Exploring Vitamin D: Facts and Insights

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Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Greetings everyone. This is the Sound Health Radio Show where we talk about the crossroads of the environment, our health and longevity, with Richard Tachtamigay and Sherry Edwards off working on the Sound Health Portal. I would suggest going to the SoundHealthPortal.com, scrolling down just a bit and clicking on the Watch How button. You'll see a short video explaining how to record and submit your first recording. Then go back to SoundHealthPortal.com, scroll down to current active campaigns such as cellular inflammation, bio-diet, neuroplasticity, or memory.

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If you'd like to leave me a voice message with a question for a guest or a guest idea for a show, you can do that directly from the site and I will be notified. With that, Jen Aliano, MS, CCN, Executive Director of Grassroots Health, an organization supported by over 50 international vitamin D experts, with more than 13 years focused on vitamin D research, Jen has been instrumental in addressing the vitamin D deficiency epidemic worldwide. Jen began her career with Grassroots Health in 2012, where she's served in numerous roles including operations management, study design, communications director, and educational program development. She has co-authored several peer reviewed papers and resources in collaboration with Grassroots Health's panel of scientists. One of her notable achievements was helping implement the Protect Our Children Now quality improvement project for pre-neutral patients at the Medical University of Southern California in 2015. Prior to Grassroots Health, she founded a resource for holistic family health and ran a practice specializing in nutrition, acupuncture, and holistic medicine. Jen holds a master's degree in traditional Oriental Medicine from Pacific College and serves on the editorial board of the Ortho-Molecular Medicine News Service. When not advancing public health, you might find Jen surfing, practicing kung fu, or hiking in nature. Welcome, Jen.

Jen Aliano: Thank you for having me.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Oh, I only have about three hours of questions.

Jen Aliano: Well, we've only got an hour.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: I know, I know. We can go a little long. If we go a little long, I'll be okay with me.

Jen Aliano: That's fine with me, yeah.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Something that just popped in really lit up for me as I was reading your bio again is this. Why and or how do you think the vitamin D deficiency really did become an epidemic worldwide? Why is that? Is it because we moved from being outdoor creatures to indoor creatures? Right.

Jen Aliano: It's the sunshine vitamin. We're meant to get vitamin D from the sun. And, you know, when back in the industrial revolution days, they, you know, moved inside, started working in cities with tall buildings, and we really took ourselves out of that rural country lifestyle and began that city life. You know, there's something called the vitamin D winter. And there's the closer you get to the equator, the longer you have UVB rays available from the sunshine, and that's what you need to hit your skin in order for your body to make vitamin D. And so if you live closer to the equator, you can get UVB year round. But then when you go up higher to the higher latitudes, there's what's called a vitamin D winter when there's no UVB available or it's not hitting the, it's not getting through to the atmosphere to hit your skin. And so you can't make vitamin D. But what we've done over the last several decades, centuries, is we've created our own vitamin D winter by going inside, staying indoors, putting on sunscreen.

Back in the 80s when sunscreen became, you know, a big deal, we started slathering it on anytime we went outside and that blocks the UVB from getting to your skin to make vitamin D. So, you know, we've all done all of these things that have removed sunshine from either our daily lives or from hitting our skin the way it's meant to. And there's been studies that have looked at vitamin D levels of people who either work outdoors, so lifeguards, or the tribes in Africa who still live that nomad lifestyle. And what we've found is that where our bodies naturally produce enough vitamin D to maintain a vitamin D blood level between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter. So anytime I talk about, first of all, anytime I talk about vitamin D blood level, it's 250 HD that you measure in the blood. And that's the way you can tell what your status of vitamin D is.

But I'm just going to say vitamin D not 250 HD. And then another important thing, it's nanograms per milliliter is the unit of measurement that we say here in the United States. And there's another one, and mole per liter. So that's 2.5 times and more so, or nanograms per milliliter. But yes, people who live outdoors, the way that we evolved naturally have a vitamin D level of 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter.

And unfortunately, the average I think in the United States right now is around 25. And yeah, and I do think it's because we have in a way demonize the sun. We've made people fearful of the sun when in fact the sun, it's why we have human life, you know. And there's so many more benefits to sunshine exposure than just vitamin D. But vitamin D is definitely one of the biggest benefits of getting enough sunshine, safe sun exposure.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Well, and I also, I have an issue with goo that they mirror on your skin, especially children, because they're victims and I don't mean that in a really bad way, but I mean they're like, you know, mom grabs the by the arm and covers them and goo. And mom means the best. However, an issue for me is that a lot of that is almost used a really bad word. It's being photo driven into the tissue.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Oh, and you thought it brings to and it's bad stuff. I mean, it's not, it's not, you know, you don't need to put a potential toxin on your child's skin and then have it photo driven in by the heat.

Diverting the pores make me to simulate really well. That has always seemed wrong to me. So there's that. So you're adding toxins, you're not only blocking them from getting the sun, which is benefiting to your everything. Then you're smearing skin stuff on their skin, which is being photo driven in by the heat. Like really, that's so bad. I don't have a question there. I'm sorry.

Jen Aliano: No, no, it's it's a great point. I interviewed Dr. Cicero Coimbra a few months ago. He is a medical doctor in Brazil. He's a neurologist and he specializes in multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases, but he's also been focusing a lot more on autism. And what he's found is that these kids and you know, you can get a lot of these toxins from sunscreen, but you can also get a lot of them from vaccines. And what he's found is that kids are we're getting aluminum in our bodies from the vaccines from sunscreens and other products that you put on your skin. And they're finding aluminum in the brains of these kids with autism. And he's found that giving them silica can help pull the aluminum out of the brain and out of the body and can help improve their their symptoms. So that along with vitamin D deficiency.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And is the silica a homeopathic or is it just a over the counter supplement?

Jen Aliano: It's an over the counter. Okay. Yeah, very safe. He finds when you start giving them silica, you start finding aluminum in the urine. So you're excreting the aluminum. It's helping to pull it out of your body. Great. Pull it out of the brain.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Okay. Good to know.

Jen Aliano: Didn't didn't mean to go on.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: No, no, that's good. No, no, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. What were we talking about again? Yeah, we'll get back there. Well, actually, I'm going to, I'm going to jump slightly.

No, I have to ask this question first. Sorry. So I watched it.

I've been aware. And then you have a great selection of a bunch of videos on the grassroots. Oh, no, it's what is the video? Your YouTube channel is VitaminDaction.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Thank you. And I watched video with a doctor talking about taking K2. And it doesn't seem like K2 has always been, you know, aware. I've been taking vitamin D for a long while. As we discussed backstage, I've been listening to William Grant for 100 years from having met him at Smart Life Farm years ago. So I've been taking vitamin D for a long time. But it wasn't till, I don't know, past couple of years that K2 sort of lit up and people are talking about it. Could you talk about the benefits of taking K2 with vitamin D?

Jen Aliano: I can. And I'm going to just start with a little side note. It's interesting. I've got the, the honor of working and collaborating with some of the world's leading vitamin D scientists, right? They're the smartest minds when it comes to vitamin D. And, you know, like you just said, vitamin K2 is the new kid on the block. And there's not a lot of research yet that really demonstrates whether or not or how vitamin K2 affects vitamin D in terms of, you know, I get, I get this question all the time. If I'm taking vitamin D without K2, does that, is that, you know, going to be harmful or toxic?

And there's not a lot of research yet that shows that that is the case. But that aside, there are definitely benefits to vitamin K2 itself. There's a lot of research showing that getting enough vitamin K2 is good for your immune system. Of course, it's great for your bones. It helps to guide the calcium where it needs to go. But for example, if you're getting vitamin D, you're taking vitamin D as a supplement, you're getting it from the sun and you're not taking K2.

I'm not sure if that's an issue. However, there are plenty of our scientists who do recommend taking K2 along with your vitamin D. I believe Dr. Sanil Wimilawansa is one of them who suggests if you're taking more than 8,000 IU of vitamin D a day, he suggests taking, I think it's 100 micrograms of K2 supplement. So you don't necessarily need to supplement. There's been studies that show just eating, you know, the aged cheeses, sauerkraut, other fermented foods will give you just enough K2 to help balance that action of vitamin D, calcium and where it needs to go. But honestly, my opinion is as long as you're getting the recommended intake of any of these nutrients, because vitamin D is the superstar. I think vitamin D is, it's not a cure-all, but it is what most people are deficient in.

And you have to get it from the sun, most of us. It's really hard to get enough vitamin D from the diet. You can, but we can get most of our other nutrients from a good diet, including K2. I mean, I know sometimes we go down that whole rabbit hole of our food is no longer as nutrient dense as it used to be and all of that, but that aside, there's no harm in taking K2.

There's definitely benefit in getting enough, but I don't think that it's absolutely necessary to take along with vitamin D. And that's my very long answer to your question. But it's a topic that people ask about all the time. I bet.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: I see lots of docs on the YouTube, as they like to say, who are talking about vitamin K2. So it's lit up. I've been doing it for a while because it also has some anti-inflammatory properties. But that's also the reason why you said the secret word you get the gold star for using the word natto, which most people I know are terrified of, and I love natto. And not just because it goes with sushi. I'm always the guy Jean, as they would say, which is Japanese for white guy, at the sushi bar, asking for a natto roll.

And they're always looking at me like, what? Where'd you come from? Why do you even know what natto is? And natto is a great, it's a great proteolytic. It's a great anti-inflammatory. Just that alone, it's enough to want to eat. I mean, I find it to be delicious with a wasabi and soy on rice.

But, you know, it's a great thing. So I'm a fan of all things proteolytic, which also natto and other proteolytic just means that it's protein eating in a certain way. And it's anti-inflammatory. And it also, natto also helps break down that chunky cholesterol stuck in our veins, arteries.

So I have nothing but good words for natto, even if it does scare people. Just looking at it is always like, really? I don't know. It looks slimy. Yes, it does. Yes, it looks slimy. But it tastes so good. Okay.

Okay. So let's jump to Alzheimer's Prevention Day on the 20th, since it's coming up in two days. And you have a wonderful article. You have a great bunch of articles on grassrootshealth.net. Thank you. And the article I'm referring to is, How to Strengthen Cognition and Memory. Yep. So let's talk about, does vitamin D figure into the Alzheimer's Prevention World? It must.

Jen Aliano: Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about it right now. There's that. Yeah. Yes. Yes. We need vitamin D for our brains. In fact, there was a study that found that our brains are very saturated with 25 OHD. And that's one of the forms of vitamin D. So we need good levels of vitamin D. We need omega-3 fatty acids.

And that's the, you know, those are the good fats that you get from fish and seafood. B vitamins are also important. And then the other focus for Alzheimer's Prevention Day is lowering your blood sugars. So cutting all the sugary, starchy foods out of your diet or down. And really those four things, the vitamin D, the omega-3s, the B vitamins and blood sugar. But then there's so many other things, exercise, of course, and an overall healthy diet, sunshine, stress management.

You know, there's things you can do every day starting now that can boost your brain health while lowering your risk for Alzheimer's and dementia. And, you know, it's all a symphony, right? Everything works together. You can't just pick one thing and do it and expect that that's all you need to do. And one of the examples that I like to use is, you know, people like to take their B vitamins, right? But a lot of us are not getting enough omega-3s. And there's been a lot of research showing how great B vitamins are for your brain, for your memory. But there's also research showing that you won't reap those benefits if you're not getting enough omega-3s.

So you have to get both. And, you know, that's where it just comes down to making sure you're aware of everything your body needs, just like the vitamin K2 that discussion we just had. Our body needs all of these nutrients. But knowing the ones that you're most likely deficient in. Most people are low in vitamin D. Most people are low in omega-3s. And then, you know, knowing whether or not you're getting enough exercise, you know, if you're being lazy and sitting on your butt too much, get up and even just walk for 15, 20 minutes a day, a few times a week. There's things, yeah. So there's lots we can do on a day-to-day basis that can sharpen our mind now and keep it sharp later on.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And there's a doctor, Diana Berfered-Kroger, who is a cardiologist, but didn't like that as an industry, literally. I've seen her speak a number of times. And she wrote a book called Call of the Forest. And so she went on after she was a medical doctor, then she got a PhD in botany.

Just because she's possessed in the greatest of ways. And she did a lot of research in Japan where they have forests, of course, in Japan. They have paths, like little cement walkways and things that you walk through the forest. And the benefits derived from the esters that are coming off the trees in the forest, she's actually studied. And it shows actual nutritive value to inhaling those oils while walking in nature. And only because Japan has a very organized way of doing it, of course. It's observable there.

Jen Aliano: Don't they call it forest bathing?

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Yes, that's the word I was looking for. Thank you. Yeah, forest bathing. Yeah. And the two things that amaze me about that is I live in Northern California where there's a lot of mountain biking and hiking in the woods and everything. And one of the things, okay, great, they're getting the forest bathing benefits. The other thing I realized is they have the carryover from that little girl who was grabbed by the wrist as a child in my world. There was a campaign by a tan, anti-tan company with some kind of gooey, severe duster skin.

I can't remember the name of it, but it was a national brand. And it's fascinating to me how so many people who are out in nature, taking advantage of being in nature, are covered up to their wrists. You know, they're just sealed up like they're going into some sort of hazmat suit situation. They're not getting any of the benefits. I think if you can inhale an ester, you can also absorb it to your skin.

That's my personal opinion. And in forest bathing, I think you're going to simulate some of that through your skin. But they're dressed up like they're going into a hazmat situation.

From ankle to elbow to wrist, they're just completely sealed from the benefits of receiving that light and the sun on their skin. I don't have a question there. It just blows my mind.

Jen Aliano: Yes. Yes. And we don't even know everything that happens to our body when we expose it to sunlight, when we immerse ourselves in all that green. And by putting that slimy stuff, is that what you're calling it? Yes.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: I can see the ad in my brain, but I can't think of what the product is. The copper tone girl? Yes. That was it. Yes. It's the copper tone girl. Exactly the coppertone girl.

Jen Aliano: Yeah. Yes. But you don't know what you're doing to your body when you put it on. At least you don't know everything that you're doing or everything that you're preventing from happening. Yeah.

I just, you know, it's not natural. Now, again, though, it is important to avoid sunburns, but you can cover up after exposing your skin for a certain amount of time. And that amount of time varies depending on many factors.

Yeah. But cover up with, you know, put some clothing on, getting some shade that that sunscreen, like you were saying earlier, you're not just putting toxins all over your body. You're also blocking a lot of the benefits that we're supposed to be getting from the sun, including vitamin D.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: It was actually Stephanie Seneff. I've interviewed her a bunch of times. And she's the author who wrote Toxic Legacy about the glyphosate toxin. Yeah, that's all show. Anyway, she was the one who really taught me in her, in her mind, she's a big fan of sun and vitamin D. And she was the one that said, you know, the best way to prevent getting a sunburn is to have a good tan. That's really, it's really simple. It's not, you know, it doesn't take calculus to figure this out. If you have a tan, you don't burn as fast. So develop a tan. It's good for your body. It's good for your immune system. And you look a little George Hamilton like, that’s ok, LoL.

Jen Aliano: Quite that far. You need to learn to acclimate, right? Because for those of us who have a vitamin D winter, there's our skin, you know, it loses that tan over the winter, and then it makes you more susceptible to burn. So you just start exposing your skin a little slowly at first. And then you can get more time because that melanin that it's that it's what gives you that tan. But it acts as a natural sunscreen. And so the darker your skin is, the longer you can be in the sun without any fear of burning, like you were saying. In fact, Australia, I believe two years ago, they updated their government recommendations for sunshine exposure based on skin color, where they noticed that people with black skin had a much higher risk of vitamin D deficiency. And again, you know, it's not just the sunburn that you're delaying when you have darker skin. It also takes your skin a longer time to make as much vitamin D. So the darker your skin, the more sun exposure UVB sun exposure you need to make the same amount of vitamin D as somebody with lighter skin. So you've got, let's see, we were talking about I keep going on these tangents.

I'm so sorry. But yes, the darker the skin, the less concern you need to be about sunburn and that's right. So Australia updated their recommendations to say that people of black color needed like they recommended getting more sun exposure without sunscreen.

But then, you know, they also recognize the fair skin, you know, to be more aware and cover up. But also, it brought vitamin D into the picture. And it brought that there's a real problem, especially with blacks who move from close to the equator to countries like Canada.

Or the UK. You see a much higher risk of vitamin D deficiency among them. And then you also see a much higher risk of vitamin D deficiency related diseases. COVID, you know, there was a lot of research showing that the those who were deficient in vitamin D had a much greater risk for severe COVID, a much greater risk for hospitalization and a much greater risk of death. And you saw those that was even higher among blacks. And there is a real, a real problem that could be addressed simply by making sure everybody's getting enough vitamin D. When it comes to the racial health disparities, there's actually been studies showing if you look at specific health outcomes, and you compare between whites and blacks, and I hope I'm not using the wrong terms.

I'm, you know, being publishing papers and writing and all of that. I'm just going to just say whites and blacks. That's just our skin color.

Okay. But you see, if you look at these rates of specific diseases or mortality due to cancer, cardiovascular disease, you see that you've got the same risk by vitamin D level, no matter what the skin color. It basically closes that gap. And, you know, this is all going back to when we started talking about skin color and that tan blocking sunburn or making it lower, lowering your risk for sunburn, you're also that tan, that dark skin is also increasing your risk of vitamin D deficiency. So it all, all works together like that.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And can you cheat a little by using a tanning booth? Oh, yes. Okay.

Jen Aliano: You know, as long as you are using one that has the mixed UVB and UVA, because there are certain tanning booths that are higher in UVA. And that's not what you want. That increases the risk of sunburn and certain, certain skin cancers. In fact, the vitamin D that your body makes in the skin from UVB directly fights that skin damage, the DNA damage, it helps to repair it. So it is really important to get those UVB rays along with the UVA and to find, you know, there's, I know the tanning salons that have gotten a lot better about safety and educating the people who own, you know, run the facilities so that they make sure that their clients only get safe exposure. But yes, a UVB tanning bed or there are also UVB lights you can buy. Like Spurdy, there is one brand, they sell sun lamps. And it's a UVB bulb that you can produce vitamin D just by, you know, putting this light on for, you know, five, 10 minutes. Nice.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: I'll have to write that down, put that in the show notes. That's good to know. I spent a lot of time indoors because this is what I do. I stand at a computer and work and produce for people.

So the idea of years ago, I was traveling around selling full spectrum lights and other electromagnetic devices and whole life expose and other kinds of events. And my partner and I would go in tan a couple of times a week so that we had some, you know, color because otherwise you look pale and ghost like, which is always a little spooky. And it just, it always, it felt good and wasn't very long. We never burned. We just had enough. So we had color and it made so much difference in how I felt. I hadn't, at that point, I hadn't quite figured out, even though that was the early days of actually discovering the ortho molecular medicine group and listening to Dr. Coon and talk about all sorts of things.

The founder of the ortho molecular in San Francisco. And it made sense that would have benefit to the system. But that was in the early days before people were really talking about vitamin D. But it seemed to have benefit to the immune system. Just in the sense of probably if nothing else, just from feeling better.

Jen Aliano: Well, I mean, like you said, it does produce vitamin D with those tanning beds, but you also produce nitric oxide from UVA. And that's beneficial to your cardiovascular immune systems. You produce beta endorphins and serotonin, all these other hormones and neurotransmitters that affect your mood are made when your body's exposed to sunlight or full spectrum. And, oh, by the way, I don't think we mentioned this yet. May it is sunshine month right now. And so we this month every May it's our 10th annual actually we talk about all the different benefits that our body gets from proper or safe, sensible sunshine exposure. But we are also going to be talking a little bit more about the different like red light therapy. Now they've got red light, blue light, green light, and it's great for so many things from skin health, acne, inflammation. You name it, all these different light therapies that it's it blows my mind how light can do so much for our body.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Yes, it was years ago. There was a group called the health core by a doctor whose name escapes me at this moment because it was that long ago. But he did a lot of work training people how to use LEDs to balance out imbalances. But he was using this was before all of the the revolution of the red light world and all the pads and booze and things you can use with red light. I'm very pro red light but it's just like wow there's a bunch of them now. And he focused a lot on red light and a number of the. Levine who's the head of Allery research Group.

No, that's not quite right. But anyway, he did a lot of work looking at the effects of red light is an anti inflammatory in tissue. And I just think red light is miraculous. I think there's ever all the colors are good. But I just think the beneficial effects of using red light.

Topically on the skin or in you know particular areas for an inflammation is really beneficial and probably having some benefit on stimulating the mitochondria possibly. So I'm a fan of all that and yes you were reading my notes because I was about to say wait isn't it sunshine month. It's perfect. Thank you. And I want to in that in that realm. I'm going to jump to the area where I which is really fascinated to me is the sunshine and gut microbiome health.

Jen Aliano: Please. Yeah. Well, and, and you know you've got you've got these good and bad bacteria not just in your gut, but on your skin as well. And so what we've noticed is that your sunshine exposure can affect the diversity of the bacteria in your gut, meaning it can help increase the number of good guys in there and do you know.

It can decrease the number of bad guys and that's what you want just sunlight and vitamin D. But there was a fascinating study that was done on it showed that I believe it was just women and the women who were vitamin D deficient. When they received sunshine or when they, or they might have actually used UVB devices. So tanning buds, and I can't remember specifically, but they found that exposing the skin to UVB or sunshine increased their gut, the good guys in their gut.

Similarly to how women who are already vitamin D sufficient. So, and then you've got the good and bad bacteria on your skin and sunshine actually helps to increase the good bacteria on on your skin and they, in return, help to decrease the risk of sunburn. They're also kind of like melanin, the good bacteria on your skin help block sunburn. And it's just they're they're great for overall skin health. So I don't know I, I think that just that one study, I think by Bosman, Bosman at all. And just to show that sunlight changes the bacteria in your intestines. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: So sunshine. I'm trying to formulate this into a question. So it has immune system benefit. That's not really a question, but that's more of a tell us more about the system from sunshine. I mean, it's not only it not only feels good. Like there's a reason why the dog goes out and lays in the sun, because dogs I maintain are smarter than people.

That's that period. Cats close the dogs really know stuff. Cats just don't talk about it. But they we go out we like laying in the sun we like to feel of the sun. If you if you put a child in the sun they're going to probably giggle with delight because they're again smarter than adults. So it's it's it's having an effect. The sun is having effect on our mood, which I think in some way is reflected by happy cells in our body.

Jen Aliano: Well, you know, a lot of those neurotransmitters and hormones are made in our gut. And exposure to sunshine helps to increase the production of those chemicals in our body. And then, but you also have to remember, you know, you've got the heat from the sun too, right? And you've got the infrared, the far infrared, and those are also going to have beneficial effects. So you've got infrared can actually penetrate, like, all the way down into your bones. So you've got different effects from regulating blood pressure to increasing circulation and and wound healing. Yeah, there's, you asked about the immune response.

So that's the sunlight, right? That's, you've got nitric oxide, you've got the hormones, you've got all that, but then you've also got vitamin D. And vitamin D itself has incredible benefits for our immune health. They've found that vitamin D regulates, I think it's 10% of our genes. And immune cells are incredibly sensitive to vitamin D. If you don't have enough vitamin D, your immune cells can't respond optimally. And so vitamin D deficiency in a way hinders the immune response. And what vitamin D does is it helps to turn certain genes within the immune cells on so that they can properly respond to a, you know, a pathogen or any disease. Vitamin D helps those immune cells create those chemicals that kill the pathogens and helps to modulate the different responses, whether it's a virus, a bacteria, or even there's a role that vitamin D plays with autoimmune diseases as well. So regulating the immune system, not just boosting a response. But yeah, so that vitamin D that we're supposed to get from the sun has a lot of different roles within our immune health as well. So, but sunshine, you know, like I said, we don't know everything, all the different effects that it has, but we do know that from the nitric oxide that we produce upon UVA exposure all the way to whatever it is that's happening with the infrared and just the warmth with increasing circulation and all of that. So it's that full effect that we get from sunshine, but with the vitamin D.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And I think it's back to dog. I think it's possible that on some level, our cells know there, our cells are smarter than we are. I'll jump to this. And our cells on some level know that the sunshine is having benefit to the system. And the cells all want to work together. They're not trying to fight with each other.

Our cells are not political. I'll just put it that way. They really do want to work together. And the idea is that they get this amazing thing called sunshine.

And you have this, I'll jump slightly, but it's in the same family, same venue, is you had a great article at grassrootshealth.net. And it's the sunshine vitamin, a marker, not a full replacement for sunshine exposure. Right. So I think there are things in the sun and the effects that the sun is having on our tissue and making happy cells and the benefits of everything you talked about, the NOx, the vitamin D, all sorts of things we probably don't even know yet in spite of what we think we know.

Jen Aliano: And you're bringing up a really good point. It's not just happy cells. It's literally the beta endorphins that our body produces upon sun exposure. It's almost like our body craves sunshine for those beta endorphins or for those specific chemical reactions. Right. There was a study by, I think it was Kimani. And what they found was that there's actually a feedback loop.

It's a beta endorphin feedback loop where you crave sunshine when you're lacking not just vitamin D, but when you need the beta endorphins. There's addicts, right? Opiate addicts. You can actually decrease the risk of addiction by getting enough sunshine and vitamin D because it's almost like they're chasing those beta endorphins, right? So it isn't just that our cells are happy. It is our literal happiness and we need sunshine for that.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And we can't. So I know people who I think they take, well, I know they take vitamin D. So they're making this mistake. I'll call it a mistake. I'm thinking because they're taking vitamin D that they don't need to get vitamins, need to go out and get vitamin sunshine. And I suspect that there are things in that sunshine exposure that we haven't yet discovered. We don't know everything, do we? I don't think so. Are we here now? No, we evidently do not.

Jen Aliano: But again, we're humans. We're meant to be in the sun and I do believe very strongly that it's important to get morning sunshine, midday sunshine, and sunshine at the end of the day. All this new research that's blowing up around our clock genes and our circadian rhythm, all the different time-based systems within our body, within ourselves. And this is one of the fascinations that I have with Chinese medicine. So the Chinese, what they noticed based off of observation was that different organ systems in the body were more active at certain times of the day. And so they formed the Chinese clock that shows, like, okay, you know, there are two hour increments. And as you go throughout the day, the energy kind of flows through the different systems, you know, based on this time clock. And like, you've got more activity in one organ system and then it switches.

So anyway, my point is, is that we're meant to live on this through with this rhythm. What we found, Grassroots Health, we did, we wrote a paper based on a case study where we measured the vitamin D levels in the body throughout the day. And what we found was that the vitamin D level also fluctuates throughout the day.

So it peaks around noon and then it's lowest at the end of the day. So your body is always, you know, we need that rhythm. And part of maintaining that rhythm is getting sunshine throughout the day. So you can't make vitamin D in the morning, but you still got to get that sunshine exposure.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: So we should be taking morning walks and afternoon walks, if nothing else.

Jen Aliano: If nothing else, or at least, you know, just stepping outside. Even if you can't go outside, getting it through a window, they've shown health benefits of sun exposure through a window where it can actually improve blood sugar, uh, compared to people who don't get that sunshine exposure. They're in a dark room. So yeah, even if you can't go outside and get a nice walk in, just that sunlight alone is good.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And I love that Chinese organ clock.

Jen Aliano: I did my best. I was tripping on my words a little bit, but

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: no, no, no, it's, I love that Chinese clock. Yes. No, I know. Yeah. I always referred to that when I was in the herb store at an herb store on the Monterey Peninsula. And I would often have acupuncturists come in and we'd end up always talking about the clock because I just thought it was an amazing idea that of course the Chinese would figure this out. I'm a huge fan of acupuncture.

Jen Aliano: And now, just now we're finding the scientists, you know, are finding all these clock genes and actually, um, proving in some way what the Chinese have observed for centuries.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: I love it when the scientists go, we can figure this out. We know what this is. It's only been working for a couple thousand years, but we need to figure it out. That's just amazing. I want to ask about the, the project that you did with the Protect Our Children Now. Would you talk about that a bit? I think that's an amazing project.

Jen Aliano: I love talking about vitamin D and pregnancy. And there is, so let me, let me just kind of give a quick summary of vitamin D, right? For those who aren't familiar enough with it. Vitamin D3 is what we either take from supplements or should, you know, there's vitamin D2, but you shouldn't supplement with that one. D3 is what our skin makes upon UVB exposure.

And then it's converted to 250 HD. And then it's converted again to 125 D. And that is what's called the active form of vitamin D. It's also the hormonal form of vitamin D. And the role, the hormonal role of vitamin D is calcium regulation, making sure that we have the exact right amount of calcium in our blood. Now there's many, many, many other functions that are non-hormonal, non-hormonal functions of vitamin D125.

But I'm not going to go into that right now. So the conversion of vitamin D into 125, the hormonal form of vitamin D, is very strictly regulated. And it's based on our calcium homeostasis. But there's one time in our life cycle that that relationship is uncoupled and that's during pregnancy. So something happens when we, when a woman becomes pregnant, where her body is no longer regulating that conversion of vitamin D into its active form based on calcium levels. And what happens is by the end of the first trimester, she's got her blood level of 125 vitamin D would be toxic or even possibly fatal to a non-pregnant individual. So something happens during pregnancy that is increasing the demand for that active form of vitamin D. And it's not hormone, it's not because of calcium levels. There's something, and they think maybe it has something to do with maintaining the pregnancy, making it so that the woman doesn't reject the baby, you don't want the immune system attacking the baby. But the placenta uses up a lot of that vitamin D. And then the fetus needs that vitamin D for development as well.

So that is my little side note before I talk about the project. I just, you know, I think it's really important for any woman to be aware of her vitamin D levels if she's pregnant or if she's trying to get pregnant. So what we've found is that, you know, I mentioned that 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter is what you want that vitamin D level to be, right? That's the amount, that's our blood level that we naturally produce when we have abundant sun exposure. And so getting your blood level of vitamin D to at least 40 during pregnancy, and that's, you know, that's the level at which that conversion of vitamin D into its active form plateaus, right?

So you've got, if you've got a vitamin D blood level of 40, you're producing enough of that active vitamin D to do whatever the body needs, right? For most people, there are some instances, you know, people who have autoimmune diseases likely need more, but we're talking pregnancies. So what we've found was at the Medical University of South Carolina, we implemented a new standard of care among all of the prenatal patients there. And it just involved measuring vitamin D level at their first prenatal appointment and supplementing to make sure that all women got up to at least 40 nanograms per milliliter. And we would retest to make sure because everybody, this is another key, key point about vitamin D, pregnant or not, is everybody responds differently to dose. So you can't just recommend one dose of vitamin D for everybody because we all respond differently. So you need a personalized dose, and it should be based off of your vitamin D blood levels. So we would supplement or we recommend based off of our calculator. We have a calculator on our website that you can enter your starting level of vitamin D, your target level of vitamin D, and it will suggest and it will come up with an estimated amount of vitamin D to take to get to that level. So at MUSC, we found that the women who achieved a vitamin D level of at least 40 by the end of their pregnancy compared to the women who were vitamin D deficient at the end of their pregnancy, the women who got enough vitamin D had a 62% decreased risk of preterm birth only with vitamin D, right?

That's the only change we made. And there's many, many, many other studies showing that getting enough vitamin D during pregnancy reduces the risk of not just preterm birth, but also preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, many other health outcomes for the baby. You've got babies who are developmentally delayed. Their risk goes down if you're getting enough vitamin D during pregnancy, autism, different autoimmune diseases, type 1 diabetes, you name it.

And it's asthma, yeah. And not only does getting enough vitamin D during pregnancy decrease the risk of all these different diseases, but it's been demonstrated to be incredibly safe. We had zero cases of toxicity. It's very, very hard to take too much vitamin D. So not only is it safe, it's inexpensive. We like to call vitamin D the low hanging fruit because it is one of the safest, easiest, cheapest ways to improve our health. But I really want to stress the importance of getting enough vitamin D during pregnancy, making sure you're getting enough vitamin D before you get pregnant. Because then what you're doing, you're not only improving the health of your pregnancy, but you're improving the health of that child for the rest of its life.

And there are studies to show that the amount of vitamin D that a pregnant woman has, has even been correlated to a decreased risk of certain cancers, breast cancer, and other diseases for that child later in their life. I think Dr. Wagner likes to call it, it's priming the immune system for the rest of the life.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Well, I'd like to jump back to asthma for a moment because it makes so much sense to me because of the benefit of the, let's say sunshine or oral vitamin D. If you're getting my observation from vitamin D, is that it makes sense that it would have benefit to asthma because it's benefiting the mucosa. And it's benefiting all of the mucosa, not just that.

That's why women are having benefit from taking vitamin D and the baby is being set up with this better immune system. It's benefiting our immune system. And one of the other effects of that is that it's also helping make stronger mucosa. And since we're basically walking sacks of mucosa, this seems really good. This seems really beneficial for us to have vitamin D levels that are going to help all of the mucosa in the system be more effective, either defending or shielding or everything that it does, just our stomach. We're a lot of mucosa.

Jen Aliano: And remember, back to the effect of vitamin D on our genes, we need enough vitamin D to turn our genes on and off and it's very, very active within our immune cells. And so there was a study that showed that depending on how much vitamin D the participants received, if they weren't getting as much vitamin D, fewer of their genes were being regulated. And the highest group was getting 10,000 IU a day. And they had the most gene regulation.

But who knows, maybe they needed even more than that. But yes, so it's almost like it's almost like you're shining sunshine into your cells, right, into your long tissue and your gut tissue. And that's just how I envision vitamin D having its effect on all the different systems in the body.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: And how do, then we have time for this, we might go a couple minutes over, how do optimal vitamin D levels differ from conventional normal reference ranges?

Jen Aliano: Sorry. It's a big mess out there. Right? It's a mess. And, you know, I'll start with laboratory reference ranges, right? Because we are aware that you've got a laboratory reference range. And they base that off of everybody who's testing through them, right? So you've got all the healthy people, you've got all the sick people, you've got everybody, and you're just throwing all their levels in and you're saying, here's the range. And too many people rely on that as, you know, a good indicator.

But then you've got the optimal range. So for example, I can, I keep referring to our 40 to 60, some of our scientists believe it should be 40 to 80. I really believe that it depends on your overall health and specific conditions, because you can use vitamin D therapeutically, and that will raise your vitamin D, your optimal, personal optimal level up a lot higher.

But that's, that's like using vitamin D as not a drug, but just as a therapy. But general health, the optimal level is between 40 to 60, up to 80. Lab reference ranges are all over the place. You've got some labs that say the, you know, the range is 20 to 50.

So they, you know, below 20, they call deficient, if you're above 50, oh my God, you're taking too much vitamin D. Some labs have a reference range of 30 to 100. And so it's all over the place. It's very inconsistent. And you can even go from one hospital to another hospital in the same city, have a vitamin D level of 55. And one of them is going to tell you your, your toxic, you're taking too much, while the other one's going to say you're perfectly fine, you're in range. But back to the guidelines, because there are certain institutions that set the guidelines that, for example, doctors refer to.

And that becomes their truth, right? So we've got the Institute of Medicine, who has defined vitamin D, like, you're fine if you're above 20, basically, they say anybody below 20, okay, you're deficient. But if you're above 20, you're great, you don't need any more vitamin D. But we know that's not true.

We also have the endocrine society who previously said that a vitamin D level of 30, or higher was considered sufficient. They recently changed their guidelines, made them incredibly confusing. And anybody who wants to learn more about that, we did a, we hosted a virtual forum in response to those guidelines.

And so I'd recommend looking that up on our website or our YouTube. But bottom line is that everybody should achieve a minimum vitamin D level of 40. When you're going to your doctor, and they're testing your vitamin D level, don't rely on your doctor just saying, oh, you're fine. Because oftentimes, unfortunately, the doctors themselves are not aware of vitamin D, they don't know what the optimal levels should be. So they're referring to those lab reference ranges. And they might see that because your vitamin D level is within the lab reference range of 20 to 50, or whatever, if your vitamin D level comes in at 22, they're going to tell you you're fine.

But what everybody needs to do is they need to ask for their number. So if you're getting your vitamin D level tested through your doctor, ask your doctor what was the result. And it's going to be that 25 OHD, right? That's the unit, the measurement that we do to determine our vitamin D status. And yeah, ask for the number, don't rely on the lab reference ranges, don't rely on somebody saying, oh, you're fine.

And then once you get that number, you can determine a dose. And I think it's incredibly important to retest because we've got, for example, we have a husband and wife, husband and wife participants in our study. And they wrote in one time and said, you know, we find it fascinating that, and this was the wife, right? The wife only needed 2000 IU vitamin D to be in that 40 to 60 range. Her husband needed 10,000 IU vitamin D to be in that range.

And he had type two diabetes. So there are many different factors that affect our vitamin D level and how we respond to supplement so really important to make sure you are taking enough and that your body is responding to dose. Because another good thing about testing and retesting is if you're not responding to vitamin D, your blood level is not going up with supplementation, you could be deficient in magnesium.

So that could be an indication that, oh, I need to take more magnesium or any other conutrient. You also see vitamin D levels can drop with certain illnesses. So in that study that I was talking about earlier that showed the diurnal effect of vitamin D, how vitamin D levels fluctuate throughout the day. What we also observed was right before the symptoms of a cold or an illness, the vitamin D levels dropped. So as soon as the body recognized, oh, I've got a pathogen, I need to start fighting it, we need to rev up our immune system. So almost like the immune cells started sucking that vitamin D out of the blood because they needed to use it for the immune response. So what you also see is that the body uses up vitamin D during times of illness, high levels of stress and all that.

So there's many reasons that measuring your vitamin D level is really important. And then also testing, not frequently, we suggest at least once or twice a year. And the best time of year to do it is at the end of winter, because that's going to be your low because you haven't been in the sun. You haven't been making vitamin D. And if you're not taking vitamin D, I guarantee you're going to be deficient. So testing at the end of winter is going to tell you how low you go every year. And then testing after summer will tell you your highest point of the year because most of us are getting more sun during the summer and making some vitamin D. So but again, it's really hard to get enough vitamin D with our lifestyles just from the sun. So anybody who's not supplementing is probably deficient. I like to give really long answers to your question.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: No, I like them. We're a good fit for each other. We're good at the sure. Go with that. And I would add that I have the feeling that we would find that the level of vitamin D is also related or a desire for more.

I'll put it this way. I would like to have a higher level of vitamin D because I live in a toxic area. And what I mean by that is I live in an agricultural area. I live in wine country. And the wineries that are commercial will have people out in hazmat suits, literally on tractors in hazmat suits pre dawn, spraying the vines with some kind of dusting. Usually it's a sulfur compound of some kind, partially because the vines are so immune to suppress themselves because they don't get regenerative farming practices on some vineyards that they have to have the support in order to produce the grapes and pump out the grapes at the rate that they need to.

The vines are immunosuppressed because they're being given chemicals and blah, blah, blah. The bottom line is there's a lot of stuff in the air around here. So I like to have a higher level of vitamin D because I think I'm living in a more toxic area and I don't live in a large metropolitan city where you have buses driving around and all that kind of stuff. I mean there are buses here but it's pretty rural comparatively.

It's not downtown San Francisco or LA. So I think that if you live in a city with all of that, I would want, personally, I would want a higher level of vitamin D to give the body as much possibility of fighting things off as possible.

Jen Aliano: Right. And vitamin D directly affects your inflammation. So it's anti-inflammatory. It's an antioxidant. It's anti-bacterial. It really does support how your body responds to your environment, how it responds to pathogens, how it heals. So ooh, do I have time? Just real quick.

Sure, please. I really want to make sure that we talk about our Vibra project. So we recently, Vibra Hospital, it's an acute care hospital in North Dakota and they implemented, they learned about vitamin D from one of my colleagues. She gave a lecture. She's a nurse and she does a lot of vitamin D presentations to other nurses and other medical professionals.

And these two gals heard her presentation and they run Vibra Hospital and they're like, wow, if vitamin D has all these health benefits for us, we need to make sure that our patients are getting all the health benefits from vitamin D. And so we help them implement a quality improvement project within their hospital. And what they did was they measured all of their patients and mind you, this is an acute care. Some of these patients were coming in from other hospitals, from other intensive care units. Some of them were coming in with severe brain damage and comas.

Some of them were coming in with major wounds. And so they're receiving these patients and testing their vitamin D level upon admission to the hospital. And then they used our calculator to determine how much of a loading dose of vitamin D followed by a maintenance dose. So they supplemented all of their patients with high doses of vitamin D loading doses, which gets the blood level up a lot quicker. So for example, giving them 50,000 or 25,000 IU a day for a week. And then following that up with what's called a maintenance dose, which would be the daily dose to then maintain the level.

So it helps boost the level real quickly and then maintains the level. And what they found was they started having much lower rates of hospital acquired infections. The CAUTIs, the catheter induced infections, they went, I mean, I think one year they had zero. So they've been doing this for three years. And two or three years, one of the terms they had zero incidences, their rates of infection went down so much that they received a letter of recognition from the state. And of course, you can't say that it's all the vitamin D. It's all because of the vitamin D. But that was the one big thing, the one big change that they did. They had coma patients coming in that had very poor prognoses.

And they fully recovered. Please go to our YouTube channel. It's Vitamin D Action and listen to the interview that I did with them. It's Vibra Hospital. And just hear the stories of these patient outcomes and the improved health.

And I, you know, it frustrates the heck out of me that people who hear these stories and have they're in the position to make these changes in their own hospital or with their own patients. There's no reason not to. Like, why are people not doing this? And this is what is incredibly frustrating to me. We've been talking about vitamin D for years now. And just the take up is so slow. But it's definitely getting better, right? So the awareness is getting out.

We do have more practitioners who are reaching out to us wanting to learn more about vitamin D, what they can do for their patients. But yeah, it's just, it's amazing. Yeah.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: It's so simple. That's the way I when I discovered I think it was from William Grant. A long time ago.

Jen Aliano: And maybe it's too simple. Maybe that's why people just don't believe that. Can't be that easy.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Yeah. Oh, you mean if I just take vitamin D it might completely change my life? No, maybe. Maybe. Don't know. Doesn't hurt. That's for sure. Okay, I'm going to stop us now. Not because we couldn't go on, but because time's up. That's it. I'm glad you threw that in because that was a great story. I watched that video. And it was mind blowing at the ah-ha that all of the people that were talking of like, you know, this stopped CAUTIES, which took me a while to find a catch on what that when they explained it.

Then I was like, oh, thank you. And it is just amazing how I was 10 years ago, I was hospitalized and had 30 hours of surgeries and much of stuff. And I had some of those issues. And but I had less than normal and it was probably because I was already taking high comparatively high doses of vitamin D that I had to have snuck into the hospital, into the facility because they didn't want me, they didn't want me taking vitamin C. Why?

That's a good question. The doctor, not my primary, not my primary there, but at the facility doctor and I had a big blowout about it. And at some point she came storming into my room and said, okay, I get it. You know what you're talking about.

We're not going to talk about this again. Take your vitamin C. I don't care. Okay, thank you.

Have a nice day. But I mean, you know, just like vitamin D, like why couldn't we, I can get in trouble possibly for this. Why couldn't we be giving kids vitamin D in school? Just one vitamin D a day or supplement food with vitamin D so they get a little bump of vitamin D. So there would be less stuff passed around in schools because it's just like a place where pathogens are hanging out going, look, young ones, let's go. Where would you like people to find out more about you, your work, and I'll put all of this into the show notes. I'm just happy for the audio audience.

Jen Aliano: For grassrootshealth.net and anybody can email me gen, j-e-n at grassrootshealth.org. Yep, our website, our blog, our YouTube channel. If you go to any of our social media accounts right now, they are overrun with sunshine in month material. But it's not always that way.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Okay, that was fun. Thank you. That was really good. It went fast. It does when the material is this good, it goes like, oh, and we're done? Really? I have another hour of questions.

Jen Aliano: I could talk for two more hours.

Richard~TalkToMeGuy: Yes, me too. Yes, and the audience knows I could. I have. But we're not going to today. That was really wonderful, Jen. Thank you so much. And keep up the good work.

I just am such a huge fan of grassroots health. As you said, we talked a little bit about stage. I think I've done four or five interviews with Carol Begley. And I just think the work is phenomenal. It just seems it's possibly too simple.

Jen Aliano: Right. Maybe that's the issue that keep people from doing it. People like, oh, it's just a vitamin. Yeah, it's just a vitamin. What?

So is vitamin C for Goodness sakes. All right, I'll stop now. Thank you very much. Everybody have a great rest of the weekend and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.