The Breakdown: Vitamin D

Welcome to The Breakdown, a brand-new series inside the Oh Health Yeah podcast where we take major wellness topics, cut through the noise, and give you simple, practical insights you can actually use.  
In this kick-off episode, we are tackling a huge pillar of overall health: Vitamin D.  
What We Cover in This Episode
What Vitamin D Really Is: Learn why Vitamin D is actually a steroidal hormone made by your body, not just a simple vitamin.  
The Hidden Deficiency: Why roughly 70 percent of adults are deficient, how skin tone affects absorption, and why getting outside still might not be enough.  
Real Personal Numbers: Zach shares his surprising test results (12.3 ng/dL) after spending over 20 hours a week outside fly fishing.  
The Mind & Body Impact: How Vitamin D influences energy, mood, anxiety, blood sugar regulation, and Seasonal Affective Disorder.  
Quick Takeaways & Hacks
Eat for Vitamin D: Focus on mushrooms, red meat, egg yolks, tuna, trout, and salmon.  
Morning Commute Hack: Skip the sunglasses on your morning drive (when safe) to help signal your body to wake up and absorb light.  
Smart Supplementing: Look for Vitamin D3 paired with K2 or healthy fats like MCT oil to ensure proper absorption.  
Test, Don't Guess: Work with a doctor to get your baseline levels checked and retest every 4 to 6 months.  
Drop a comment below with the topics you want us to break down next, and make sure to like and subscribe for future episodes!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome into the Oh Healthia Podcast, brought to you by Healthia as Wellness. Thank you so much for tuning in today. It's pretty dang cool. You're a part of one of our newer episodes. This is the breakdown series where we're going to be breaking down health topics that people are like, what in the health does this even mean? We're going to start to break those things down. There's a lot of complicated things out there in the world of health and wellness that majority of people are like, what are these people even talking about? We're going to take some of those topics and we're going to break them down into layman's terms that we can all understand. Thank you so much for tuning in. Here we go with a breakdown. Welcome back to the breakdown. Today we are breaking down something that's pretty important and talked about a lot in the wellness space. We're going to break down vitamin D. We're going to go over the definition of vitamin D, the way that we think it works within the body, and then some actionable items you guys can do to increase vitamin D if you're wanting to. With the healthy wellness side of things, the way that we like to look at vitamin D is vitamin D is a steroidal hormone. A lot of people don't know that. Misty does a great job of explaining this to our clients as well. But vitamin D is something that is produced within the body. Oftentimes people call it the sunshine vitamin because our bodies make it when our skin is exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D levels can play into energy levels, they can play into anxiety levels, depression, they can play into libido. They play into so many different aspects of health. And the majority of Americans are deficient in vitamin D. You can look up the studies, but I would guess probably the numbers are around 70% of adult Americans are deficient in vitamin D. And actually, the darker your skin, the less vitamin D you absorb. So if you have dark skin complexion, the odds of you being deficient in vitamin D are actually really high. The biggest thing with vitamin D that we've found out, step one, is figuring out where you're at with vitamin D. Oftentimes people don't even know where their vitamin D levels are at. So this is something that we do within our own practice for our clients to be able to see where they're at with vitamin D because it plays into so many different aspects of health. Not only does it play into libido, energy, anxiety, vitamin D helps the body to regulate blood sugar. It helps with the immune system, it helps with blood pressure, it helps with bones and muscle strength. So vitamin D is huge. And it's something that we need to be more aware of as a society, I think. When we're thinking vitamin D and how we increase that, there's a few different buckets that we want to talk about. The first one, Zach and I were talking about right before we hopped on, is nutrition. What things can you actually eat to increase vitamin D levels? We like to talk to people about mushrooms. If you're a mushroom fan, that helps to increase vitamin D. Red meat's another one that's extremely beneficial. Egg yolks, tuna, Zach's favorite thing that he catches but sometimes doesn't eat.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Trout, salmon.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Those things are all extremely beneficial for increasing vitamin D. If you're wanting to go the nutrition route, to say them again: mushrooms, red meat, egg yolks, tuna, trout, salmon, all those things can help to increase vitamin D. Obviously, going outside can be beneficial. Going outside doesn't necessarily mean that you're always going to increase your levels. But if you go outside, it's going to help the body to start to absorb vitamin D. We oftentimes talk with clients about like not wearing your sunglasses in the morning, too. Obviously, if your eyes are very sensitive, you might have to wear sunglasses. But starting your day on your drive to work, if you're able to allow the eyes to see the sun, it helps to let the body know that it's time to start absorbing vitamin D. And it also helps with waking up in general. So the more that you can, when it doesn't hurt you, don't let it negatively impact you, the more that you cannot wear your sunglasses in the morning. It can be beneficial for absorbing vitamin D. So when we're thinking nutrition, those are the foods. When we're thinking on the calm side of things, like get outside as much as you can, absorb it that way. Obviously, the supplements side of things is huge. A lot of people talk about different ways to absorb vitamin D through supplements. We like to recommend to clients D3 plus K2 due to the fact that vitamin D is fat soluble. So it makes it easily absorbable when it's paired with that K2, that healthy fat that comes with it. When it comes to recommended daily allowances, that's where we like to refer to doctors. Obviously, every single pill bottle you take is going to have a suggestion on the side of it that shows you how much you should take based off of I use. We like to say retest and see where you're at and see what's making a difference for you. Ideally, in a perfect world, we would have clients retest every four to six months to be able to say, okay, my vitamin D was here. Here's how it's changed over the course of time. And just like anything else, we want to know where that trajectory goes. But we think vitamin D is important due to the fact that it plays into so many different areas of health and specifically the mental health side of things. And it's huge here in the state of Montana for sure. You got anything on vitamin D, Zampi?

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Vitamin D. I recently tested my vitamin D. And for the people that have never seen me in front of the camera, I am a fair-skinned redhead ginger. So being that I have the least amount of melanin a person can have, you'd think I would be able to absorb the most vitamin D. But that's not the case. Um I tested my vitamin D probably two months ago in the middle of the summer, and my vitamin D levels were 12.3 nanograms per deciliter, which is at the bottom of the barrel. Like that is terrible, awful. And it's crazy because I probably fly fish outside. I mean, a minimum, a minimum, especially in the summer, of 20 hours plus a week outside. And you know, sunburns, tans, all of the things, but my vitamin D is just on the floor. So I am working with my doctor about supplementing and trying to get my numbers up to help with my mental health and all of the things that the vitamin D helped me with. But so it's like sometimes, sometimes, even though they say that the more melanin you have, the less you can absorb. It's not always the case. Um, so I think it's just the most important part of this whole thing is just working with your doctor, getting tested in any way that you can, and figuring out where you're at. Seasonal affective disorder is very, very often affected by vitamin D levels. That's why you see rampant um SAD diagnoses uh in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Seattle, Portland, you know, Oregon, Washington, all of those places you, you know, it's taking vitamin D on a daily basis is a staple living in places like that. Um, the last thing I wanted to talk about is just to ask you like, what are some good brands that we can trust? Personally, I started taking uh micro ingredients from Amazon. It's most cost effective, and they seem to be pretty good. They so it's vitamin D3 plus K2 with MCT oil. And again, like you said, because it's fat soluble, it has MC2 oil, it's just coconut oil, guys. Um, it has that coconut oil in it, which helps you absorb it a little bit better. So I am taking that. They're really small. I think it was somewhere along the lines of like $30 for six months worth of a decently high IU and I'm enjoying it. I haven't seen any bad side effects of it. I'm probably gonna retest in like two or three weeks after taking it for a month and see where I see if I'm on the right trajectory.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

I like the focus pharmacology one here in Billings. You can get that online too. I like that one because it worked for me, but my body is different than anybody else's. I went from 40 nanograms per milliliter to like 60 over the course of like six months. So that supplement worked for me. One of the key things with vitamin D is to know that every supplement works differently with every single person's body. So, like Zach said, retest, see if it's changing, see if your numbers are actually increasing because we don't want you wasting money on whatever supplement you decide to go with. Key things with vitamin D, though, actionable items that we want to leave you with, try to prioritize those nutrient-rich foods, the mushrooms, the red meat, the tuna, the egg yolks. If you're focused on increase increasing vitamin D, those can be extremely beneficial. Get outside when you can. Your body may absorb it that way. If you're looking into supplements, the big thing there, try to retest over time and make sure that what you're taking is working for you. And if you want one little hack to play with in the mornings, try to keep your sunglasses down on your drive to work if you can, but do not risk your eye health in doing so. Thank you all so much for tuning into these breakdown episodes. We love doing them for you. If you ever have anything that you want us to break down, let us know in the comments. We appreciate you all.