Vitamin D is one of those topics I get questions about regularly. It’s a tricky nutrient that acts more like a hormone and is recommended to anyone and everyone, so it can make it hard to understand why many practitioners caution against high doses of vitamin D. When you understand what impacts your vitamin D status and what different levels could be telling you about your health, it starts to make sense. That’s what we will break down in this newsletter along with how to start taking steps to optimize your vitamin D status.
While it is tempting to get a low vitamin D lab result back and hop right on a vitamin D supplement, it’s important to look at the body as a whole. What is causing the low vitamin D? While vitamin D is well-researched and linked to many conditions, it’s not the cause. Low vitamin D is a symptom.
Inflammation is a common root cause of low vitamin D on blood work. Most blood work is measuring vitamin D 25OH. This is the storage form of vitamin D. A common vitamin D pattern when someone is dealing with inflammation would be low vitamin D 25OH and high 1,25 OH Vitamin D (this measures the active form of vitamin D). This is why I don’t recommend supplementing vitamin D based on a 25OH measurement alone, ideally, you see both. This article breaks down how this pattern is often related to inflammation and pathogens. Oftentimes, this inflammation is driven by imbalances and possible pathogens in the gut. Inflammation could be driven by a number of different things though. Another common one is iron overload. While certainly, not everyone deals with this, it is a common issue for many women with PCOS and those with a genetic history of hemochromatosis as well as women that are not cycling. The last big root cause of inflammation in the body that I see in my practice that I think is worth mentioning is mold toxicity (this is a very nuanced topic and goes beyond the scope of this newsletter, not everyone reacts to mold, I plan to do a podcast episode on this in the future). When struggling with mold toxicity, many minerals become depleted, inflammation is high, and gut imbalances are common. This can all drive down vitamin D levels.
Another important thing to note is that studies show that both healthy and unhealthy adults can have “low” vitamin D 25OH levels. This article has a great graphic, shown below, to make this concept easier to grasp. There are also many different ranges for what is considered optimal for vitamin D. For example, The Vitamin D Council considered 40 ng/ml or less to be deficient. The Endocrine Society considers less than 20 ng/ml depleted. Finally, The Institute of Medicine considers 12 ng/ml a deficiency and 12-20 ng/ml insufficient and at risk but over 20 ng/ml optimal.
Because of all of the different ranges and takes on vitamin D levels, it’s even more important to keep it in context to your health history and nutritional status.
Magnesium status plays a major role in our vitamin D levels. Magnesium is responsible for converting vitamin D to the active form. It also had a big impact on our parathyroid. This study shows that a magnesium deficiency led to a reduction of parathyroid hormone and a decrease in vitamin D. There are also studies that show that magnesium supplementation in children with low levels and diabetes helped restore their levels of active vitamin D (1,25OH). There are many possible depleters of magnesium. See below.
Nutrition
Lifestyle
Medications-also often contain fluoride
Physiological
Learn more about magnesium in this podcast episode!
While our health history and mineral status play a huge role in our vitamin D levels, sun exposure and time outside also have an impact and are a great way to optimize vitamin D status. The Nature of Americans reports:
“Over 60% of adults report spending 5 or less hours outside in nature each week.”
This is staggering! Not only for our overall and mental health but for optimal vitamin D levels as well. Sun exposure and getting that light in our eyes is important for stress hormones, vitamin D status, and optimal sleep. Working on getting outside more and working that into your routine can really help optimize vitamin D status. Learn more below!
Hopefully, by now, you realize that there are many interpretations and ranges of what an optimal vitamin D level is. So before we obsess over achieving an optimal vitamin D, we have to take a step back and look at all of the areas that impact it. If you optimize your magnesium status, reduce inflammation, and overall feel good but your vitamin D 25OH is still considered suboptimal, then I would reconsider what an optimal range is. Of course, you would want to discuss this with your practitioner, but when we try to perfect one lab value, it often leads to ignoring the bigger picture and what is actually going to make a difference in your health. You could achieve an “optimal” vitamin D from supplementation but still struggle with low minerals, poor gut health, and inflammation. Don’t forget to keep the whole picture in mind.
With that said, there are ways you can support healthy vitamin D levels if you are concerned with yours and don’t want to take a supplement:
Support healthy digestion and gut health. The best way to support your overall gut health is to support digestion. This looks like slowing down at meals so you can eat in a relaxed state and digest your food better. This is something everyone can focus on. I like to do a little check in with myself and a quick body scan before my meals to get into this relaxed state. Do what makes you feel relaxed. Optimal digestion supports a healthy immune system and healthy gut. I have a post on Instagram that digs into this more here.
Include magnesium-rich foods, topical magnesium, and magnesium supplements (if appropriate).
Magnesium-rich foods include:
Get outside! We won’t be able to boost vitamin D without sunlight. Vitamin D supplements are not sulfated and don’t optimize our levels like good old-fashioned sunshine. I like using the Dminder app to understand how much vitamin D I’m getting from the sun. Learn more here. You can enter your skin type and location and it will tell you how many IU’s you are getting based on the amount of skin exposed and time of day. It’s really neat!
There can be a time and place for vitamin D supplementation. If you live in a place without a lot of sunlight or are unable to get sunlight daily, plus you have low calcium, and/or struggle with an autoimmune condition, then taking 1,000-2,000IU daily could be a good fit and could also support calcium levels. Avoiding high doses will help avoid further mineral imbalance. If all macro minerals are low on your hair mineral test (calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium), then I would avoid vitamin D supplements.
If you want to learn more about supplements and how they can be supportive but also unsupportive check out these two podcast episodes:
reminder: i’m currently taking on 1:1 clients. if you’d like to explore what it would be like to work together and if we are a good fit, fill out this form to get more details!
