Empowering Women in Chiropractic -Unlocking the Sunshine Vitamin

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Hey everybody, Dr. Julie McLaughlin here from Vital Health Protocols. Today I'm here with empowering women from ChiroSecure. So what I want you to do is let's give ChiroSecure lots of love. Thumbs up. They are the most awesome insurance company, and they have all these programs for us to keep us educated and up to date on everything that's the latest and greatest about chiropractic.

So be sure to check out ChiroSecure and give them lots of love. So let's get started. Today we are gonna be talking about unlocking the sunshine vitamin with a deep dive into vitamin D. So I know a lot of you aren't doing lab work in your offices, but you do wanna do some supplements with your patients.

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So I thought I'd give you a little bit of boost on what to do with some vitamin D. So we know vitamin D is 25 hydroxy, vitamin D is a hormone precursor that promotes bone calcium and phosphorus metabolism, among other things because chiropractor's bone health is super, super important to us right now.

Look at the symptoms of a vitamin D deficiency, back pain, breath, holding burns, cancer, colds congestive heart failure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, fatigue, hearing loss, insulin resistance. Influenza myopathy, osteo osteoporosis, Paget's disease, right? How many times have we seen that on a board question, right?

PCOS, sad thyroid problems and rickets, just to name a few. Now, how many patients do we see walking into our office, let alone back pain number one, right? Obviously. So there's a good chance that they have a vitamin D deficiency, so look for some of these symptoms. And let that little bell go off Hey, maybe there's something else that I can help in addition to my chiropractic adjustment to boost these patients up.

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So why do we love Vitamin D? It became so popular in this Covid era, but. The truth is we've been testing vitamin D in our patients for at least 20 years, and it's a fat soluble vitamin, and it's a great immune and energy booster. It helps with calcium absorption for stronger bones. It helps with weight loss, it helps with blood pressure regulation, mood regulation, and cognitive functions, and it's a important role in reducing inflammation, cancer prevention.

More so some of the sources, everybody knows you can get vitamin D from sunshine, the UVB rays. But the truth is, we're all wearing clothes, hopefully, right? And we all are inside, or we're wearing sunscreen, so we're not getting as much sunlight to synthesize that vitamin D. So therefore, getting it from foods like fatty fish, fortified foods or mushrooms are a great source.

But ultimately. Almost everybody I test has been deficient in vitamin D. So we need to supplement, and I'll tell you what that looks like. So the 25 to 57% of adults have a vitamin D deficiency, and they're out of the pathological range. So when I say the pathological range, they can range anywhere from 20 to a hundred typically, or 20.

150 on some labs, but 95%, 90 to 95% are out of the functional range. So my functional or my healthy range, I like people between 60 and 80 on vitamin D and it is a great idea to measure the vitamin D in the blood if you can, or get their doctors to order it for them so you can see what it is. If you're doing blood work in your office.

You don't wanna take too much because it can cause kidney problems, kidney stones, but you wanna have that sweet spot between 60 and 80 for your vitamin D dosage. Now remember, it's gonna vary by individuals. It can be a genetic thing. People with darker skin need a higher dose. They need a sustained higher dose, larger adults.

Need more than smaller adults because the vitamin D late, since it's a fat soluble vitamin, it like to get sequestered into the fat. So make sure that you're taking the adequate dose. And I can tell you I can't say a hundred percent of anything ever except for vitamin DA hundred percent. I live north of Chicago, a hundred percent of my patients that I test who are not supplementing are deficient in vitamin D.

So this is a huge one that you wanna be on the look for. And so some of the causes are obviously gonna be lack of sunshine, darker skin. Elderly people tend to have lower vitamin D. Certain medications steal vitamin D, so you have patients taking it and they're still deficient. Malabsorption or if they're taking a poor quality, maybe they got one from the, the grocery store and it's not a good quality and it's just not being absorbed.

Or if they have an increased body mass and that vitamin D is getting sequestered and not utilized, so it interacts with some other nutrients. We know that vitamin D interacts with calcium is essential for bone mineralization, increases absorption and hormone regulations of the parathyroid in the blood.

The other interaction is K two increases calcium absorption with the help of the vitamin D. So many times you can get AK two D three supplement all in one pill, which is awesome, right? Magnesium vitamin D may increase the gastrointestinal absorption of magnesium. And remember, magnesium is natural muscle relaxer.

That's an awesome thing for chiropractors and it increases the transporter Mac. Magnesium from the extracellular to the intracellular space. So vitamin D has this interaction with these three nutrients that are also really helpful to our patients. Now let's talk about the dosing. I want you to get this down because I've seen so many people either.

Under dose or overdose. And you can't just guess, right? You can't go. I think my vitamin D is gonna be this today. It's really good if you know the lab levels. So they come in various dosing and you look on and you look on the website, you're like, what the heck? What dose do I get? So it could be a thousand.

I use 2000 IUs, 5,010. I once which. If you look at my little formula here, a thousand IUs daily, a vitamin D will increase a person's level in the blood by 10 nanograms per deciliter in three months, right? So if for example, if you're taking that vitamin D over three months and you're only taking a thousand and you started at 20, you're gonna go up.

But it's based on weight. So 35, I use a vitamin D per pound that the person weighs per day. So I did a little formula, so you can see 150 pound person times 35. This 35 I use equals 52. So that's what you wanna give them around a 5,000 IU dose. So in three months, this person should have their, whoops, they should have their vitamin D increased by 50.

So if they started out at 20, they should end up at 70. Three months now retesting is gonna be so super important. So you can see where that is because you wanna stay in that sweet spot. And typically once they hit around that area, you can either reduce their dose a little bit to keep 'em there.

Or some people they have a harder time holding onto it, and you'll know by testing their blood you can keep 'em at that 5,000 dose. So that's a great way to know your dosing on your vitamin D. So that's it for.

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