Dr. Hotze Discusses the Many Health Benefits of Vitamin D
Dr. Hotze discusses vitamin D and its many wonderful health benefits.
Podcast Highlights:
1:35: Now vitamin D is made from cholesterol in your body. As a matter of fact, because it’s made from cholesterol, it’s considered by many a hormone, not just a vitamin, a hormone, because many of the major hormones in your body derive from cholesterol.
2:17: You need cholesterol, it’s essential. It’s essential for the cell walls in your body. It’s essential for the covering of all your nerves in your body. It’s important for brain function and cholesterol is very important for hormone production.
2:53: Now vitamin D is produced in your body when ultraviolet light from the sun, passes through your skin and there’s a chemical process that causes the conversion of cholesterol to vitamin D, every cell in your body, in the nucleus of your cells, you have receptors for vitamin D. And in the immune system specifically, there are 15 different genes that are regulated by your vitamin D.
3:29: …vitamin D strengthens both your innate and your adaptive immune system…
4:17: Your innate immune system are your foot soldiers and your adaptive immune system are your snipers. So these two working together, when they come in contact with viruses and bacteria that are foreign and that are dangerous, they whack them, in every which way.
4:38: …it’s essential that you have Vitamin D to stimulate and to strengthen both the adaptive and the innate immune system.
5:00: Now 70% to 80% of Americans are vitamin D deficient.
6:04: In hospitalized patients, 80% are found to be deficient in vitamin D, and ICU patients almost 100%, 96% are vitamin D deficient. And in nursing homes, upwards of 90% of the people are vitamin D deficient.
6:27: Vitamin D deficiency causes suppression and dysregulation of your immune system.
7:45: I happen to believe that the best range you can be in is between 70 and 100. 100 is the upper limits of normal on the current test. I think that’s probably even low.
10:41: Maintaining a strong vitamin D level is essential for immune system health in order to prevent and minimize any viral respiratory infection, such as the flu.
10:57: Vitamin D is also very important for maintaining strong bones. It enables absorption of calcium from your intestine.
11:51: Vitamin D is also very beneficial in autoimmune disease. Immune cells in autoimmune diseases are responsive to the ameliorative anti-inflammatory effects of vitamin D.
12:44: …it protects heart health, it lowers blood pressure, it improves your mental function, so you can think clearly. It improves diabetes. It helps with insulin, decreasing insulin resistance in the cells, so your body can properly utilize and metabolize sugar. It decreases the risk of cancer, particularly the studies have indicated in colon cancer. .
13:14: It promotes healthy pregnancies and healthy babies. It enhances moods.
Podcast Transcription:
Stacey Bandfield: Thank you for joining us today at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. I’m Stacey Bandfield, here with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. And as always, if you have not downloaded our podcasts, you can always go to HotzePodcast.com. That’s HotzePodcast.com. Well, we have one of my favorite, favorite supplements on tap today. We are going to be talking about the amazing benefits of vitamin D, and once you hear Dr. Hotze talk about it, that will become your favorite supplement, as well. Dr. Hotze.
Dr. Steven Hotze: Thank you so much, Stacey, and thank each one of you for joining us here on Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. Got an exciting topic today that’s going to help you tremendously, improve the quality of your life and also increase your lifespan. We’re going to talk about vitamin D.
Now, I believe that everyone listening to this program needs to have a physician and staff of professionals who can coach you on a path of health and wellness, naturally. Those individuals that have the know-how, wherewithal and the experience to do that can enjoy a better quality of life. And one of the ways you can enjoy a great quality of life is by vitamin and mineral supplementation. I’m going to talk about a most important vitamin today, vitamin D.
Cholesterol and Vitamin D
Now vitamin D is made from cholesterol in your body. As a matter of fact, because it’s made from cholesterol, it’s considered by many a hormone, not just a vitamin, a hormone, because many of the major hormones in your body derive from cholesterol. You’ve heard of steroid hormones. Your body makes steroid hormones in your adrenal glands and in your sex hormones are all derived from cholesterol. And because it has the term cholesterol, that’s where we get the word steroid. So vitamin D is also made from cholesterol, which is a normal molecule made in your body.
You need cholesterol, it’s essential. It’s essential for the cell walls in your body. It’s essential for the covering of all your nerves in your body. It’s important for brain function and cholesterol is very important for hormone production. So we don’t want to do anything that destroys cholesterol in our body, as many of the statin drugs do. We want to make sure that we have cholesterol so that our body can make the natural hormones that we need to function.
And a key hormone, or a vitamin as it’s sometimes known, is vitamin D. Now vitamin D is produced in your body when ultraviolet light from the sun, passes through your skin and there’s a chemical process that causes the conversion of cholesterol to Vitamin D, every cell in your body, in the nucleus of your cells, you have receptors for vitamin D. And in the immune system specifically, there are 15 different genes that are regulated by your vitamin D.
Vitamin D Strengthens Your Immune System
Now that means vitamin D strengthens both your innate and your adaptive immune system, let me explain briefly. Your innate immune system are those foot soldiers, so to speak, the white blood cells, the eosinophils, the macrophages that attack any foreign bacteria or virus or fungus, or even worms, parasites that come into your body. They immediately attack anything foreign to your body and destroy it. Then your adaptive immune system takes over and it makes antibodies. So think of your adaptive immune system…think of it in a war mentality, that’s your snipers.
Your innate immune system are your foot soldiers and your adaptive immune system are your snipers. So these two working together, when they come in contact with viruses and bacteria that are foreign and that are dangerous, they whack them, in every which way. But it’s essential that you have Vitamin D to stimulate and to strengthen both the adaptive and the innate immune system.
Vitamin D Deficiency
Now, vitamin D deficiency is considered anything under 20 nanograms per mL. You get blood tests, people do vitamin D blood tests. Now 70% to 80% of Americans are vitamin D deficient. That means they have a level of 20 nanograms or less, and that’s considered significantly deficient, 20 to 30 to 20 to 40 is a very low level. Now, interestingly enough, the different ethnic groups have different deficiency levels. It turns out in blacks, African-Americans, they have levels up to 83% deficiencies. In Caucasians, it’s 50%. In Hispanics and Latinos and American Indians, are about 70% deficient and it has to do with the skin color. So UV light is better absorbed through white skin than it is through darker skin. And that’s why we find levels of vitamin D deficiency that vary from one race to another.
In hospitalized patients, 80% are found to be deficient in vitamin D, and ICU patients almost 100%, 96% are vitamin D deficient. And in nursing homes, upwards of 90% of the people are vitamin D deficient. Being vitamin D deficient is going to adversely affect your immune system. Vitamin D deficiency causes suppression and dysregulation of your immune system. Above the 35th parallel, which would be from San Francisco to St. Louis to Washington DC in the United States, for four months, if you stood outside in a swimming suit in the middle of the sun and on a cold winter’s day, and the sun was shining, you could not convert any of your cholesterol to vitamin D, because of the tilt of the earth.
So anybody that lives in the north and climbs north of the St. Louis/Washington area here, and that would be north of Rome, Italy in Europe, you don’t make vitamin D during the winter. And besides that, even during the spring and summer, how many of us are outside? If we do go outside and happen to go to the pool or go to the beach, what do we slather on our bodies, but some kind of sunscreen that blocks UV light. So the long and the short of it, most of us are very low in vitamin D, even if we’re not deficient, we have very low levels. And at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, we check everybody for vitamin D and we find 80 to 90% of the people are 50 nanograms or less, and that’s in a suboptimal range.
I happen to believe that the best range you can be in is between 70 and 100. 100 is the upper limits of normal on the current test. I think that’s probably even low. That’s because we’re measuring people that are low in vitamin D anyway. So the range is going to be low, it’s 30 to 100, is the range that probably more correctly, if we were working outdoors, like we used to do back in the old days, we were farmers and were outside, their levels probably would be 50 to 150, somewhere in there. But the range right now is 30 to 100. And we like to see the range stay above 70 and below 100, in that range. And that will give you optimal vitamin D levels that will enhance the immune system, among other things. I’m going to talk about some other things.
So vitamin D3 is cholecalciferol, that is the active vitamin D, and that’s what we recommend you take. Vitamin D is especially critical in the fall and the winter. Why? Because you can’t make your own vitamin D if you’re outside and most of us aren’t outside anyway. So when does flu season occur? It occurs during the fall and the winter. That’s as people’s vitamin D levels get lower and lower and lower.
Vitamin D levels can prevent what is known as a cytokine storm, cytokine storm in your immune system. Now, cytokines are proteins that the immune system makes to help kill off infections, bacteria, viruses, and other organisms that may invade your body. A cytokine storm, is when you overreact and make too many of these cytokines, which are leukotrienes and interleukins and interferons, chemokines, and some other proteins that the immune system makes to try to destroy the infection. When you get a cytokine storm, the immune system is overreacting, and it starts not only killing the bacteria and viruses, but it also destroys your cells.
And this is what happens when people get a severe pneumonia, they get a severe pneumonia caused by secondary bacterial infection, after they’ve had a viral infection such as the flu, the immune system overreacts. If they haven’t gotten on top of this…as they progress and their immune system is unhealthy because they have low levels of vitamin D and other key vitamins and minerals, the immune system overreacts. And if it doesn’t have the proper vitamins and minerals to quell the inflammation, it just destroys the lungs and people die in respiratory failure. Maintaining a strong vitamin D level is essential for immune system health in order to prevent and minimize any viral respiratory infection, such as the flu.
Vitamin D is Essential for Strong Bones
Vitamin D is also very important for maintaining strong bones. It enables absorption of calcium from your intestine. It works in harmony with vitamin K2, which promotes reabsorbtion of calcium into your bones. So vitamin K2 and vitamin D are both very important for bone health and bone strength. When people have vitamin D deficiencies, they get very soft bones that deform very easily. The diseases called osteomalacia, that’s the medical term. You’ve heard of it as rickets, that’s when people have a vitamin D deficiency. They have very weakened bones, often bowed legs, and they don’t grow and mature the way they should normally do. Now in America, we fortified a lot of the foods, particularly milk with vitamin D, so we help prevent that.
Vitamin D and Autoimmune Disease
Vitamin D is also very beneficial in autoimmune disease. Immune cells in autoimmune diseases are responsive to the ameliorative anti-inflammatory effects of vitamin D. There is significant evidence linking vitamin D deficiency to autoimmune diseases. And those autoimmune diseases would be like multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes mellitus, autoimmune thyroid disorders, and lupus. So vitamin D levels can be helpful in these diseases as they reduce the inflammatory response of the immune system.
Other Health Benefits of Vitamin D
And finally, some further benefits of vitamin D3. One, it protects heart health, it lowers blood pressure, it improves your mental function, so you can think clearly. It improves diabetes. It helps with insulin, decreasing insulin resistance in the cells, so your body can properly utilize and metabolize sugar. It decreases the risk of cancer, particularly the studies have indicated in colon cancer. It can be very beneficial in reducing those risks. It promotes healthy pregnancies and healthy babies. It enhances moods.
At the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, we recommend vitamin D3 levels between 70 and 100 nanograms per mL. This would just be a regular vitamin D level. This usually requires vitamin D3 intake of somewhere between 5 and 10,000 international units daily, and sometimes more. We also recommend that vitamin K2, be used simultaneously with the vitamin D, and that would be 200 micrograms daily.
In conclusion, vitamin D has dramatic health benefits and should be a major part of your daily vitamin regimen. I’m Dr. Hotze, I want to thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to contact us here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center and our number on the screen, (281) 698-8698. If you’re interested in purchasing high levels of vitamin D3, please don’t hesitate to go to our website, HotzeVitamins.com.
Two goals we have at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center for each one of our guests, help them strengthen their immune system. This has been in our mission statement for 25 years:
- strengthen your immune system
- increase your energy level
If you have a good, healthy immune system and good energy level, you’re going to be a healthy individual, and you’re going to have a full, enjoyable life, and that’s what we want for you. We want to help you get on that path of health and wellness naturally, so you enjoy a better quality of life. Well, thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to be with you today, and I look forward to our next time we get together. Thank you so much.
