Transcript

0:05:53  Vitamins are considered by both clinicians and patients as optional. Most people seem to believe that if they eat a balanced diet and have a good lifestyle, that that’s all they need to do. But as soon you start studying the deficiencies states, you realize you can’t eat your way to a normal Vitamin D level. And for the vast majority of people, you’re not gonna be able to get it throughout the year, trying to get it from the sun.

0:11:21.3  What I found though was, from my graduate training in pharmacy before I became a physician, they said, “If the range of reference and the ranges of toxicity don’t have any overlap whatsoever, in other words, you have an incredibly safe agent to use. Then you shouldn’t be timid and shouldn’t be afraid to exploit the full range of reference when it’s making a difference.” And this has been one of the biggest problems with Vitamin D, is because the amount of D needed to prevent rickets is really tiny. I call it inky dinky D. You only need a level of 20 nanograms, which would be 50 nanomoles per liter. Doesn’t take much at all to completely prevent rickets, 100% prevention. At that level, 20 nanograms per mil, no other Vitamin D responsive condition improves. None of them. They all need levels of 50, 60, 70 or higher. The reason I selected 80 nanograms per mil is several other real key conditions like breast cancer in women, colon cancer, and auto-immunity, all seem to benefit from those levels that were up around 70 to 80. …

0:13:09.5  So Americans are relatively large. We have a high level of obesity, and since Vitamin D is stored in body fat, we have to use a lot more than Europeans or Canadians would require. For folks that are around 125 pounds, 5000 units a day over time are gonna get that person a level that’s somewhere up around 70 or 80. But I’ll tell you, the thing about levels that we have to keep in mind is that there’s a tremendous amount of gene variation….

0:14:43.2  Now, most Americans haven’t been taking any Vitamin D for prior 12 months. Recent studies are showing it’s improved during the pandemic, it was running about 69%, hadn’t had any in the prior year. Now it’s down around 48%. So we picked up about 20% in there, but still, most people aren’t taking any. And when they first start taking it, if you just use the maintenance dose, it’ll take several months to get the level up to its steady state, and so a loading dose is used.

Thiamine

0:24:36.2 Thiamine‘s interesting because it’s a deficiency state where you can have plenty of it and yet you manifest symptoms and signs of conditions that are known to be caused to Thiamine deficiency. And the reason for that is there are three really common drinks that people ingest: Coffee, tea, and beer, and these contain anti-Thiamine factors. And these anti-Thiamine factors are competitive inhibitors of the receptor. So when you drink several cups of coffee and then maybe iced tea for lunch and then have a beer in the evening, you’ve got these anti-Thiamine factors all day long.

LISTEN:

033 Dr. Dave McCarthy: D for Deficiencies, D for Diseases – Jan 3, 2022