Radically Resilient Health
Radically Resilient Health
Vitamin D3 and Your Relationship With The Sun
Vitamin D3 is provided by the sun, but it is not always possible to get enough sun optimal for your body. That is why Dr. Carolyn Dolan put D3 in Vitakinetics to boost gut health and overall absorption of the foods that fuel your body for better recovery. In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Dolan talks about why D3 is so important to your overall health and how you can have a holistic relationship with the sun, your skin, and your overall health.
Radically resilient health with Dr. Carolyn Dolan and our last podcast, we talked about the opioid crisis. And one of the many reasons that Dr. Dolan created Vita kinetics was to have an alternative to opioids, to help individuals who had gone through a traumatic experience who were using an opioid, but ready to move on still adding to that natural healing process. And she had mentioned in the last podcast that we would be diving deeper into the ingredients and the importance of the ingredients inside Vita kinetics. And I'm happy to be talking about one that not only is it an ingredient in Vida kinetics, but it's something that we can all get naturally. And sometimes I feel as though we are ignoring the importance of vitamin D, is that correct? Dr. Dolan, are we just forgetting the importance of the sun?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's it's so powerful. The sun rays. I think there's a lot of fear that plays into that to begin with the sun is our natural exposure to the full spectrum, sun UVA, UVB rays, when it hits our skin, it converts the cholesterol in our blood to the vitamin D three. And so that's our natural conversion just simply by exposing ourselves to UVB rays. Now, what's really fascinating about that is with our current lifestyles inside computer work, use of skins, sunscreen covering up and actually avoiding the sun for fear of burning, I think is, is a big thing that we're not actually getting to our normal conversion, because it does require exposure to the skin. And the more skin you have exposed, the more vitamin D three you will produce now in certain areas that you live, that your, how close you are to the sun or the latitude and all of that. And the time of year will dictate whether or not even UVB rays are available. So at certain periods of time of the year, the UVB rays aren't actually even available. And so what was really interesting as the more I explored that and considering exposure to the sun and your vitamin make converting vitamin D 3s is probably one of the safest ways to do it so long as you pay attention to avoiding burning. So it doesn't take terribly long, depending on your skin tone. It can take up to maybe 20 minutes, 10 to 20 minutes. If you have a huge portion of your skin exposed to produce enough vitamin D to be therapeutic this natural exposure to sun, you know, we've talked a lot about the health of the gut brain connection and integrity of the gut, exposing yourself to sun and improving your vitamin D three levels also seems to have a positive impact on your microbiomes, the type of bacteria that live in solely by sun exposure. So by improving your vitamin D three status, you're improving your integrity. Your gut integrity pain response goes down. Healing goes up again, avoiding the burning stage, but with safe sun exposure. Now in certain times of year, certain situations having full sun exposure is not practical, right? They even used to have in times of war, they would have sick wards moved out into sunshine for healing. Clearly, as far as infection control goes, that's a little bit more challenging to try and do that if you can imagine. So the way you can supplement it's an easy supplement vitamin D three, powerful with reduction in chronic pain states, particularly for women, it enhances the bacterial eating capacity of certain macrophages, which are important for that inflammatory process and that healing process improving vitamin D three status improves the inflammatory process so that certain types of macrophage cells go from an inflammatory state to a healing state. So it helps promote that transition to the healing state, um, and it can be associated with poor outcomes related to surgery, upper respiratory infections and such. It is a fat-soluble vitamin. So theoretically it, unlike water-soluble vitamins that you're just going to pee out it's fat soluble. So it does require eating fat for absorption, which is when you think of cholesterol, that's no measurement of sort of lipids in your blood, which is a fat is also one of the reasons why the instructions on the Vita kinetics bottle with the day three is that you eat it with a meal containing a serving of animal protein so that you can get that fat to help with the absorption. But because it's fat soluble, it's theoretical. And I say theoretical that you could become toxic because you're not peeing it out. But in order to become toxic with a vitamin D three, you would have to be consuming over 40,000 IEU U units a day for an incredibly extended period of time. I think I came across one case report of vitamin D three toxicity. And this person was like, ridiculous supplementation. I mean, you could take our whole bottle and not reach that level. And again, that's one of our whole points is to make sure you're getting it in safe amounts. And it's also at a level where if you have to be supplementing separately, because you do really have low levels of vitamin D three, that it's also supportive.
Speaker 1:You can find vitamin D in foods, but you're probably not going to get the most amount of vitamin D when you're eating your sardines or your child down on a mushroom, it's difficult to really reach the optimum level. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes. So there are foods that contain the vitamin D and there's different versions, vitamin D two, which is from plants and vitamin D three, which is from that conversion and the cholesterol in your blood. So, absolutely. Um, so while it's still beneficial to be eating the, you know, the benefits of eating mushrooms and such are beneficial, um, it's not the same type of vitamin D presence and functionality. The other thing I do recommend sometimes with folks, depending on, you know, their health status, I mean, always let your doctor know, and, you know, we are all 400% open communication with your healthcare providers and letting them know it's always important to let them know what you are taking. But vitamin D three is an incredibly safe supplement to consume. It's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to create illness by some over supplementing with vitamin D three, and you don't have to supplement with very much to have that positive effects on both pain reduction and the intestinal integrity. The reason why it was included in our supplement was for those reasons. And you can still, even if you are supplementing or using Vita kinetics, getting that adequate sun exposure is still important and safe to do.
Speaker 1:I love on your website, you say, remove, replace, restore, and you talk about the removal of the fear of the sun. And you replace that with a safe spectrum of sun exposure for natural vitamin D for pain relief. It helps with sleep getting that skinny and rhythm back in place, but the supplement is just another way to make sure taking by by the kinetics is another way to really make sure you're getting that exposure. And you talk about restore intestinal integrity, going back to that gut brain connection and reducing pain. So I feel like you having that vitamin D component within the Vita kinetics is yet just one of the many vitamins that you add into this so that we can, our bodies can heal and read that radical, resilient health that we all want.
Speaker 2:And, and it's safe. It's easy to support yourself with this. And again, it's, it's a compliment. It's never a replacement. I would never, um, say that this supplement is a replacement for healthy behaviors. Like we might, like you brought up again, you know, the exposure to the sun helps normalize your circadian rhythm. And so, but you know, when you are in the middle of recovering surgically from something or trauma or whatever it may be getting outside might not be what you can do right now for a moment, or you have stairs to get outside. And CA you know, right now you're not able to do stairs, or your line of work really keeps you more indoors. You find ways to fit that the exposure in, and then you support. And that's really where we're the supplement is. It's supportive of those strategies, not a full replacement. And then I always do recommend if you find your, you think that it really is something, um, that your vitamin D three levels are not doing very well, or it's not responding the way you would have helped. I always recommend to return back to your healthcare provider and get your blood work done, have them check your levels, and you may need to additionally support, you know, supplement vitamin D three for a period of time to get those levels up. And then this, the, by the kinetic still is more of a supportive maintenance role for those. But if you're really concerned, then get tested supplement, and then retest. And in a lot of the allopathic healthcare community is getting on board with, with knowing that our blood levels of vitamin D three are, are actually important. And I remember there was, um, a friend of mine who started to just take vitamin D three. And I thought it was really fascinating because she said all of these things started to improve. And, you know, my first response prior to developing Vita connects was like we mentioned before supplements, aren't, aren't worthy of all of this, right? Like how could the supplement vitamin D three? That's just, it's all in her head. But then as I was researching and I said, well, if she had low vitamin D three levels, maybe it really would help her gut integrity, help improve her sleep, reduce whatever pain allow her body to actually heal from whatever injury or illness she was had underlying that she didn't really know about. Um, and she asked the question and I don't have the answer, but she did ask the question about when she was younger. She used to like to go to the tanning beds and, you know, tanning beds are really, um, you have to be really careful because those have been linked to some skin cancers. Um, but I wonder if part of why she continued to go there was because she struggled with her vitamin D three levels and wasn't getting enough sun exposure or something like that. But vitamin D three is pretty powerful.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting because I come from, I originally lived in Seattle and I now live in Northern Nevada. And one of the things that really sold me on staying in Northern Nevada was the sun, the vitamin D after living in an area where it's gray and gloomy a lot of the time, first of all, you should see Seattle on the very first spring day. It's no one goes to work. We're all outside in the sunshine. One of the biggest deciding factors in staying and living Northern Nevada was we're very lucky. I mean, I would say the sun comes out probably, you know, 335 times a year. We have sunshine. And for me, the biggest thing was having sunshine November, December, January. We were not really starting to really see the sun come out until April and may in Washington state. So that decision, I always tell people, they say, well, what kept you in Northern Nevada and vitamin D the sunshine. If you look at people who live in Florida, who are living in California, and they talk about most of these cultures, and those communities are very active in the outdoors, even in a colder climate Denver, for example, it may be cold, but the sun is out so much. So being able to take advantage of that, and really, I know how I feel just walking the block in my neighborhood when the sun is out, it feels so good. And, you know, obviously you mentioned this too, taking into consideration. I use a mineral based sunscreen when I'm out. My husband is a as wide as all get out. So, I mean, he just went out yesterday. We were up in the Hills in Nevada and he got a little burn on his neck. Um, but he did say he's like going back to the Tammy Betty's, he's like, I know I shouldn't burn myself, but gosh, it sure did feel good to have that sun on my,
Speaker 2:I guess they're done. Um, and I do think you bring up an important point here related to the sunshine. There's far more value with natural sunlight that, you know, that will continue to be brought to light as we continued research. So even if in the middle of winter, you're walking out in the sunshine, it's not going to be the time you're actually getting vitamin D three necessarily. There's far more that we are actually getting that we maybe don't fully understand and yeah, healthy doses have your sunscreen. If you're going to be out for a long time, again, you want to be out enough to develop some vitamin D three and then you need to protect your skin. It's important. And they go, they go hand in hand and we shouldn't be afraid as much as starting to pay attention and really do things on purpose, right? Like start to pay attention in that moment and attending to that task. So my family, we try to get out and if we are going out to the beach or something, we try to spend about 15, 20 minutes just getting, you know, in our bathing suit, getting that sun on our skin before we're really swimming. And then we lather up and protect ourselves.
Speaker 1:Vitamin D. It is a vital resource to our body just as vitamin C is. And we're going to continue on with our series, discussing the ingredients, invited kinetics. And I'm excited about our next podcast, Dr. Dolan, because I know vitamin C is important, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to eat a hundred oranges every day to get the vitamin C that I need. And Vita kinetics is just another way for you to get that vitamin C. And we'll talk about the importance of vitamin C coming up on our next episode of radically resilient health.