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One of the biggest deficiencies that we see when we do blood analysis of our patients
in terms of vitamins is vitamin D. Vitamin D is well beyond simply being important for
strong bones. In fact, vitamin D activates more than 900 genes. 900 parts of our DNA
reducing our risk of things like cancer, inflammation, low vitamin D levels are associated with cognitive
issues like Alzheimer's disease and even Parkinson's disease. So, Vitamin D turns out to be a big
player. We often times don't have enough Vitamin D. Again, when we see people, typically their
vitamin D levels are suboptimal. Again, the normal range of Vitamin D is between 30 and
100 so some people will go to their doctor and he or she will say, well your level is
31. You're in the so-called normal range. The "Grain Brain" is not about getting into
the normal range, it's about getting into the optimal range. You want to ask your doctor
to help you get to a vitamin level of around 70 or 80. That's what seems to be best. Why
do we have such low levels of Vitamin D? Well, most of us these days wear clothes. In our
hunter-gatherer days we would go around naked and as such, our skin would get ultraviolet
radiation from the sun and we would turn a specific chemical in our body into vitamin
D. It turns out that these days everybody is doing their best to get rid of that precursor
chemical that makes vitamin D. That chemical is cholesterol. So with all these great efforts
to lower cholesterol we're actually lowering the very chemical our body needs to make vitamin
D. It's difficult for me to prescribe to a patient how much vitamin D he or she may need.
It's all about the blood test. Typically a patient may need 5000 units a day. You might
need 5000 units today. But, again what we normally do is give a patient an individual
dosage of 5000 units and then recheck the vitamin levels in about 2 months and adjust
the dosage.