True Health Balance

You were told as a child to drink your milk to make sure you have strong healthy bones. Turns out Milk in its natural state only contains about 30-70 IU’s per quart. Let’s do the math. There are 4 cups in a quart. Even at the high end, you are only getting less that 20 IU’s per cup. The food and nutrition board recommends 200-400 IUs per day.  Back in the 1940’s there was a condition called Ricketts. This is a softening of bones in children potentially leading to fractures and deformity.  You can read more about this if you go HERE. The milk producers figured out if they supplement the milk with vitamin D they could reduce the cases of Rickets. Doing so reduced the incidence rate of juvenile rickets by 85% in the United States.

So what is vitamin D?

First of all, it is not actually a vitamin. It is a hormone. A hormone is a chemical messenger that is produced and secreted by specific glands and cells within the body of animals. It is classified as a vitamin for nutritional and public health reasons.  So, Vitamin D is a steroid vitamin, a group of fat soluble prohormones, which encourages the absorption and metabolism of calcium and phosphorous.

Why do we need vitamin D?

Its main function is to maintain blood calcium in a normal range. It does this by telling the intestine to absorb more calcium from the food we eat. If it can’t find calcium in your blood, it will start to leach calcium from your bones. Our country has one of the highest rates of osteoporosis rates in the world. Partly because the US is suffering a extremely high Vitamin deficiency rate. I am not saying that this is the determining factor in osteoporosis. There are other factors including low level of physical activity and smoking. It has also been proven that excess protein is a factor. A normal adult needs about 25 grams of protein daily.  The typical American diet will consume upwards toward 200 grams a day.  Your body cannot use this amount of protein.  Protein is also not stored in the body, so the liver and kidneys have to find calcium and magnesium from the body to neutralize the acid that the protein produces.  What do you think happens when the liver and kidneys can’t find enough calcium in your blood?  They look for alternate sources like your bones and your brain.  There are also multiple studies to support the following needs for vitamin D.  It is also a factor as an immune system regulator.  Although more studies need to be done it also may be important to the immune system against disorders like a common cold, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and depression.  Studies also show a correlation between weight gain and vitamin D deficiency.  Studies are now coming out that are proving very promising that vitamin D fights cancer cells.

How do I get vitamin D?

Vitamin D is known as the sunshine vitamin.  You don’t actually get vitamin D from the sun.  Vitamin D is formed in the skin when ultraviolet light of the correct wavelength, UVB, strikes bare skin. Enormous quantities of cholecalciferol are rapidly made in the skin if the sun is high in the sky (midday and the summer season), your skin is not covered by clothes or sun block, you stay in the sun until your skin just begins to turn pink (not red), you are not behind glass. Glass blocks virtually all UVB, preventing vitamin D from being made.  There are also a few foods that contain vitamin D that I recommend.  One is wild salmon the other is shitake mushrooms.  I also recommend a liquid form of vitamin D.  I used carlson’s D drops.  You can find them here

 

Sunlight Exposure (full body exposure)*	3,000 – 20,000 IU
Salmon (3.5 oz. of fresh, wild salmon)	600 – 1,000 IU
Salmon (3.5 oz. of fresh, farmed salmon)	100 – 250 IU
Fortified Whole Milk, 8-oz. glass**	100 IU
Fortified Multi-vitamin	400 IU

 

For the D drops, here are the recommends amounts

Age	Dosage
Below 5	35 units per pound per day
Age 5 - 10	2500 units
Adults	5000 units
Pregnant Women	5000 units

WARNING:
There is no way to know if the above recommendations are correct. The ONLY way to know is to test your blood. You might need 4-5 times the amount recommended above. Ideally your blood level of 25 OH D should be 60ng/ml.

 

How much sun exposure do I need?

I recommend sun exposure to the arms and legs for 10 to 15 minutes.  Unfortunately, in the winter months, the amounts of UVB rays are minimal.  The question arises about tanning beds being a suitable replacement for the sun.  Both the sun and tanning beds emit two types of ultraviolet rays, UVA and UVB.  Most tanning beds will emit UVA rays.  Make sure that the  beds are calibrated for UVB.

 

If you or anyone you know is pregnant, please make sure you get your Vitamin D levels (25 hydroxy D) regularly checked during pregnancy. Levels need to be above 50 ng/ml to protect you and your baby from some of the most serious complications of pregnancy such as premature delivery and preeclampsia. This is a potentially deadly increase in blood pressure and fluid accompanied during pregnancy. Preeclampsia and related disorders is suspect to cause 76,000 and 500,000 infant deaths every year. These deaths could have been prevented by simply optimizing vitamin D. It is not standard practice to check vitamin D levels during pregnancy. You have to ask your doctor. U.S. researchers Drs. Hollis and Wagner also found that over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state.

What about sun Screen?

If you wear a sunscreen with SPF [sun protection factor] 8, it prevents 95 percent of your skin's production of vitamin D. When you get to SPF 30, production is almost zero.

Which is more important for humans, vitamins D₂ or D₃?

Both forms are present in nutritional supplements. It is debated that both forms are equally effective, but I have to go with nature on this one.  D3 is produced in your skin. Make sure it is Cholecalciferol.

The fact that you will get 20,000 IU’s of Vitamin D produced in the skin after just 30 minutes of sun exposure begs for the question , Why did nature develop a system that delivers huge quantities of a steroid precursor after only brief periods of sun exposure? The benefits of vitamin D are just starting to surface in large quantity. I had my kids on vitamin D all winter and they may have had one small cold each.

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Can you really fight depression? To answer this question, I believe we need to understand what depression is. The brain is made up of billions of nerve cells called neurons. These neurons send and receive messages from the rest of your body, using brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. These brain chemicals, in varying amounts, are responsible for our emotional state. Depression happens when these chemical messages aren’t delivered correctly between brain cells, disrupting communication. You can think of this as bad cell phone reception. When you are in an area that has weak coverage, your reception is filled with static. Mountains and valleys and distance from a cell tower all interfere with your reception. You end up with static service and dropped calls. You brain works the same way. Anger, sadness, worry, and pain work as inhibitors that do not allow those neurons to transmit. For some, it is a chemical imbalance that will restrain proper brain function. For most, it is a collection of thoughts that we entertain over an over in or mind.

 

Unfortunately, it does not stop there. We turn on the TV and radio and listen to people around us filled with anger and sadness. The strange thing is that we actually want to hear all of this! Have you ever noticed when something destructive or negative comes on TV we are reaching for the remote to turn it up? When we are at work, we open out ears to make sure we hear someone’s misfortune. Why do we do this? It does not seem to make sense that we are so interested in all this negativity. I have a theory on this behavior. We walk through life with a varying amount pain, worry, and anxiety on our shoulders. We feel like if we hear the trials and tribulations of others, it will give us comfort to know that we are not the only ones feeling pain. For a short time, it works. We do get a sense of relieve that someone has it worse than we do. Unfortunately, that feeling go’s away. We have now added extra weight to our shoulders and we feel worse than we did before. Like a drug, we search for that high, that brief moment where we feel good. We try to conceal our problems with other people’s problems. We start to consciously or unconsciously think about what we have heard.

 

I remember years ago I was watching the news. They had a story about a 6 year old little girl that had been abducted a month earlier. They found her badly bruised body in a ditch along the road. They continued to inform us on the details of how the little girl was physically and sexually abused by the abductor. I remember my first thought was a sigh of relieve that it was not any of my children. As time went on, my relieve turned to sadness then to anger. As the day went on, my anger grew as my co-workers and I talked about it. Feelings of hate and despair filled my mind. Even after the conversations were done, it continued to ruin my day. So the question is, how could I have stopped that? The better question to ask is how could I have stopped this horrible tragedy? The answer is, you couldn’t have stopped it! There is nothing you can do about the news that you hear. I have decided to stop listening to the news. People are quick to say things like. “How do you stay informed?”  My answer is simply this… I do just fine. I walk away from negative people. I will listen to people’s problems, but I am aware of my feelings and I do not allow myself to become effected by the negativity

 

My next question to you is… “What do we do to stop being depressed?” Do we just control our thoughts? Of course not, that is impossible. We do not have the ability to control our thoughts. If you don’t believe me, sit in a quiet room, with your eyes open, and try not to think for one minute. You can’t do it. If anything, you will start to think about not thinking. Thought happens as automatically as your heart beating and your lungs breathing. The key is to be aware of your thoughts. They teach this in Yoga. When you are meditating, you try to clear your mind. Thoughts pop in and out of your mind, but you do not allow them to anger you. You just become aware of the thought and gently allow the thought to leave your mind.

 

To be aware of your thoughts, you need to know what to be aware of. This is where reading and listening to people, mentors if you will, help you to understand your thoughts and get a better understanding of why you do what you do. People like Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Norman Vincent Peale, and Tony Robbins, to name a few. You may not agree with all of there ideas, but your job is to pull out the ideas that work for you.

 

My next suggestion is to combat depression with  exercise and good nutrition. I know, you are depressed, exercising it the last thing you want to do. God has given you a temple to work with. It is up to you how you want to take care of this temple. As the saying goes, “Bad stuff in, Bad stuff out. Good stuff in, good stuff out”. Just how exercise reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety isn't fully understood. Some evidence suggests that exercise raises the levels of certain mood-enhancing neurotransmitters in the brain. Exercise may also boost feel-good endorphins, release muscle tension, help you sleep better, and reduce levels of the stress hormone Cortisol. It also increases body temperature, which may have calming effects. All of these changes in your mind and body can improve such symptoms as sadness, anxiety, irritability, stress, fatigue, anger, self-doubt and hopelessness. Exercising builds confidence with the sense of accomplishment. It also works as a distraction to take your mind of off the anxiety. Plus you are doing something positive to manage your depression. A couple of keys to think about before you start. Get a good understanding and awareness of exactly what the barriers you have to not exercising. Do NOT think of exercise as something that is being taken from you. Think of it as something that you are giving yourself. Set reasonable goals. Do not kill yourself. You should be able to carry on a conversation while you work out. You should, however, be working up a sweat. The most important thing to know is that you WILL have obstacles and setbacks. You only fail when you quit!

 

The next thing to do is change your attitude. I know change is hard. Most people spend there life in the blame game. They blame everyone else for the problems they have. I have no money. Blame the government. I have a bad marriage. Blame your spouse. My kids are on drugs. Blame society. True maturity is attained when you take responsibility for your own actions. When I first started changing my attitude, I had to force myself to be happy and positive in the morning. I didn’t believe an ounce of it, but I kept being positive. My only drive at the time was that it had to be better than how I was currently feeling. Somewhere down the line. My attitude started to change. I finally realized the key to changing my attitude. The key is to have a heart of gratitude. Did you catch that? I will say it again. The key is to have a heart of gratitude. When I became grateful for everything I have and lost the desire for the things that I don’t have, my attitude started to change.

 

There are several other great ways to dispel depression like deep breathing, Yoga, and getting the proper amount of sleep, but this is a blog and not a book. I will cover these in later blogs. I have said this before, be a student of life. If depression is your issue, study depression. If you are out of shape and tired, study health. If you are poor, study wealth. Success leaves clues. Pattern yourself around people that have succeeded in your issue. Misery loves company. Hang around miserable people and you will be miserable. One last thought that wraps up this conversation. If you try to fight depression, you will lose. The key to beating depression is to go after the cause and sources of depression.

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