Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now, here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I am Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified doctor of non-force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine.
For those of you who are tuning in for the first time, welcome.
Thank you for tuning in and for those who have been sending me questions and referrals,
welcome back.
One of the commonest questions I've been getting is how can I listen to these programs on demand?
So I have gotten, I have finally gotten a podcast set up so you can listen to these
programs on demand anytime you like now just by going to my website at BinkleyHealingCenter.com.
Every episode, this is episode eight, so not all of them are up there yet, but you can
listen to some of the old programs now and eventually I'll get them all up and I really
appreciate you tuning in.
The theme of today's show is going to be mostly about vitamin D. It's a timely topic in the
holidays.
When people are exposed to less sun, their vitamin D levels go down.
It's the cold and flu season.
That's not a coincidence.
And I'm going to be presenting a bunch of data that a lot of people are surprised about.
There's amazing things that happen when you get adequate levels of vitamin D in your body
and most people do not get adequate levels of vitamin D in their body if their goal is
to keep their immune system strong.
Before I get into sharing some of the amazing data on all of the fantastic effects vitamin
D has on keeping your body healthy and strong, I just want to give everyone a context.
So usually the conversation, people are worried, oh my God, 5,000 units of vitamin D, really?
But the RDA is only 400.
Well it's ridiculous.
The RDA should be 5,000, maybe 4,000 if you weigh less than 120 pounds, although children
above 60 pounds can often take 5,000 units of vitamin D a day and how do we tell what's
working or not?
You test.
So if your serum level ends up between 50 and 90, then the amount you're supplementing
is the amount that you need.
But years ago they did studies on mega doses of vitamin D. This was published in 1945 by
Dr. G.W.
Dowling, MD and E.W.
Prosser, Thomas, MD and they were experimenting with mega doses that I do not recommend, but
mega doses of vitamin D, 100,000 units of vitamin D a day for two years and they eliminated
lupus disease.
Again, there's always been a link between vitamin D and an effective immune system function
that gets too often ignored.
This was not a good idea.
This study also, it raised their calcium levels to plus 14, which will cause kidney stones.
So they stopped doing that.
It's not a good idea to take that much.
But it didn't kill them.
It's not as dangerous as people think.
They did another case study, 150,000 units of vitamin D for two months and then 100,000
for a year with no ill effects.
Her calcium levels remained fine.
This is just one case study.
That's not enough information to base a broad recommendation for the general public.
But it's just an outline of some brackets to give you some perspective.
It is really difficult to do any damage by taking too much vitamin D, whereas the opposite
is occurring daily all around us all the time, people dying from diseases that could be prevented
if they took enough vitamin D.
So here's a study more recently from 2016 published in the North American Journal of
Medical Sciences and they were looking to see if taking vitamin D could help people
with statin intolerance.
Well, it would be a lot better to, here's the best way to fix statin intolerance.
Don't take statin drugs.
Hardly anyone needs to take statin drugs.
I'm probably going to get all kinds of messages about that.
There's lots of other ways to reduce your cholesterol without taking statin drugs that
are much healthier and statin drugs, cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease.
I've talked about this before.
I'll talk about it again.
But anyway, this study was giving people 50,000 to 100,000 units of vitamin D per week.
So that's a reasonable dose.
Divide by seven, 50,000 to 100,000 per week.
That's about 10,000 a day.
That's what I recommend to many patients whose vitamin D levels come back testing low, below
30.
Anybody below 30 or 40, I recommend they take 10,000 units of vitamin D for two or three
months and then we retest to make sure that their vitamin D levels get back up to between
50 and 90.
That is the healthy range to keep your immune system strong.
But this study also showed that people who were taking statin drugs and having side effects
from statin drugs, which always have side effects.
They stress your muscles.
They put a chemical clamp on your liver to stop it making the cholesterol that it's designed
to make, which is an essential nutrient to build cell membranes and all of your sex hormones.
So just taking vitamin D, getting adequate amounts of vitamin D in these people's blood
systems dramatically reduced their side effects from taking cholesterol, lowering statin drugs
without any side effect.
Here's one of the most important things you can take away from any episode of this program.
People who feel fine, symptom free, healthy as a horse, suddenly drop dead every day.
If you're still convinced that you're fine because you feel fine, then I'm really glad
that you've tuned in because how you feel is a very poor indicator of how healthy you
are.
Have you heard about people healthy, supposedly air quotes healthy athletes drop dead on a
basketball court or people who jog every day drop dead while jogging.
The most common first sign of severe underlying heart disease is sudden death from a heart
attack.
Everyone knows someone who has been recently diagnosed with cancer and has three months
to live a lot of really bad things.
You have no symptoms.
You have no idea how healthy you are unless you get tested.
99% of doctors who practice conventional medicine do examinations to see if you have disease
now a full blown diabetes, heart condition.
They don't scream for cancer.
Usually it's a sad thing that this is the one of the main reasons I'm doing this program
is to help inform people, give you, arm you with information that you can use to bridge
the gap that exists, this huge gap that exists between conventional medicine that is not
stopping heart disease and cancer from being the number one and number two causes of death
in America, which are preventable.
Most heart disease, many cancers could be prevented with better food, exercise and supplements,
but the only way to make that happen is for you to get tested.
The condition of your body is far more important than any disease you've been diagnosed with
and obviously more important than any disease you haven't been diagnosed with.
And the only way you know how healthy you are is to get tested.
I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving last weekend.
It's the holiday season and one of the most common comments, questions, feedback I get
at this time of year is I know I'm going to eat too much sugar.
Well, you have choices.
You don't have to eat all those cookies and cakes and pies, but I'm going to all these
events and all this stuff is going to be there.
I have to eat it.
I don't want to be antisocial.
Well, here's one thing you can do before you go to all of these holiday parties that are
going to be surrounding you with various forms of amazing delicious cakes, cookies, pies,
whatever sugar kills you.
Okay.
Sugar is death.
Sugar is really, really bad.
It's far worse than you think it is.
People make light of it.
Oh, it's just a little sweet.
Listen that sugar is the worst thing anyone can eat.
It contributes to all diseases.
It feeds cancer.
It causes diabetes.
It exacerbates heart cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, increases your risk
of dementia.
Dementia is now being called type three diabetes because of the impact of hyperglycemia, too
much sugar in your blood, destroying cells in your brain.
So it's not a light matter.
This is a serious thing to think about.
Don't eat all those sweet things during the holidays.
You don't have to.
And here's one thing you can do when you're getting ready to go to one of those parties
filled with cakes and cookies and pies and whatever else, stuff yourself with some real
food before you go to those parties.
Eat a salad.
Eat an apple.
Eat a carrot.
Eat something that actually has nutrients in it.
Stuff yourself.
Fill yourself up before you go to those parties so that when you get there, you can politely
have a bite or two of this or that, but not gorge yourself on it because you won't be
hungry with a full stomach.
Before going to any holiday event, you can also stuff yourself.
It would actually be best to stuff yourself with healthy fats and protein because these
things will sustain you and make you less hungry for all those horrible sugary things
that people are going to be tempting you with.
So carry some nuts in your car before you go to any holiday event.
Stuff yourself with cashews or walnuts or almonds or pistachios on the way there in
the car even.
Or before you go, have some cheese, some olives.
Do a shot of olive oil.
This is a really delicious thing to do.
It probably sounds kind of strange, but they do it in Greece every morning.
Drink a shot of really good olive oil.
Not the stuff from the supermarket, but the good stuff that you get at farmers market
or Whole Foods or a specialty store.
Eat a piece of chicken.
Keep some hard boiled eggs on hand, ready to eat on the go.
Have a can of sardines and olive oil.
Not everyone's taste, but they can be delicious and super satisfying, especially if you put
some capers on a can of sardines or a can of any tinned fish.
Can of salmon or a can of tuna, as long as it's the Polka low mercury tuna.
That's always a good snack to have.
Eating healthy protein and fat is super satisfying.
Feeds your brain with excellent protein and omega-3 fatty acids and will help you avoid
the temptation to ingest sugar that is just not going to do you any favors at all.
Vitamin D is essential for pretty much every organ in your body, but the most important
system in your body that vitamin D is essential for is your immune system.
The recommended daily allowance, if you look at those ridiculous numbers on the back of
a vitamin, it'll say, oh, the RDA or the daily value of vitamin D is 400 units a day.
Or if you're pregnant or you're over a certain age, maybe 600.
Ignore those numbers.
Please ignore those numbers.
Ignore those numbers for every vitamin.
They're useless information if you want to be healthy.
The recommended daily allowances of all vitamins are the amounts you need to prevent severe
deficiency diseases like pellagra and berry berry and scurvy.
Vitamins were discovered when they found out that people's teeth were falling out.
People on long voyages across the seas at the turn of the 20th century because they
hadn't didn't have vitamin C. So they started giving them limes.
And that's why British sailors were called blimeys because they ate limes that stopped
their dramatic reduction of collagen production, which is dependent on vitamin C to stop their
teeth from falling out by giving them limes.
So severe deficiency diseases are what the recommended daily allowances of most vitamins.
That's the listing on the back.
Those recommended daily allowances are to prevent severe deficiency diseases.
They have nothing to do with what you need to be healthy.
Back to vitamin D. Vitamin D is the single most important vitamin that no one ever gets
enough from in their diet.
Every was well, not everyone, but far too many people think, oh, if I walk around in
the sun with short sleeves and short pants and do some gardening, I'll get all the vitamin
I need from the sun.
No one gets enough vitamin D from the sun.
They should, we should human beings in some parts of the world do that.
If you walk around naked all day and expose the entire surface area of your skin to the
sun in the summer, you'll get enough vitamin D. If you expose your torso in Southern California,
not your arms and your legs, but your torso to the sun with no sunscreen on for 20 minutes,
three times a week.
If you have darker skin, it will take even longer to get adequate amount of sun exposure
to generate healthy levels of vitamin D in your skin.
No one does that.
That's the main point.
No one sun bathes without sunscreen and they shouldn't, especially on your face.
You want to wear sunscreen.
So the point is, yes, our bodies are designed to make vitamin D from sun exposure, but no
one in the Western world, in the, in cities, the places where most of you are listening
live even in play, even in India or Africa in cities, in third world countries near the
equator where there's lots of people that are outside.
They don't get enough vitamin D either.
There's studies on all of this.
No one gets enough vitamin D to keep their immune system healthy and strong unless you
supplement vitamin D. So just forget everything you've heard about, Oh, you can get all the
vitamin D you need just by going out in the sun.
It's not going to happen.
If you want your immune system to be strong, here's how you know.
You have to test your serum level.
You have to test your blood, your serum level, your blood tests of vitamin D should be between
50 and 90.
Most doctors will order this test for you now if you ask, but egregiously in my opinion,
they will also tell you that if it's above 30, it's fine.
In fact, even it drives me crazy.
Some doctors tell their patients that, Oh my God, if your vitamin D level is above 40
or 50, that's too much.
This is ridiculous.
The lab range for vitamin D on Quest LabCorp, all the major labs is 30 to 100.
If your vitamin D level go, it is possible to take too much vitamin D, but it never happens.
The reason some doctors, many doctors are concerned, worried unnecessarily that anyone
might supplement too much vitamin D, 5,000 units of vitamin D every day is the standard
dose for all adults.
If you want your immune system to work at its peak, 10,000, I routinely recommend that
patients of mine take 10,000 units of vitamin D every day for two, three, four months.
I've had patients, especially older patients, the older you are, the more difficult it is
for your body to absorb and maintain a healthy level of vitamin D. I've had patients who
I told to take 10,000 units of vitamin D every day for two, three, four months, who can continue
taking 10,000 units of vitamin D for a year and it still didn't raise their calcium levels.
So when you, when you hear medical doctors worried, if you're, if you go to your GP,
your physician and they say, Oh my God, your vitamin D levels are too high or it's dangerous
to take these ridiculously high amounts of vitamin D. They're, what they're worried about
is kidney stones.
If you take too much vitamin D for too long, you can increase your risk of kidney stones,
but it never happens.
You have to have first elevated levels of calcium.
The normal levels of calcium are in the range of 10, 10 point anything.
If it's above that, then, and if your calcium levels are 11 for several months, then you
can increase your risk of kidney stones.
But even then it doesn't happen.
So if you ever take too much vitamin D and get it tested, then just stop taking vitamin
D and avoid sun exposure for a month and it goes back to normal.
So the problem is millions of people die needlessly from colds and flus that take them to the
hospital and cancers that could be prevented.
Robust data has documented the association between insufficient levels of vitamin D and
death rates to cancer, especially breast cancer, prostate and colorectal cancer.
Vitamin D is the single most nutrient that you can take if you want to become healthier.
And if you're not currently, for example, taking any supplements, everyone wants to
take one pill.
I already did a rant in my last episode about how useless most one a day multivitamins are.
But if you want to take just one pill to improve your health and you're not supplementing anything
now, then the best one to take would be 5,000 units of vitamin D. Vitamin D impacts and
is involved in maintaining the health of almost every organ and system in your body.
And I'm going to present some data about that.
But I also want to arm you with things that you can do yourself.
So if you are someone who likes to look things up, just go to PubMed.
The actual website is pubmed.ncbi.ml.
It's a whole mouthful, but it's run by the National Institutes of Health and it is a
resource where all published medical literature is available for free.
And even if you're not going to read the studies, you can at least get an impression of how
much science is behind the things that I'm talking about on this show that maybe other
doctors haven't told you about.
It's out there.
Unfortunately, a lot of doctors just aren't that interested in the benefits of supplements.
They spend most of their time providing crisis care using pharmaceuticals for most conditions
for most people.
So here's an obvious example that's still on many people's minds.
COVID, right?
Vitamin D can help your immune system.
It should help with COVID, right?
Well, absolutely it does.
When I was open, my office was open throughout the pandemic.
People were still coming to see me and I put out a, I built a box outside my office with
a smart lock on it so that people could come and pick up supplements without any contact.
And but the point is long COVID.
Now we've got long COVID.
People are still having lingering symptoms like fatigue and brain fog and loss of sense
and smell.
But, you know, mostly fatigue, headaches, brain fog, a few other symptoms, the spike
proteins on COVID wreak havoc in your vascular system and create an ongoing inflammatory
response.
And this is the way vitamin D helps.
So here's a study.
You can look it up on PubMed.
It's in the prestigious journal Nutrients.
This is from April of 2022.
Vitamin D is an immunomodulatory.
That means it regulates your immune systems in ways that if it's overreactive, it will
make it less.
And if it's under reactive, it will boost it.
That's the ideal situation.
And that is literally true.
The reason vitamin D is so important for your immune system is because your immune system
is designed to ramp up inflammation, to destroy debris, to heal damaged tissue.
But then it can also get stuck on overdrive and overload your body with inflammatory cytokines
and other things that can cause problems.
So vitamin D is the great modulator.
It's the it's the referee.
It helps your immune system figure out how much exactly when to stop killing off dead
tissue that needs to be cleared out and replaced with healthy tissue and when to relax and
boost the healing functions of your immune system.
So vitamin D is an immunomodulatory hormone with proven efficacy against upper various
upper respiratory tract infections.
Also says this study, it can inhibit the hyper inflammatory reactions and accelerate the
healing process in affected areas, especially lung tissue.
Moreover, vitamin D deficiency has been associated with the severity and mortality of covid-19
cases with a high prevalence of people with low vitamin D found in patients with acute
respiratory failure.
So let's say that again.
And this is just one state.
There's several other studies that say the same thing.
The people that died with covid from acute respiratory failure, the people that ended
up in the hospital in the first place, all any any population like that who has been
tested and compared with people who didn't up in the hospital and didn't end up on a
respirator.
The people with the lowest vitamin D levels died.
The people with the highest vitamin D levels, even if they ended up in a hospital, even
if they ended up on a respirator, they were the ones most likely to survive.
Just that one nutrient, one change in the serum level of that nutrient made a dramatic
difference.
We're about out of time.
I usually do a case study to demonstrate or give you an idea of what's possible for you.
If you change your diet, exercise, take some supplements, get some testing, it's just there's
so many.
I tell everyone to take vitamin D and I have thousands of patients who do that.
And one of the most common responses just to leave you with is people tell me they no
longer get colds and flus or if they do, they last for a couple of days instead of a couple
of weeks or a couple of months.
Osteoporosis, of course, is the second most common thing that dramatically improves when
you consume adequate amounts of vitamin D along with calcium and vitamin K2.
Do something today to be healthier than you were yesterday or last week.
Go for a walk, call someone you haven't spoken to in a long time, do some deep breathing
exercises, eat a few more vegetables than you otherwise might, stay away from all that
sugar.
Don't be trying to shove down your throats and give me a call and give me an opportunity
to help you find a safe, effective natural solution to any health challenge you might
have.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
I look forward to speaking with you right here next Friday at 4 p.m. right here on KDAR.
You've been listening to Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to
Dr. Binkley at www.BinkleyHealingCenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved
ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 4 p.m. for Safe, Effective Natural Solutions right here on 98.3 The Word,
KDAR.