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'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board -certified
doctor of non -force chiropractic and practitioner
of functional medicine. Thank you for tuning
in to learn how to take better care of your health
and perhaps even be entertained in the process.
We're going to talk about essential vitamins
and minerals this week, a continuation of some
things we talked about last week. Last week,
I did a calm, dispassionate, unbiased dissertation
on why no one should take gummy supplements,
especially gummy multivitamins, because they're
mostly candy and simply not useful for maintaining
human health. But in the course of explaining
a related topic, namely why the U .S. government's
recommended daily values of vitamins and minerals
are nearly useless as health information, Instead,
think of them as the minimum amount necessary
to prevent severe vitamin deficiency diseases.
They have nothing to do with maintaining health.
But in the course of looking up the exact numbers,
I came across a really good website hosted by
the FDA. Not all government websites are useless.
Some of them still provide really useful information.
And I'm going to post this one in the podcast,
and it'll be listed in the transcription. I recommend
it. Check it out. It's a chart called the Interactive
Nutrition Facts Label from the U .S. Food and
Drug Administration. What's great about it is
in addition to the uselessly insufficient amounts
of each vitamin recommended, If your goal is
to maintain health, in addition to this, it also,
and more importantly, it tells what each vitamin
does, the function of each of these vitamins,
why they're important, what function in the body
it helps support, and good food sources of that
vitamin. So, for example, it explains that folate
or folic acid helps prevent birth defects. Many
people know that folate is one of the most important
vitamins in any prenatal vitamin, and for that
reason, and it also helps with protein metabolism.
and the formation of red blood cells. Next to
this, it lists good food sources to get folic
acid from, including asparagus, avocados, beans,
and peas, and green leafy vegetables. Of course,
it also recommends getting folate from enriched
grain products and fortified orange juice, which
I don't recommend. Another good example is it
lists the fact that vitamin B12 It's essential
for conversion of food into energy. A lot of
people get B12 shots or take B12 for energy,
but B12 doesn't give you energy. It is essential
for the conversion of food into energy. It's
also important for nervous system function. and
to produce red blood cells for red blood cell
formation. And this is why B12 is one of the
most important vitamins for anyone to get adequate
amounts of. And it's also one of the most common
deficiencies. Most people do not get enough B12
in their diet. So this document lists good food
sources of vitamin B12. Dairy products, eggs,
fortified cereals, I do not recommend. When you
see the word fortified on a quote -unquote food
label, quote -unquote food product, what you
really want to think is, imagine that it says
instead, we've stripped almost all the nutrients
out of this ultra -processed food, so we're going
to put a few of them back in their cheapest possible
forms and call it fortified to confuse you into
thinking that it's good for you. Fortified foods
are basically denatured foods stripped of nutrients
to make them, to give them long shelf life. And
in certain situations to give you sufficient,
just tiny doses of things to save your life if
you live in an area where you don't have access
to real food. So if you live in an impoverished
area and have no access to fresh fruits and vegetables
and quality animal protein, then fortified bread
and rice will be better than eating nothing.
Only just. So you get decent amounts, you get
good amounts of B12, mainly from meat, poultry,
and seafood. So animal protein, B12, there's
lots of B12 in liver, which is why carnivores,
if you ever watch the shows showing lions and
tigers and bears ripping into animals that they've
caught, they often eat the organs first because
they instinctively know that they need the nutrients,
especially in the liver, and B12 is one of the
main ones. But many people choose not to eat
any animal protein, vegans and vegetarians, and
even the vast majority who do eat sufficient
amounts of animal protein often don't absorb
all of it. They don't absorb the protein, and
especially it's difficult to absorb the B12,
even if you're eating a sufficient amount of
it for a whole host of reasons. And this is a
great example of why it's so important for many
people to take a good multivitamin or other supplement
source to make sure that you're getting. adequate
amounts of vitamin B12. The paltry 2 .4 micrograms
is the USRDA recommended for B12. That's just
barely enough to prevent pernicious anemia. Pernicious
anemia used to be a death sentence until it was
discovered in the early 20th century that if
you fed people liver, it would cure. And then
around the 50s or 60s, a few decades later, they
found out, they identified that B12, vitamin
B12, was the substance that is in abundance in
liver. That cures and prevents pernicious anemia.
It's essential for forming red blood cells. Well,
so you can also just take a vitamin B12 supplement.
A lot of people go out and get B12 shots, quote
unquote, for energy. So, you know, it's a good
idea to understand that B12 doesn't give you
energy. B12 is essential for converting food
into energy. So if you lack energy and you suspect
that you're deficient in B12, of course, the
best way is to test. You don't even need to test
B12 directly. I prefer to test a CBC, a complete
blood count. If you're deficient in B12 and folate,
what you'll see on a complete blood count is
that your older red blood cells get larger to
take up the slack for the fact that your body's
not making enough new ones. They get bigger.
That's a classic sign of insufficient B12. and
folate, but you don't need to get a shot. You
can just take a sublingual underneath the tongue
tablet of B12. And especially if you get the
active form methylcobalamin instead of cyanocobalamin,
99 % of supplements, all cheap supplements have
cyan. Read your labels. If you have a cheap one
a day multivitamin or a B12 supplement that you
bought from Costco, read the label. I guarantee
you it will say cyanocobalamin. That's a little
bit better than nothing, but it's much better
to take methylcobalamin, the active form, and
especially in a sublingual. It's a little pink
tablet that you hold under your tongue. It dissolves
and directly enters your bloodstream under your
tongue, and it works just as well. In fact, for
many people, it works better than getting a shot
because you're not getting a huge dose all at
once that your body stores and then slowly releases.
There's nothing wrong with doing it that way,
but it just makes more sense to me to get a little
bit every day, especially if you're deficient
in it. Let it dissolve under your tongue. Your
body will store up any excess. As with all water
-soluble vitamins, vitamin C and all the B vitamins,
it is virtually impossible, very difficult to
take too much of any B vitamin. And so many people
are deficient because there's a host of reasons
that make it difficult to absorb. B12, especially
from your digestive tract. There's a gene snip
that about 15 % of the population have that make
it difficult to absorb it. You need hydrochloric
acid in your stomach to break it down. And then
it's not actually absorbed until about 30 feet
later at the very end of your small intestine.
And there are a lot of things, including effects
from your gut microbiome that can impair the
ability to absorb it. There's a whole bunch of
things that need to happen. When you're super
healthy and young, you absorb B12 easily. As
you get a little bit older, it becomes increasingly
difficult. And that's why for many people is
a good idea to supplement vitamin b12 this fda
website fact sheet on vitamins recommended amounts
and sources the recommended amounts are way too
small but as another example it shows explains
how vitamin c is important because it is an antioxidant
vitamin c is essential for collagen and connective
tissue formation for wound healing and general
immune system function. So nobody gets enough
vitamin C from their diet to keep their immune
system strong. That's why it's important. I recommend
most people take at least 500 milligrams of vitamin
C a day. Well, the recommended daily value is
sometimes 60. I think on this page it says 35.
It's ridiculously low amounts, just enough to
prevent scurvy. But it's almost impossible to
take too much vitamin C. If you take too much
vitamin C, all it'll do is cause soft stools.
So Linus Pauling, the discoverer of vitamin C,
took 15 grams. That's 15 ,000 milligrams of vitamin
C every day, four years. Well, if you take that
much, it might cause diarrhea. It might cause
soft stools. But if someone is really sick, if
somebody has a severe cold or flu or infection,
it's a good idea to take somewhere in the neighborhood
of 12 ,000, 3 ,000 milligrams of vitamin C three
or four times a day. You quickly get up to...
12 to 15 ,000 milligrams in a day when you're
sick because your body uses a lot more then.
And the worst thing that'll happen if you take
too much is you get a little soft stools and
then you back it off by a thousand and it'll
go back to normal. But in the meantime, it'll
boost your immune system and maximize your body's
ability to fight off whatever bug your immune
system is trying to get rid of. And vitamin C
is an essential component of that natural healing
response. Anybody, for example, who just finds
themselves constantly sick or finds that if they
get a cold or a flu, instead of it going away
in a couple of days, it takes a couple of weeks
or a couple of months. People in this situation
should take at least a thousand milligrams of
vitamin C every day and preferably a thousand
milligrams three times a day. So you're keeping
that in your system. It's water soluble. Your
body flushes it out in a few hours. So that is
one vitamin that it's good to spread out over
the day. Take a thousand milligrams three times
a day if you're a person that finds it difficult.
to fight off a cold or a flu, or even up to two
or three times that amount when you're sick.
3 ,000 milligrams three times a day. The FDA
website lists good food sources. Everyone knows
you can get vitamin C from oranges and strawberries,
but it often surprises people that you can get
lots of vitamin C from broccoli and Brussels
sprouts and peppers and tomatoes. And many of
these sources have more vitamin C. Then oranges
and strawberries. Of course, the FDA website
recommends that you get your vitamin C from fruit
like cantaloupe and citrus fruits, obviously
kiwi. But a lot of these things, grapefruit juice,
a lot of these things have so much sugar that
they're better off avoiding a lot of fruits and
especially any kind of fruit juice. If you're
pre -diabetic, if you're overweight, if you're
fatigued, then a component of that is probably
getting too much sugar in your diet. And all
fruit juices should be a no -go. I'm Dr. Todd
Bankley. You're listening to Safe, Effective,
Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
If you just tuned in, we're talking about a really
good website that I recommend people check out
from the Food and Drug Administration. There's
something that's really useless about it, which
is the ridiculously low amounts. that are called
the daily value for each vitamin and mineral.
Those are also on this website. But in addition
to those useless, overly low values of each vitamin
and mineral that are recommended to keep your
body healthy and strong, it does list good food
sources for each vitamin and the functions, what
each vitamin does in your body. And these are
things that most people are interested in. So
another great example of the egregiously low
values listed is the FDA -recommended daily value
of vitamin D. 20 micrograms 20 micrograms of
vitamin d is 800 international units 800 iu which
is the highest they recommend on any product
many many vitamin products still list the daily
value of 400 units a day or 600 if you're pregnant
or elderly and that's just barely enough to prevent
your bones from collapsing it is nowhere near
enough to begin dramatically reducing your risk
of osteoporosis and absolutely nowhere enough
to keep your immune system strong vitamin d has
a function in virtually every organ and system
in your body. But the most important of them
is to keep your immune system strong. And many
people think they don't need to eat anything
to keep vitamin D. Everybody knows we get vitamin
D from the sun, right? Oh, I garden. I spent
two hours yesterday with my shorts on and I must
be getting plenty of vitamin D. Well, you have
no idea if you're getting enough vitamin D unless
you get your blood tested. And guess what? I've
tested thousands of people, colleagues of mine
test millions. of people. Even your regular doctor
will order the vitamin D test if you ask him
now. Medical doctors are aware of the overwhelming
research that shows the importance of vitamin
D on preventing cancers, maintaining immune system
function, reducing your risk and severity of
colds and flus, heart disease, brain health.
The research is out there. So any doctor will
order that test for you if you request it. And
that's great. But the problem is they'll also
tell you that if your vitamin D level in your
blood is 30, you're fine. Well, that's egregiously
misinformed. The healthy range of vitamin D is
50 to 90. If you want your immune system to work
normally at its peak, reduce your risk of colds
and flus and the severity of a whole host of
diseases. If you want your immune system to be
strong, you need your serum level of vitamin
D to be between 50 and 90. And if you are not
taking a vitamin D supplement, in the range of
5 ,000 units a day, then I can virtually guarantee
you that your blood level will not be between
50 and 90. So hardly anyone gets enough vitamin
D from the sun. In Southern California, if you're
a white person and you expose your torso with
your shirt off, your torso to the sun without
any sunscreen on for 20 minutes, three times
a week. then your blood level is likely to be
in that healthy range. But hardly anyone does
that. When we go out in the sun, we wear hats
and clothes and sunscreen. Any part of your skin
that is covered by clothes, obviously, but people
don't realize if you have sunscreen on, you're
also not making any vitamin D. And the more important
thing is most people think if they're out in
the sun in short pants and a short -sleeved shirt
that they're getting any significant amount of
vitamin D. And they're usually not. Not enough.
To keep your immune system strong. Not enough
to test. your blood level in the range of 50
to 90. So yeah, if you go, if you ask any doctor,
they will test that. They'll do that test for
you and then your insurance will pay for it.
That's great. But don't ask them if it's good.
Ask them what the number is. Get them to give
you a printed report. You want to know if that
number is at least 50, not if it's at least 30.
MDs will tell you the broad range on the lab
report from LabCorp, Request, or any major lab
says that the normal range for vitamin D is 30
to 100. And that's really interesting because
a lot of doctors will say, if it's above 30,
you're fine. That's not true. It should be above
50. But I've also had so many patients come in
and they'll say, oh, my doctor told me I need
to make sure I'm not taking any vitamin D right
now because it's too high. It was 40 or it was
45 because they think it should just, apparently
they just think it should be right at 30. And
the bottom of the normal range used to be 20
for many years. So that's an increase. So a lot
of misinformed doctors that don't do the research,
don't keep up with the research on vitamin D
still think that... 30 on your blood test is
adequate, and it is not. You need it to be between
50 and 90, and anything below that is certainly
not high. Anything below 100 is not high. That's
the worst part. MDs will tell, regular doctors
will tell people that their vitamin D is high
when it's 50 or 60 or 40 even, when it says right
on the report that the normal range is 30 to
100. The main reason most doctors are worried
about people taking too much vitamin D. is because
if you take too much long enough, then it can
increase your risk of kidney stones. But does
that ever actually happen? To increase your risk
of getting kidney stones, you have to take vitamin
D long enough and take crappy calcium. A lot
of people do take crappy calcium by buying Costco
multivitamins or calcium carbonate supplements.
If you take that and 5 ,000 units of vitamin
D, actually, you have to take about 10 ,000.
Units of vitamin D every day for a year to even
start to increase your calcium levels. That's
the most important part. The only way you're
ever going to take too much vitamin D is if it
starts to increase your serum calcium levels
and you're taking crappy calcium. carbonate supplements,
then vitamin D keeps calcium in circulation.
So if you keep crappy calcium in circulation
for too long, again, it has to be a long time.
You have to really overdo it for a year or two
before it will even begin to increase. I've had
patients that took 10 ,000 units of vitamin D
a day for a year, and it still didn't at all
increase their calcium levels. Even two years
sometimes. I've had patients that take 20 ,000
units of vitamin D for several months. No increase
in their calcium levels. So it's possible to
take too much vitamin D, but it almost never
happens. And if you test your calcium levels
at the same time and make sure that they're normal,
you're totally fine. And even when it does, I've
had a couple of patients that their serum vitamin
D levels were over 100, and I'll just tell them
to quit taking vitamin D for a month, and it
goes back to normal. I had one patient recently
who came in and their vitamin D level was 150.
Well, the toxic level of vitamin D is 150. That's
the government. determined level of the point
at which it can become toxic. And that's the
first time in 30 years that I've seen anybody
that had, and I've touched thousands of people,
it's the first time I've ever seen anybody that
had a vitamin D level of 150. And that was because
she was taking, this woman was taking 20 ,000
units of vitamin D every day for a couple of
years. So nobody needs that much except for a
few days when they're sick. The point is, it's
very difficult to take too much. And most people,
if they want to be healthy, should take 5 ,000
units a day and get your blood tested. Make sure
your blood level is between 50 and 90. And you
should always know, if somebody's convinced you
otherwise, you should know that you will never
have a blood level of 50 to 90 by just wearing
short pants and walking outside in the sun. You're
never going to get that amount from the sun to
get that level and maintain it. Except for a
few months in the summer, if you sunbathe naked
three times a week for 20 minutes, you're going
to be deficient unless you take about 5 ,000
units a day. Shifting gears here a bit, there's
some really exciting, some more information that's
come out recently in the medical press about
a test that has been around for quite a while,
but some, you know, very few doctors use it,
cardiologists use it. It's called Lipoprotein
A or LP, capital A, Lipoprotein A. This is a
test that's kind of like testing your cholesterol
levels, but it's much more important than the
standard cholesterol tests because it's much
more specific. It's much more strongly associated
with some of the worst outcomes. of plaque hardening
of the arteries. So, for example, it's associated
with blockage in the coronary arteries, as is
a number of other things, but also blockage of
the arteries in the kidneys and in the lower
extremities, people that have peripheral artery
disease and might have to have surgery because
of that. Another peripheral artery, the carotid
arteries in the neck, if you have blockages in
that, that's a huge risk factor for a stroke.
The little pieces of plaque that break off and
cause a stroke often cause come from the carotid
arteries in your neck. So this test, lipoprotein
A, is a way of measuring what is your risk of
having a large amount of blockages, not just
in the heart, but blockages of the arteries,
plaque formation in the arteries, arteriosclerosis.
Anywhere in your body, but especially the heart,
but also the legs, the kidneys, and among other
places, the carotid arteries in your neck, which
increase your risk of a stroke. So this is a
study that was done on 460 ,000 participants
in the United Kingdom Biobank that had their
LPA, lipoprotein A concentrations measured. And
then they were followed for about 14 years. And
the concentrations varied significantly from
the people that did have... arteriosclerosis
and those who did not. And it was strongly associated
with stenosis of the carotid arteries, narrowing
of the carotid arteries. If people had carotid
stenosis and an elevated LPA, it increased their
risk of stroke by 40%. If they had peripheral
artery disease, the most common place for that
is in the legs, that increased their 60 by 60
% of having a major adverse limb event, meaning
they had bad enough blockage of an artery in
their legs or the hips where the aorta branches
off to each leg that they would have to have
surgery to fix that. So this test has been around
for a while, a lot of progressive cardiologists.
There are functional medicine practitioners who
are also cardiologists, and they order separate
panels of a number of additional tests, some
of which I've talked about on this show before,
like BNP, B -type matriotic peptide, homocysteine.
other lipoproteins. There are a whole host of
other blood tests that there's a plaque test
that can be measured, simple tests, simple blood
tests that can more accurately assess your risk
for a heart attack or a stroke versus just testing
your cholesterol levels. The question is, should
we test it? Everyone gets their cholesterol checked.
Anytime you go to get blood work done by any
doctor, they're going to check your cholesterol.
I do the same. It's an important test. It's not
as important as people make it out to be, but
it is important to check. Your cholesterol levels,
it's just equally important to not go crazy and
immediately think you need to take a statin drug
if it's elevated because there's lots of other
ways to lower your cholesterol without taking
statin drugs like Lipitor, Torvastatin, Simvastatin,
etc. And cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease.
Inflammation causes heart disease. So the inflammation
that actually drives the formation of hardening
of the arteries, this formation of plaque in
your blood vessels, pieces of which can chip
off and cause a stroke or... Become thick enough
to close off an artery to your heart and cause...
A heart attack, there are other ways to measure
for this. The only way to directly measure it
is with invasive scans that have a lot of radiation,
like a CT scan of your heart, a CT arteriogram
is the most accurate way to measure how much
plaque you have in your arteries. But that involves
a lot of radiation and the injection of a dye,
and it's just not necessary most of the time.
You're not going to screen everybody with that
kind of a test like we screen most people anytime
they go to a doctor with a serum cholesterol
test. Some things that are in between, there's
a lot of people have heard about the calcium
score. This is a very low dose radiation CT,
very thin slice through the heart. Just a couple
of images, CT scan through the heart to measure
your calcium score, which shows calcified plaque
in your coronary arteries. And the only downside
of that is calcium calcified plaque. It means
it's been there for a long time and there's not
really anything you can do about it. You can't
get rid of the calcified plaque. It's the softer.
softer plaque in formation that hasn't become
fully calcified yet that is the most dangerous,
that is the most likely to cause a heart attack
or a stroke, that is also reversible. And because
that's soft and not fully calcified, it doesn't
show up on a CT scan or an x -ray. The main reason
the test is useful is if you have a lot of calcified
plaque that shows up on those tests, then you're
very likely to have larger than normal amounts
of the softer plaque as well. But it doesn't
measure that directly, and that's why it's nice
to have these other blood tests that show your
risk. heart attack or stroke by measuring things
that we can actually reverse and eliminate with
nutrients to break down the scar tissue that
begins the process of hardening in the arteries
looks like we're about out of time thank you
as always for tuning in remember the condition
of your body is always more important than any
condition you've been diagnosed with try and
do something today to become a little healthier
than you were yesterday have a fantastic weekend
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 drbinkley at 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 2 p .m. for Safe. Effective Natural Solutions,
here on 98 .3 FM, The Word.