WARNING: The audio message below contains a “bad word!” It might offend some of you. If so, skip the audio link. It’s not for you. If you’ve been around for a while, you may already be familiar with my sense of humor.
Here’s some trivia for you.
What deficiency is rarely diagnosed, has been linked to many forms of cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression, dementia, bone loss, and autoimmune diseases, like MS?
(Come on now. I know most of ya’ll saw Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” And remember that scene where Radio Raheem was trying to get his batteries!)
In any event, the answer to all the above is Vitamin D, which isn’t really a vitamin. Vitamin D is actually a hormone synthesized in the skin from sun exposure and activated in the liver and kidneys.
Did you know that ¾ of American kids aren’t getting enough D? I’m guessing because their little asses won’t go outside and play. They are sitting in the house playing on devices, watching the two trillion channels, and blowing things up in video games. (We stayed outside all day. You just better have your ass home when the street lights came on!) Sadly, in addition to the sedentary lifestyle, the lack of vitamin D puts them at higher risk of obesity. It’s a whole vicious cycle because subcutaneous fat is known to store vitamin D. So apparently fat cells screw things up by keeping D from going where it is needed.
Research confirms a correlation between D deficiency and Covid. Vitamin D plays a very important role in immune function. There are clinical examples that have shown that D deficient Covid patients were at risk for increased severity of their symptoms and at a higher risk for death. Another reason the black community was hit so hard! Vitamin D has a huge impact on your health and your cell function.
Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to colon, prostate, breast, and ovarian cancer. And, because it reduces cancer-promoting cellular growth, it’s considered a powerful cancer inhibitor.
Vitamin D is what’s call an immunomodulator. For instance, in someone with an autoimmune disease like MS which makes the immune system overreact or hyperactive, it can lower the response or increase it for an actual invader. Almost every cell in our body has a Vitamin D receptor. When cells mutate, D delivers the instructions to the cell to repair or destroy itself, so it doesn’t lead to cancer.
So, what should we be doing?
Your body makes vitamin D when it’s exposed to sunlight. Almost all of the vitamin D we need comes from the sun. And this is part of the problem! So many of us aren’t exposed to enough sunlight. (Especially in the past year!) Overuse of sunscreen is one of the reasons. It’s sort of a double-edged sword. While sunscreens might help prevent skin cancer, they are also blocking Vitamin D production. In addition, most of us don’t eat enough of the few natural dietary sources of vitamin D, like wild salmon, cod liver, and fish oils.
To make matters worse, as you age, your skin produces less vitamin D. I know they say, black don’t crack, and that is one benefit to being a person of color, but brown skin also produces less Vitamin D. For this reason, D deficiency among my peeps is pretty common.
If you live in a colder climate, you’re also kinda screwed. During daylight savings time when you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, you REALLY aren’t getting enough sun. This is one of the reasons MS is more prevalent in the northern parts of the world! It wasn’t until my Daughter’s diagnosis that I really started to research the benefits of Vitamin D and came upon this info.
But it’s not just MS. One study found that vitamin D supplementation could reduce the risk of getting type 1 diabetes by as much as 80 percent. Another study showed that it reduced the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) by a whopping 40 percent.
As menopausal women, we are already at risk for Osteoporosis. Vitamin D has been shown to help prevent and treat osteoporosis. Your body needs vitamin D to be able to properly absorb calcium. D along with Vitamin K, help to maintain a proper balance of calcium between your blood and your bones. Combined, they regulate calcium. Without both, Calcium may not get to where it’s supposed to go. This can cause it to accumulate where it shouldn’t be like your blood vessels or kidneys.
Now before the men reading this tune completely out because I mentioned menopause, do I have news for you! I learned in this masterclass presented on Model Health, that a group of men that were D deficient, also scored lower in erectile function and sex drive. Or as I now call it, BONERABILITY!
So, here is one problem. In order for D to be converted properly, you need to have healthy organs. Your kidney and liver need to be functioning properly. And with all the drugs everyone is on these days, that’s a problem. Most of the pharmaceutical drugs we shovel into our systems can damage our liver. There’s a reason that even a bottle of Advil has a daily limit. Now think about all the heavy-duty meds so many are on. Not good.
Okay, so just as vitamin D occurs in different forms, with D3 being the effective form to supplement with, vitamin K exists in two forms: K1 and K2. K2 is the form thought to be most effective for supplementation.
You can get your Vitamin K1 in leafy green veggies, and cruciferous veggies like brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli. K2 is found in fermented foods, liver, egg yolks, and chicken. If you have a healthy microbiome or gut bacteria, it can also produce K2 by converting K1.
Look. The bottom line is that Vitamin D is critical for good health. Supplementing with D3 can be very effective in reversing a D deficiency, however, you really should have your levels tested before you start supplementing. If you are deficient, you may be temporarily told to supplement with a higher dosage than you would to maintain the level once you resolved your deficiency. What you need will vary depending upon where you live, the season, and how much time you spend in the sun.
Get tested! Do the repairs and then do the maintenance. DO THE RIGHT THING! Get you some…….
PS: If you do use sunscreens, which EWG, or Environmental Working Group suggests may not be safe or effective and contain harmful chemicals, check their database below. Remember, your skin is your largest organ. Whatever you put on it is absorbed into your body! Proceed with caution!
https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/