Hello friends and listeners, welcome to Shameen's model health podcast. For those looking to optimise their help, I'm long-term fat loss. I am Shameen Lenny and I am a biohacker and fitness and nutrition expert. I hope you're all having a great week so far and this week's podcast is one I have been waiting to do for a while and I'm super excited about it.
And this is my 50th podcast. It was around this time last year, I think that I started podcasting and I've been pretty much consistently doing it every week since then and I think part of me saved this podcast for this time of the year and as well because 50 is special to me and I wanted to just give something really special back. So I'm excited about this podcast and why is it you say, well yes it's about vitamin D and you of course already saw that in the title. I'm passionate about vitamin D so it's one of the reasons I kept it until now and with the change of the season I think it's time we really start to address vitamin D and this time of the year is where I start to increase or address my clients and students and even families intake of vitamin D.
So before we move on I just want to start by saying I must ask that you please keep in mind that the information in this podcast is not intended as medical advice. It is for informational purposes only and run it by your physician if you have any concerns. Okay great, let's move on. What is vitamin D?
Okay well vitamin D is a hormone contrary to its name. We make vitamin D in the skin from UVB from the sun which then converts it into its steroid or hormone form because that is what it is. Vitamin D is a hormone just like estrogen or estrogen whatever you want to call it and testosterone. It's got the same molecular buildup as them and it is built out of cholesterol just like them.
On a side note did you know that the oils our skin needs to produce vitamin D? They get stripped away if you shower or bathe too much. So that's just something to think about because I've already spoke about the topic of showering too much bacteria on our skin. So what we're seeing now is lower levels of vitamin D have been associated with cancer, brain aging and brain related diseases like Alzheimer's, MS, kidney failure, heart disease, obesity and even depression.
So I just want to give you a study here. So there was a study done by the World Health Organization. And they did a randomized trial on 77 overweight and obese women who they administered 1000 international units of vitamin D daily or placebo, so some got the vitamin D and some got the placebo supplements. And what they saw was that those women that were given the vitamin D supplementation saw a significant reduction in body fat mass compared to the placebo group.
They also saw a significant rise in 25D hydroxy concentrations and I will explain to you what that is in a minute. Then looking at the next study, we saw a study from Norway. It was done in 2008, which found that people with a low level of vitamin D in their blood had more symptoms of depression. The research also found that taking vitamin D, particularly in large amounts, improved the symptoms of depression.
The biggest effect happened in those people with more severe symptoms. And then there was another study that associated vitamin D and depression in 2013 where researchers analyzed all of the published research that had previously been done about depression and vitamin D up until February 2011. So it's been about two and a half years and they concluded that a lack of vitamin D in the blood is linked with being depressed. A lack of vitamin D in the blood makes it more likely an individual will develop depression and taking a vitamin D supplement can improve or prevent depression.
So there's been so far approximately just regarding depression. There's been about 5,000 research articles that looked at this area of depression and vitamin D. And it's one of the main reasons that I recommend vitamin D not only for brain health and joint support and bone support, but depression. And especially around this time of the year where we see seasonal affective disorder and I see it in not all, but some of my clients I see get affected with the change in the weather.
I know myself, I get awful cabin fever. I'm okay. November, December, but come January, I've had enough get me out of the house. I need some China fresh air again.
And we see this with people, especially with lower levels of vitamin D around this time of the year, they can slowly start to go into themselves and feel a little down. This is where it can not only affect their mental health, but their physical health as well. Not just leading to those health issues that I spoke of, but it can be more severe, can be less severe and it'll obviously impact whether or not someone wants to go and get exercise or if they want to watch TV, if they want to eat well, or if they're just going to go for junk food, if they are going to sit down and feel sorry for themselves or they're going to practice some self care and so on and so on. And this has all been associated with vitamin D levels amongst other nutrients and minerals, but vitamin D being the more prominent one at this time of the year and a lot more lately we're seeing with the rise of technology and people being indoors and a lot more sedentary than we used to be say 40, 50 years ago.
Moving on, what we're seeing though, when we have adequate levels of vitamin D, we see more energy, we feel more of feed or even healthier in ourselves, we see a metabolic rate increase. We are noticing that tissue repair improves which is very important for health and also that pain and inflammation gets reduced as well when we have adequate levels of vitamin D. So then I get asked what is an adequate level of vitamin D and for those of my students and clients that are listening I'm well aware of your vitamin D intake and I play around with your numbers so no need to kind of message me after this podcast. What is an adequate vitamin D level for you?
I couldn't say, I couldn't exactly say because there are so many variables involved. There are some baseline or guideline numbers but to give you an exact one for your optimal health I couldn't say that now we need to get some testing done. There's a lot of variables that are involved, your age, color, your skin, how much sunlight you get, where you actually live, if you're further up in the northern hemisphere, your body fat percentage so we're seeing that or we've noticed that what study is done that showed vitamin D can be compromised with a higher body fat composition because it impairs the bioavailability of the vitamin D because fat itself acts kind of like a sponge and it prevents the vitamin D from being released into the bloodstream where it then makes its way to the liver and kidneys to be converted into its more active form or hormonal form. There's also a gene polymorphism that you would need to get tested to determine if you have it but this can render a person unable to convert vitamin D into its precursor which is called 25-hydroxy-vitamin D and this would mean you're not getting enough conversion into the active vitamin D hormone or circulating form.
As you can see there's a lot of variables and the best thing you can do is get vitamin D levels measured ideally before and after supplementing to or adding a supplement to your routine. Also when I advise people to take a vitamin D supplement vitamin D is fat soluble so taking it with some sort of good fat, a mono saturated fat would be optimal but that's just going to help you absorb or increase the bioavailability of that vitamin D supplement if you were taking one as well and you want to be getting the vitamin D three supplement or in that form. So there's some general guidelines also before we move on. Vitamin K2 which is found in fermented foods it's also important to make sure that you're getting enough vitamin K and especially K2 if you are supplementing with higher amounts of vitamin D just to help with any sort of calcification or crystallization that may happen in the blood vessels.
It's rare you'd need to be taking high amounts but better to be safe than sorry and if you wanted to buy a K2 supplement you can supplement with about 15 milligrams of a natural supplement maybe made from natto or whatever your health store has in store. That will be helpful. So the baseline recommended amounts you would need to speak to your GP or the health professional that you're working with to get their opinion because they should know you well enough as I know my students and clients that I can make recommendations but the baseline would be at this time of year or more going into winter you would be looking around 4000 international units a day. Now that's a general guideline for people that are not obese so remember we spoke about how being overweight can affect how you absorb vitamin D so they're not obese and they don't get a lot of sun so you don't get a lot of sun you may be working in office all day and by the time you get home it's dark you leave in the morning it's dark so 4000 would be what you're looking at and then in the summer time for people who are not obese and don't get a lot of sun again you leave quite early in the morning you're in an office all day maybe you get home in the evening and you're too tired to go outside or you're putting kids to bed or whatever that would be about 2000 international units a day so I hope that is helpful to give you some idea what you should be looking at and as well I just want to say before we finish this week's podcast off that just because something is good for you try not to overdo it do seek professional advice and know what numbers you should be aiming for a plane around this so there are cases of toxicity from overdoing vidminities it's rare it is quite rare toxicity is usually seen in those who take 10,000 international units or more a day or on a regular basis even up to 50,000 international units is a lot but just being aware of that before you go maybe supplementing at the advice of a health professional as always but that kind of gives you some nice groundwork or set guidelines and understanding on how vidminity works and how important it is at this time of the year especially if you're looking for weight loss and looking to feel and look your absolute best vidminity would be one of your main supplements that you would be looking at having a regular part of your supplementation regime so have a great week as always please share with anyone you think would benefit from this and if you have any topics you would like me to cover please don't be afraid to reach out to me through my website or on Facebook be safe each of vegetables and we'll talk next week so have a great week everyone bye