitamin D into our bodies?

@5:18 - Jen Aliano

Absolutely, but mostly. So you can only make vitamin D in the middle of the day when UVB is available.

And for me in San Diego, UVB is available year-round. But when you go above a certain latitude, I believe it's above Atlanta on the East Coast and LA on the West Coast.

I'm going to have to check that and get it back to you. But you have a vitamin D winter when you live north of those latitudes.

And that means that there's certain times during the year, during the winter, when there's no UVB available, even in the middle of the day, you're not able to make vitamin D.

The problem is is we create. We Our own vitamin D winter by staying inside, and you especially stay inside during the summer, during the hottest hours in the middle of the day, right?

@6:09 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah, okay, you're putting all this sunscreen on all this makeup that has sunscreen on it, you're putting your hat and your hats are good.

mean, you want to cover your Yeah, you're just covering up to prevent that UVB from hitting your skin and making vitamin D.

Wow. Okay, so that's so interesting. And so let's go into more you said that vitamin D deficiency is directly related to preterm labor.

And what else?

@6:43 - Jen Aliano

Oh, I mean, I would like to say everything. So one of the most impressive findings, and it's It's actually published in Feldman as of 2024.

If a woman enters pregnancy with sufficient vitamin D levels, and when I say sufficient, that's at least 40 nanograms per milliliter.

So if a woman enters pregnancy with 40 nanograms per milliliter of vitamin D, she has basically a 0% chance of preeclampsia.

@7:26 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

What?

@7:28 - Jen Aliano

And there's been a couple of studies that have found that. The problem is, you know, the way that our medical guidelines are set, they are just randomized controlled trials are the only thing that you can use to make decisions, right?

Yeah. Think about it. There's several reasons that it's really difficult to have a vitamin D randomized controlled trial that is set up.

Similar to how the drug trials are set up. You can't really have a full placebo because everybody's going to have a certain amount of vitamin D already in their blood.

It's not a foreign substance. It's not a drug that you're putting into your body. And it's unethical to not give somebody the daily recommended value.

@8:28 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@8:29 - Jen Aliano

You can't have a true placebo group. You have to be giving a certain amount. So we had just had the vital trial, right?

And it was one of the biggest randomized controlled trials for vitamin D. The problem was, is they were allowed to take up to, I think it was up to 800 or 1000 IU of vitamin D per day in the placebo group.

And, and, they were only giving 2000 IU in the.

@8:57 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah. Yeah.

@9:01 - Jen Aliano

That's some pretty impressive findings, but you can't say, oh, vitamin D doesn't do this, this, and this when you're looking at it that way, instead of how we recommend you look at the baseline vitamin D level, you know what your vitamin D level is when you come into the study, and then you look at your achieved vitamin D level to see, okay, what amount of vitamin D sufficiency did you achieve?

Did you even achieve sufficiency? Because 2000 IU is not enough for most people to achieve sufficiency, and so if you can't say this person's been getting enough vitamin D, then it's really difficult to say, to correlate the findings to that, you know, vitamin D status, right?

And then the other issue that we saw with the VITAL trial especially was, we saw a lot of people coming into the trial with baseline vitamin D levels above 30.

And so when you're looking at something like bone health, which You need at least 20 for a lot of these bone diseases to be avoided.

You can't look at an outcome related to bone health and say vitamin D didn't do anything if these people are starting with enough vitamin D for bone health.

Because I don't know if you're aware, you know, you've got vitamin D works systemically and it works on almost every different tissue and cell in the body.

But there's a different threshold for each of those systems. So, for example, bone health, we know that rickets, right, you can get rid of most of rickets, the vitamin D deficiency related rickets, by having a vitamin D level of at least 20.

If you are pregnant and or your baby, you know, has at least 20, then their risk of rickets is basically zero.

But something like, let's say, respiratory diseases, certain infections. question. You want to level closer to 50 nanograms per militer, because that's where you see that curve kind of level out and plateau, as in your lungs are getting enough vitamin D to really fight infections effectively.

So vitamin D works directly on your genes. Dr. Robert Haney used to call vitamin D the key to unlocking your DNA.

And there's been a study, one study showed that giving different amounts of vitamin D resulted in expressing different numbers of genes.

And you see vitamin D, giving vitamin D of 10,000 IU a day expressed, I think it was something like 1,600 different genes within white blood cells, compared to giving only 400 IU a day, which...

Expressed. Oh, wish I pulled these numbers out.

@12:02 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Expressed only in the hundreds. Wow.

@12:06 - Jen Aliano

And really, it directly affects your genes, especially within your white blood cells and your immune system.

@12:15 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Wow. And we know during pregnancy that our immune system is already compromised, correct? And so what do most prenatal vitamins, how much of vitamin D do most prenatal vitamins have in them?

@12:30 - Jen Aliano

Do you know? About 600 or 800 IU.

@12:34 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay.

@12:35 - Jen Aliano

So absolutely nothing to guarantee sufficiency in a pregnant woman.

@12:41 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay. Because I, since having the interview with you and Dr. Hollis, I have been asking every pregnant person that comes and lays on my table, how much vitamin D are you taking a day?

Oh, I'm taking it. It's in my, my prenatal. And I'm like, that's not enough. You know, studies recommend 5,000.

OK. I use during pregnancy and up to 6,000 during breastfeeding, and they're just like, oh, but how many OBGYNs or midwives are aware of this information, Jen?

Are we telling clients something new that when they go back to their doctor, they're going to get like poo-pooed?

@13:21 - Jen Aliano

No, not enough. And that's why we're running our maternal vitamin D health initiative, which I'll talk about in a little while.

@13:30 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay.

@13:31 - Jen Aliano

But no, not enough doctors are aware. And this, so Dr. Hollis and Dr. Carol Wagner, both at the Medical University of South Carolina, first started publishing on vitamin D and prenatal health, I believe in 2006.

However, there's been studies that were being published before that. They ran the very first randomized controlled trials on vitamin D and pregnancy.

And the first one was a number to say, okay, up to 4,000 IU of vitamin D per day was safe for pregnancy for both mom and baby.

So that's what they were able to say based on their randomized controlled trial. What they also found, and this is something that I think just, it's something to really scream about in terms of the importance of vitamin D during pregnancy.

And it's, it's interesting running into even some other vitamin D, what we would call vitamin D experts are unaware of this fact.

So normally the role of vitamin D in terms of its hormonal role within the body is to regulate calcium in our blood.

And it's an incredibly important role and it works with the parathyroid. And it releases when, when, when the body is low in calcium, it increases the parathyroid hormone to tell vitamin D to get more calcium into the blood.

And so you. you. You don't want a high PTH level, because that's kind of like saying you don't have enough vitamin D, and you don't have enough calcium.

So there's a very tight relationship between PTH, vitamin D, and calcium throughout life. That's its main hormonal function, function as vitamin D in terms of calcitriol, which is what we call the active form of vitamin D.

So let me just quickly review. Vitamin D3 is the form of vitamin D that our skin makes when it's exposed to UVB from the sun.

It's the form of vitamin D that we take as a supplement. It's converted into 25-OHD, which is the form of vitamin D that we measure in the blood.

That's the most stable form in our blood. It's what tells us what our vitamin D status is, is the level of 25-OHD.

One 25-OHD calcitriol is converted in the kidneys um based on what ... ... PTH is saying, to regulate calcium levels in our blood.

It's also converted within every single cell of the body for local use within the cell. That's where it acts on the DNA, but that's not the hormonal form of vitamin D.

It's because it's being used directly within cell for local use, but the hormonal form of vitamin D is to regulate calcium.

For our entire life, that's its role. Until you get pregnant. And pregnancy is the one time in the whole life cycle that the metabolism, the activation of vitamin D of 25-OHD into 125 or calcitriol is uncoupled from calcium metabolism, and it does something special during pregnancy.

And it's so special that that conversion of calcitriol, of vitamin D into the 125 in the blood. weunaway quick training.

But also, much more And Dr. Hollis, I believe on the previous podcast that we did together mentioned a case where a doctor called him up one time and said, oh my God, I don't know what to do.

My pregnant patient, her levels of vitamin D are, she's toxic, I don't know what to do. And turns out he had measured the calcitriol levels in her blood.

And Dr. Hollis was like, no, no, no, that's normal for pregnant women. And like you said, vitamin D, we know that it plays a huge role, an important role in our immune health.

And so what they think is happening is that extra vitamin D is going to protect the pregnancy and prevent the mother from, um, rejecting the baby.

It goes, a lot of it is being used by the placenta, um, and whatever else we've got. Lung development, vitamin D is incredibly important for your lungs.

mean, just imagine all of the things that are happening with our DNA and the baby and all these organs that are forming.

Vitamin D has got to be playing such an important role for all of it.

@18:20 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I have a question for a friend who was osteoporotic or osteopenia. Is that due to low vitamin D because of the calcium connection?

@18:33 - Jen Aliano

It's more so osteomalacia, the softening of the bones can be a vitamin D issue. I mean, we do generally get enough calcium from our diet, so it's not usually a calcium issue.

It's usually a vitamin D issue. And I'll tell you one thing, the majority of people in this country and in the world, actually, vitamin D is our number one nutrient deficiency.

And there was just a press release put out. When most people talk about vitamin D deficiency, they are defining that cutoff as 20 nanograms per milliliter, right?

So that's what the Institute of Medicine basically said back in 2011, that all you need for vitamin D is 20 nanograms per milliliter because vitamin D you only need for your bone health.

And so, and yeah, everybody only needs vitamin D for their bones and all you need is 20 nanograms per milliliter.

So unfortunately, that has been the cutoff for sufficiency for a lot of doctors practicing, but, you know, they disregarded a lot of the randomized controlled trials that showed vitamin D and its effects with immune health, with pregnancy especially.

So back to pregnancy, that conversion of vitamin D into 125 is optimized at, when you have a 25.0. And that's the level that we say at Grassroots Health, with our panel of scientists and experts, a vitamin D level of 40 or higher should be what's the true level of sufficiency.

@20:16 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay. And a normal range is 40 to 80?

@20:20 - Jen Aliano

40 to 80. We've got a consensus for 40 to 60 for the general population. Certain people will want to aim for that higher range, 60 to 80.

One of our published papers showed that even greater decreased risk of breast cancer when you were above 60 compared to just between 40 and 60.

Um, autoimmune diseases, uh, individuals with autoimmune diseases might want to aim for higher. And, you know, I don't want to go into it too much, but there are therapeutic uses of vitamin D where you can actually use vitamin D as a treatment for autoimmune disease.

But that's a whole other topic that I think Dr.

@21:07 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Hollis actually mentioned that on a previous podcast when we did a podcast for the summit and that or in the summit interview, he was talking more about the therapeutic use of vitamin D for different diseases.

And I think he even mentioned a newer paper for MS that was just, he talked about that in the live speaker group.

So we did a Zoom call with the speakers and he was talking about a newly published paper and how vitamin D was helping MS too.

@21:39 - Jen Aliano

I remember that. And vitamin D has been helping MS for a while now. I don't know if you're familiar with Dr.

Cicero Coimbra in Brazil. He formulated what we now call the Coimbra protocol, and he's been treating individuals with multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases.

For a while now, and I have, I had the honor of interviewing him. I had him for six hours on a Sunday, and it was like I was in heaven.

Wow. We've got a great video where he discusses how vitamin D works to treat autoimmune disease, but it's only one piece of a whole protocol.

You know, I do, there's other important things that we have to focus on for our health. We can't say vitamin D is a magic bullet, but vitamin D is one of those main pieces.

You've got main pieces in our health that we have to have a hold of, right? We've got to be eating healthy.

We've got to be exercising. We've got to be taking care of our mind and minding our stress. We need sunshine.

We need to be outside. vitamin D is one of those, you know, sunshine components that we are missing. And so it is one of the major puzzle pieces to be.

But, you know, it's not the only important thing. So I'm not ever going to say vitamin D is the only thing you need to pay attention to.

@23:09 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

But it's a big, big piece and an easy piece of the puzzle for us to be able to implement right away.

@23:20 - Jen Aliano

And I have to say, Jen, after our interview, I went to your website, grassrootshealth, is it .org?

@23:27 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

.net, yes. .net, okay, .net. And I ordered the vitamin D kit, and I took that, and I have to say my levels are 74, everybody.

So I'm doing well. I'm on the higher end, and that is appropriate, very appropriate for me because I have breast cancer history.

Both mom and sister have had that. So I'm super excited to know that I am keeping myself at a good level, and I will probably do that on a yearly basis.

Just check back in. And I think it cost me $74 to get my vitamin D. .net.

@24:02 - Jen Aliano

And how easy is it for people to go into their doctors and say, want my vitamin D level checked?

It depends on the doctor and it depends on where you live, your insurance, if you're willing to pay for it, because not all insurance will cover it and not all doctors will order it.

@24:21 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay. So let's talk there, Jen, because what do we need to do? And, and this is leading into what you guys are all planning on next month.

You know, what can we do to get the word out? How can we best help our clients to understand that these levels, when I'm telling them to take 5,000 IUs a day during pregnancy, 6,000 during breastfeeding, is your website a good place for them to go to get information?

@24:50 - Jen Aliano

Because I have a feeling they're going to go to their doctor and their doctor's going to poo poo it and say, Oh, that's ridiculous.

You don't need to take that much. Absolutely. They can go to our website. Right. They can go to our YouTube.

Um, I just did a fantastic presentation with Dr. Carol Wagner, who is one of the pioneering experts on vitamin D and pregnancy.

Her and Dr. Hollis have published together, uh, since the beginning. And she, the video on our YouTube is, I mean, she covers everything vitamin D and pregnancy.

@25:24 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Um, but yes.

@25:26 - Jen Aliano

So if anybody wants more information, our website is a great resource. Uh, they can email me. Anybody can email me, Jen at grassrootshealth.org.

Um, but yeah, doctors, we're here to support the doctors. We have an online CEU course. We're going to be creating more.

In fact, part of our initiative is to create a new vitamin D and maternal health module that will be aimed at nurses and dieticians and other healthcare practitioners and the general public.

Uh, but we're hoping to get it CEU we're hoping to Uh, uh, So, you know, but, but we're grassroots health.

We're starting, we're grassroots. We're here to help every individual take action for their own health. And one of the important things, can I ask you a personal question?

Sure. Which vitamin D do you take a day?

@26:15 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

How much? You know, it, it varies. I take two to three.

@26:20 - Jen Aliano

So probably between five and 15,000 IUs a day. Okay.

@26:24 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

All right.

@26:24 - Jen Aliano

Yeah. Interesting to know when you tested, because most people would not be 74 with 5,000 IU a day. But here's the thing is everybody responds to vitamin D supplementation differently.

And everything to do with our digestion, with co-nutrients, magnesium is really important. With our genetics, there are some people have something called vitamin D resistance, where some of those enzymes that work to convert vitamin D or work to, you know, grab the vitamin D into the vitamin D receptor.

Uh, aren't working as well as others due to polymorphisms in their genes. And so some people actually need more vitamin D.

This is where the autoimmune diseases and vitamin D come into play. Yeah. And, and Dr. Coimbra talks a lot about that in his video on our YouTube channel.

Um, but everybody needs a personalized dose of vitamin D to make sure that they're getting enough. I've got two of our participants in our study, um, husband and wife.

And, uh, the husband has type two diabetes and he needs 10,000 IU a day to be in the 40 to 60 range.

@27:40 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And she only needs 2000 IU a day. Oh, interesting.

@27:44 - Jen Aliano

So our website, we also have our vitamin D calculator where we've created a formula based on a ton of data that basically it suggests a vitamin D intake to help you get from where you're at now.

Now to where you want. And it tells you based on all this data, you have like a 50% chance if you take this amount or 90% chance of getting it into your target range if you take this amount.

And we actually just this week submitted a paper for a new pediatric calculator, working with a team from Stanford and Harvard and a gal in New Zealand, where we combined all of our pediatric data to create a new pediatric vitamin D calculator.

@28:33 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

So that's exciting. That'll be hopefully great. Yeah. One of the big pieces I remember from our summit interview with you and Dr.

@28:41 - Jen Aliano

Hollis was the asthma link for babies, that moms that have a higher level of vitamin D really reduces the chances of asthma in children, in their babies.

Yeah. And so that was one of the studies that showed that was a randomized controlled trial called the DART.

theрей문 caret We Um, and Dr. Scott Weiss was one of the leading researchers for that study. I did an interview with him as well.

@29:08 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

That's on our YouTube channel.

@29:10 - Jen Aliano

Um, yeah, I mean, it's everything, like there's also been, um, type, type one diabetes. You can greatly reduce the incidence of, and again, keep in mind, this is when you're pregnant, you know, if you're getting enough vitamin D when you're pregnant.

And, and it does depend when, when I was talking to Dr. Weiss, and we talked about what his dream randomized controlled trial would be.

Yeah. And it would be to enroll pregnant women, or I'm sorry, enroll women before they got pregnant. mean, how hard would it be to do that study?

Right. Yeah. And it's true that you are supplementing them and measuring their levels so that they're at least 40 when they get pregnant, all of them all the way through after birth and see what health outcomes, you know, what the health outcomes are like.

Um, but can you. Imagine, number one, how hard it would be to enroll for that, how long a trial that would be, and how expensive it would be.

@30:08 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yes. Well, and so what that triggers in my mind is us as practitioners working with clients who are wanting to get pregnant and are on that fertility journey that we need to make sure that they understand the importance of their vitamin D levels before they actually even get pregnant.

So that's the best way we can help access and get that information to them.

@30:33 - Jen Aliano

There are published studies showing that vitamin D improves the rate of conception, reduces the risk of miscarriage. And actually, there's studies showing that both the male and the female vitamin D can really help with fertility and conception.

It shortens that time, you know. Yeah. When you conceive. Yeah. And, you know, it's just one of the frustrations I have is, and this, you know, kind of goes back to my story, is that I think it was 2007, the American Academy of Pediatrics started recommending that all newborns are given 400 IU of vitamin D.

Because for some reason, breast milk was not the perfect food for our babies.

@31:28 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Ugh.

@31:30 - Jen Aliano

Why do you think that is? Is it really not perfect? Or is it because us as mothers, we were not getting enough vitamin D ourselves to give to our babies?

And we need that D3 that we get from the sun, from some foods, and from supplements to give to our baby.

That's the form that goes through into the breast milk. And so you could just, oh, okay, I'll give my baby D drops, which how many people really do?

@32:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

one. to video. them I'll Right. Well, expensive that too. You know, like I know vitamin D isn't that expensive, but if we could just hang outside during midday for what, 20 minutes and expose our skin to it while we're breastfeeding.

But that's the other point too, is we want to get up to 6,000 IUs during breastfeeding so that that vitamin D does get into the breast milk and to our babies.

@32:26 - Jen Aliano

And so that we have enough ourselves. So, so during pregnancy, um, to support that, uh, extra conversion of vitamin D into the calcitriol, our body needs, our body won't be able to maximize or optimize that conversion unless we're getting enough D3 itself.

So it's limited. Our body can't convert enough if we're not getting enough.

@32:51 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Right.

@32:51 - Jen Aliano

Um, what we see in these studies that are looking at, for example, uh, tribes that are still living in nomad lifestyle in Africa.

Okay. Yeah. Well, pregnant women's vitamin D levels, I'm talking about 250H, what you measure in the blood, those levels are, they automatically become higher during pregnancy.

Pregnant women have the highest 25, have the highest vitamin D levels of all other individuals who, you know, they're not supplementing with vitamin D, but they're getting a daily exposure to D3.

So their body's automatically increasing 250H, and they're able to produce as much 125 as they need. But if we're not getting that D3, we're limiting that conversion.

And so we've got all these pregnant mamas nowadays who are not getting enough D3, their bodies are using it up as much as possible.

And then what we see is after birth, those levels drop. And so not only are we not getting enough, our levels drop after, after birth, and so our breast milk is.

We're going to be deficient, unless we're supplementing. And so, yeah, I think if we kind of looked at it as, oh, I need to take more so that I'm giving my baby enough, instead of just give baby, and then we've got moms who are suffering with postpartum depression.

I mean, vitamin D is very strongly related to postpartum depression, as is omega-3s, but that's another conversation.

@34:26 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay. And so, Jen, I think a big point that we want to get across is vitamin D toxicity is extremely rare, right?

I mean, like these levels that we're asking pregnant mamas to take, 5,000 and 6,000 IU a day, is not anywhere near the level to create any sort of toxicity in the body.

@34:53 - Jen Aliano

Not at all. Not at all. In fact, it's easier to drink too much water. And get water toxicity than it is to get vitamin D toxicity.

And most of the case studies on vitamin D toxicity are either from manufacturing or labeling errors or from purposeful toxicity.

I posted a presentation with Dr. Reinhold Vieth and he tells a story about a girlfriend who was upset with her boyfriend and they lived with his dad.

And she put vitamin D in their coffee sugar or something like that in their sugar and they develop vitamin D toxicity.

And it took a while for the hospital to figure out what was going on, but that's what was happening.

So it's really hard. It's really hard. There are, and let me make, you know, there are certain people with certain diseases, granuloma diseases that need to be careful with vitamin D.

great. Um. . But, and there's also like, it's not toxicity, but your body won't utilize vitamin D properly if you're not getting enough, magnesium, or there's a big scare right now that if you're taking vitamin D without K2, you're going to get toxic or your arteries are going to calcify.

And that, honestly, that there's not enough published research to show that vitamin D without K2, especially if we're talking intake amounts of 8,000 and below, are going to do that.

If you're taking much higher levels, sure, increase the amount of fermented foods that you're eating or take some K2, but it's not going to cause problems.

In fact, Dr. Coimbra in Brazil, he does not give his patients K2 because he found that it didn't make a difference and he gives them, some of them are on like.

He's of thousands of IU a day. But again, he tracks their PTH levels. He tracks their, their sarin calcium levels and makes sure that they're not like that's therapeutic uses of vitamin D.

@37:15 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

So, so what people need to know, and I know I increased to 50, 60,000 I use when I'm feeling sick, you know, just for a couple of days to help increase that immune boost.

Um, it, but not something, I mean, and that's that therapeutic use that we're doing it at that high a level, five to 6,000 I use a day is really on the lower side of things.

And our prenatal vitamins are not enough. They're usually at that four to six, 800 IU a level, um, in those capsules.

So please, everybody make sure that your, your, your clients, your pregnant clients are taking enough vitamin C daily during pregnancy and increase.

Jen, tell us about what you guys have going on and what you are in the midst of doing right now.

@38:08 - Jen Aliano

Can I bring up two other points about that?

@38:10 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Sure, sure.

@38:12 - Jen Aliano

So studies have shown that you really don't have to worry about taking too much vitamin D unless you're taking 30,000 IU or higher for months at a time.

@38:24 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay.

@38:25 - Jen Aliano

The Institute of Medicine even said that 10,000 IU is the no adverse effects level, the intake, 10,000 IU and less.

And more importantly, and this is really important for people to hear, you should fear vitamin D deficiency more than you should fear vitamin D toxicity.

And I want to tell you, I was on a phone call this morning with somebody. I met him online a little over a year ago.

He reached out to me. Because his baby was born with rickets, infantile rickets, still exists. It should not exist.

And this really makes me mad. And this poor baby was having seizures, rickets, rickets, seizures due to rickets for months.

The doctors, they went into the emergency room, I think it was their fourth visit, when they finally measured the vitamin D level.

And it was like non-existent. And this poor baby, this poor family having to go through this, I think he was 10 months old.

I have a story online, and I can't remember, and I'm sorry, but I think it was 10 months old when they finally realized, okay, vitamin D deficiency rickets.

@39:47 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Oh my gosh, that's just insane.

@39:51 - Jen Aliano

You know, this is like scurvy, right? We shouldn't have scurvy anymore. We shouldn't have rickets anymore. Um, and that's only, you know, with.

Besides rickets, you've got the preeclampsia, you've got the preterm birth, you've got our maternal mortality in this country right now.

@40:09 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Ridiculous.

@40:11 - Jen Aliano

And we spend the most money.

@40:14 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Are people of color at a lower risk or higher risk of having vitamin D deficiency?

@40:20 - Jen Aliano

Back to sunshine, because you can't say 20 minutes is good for everybody. Your skin tone plays a huge role in how much vitamin D your skin makes.

From sun. So the more melanin you have, melanin acts like a sunscreen. The darker your skin, the more melanin you have, and the longer you have to be outside to make the same amount of vitamin D as a light-skinned individual.

And so there are actually, like Australia, a couple of years ago, changed their government recommendations for sun exposure to say, if you have black or dark skin, don't use sunscreen.

Go out, get, get like 60 minutes of sun. And then put sunscreen on, because they're realizing the incredibly higher rate of vitamin D deficiency among darker skinned individuals.

So darker skinned individuals are at a much greater risk for vitamin D deficiency. They're also at a much greater risk for a lot of these prenatal and neonatal negative health outcomes.

And what we've seen is this racial disparity. If you look at some of these outcomes, whether it's prenatal or cancer or cardiovascular, and you only look at the incidence in comparison to vitamin D level, you see that racial disparity basically disappear.

Wow. And, and it's, you know, it's biology, it's, it's biology, it makes sense, darker skinned individuals who were, you know, they're built to be living in a lot of sunshine, and they're moving places like the UK or Canada.

@42:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@42:00 - Jen Aliano

And they're. If you're not supplementing, and this is regardless of your skin color, if you're not taking a vitamin D supplement, you're guaranteed to be deficient or insufficient, and your risk is a lot higher with darker skin.

@42:16 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Okay. I hope everybody heard that. I love that statement. I wanted to repeat it. You should be more afraid of vitamin D deficiency than vitamin D toxicity.

Yes. That's important, everybody.

@42:30 - Jen Aliano

Yeah, you can take too much. You really can. And that's why it's important to test your level. If you're over 100 for a specific reason, and you're working with a practitioner, and they're monitoring your calcium, your serum calcium, and your urinary calcium, and you're doing it for a reason, or if you're a cancer survivor, and you're doing it for a reason, and you're working with somebody who's knowledgeable about it, great.

But I would not recommend that everybody just go out and take a ton of vitamin D.

@43:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@43:01 - Jen Aliano

Yeah. Thank Without monitoring their levels. Because, you know, like I said, you could be fine taking your five to 15,000 IU a day, somebody else might be above 100.

And then it's like, hmm, I don't know, there's not enough research that a normal individual will be, you know, everything in moderation.

@43:21 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

But, you know, this is where our, our society is really suffering from vitamin D deficiency.

@43:28 - Jen Aliano

So, so back to what you asked me, about what we're doing. Vitamin D is, addressing vitamin D deficiency is probably what we call the lowest hanging fruit right now for improving the health of our country.

Especially the health of moms and babies. And that means vitamin D is very low cost. It's very safe. It's, and it's very effective.

It's backed by science. And, and, and so to. Address vitamin D and ensure sufficiency. I mean, really, there's no reason for anybody to be deficient.

Let's just, it's 100% preventable. It's easy to identify and it's easy to address. And so to not address it, I mean, we could liken it to malpractice or whatever, but it's negligence, you know, and it's so easy that we could be doing for For the, for our health, especially for pregnancy and babies.

You know, we're setting a lifetime of health during our, our prenatal time. What we do in our pregnancy is going to affect our baby for the rest of their life.

And why not make sure that everybody's getting enough vitamin D.

@44:51 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah.

@44:53 - Jen Aliano

And so what we're doing grassroots health is we have put together a team of experts scientists. of interns. We about send

We are just gathering the troops right now to take vitamin D to Capitol Hill on September 10th, and our goal is to update national vitamin D policy for all moms and babies by getting vitamin D protocols into the standard of care for pregnant women, you know, and I want to say this right now, I'm sorry, but vitamin D is important for everyone.

Everybody, I know that everybody needs to be aware of their vitamin D. Nobody should be deficient, but we have to start somewhere when it comes to politics, and I'm very new to politics, so this has been such a big learning experience.

@45:42 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I bet, I bet.

@45:44 - Jen Aliano

But, um, so we, uh, we're starting with prenatal health because that is where we can make the biggest impact.

That's where vitamin D makes the biggest impact on prenatal health outcomes, on newborn health outcomes, and on lifetime health outcomes.

great. see P. That's I mean, you talk about vitamin D during pregnancy having a direct effect on lung development and the possibility of asthma.

And you see studies that show decreased risk of type 1 diabetes and autoimmune diseases. You could affect the lifetime health of this child by making sure that mom's getting enough.

And I mean, before, so we're aiming it, the way we're wording it is, you know, ensuring vitamin D sufficiency for all women of childbearing age so that we can catch them before pregnancy.

But as soon as, you know, for that, that very first prenatal checkup, include vitamin D, include a vitamin D test.

We're also incorporating education into this initiative. So education for the health care providers, education for mamas about vitamin D and its importance.

And so really, our, our end goal would be to make that. But at the very least, we're throwing the spotlight on it, and I do have to say, we've done it before, Grassroots Health was involved in a prenatal vitamin D project at the Medical University of South Carolina, and this was in 2015, I believe, 2013, and we actually, they implemented vitamin D testing and supplementation and education.

As part of the standard of care for all of their prenatal patients, and we looked at that data, that's when we found that compared to women who were deficient, who were below 20 with their vitamin D levels, who had at the end of pregnancy, compared to women who achieved sufficiency, so we're 40 or above, their, the risk of preterm birth was decreased by about 60%.

@47:59 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

60%.% 60%.

@48:00 - Jen Aliano

60%. 60 I'm really. Risk was decreased even further for women who had had a previous pre-term birth and for women with darker skin.

So we've seen this. We've seen the effect that just vitamin D can have. Why not make it possible for all women?

@48:19 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Right. Oh my gosh. Oh, well, Jen, good luck.

@48:23 - Jen Aliano

How can we help? Okay. Well, I mean, it depends on who I'm talking to right now. Um, so if everybody could go, we are, first of all, you know, we're looking for donations.

We're doing a fundraiser and you can find a link to that fundraiser on our website, grassrootshealth.net. Um, I also have a form and I am looking for people who have connections to congressmen, people who can send our letter to their congressmen, to their state representatives, um, people who, um, are willing to endorse.

This initiative, you know, if you, if you run an organization, Lynn, I'd like to put your organization on our letter of your experts, your experts, and you say you're saying, yes, we want to see this happen.

@49:16 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

back it 100%. Absolutely.

@49:18 - Jen Aliano

Um, you know, everything from corporate sponsors to donors, to people who want to endorse it, just spread the word like this podcast, but spread the word with this podcast, because people, if you don't know, you're not going to understand the importance.

So we just shared why it's important. Now, everybody can do something about it. And then, you know, if you're a healthcare practitioner, and you're working with pregnant women, um, and maybe you're not convinced enough, email me or go to our website.

There's so much published, published evidence at this point. Um, be more afraid of what's going to happen if you're not getting enough.

We're giving infants, the American Academy of Pediatrics is like, give your baby 400 IU. vitamin D is, your need increases as you grow and as you put on weight.

So people with a higher BMI need more vitamin D. We can't be telling people that 400 IU is enough for an infant and 600 IU is enough for a pregnant woman.

But it's, it's, it's off by a magnitude of like 10.

@50:35 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

So, um, awesome, but there's plenty of research and I'm available for any questions. Great. Anybody else who has an organization that would like to be on that, uh, letter, please reach out to Jen, please spread this podcast episode far and wide and please, you know, donate what you can to support this initiative because it's, it.

So it's impacting the health of our future, basically, with our children that are being born. So I am so behind this, Jen.

Thank you so much for your time and for all that you and your organization is doing. And I wish you the best of luck on Capitol Hill in September.

And everybody, please check out the show notes and donate what you can to help support this cause because everybody wins.

And I'm so grateful for everybody. Thank you for listening in, everybody. Thank you, Jen, for your time. And we will see you all on the next episode.

Here's to smoother births, faster recoveries, and higher vitamin D levels in everybody. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.