Dr. Rhonda Patrick Goes In Depth on the Benefits of Vitamin D

This seems like in the beginning at least they're trying to figure out what the correct treatment was for these people as they were just showing up en masse in the emergency rooms and they didn't really know and doctors, they varied in how they approached it. My friend Michael, his doctor didn't put him on a ventilator and he said if I put him on a ventilator he's probably going to die. Because he said his body's going to stop working because it's going to let the ventilator do the breathing for him and it's going to give up. What he was talking about after the fact, what Michael was talking about was how that is proven to be correct in New York and that some monstrous number like 80% of the people that put on ventilators wind up dying. Not just New York. I've had friends that are physicians that have like in New Orleans, I mean same thing where it's like ... There was someone on my team, we were doing some research on this and I didn't sort of dive into the whole thing but he was telling me that ventilators do actually like cause more damage to the lungs and like he'd been reading some studies to like confirm that and he was pretty certain that ventilators actually cause damage and actually could like induce damage where it's like making it worse. That's so horrible. But I don't know. I don't know all the specifics of that. All I know is that looking at the statistics like if you go on a ventilator, I mean surely it seems like the outcome's not very ... It doesn't seem like it's going to be very good. Right, but it's hard to say is that the cause of it or is it ... Right. Is it just that they're so fucked up by the time they get on a ventilator, they just wind up dying? Right. Well here, there's been some really interesting data looking at like in the Philippines and Indonesia ... Where else? I think New Orleans as well. They've looked at patients that have died and their vitamin D levels and basically like in the Philippines, people that for like every standard deviation increase in vitamin D levels, serum vitamin D levels, the people had like an eight times less likely to have a severe form of COVID-19 and they were 20 times less likely to have critical form of COVID-19. That was the Philippines. In Indonesia, it was a really interesting study where they measured vitamin D and this was measured in the patients. There's been some vitamin D studies also where they're looking at countries that have been affected the worst and they all have low vitamin D and it's like, okay, well anyways, that's a correlation. But well so is this, but it's a little stronger data. In Indonesia, patients that died, almost 100%, it was like 98 point something percent of patients that died with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient. Four percent of patients that died from COVID-19 were vitamin D sufficient, or say four percent, only four percent were vitamin D sufficient. So basically they were all vitamin D deficient, all the ones that are dying. Whoa. Crazy, right? And like New Orleans had some crazy number. So it would be the mechanism that would cause that. So I think there's, all right, can we get into vitamin D? Please do. It's a big, I really think- Well because of you, I take 5,000 IUs a day. Awesome. Right now I'm taking 5,000 IUs a day. You know, 70% of the US population has insufficient vitamin D levels, which is considered less than, blood levels less than 30 milligrams, nanograms per milliliter. And this is something that your body can generate naturally if you're exposed to this on a daily basis. Yes. That's the best way to get it. It is. But the problem is, is that we don't go outside anymore. And- Especially now. Yeah, especially now. With this lockdown. Exactly. Yeah. Now more than ever. And what a terrible recipe, right? Vitamin D deficiency is what makes it worse, and then you're staying inside so you're not getting any vitamin D. Yeah. You're becoming even more deficient, you know? Like 28% of the US population is actually deficient, like less than 20 nanograms per milliliter. You know, like that's defined deficiency. So there's a lot of people in the United States, as you mentioned, you make it from the sun, so particularly UVB radiation. There's a reason why I want to talk about this. You make it from UVB radiation exposure. You know, basically it's made in the skin. And but, you know, there are certain times of the year, depending on where you live, in a more northern latitude, where that UVB isn't even hitting the atmosphere. So you're not making vitamin D. Also, if you have darker skin, melanin protects you, like the whole, you know, people with darker skin, people from maybe Africa or India or South Asia, they're more equatorial regions. They're closer, you know, closer to the equator, and there's more UVB radiation throughout the year. And so as a protective mechanism to not get burned, you have melanin, which protects you, right? The problem is, is that melanin also blocks your ability to produce vitamin D. But if you're out in the sun all the time, you know, in a place where you're getting UVB radiation, it's not a problem. Well, this is the very reason why people in places like Scotland and England have such pale skin. Exactly. Because it's cloudy all the time, so your body sort of develops its own ability to absorb more vitamin D. Exactly. So what happens when you take some, what happens when you take a person from South Asia, from India, from Africa, and you put them in Sweden or in Minnesota or in the UK, a place where UVB radiation doesn't hit most of the year, and you don't give them a supplement? What happens is they become severely vitamin D deficient, severely. And what happens when you take, I mean, you can throw this on the, you can flip this over and say, okay, what happens when you take the guy from the UK, the Brit, and put him in Australia, like without any sunscreen or without a hat or a number? They're going to answer. Yeah. Do you think that this could be a factor in why so many African Americans are getting hit so hard? Yes. So here's the thing. Wow. So African Americans are, there's lots of, all right. African Americans are, in the United States, there's been studies, African Americans are severely deficient. They're 28 times more deficient in vitamin D than Caucasians. Whoa. Yeah. And it's because they have darker skin and, you know, if- And they're not getting enough sun. They're not getting enough sun because people stay inside more. People stay inside. You know, it's not like the old days when we were out hunter, gatherer, and out in the sun all the time. We're inside all the time. We're in school. We're at work, in our office, in our cubicle. So the CDC, you know, obviously there's been studies showing that African Americans are more hit, but they didn't really correct for tons of like other factors because socioeconomic status is important. Other health factors, you know, but there was a big study just released not long ago from like the national office of statistics in Britain or something like that. I don't know what their official name was, but they released some statistics from England and Wales. And I don't know what the correct name to say. I mean, the blacks there basically living in England and in Wales are four times more likely to die of COVID-19 than whites. When they adjusted all that data for socioeconomic status and for other health factors, they were two times more likely to die. So clearly socioeconomic status and other health factors are playing a role, but there's something else unidentified. And I think it's vitamin D. I think that, you know, so, you know, the vitamin D, like it hasn't, look, vitamin, I'm not saying that vitamin D is going to prevent you from getting COVID-19 or it's a treatment, although I am involved in a clinical study where we're going to be testing a very small open arm study we can talk about. But, you know, I'm not a physician, I'm a medical doctor, I've never intubated anyone. So don't think I'm saying that. I don't want people to think I'm saying it's a treatment. I just want to, it's a hypothesis that needs to be tested. And thankfully there are clinical trials, randomized control trials that are now ongoing and there are some that are recruiting. But just a statistic that you've already listed about vitamin D and the people that have had COVID-19, those are insane. It's insane. In Sweden, there's a huge population of Somalis that have migrated to Sweden. And they have been identified as being severely vitamin D deficient because a lot of the Somalis have also, like autism rates are really high there and there's this link between, I published a link also between vitamin D and autism. But, so there's been studies looking at vitamin D levels in the Somali population. I mean, they are so deficient because you're taking, again, you're taking someone who's supposed to be, who's evolved to be getting a lot of sun, but not burned from it and then putting them in a place where they can't get any vitamin D from the sun. And if they don't get a supplement, like they're going to be deficient. And they're so much more likely, they're like, it's wreaking havoc in Sweden on the Somali population. That is so logical. Yeah. It's, and then, okay, so elderly, elderly are like insanely more deficient. I forgot the exact number. Obese, also, obese people are like three times more likely to be vitamin D deficient in the United States. Why is that? Because vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin and it's less, it's been shown to be 50% less bioavailable. So you have to, after you make it in your skin, it's stored in fat and it's released when, you know, basically into the bloodstream and then it can, gets converted into a hormone. This hormone regulates 5%, more than 5% of the human protein encoded human genome. That's a lot of, it's a hormone. Like, can you imagine just walking around without testosterone? You're a man. That's a hormone. I mean, like, cause there's a lot of people that are deficient in vitamin D and it's a steroid hormone. It gets converted into a hormone. Like, this isn't just a vitamin, you know? It's important. It's really important. So I went off on a tangent, but anyways. Can I ask you this, why we're off on this tangent? What is happening to people when they are vitamin D? Like what's happening in vitamin D deficient? What is happening in the body that's causing their immune system this hormone deficiency, not having this vitamin D, whether it's through sun exposure or diet? So there's lots of things. I mean, it plays a, there's vitamin D receptors on like your immune cells and the reason for that is because when the hormone, vitamin D hormone binds to the receptor, it activates all these genes and that the genes do stuff that are, you know, regulate immune function. You know, there's, there's studies that have shown people, and I love these studies because, because they basically take away people's complaints about, you know, there's lots of epidemiological studies showing that low vitamin D is associated with disease X, Y, or Z. And everyone's like, well, you know, they're out in this, they're not in the sun as much. So they're not as healthy. They're not as physically active. They're not whatever, even though those confounding factors are usually corrected for. It's old at the end of the day. It's an association, right? And everyone's like, correlation's not causation, which is true. But sometimes you got to like look at the full body of data, you know? There are genetic polymorphisms. So there are people that have variations in genes that cause them to genetically have lower vitamin D. And so this, this is called Mendelian randomization, when you can take a person that's, that has a genetically, like it's, they're genetically low vitamin D. So you're not categorizing them based on their vitamin D levels. You're categorizing them based on their gene. And those people are more likely to die from respiratory infections, just based on that gene alone. So yeah, that gene that it's known to lower, it lowers vitamin, it leads to lower vitamin D levels. And so like those people are more likely to die from respiratory infections than people that don't have that, which it's a great way of kind of randomizing people by their genes as opposed to doing a randomized controlled trial. Those have been done as well. There was a study that was over 25 randomized controlled trials. People that were given a vitamin D supplement, varying doses, either weekly or daily, monthly didn't work. There, the people with low baseline vitamin D levels, so people that were like deficient, they were 50% less likely to have a respiratory tract infection if they were taking the vitamin D supplement. Over 50%, actually. And people that had already normal levels still had a protective effect. There was 10% less likely. So even people that were already considered normal taking a vitamin D supplement helped prevent the respiratory tract infection. Can you take too much vitamin D? Yes, you can. You can. But it's too much. So right, so the upper, the tolerable upper intake has been set by the nutrition board, the Institute of Medicine to be 4,000 IUs a day. But there's been studies that have shown that you can, I mean, people that have taken, you know, 10,000 IUs a day for multiple years haven't had any hypercalcemia or had problems. But too much vitamin D can be toxic. It's not good to take that. It's best to get a vitamin D blood test. And I think that, personally, there has been a trend. So people that have blood levels higher than 60 may have just a little bit higher calcium levels, but not much. It's not like anything to be hugely concerned about. But there are studies also showing that either vitamin K1, so there's been a meta-analysis looking at 12 different studies, I think, where vitamin K1 or vitamin K2 were given. And both of those improved bone mineral density and prevented any hypercalcemia. Because when you take vitamin D, you absorb calcium better, like something crazy, like 40% more dietary calcium is being absorbed. Wow. And the problem is that calcium can easily form a precipitate in general, and particularly when phosphorus is around. And phosphorus is another thing vitamin D does increase the absorption of. But again, like I said, you know, it's really hard to find any studies where vitamin D is causing, you know, hypercalcemia unless it's like really, really high dose for a while. I personally think taking the vitamin K1, and what's interesting about the vitamin K1 versus vitamin K2 without going into too much of a tangent is basically the vitamin K1, normally it goes to your liver and it's involved in blood coagulation. But when there's enough vitamin K1 around, it stays in the periphery and it moves calcium, periphery being bloodstream, it moves calcium out of the bloodstream and takes it to places where it's supposed to go, like the bones and the muscle. Vitamin K2 usually stays around the periphery and doesn't really go to the liver. So that's usually what it's just doing, is moving calcium out and bringing it to the bones. So I actually have K1 in my multi that I take, but I also take a K2 supplement, MK4, I take it like a couple times a week. And what dose are you taking for K1? Well, the K1 is in my multi. Vitamin K1 is found in dark leafy greens, so I get a lot of those as well. So I'm getting a lot of K1. Vitamin K2 is not as readily found in the Western... It's like the food that's highest in it is that fermented soybean natto, but it's like small quantities and like cheese. Do you ever get concerned from the high volume of leafy greens? Do you ever get concerned of oxalates or getting kidney stones or anything along those lines? No. Like the few studies that I've seen, it's in people that are doing insane juicing and they're already messed up. So I'm not concerned at all. Like even like the oxalates, so oxalates actually... I don't want to go into this, but... So yeah, no, I don't consider... The vitamin D thing is so important to me. The reason, there's a big reason I think that vitamin D is so important. It's for the lung function, the respiratory function. But what's really interesting is that the very receptor that this SARS-CoV-2 virus binds to to gain entry into the cell. It's called ACE2. That very receptor plays a really important role in preventing lung damage and basically and preventing acute lung injury, preventing acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS. And what's been shown with SARS-CoV-1 is that... Because SARS-CoV-1 also binds to that receptor, ACE2, it's called. That's how it gets into the cell, just like the SARS-CoV-2. When it binds to the receptor, it attaches through this weird endocytosis mechanism. It takes the receptor in and decreases the receptor, what's called downregulates. Downregulates the receptor so you end up having less ACE2, which can cause severe lung injury with not having the ACE2. It plays a big role in protecting. That's been shown in multiple studies. So the SARS-CoV-1 virus does that. It's thought the SARS-CoV-2 also does it because it goes through the same receptor. And it's been shown that if you, for example, if you give mice lipopolysaccharide or something that's going to cause lung injury and then you give them vitamin D. So the lung injury itself also causes the ACE2 receptor to decrease. And so it's like this vicious cycle of making the damage worse. But if you give mice vitamin D before that happens, the ACE2 receptor increases and it protects them from the lung injury. But you give the vitamin D to control mice that don't have the lung injury. It doesn't do anything to the ACE2 receptor levels. So it's not like full stop. It's not like, you know, drugs, the way drugs are designed is they like, they target a certain molecule and they boom, they like do their thing. They either increase it or decrease it. A lot of times with like hormones, you know, vitamins, things like that, they maintain homeostasis. You know what I mean? So when shit goes wrong, they fix it. They're not just like, boom, full stop going to like increase something when everything's normal. And that's important because there have been some concern about taking vitamin D, increasing the ACE2 receptor. And there's another study that was with hypertensive rats where the hypertension caused ACE2 to go down and that like makes lung, it makes all sorts of problems. It also causes like kidney problems and all sorts of things, right? But the vitamin D increased the ACE2, but only in the hypertensive rats, not in the normal control rats again. So you know, and then there was another study that was like some other messed up diabetic animal model where the vitamin D actually didn't increase the ACE2 receptor, but it increased what's called soluble ACE2, which is in like, it's in the periphery and that actually potentially could bind SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevent it from, it's like sequestering it, preventing it from entering the cell. That's actually being explored as a potential therapeutic. So the bottom line here is that sometimes you'll hear this ACE2 receptor and that's how the virus gets in and it's like, I don't want that. I want less of that because that's how the virus gets in. But like biology is always way more complicated than just a simple taking it out of a big picture, right? You know, so like the ACE2 receptor, the ACE2 is part of the renin angiotensin system. It plays a huge role in inflammation. It's also like when you decrease ACE2, all these signaling cascades happen and it's like ACE2 is important for producing pro-inflammatory cytokines at the end of the day without getting into all the stuff, you know, specifics. So it causes massive inflammation to have a decrease. It basically causes acute lung injury. It exacerbates it. I mean, it's crazy. So I really, I just, I really, can you imagine if vitamin D really did help? If there was something that could be given along with the other stuff from Desivir or whatever, whatever it's going to be the stuff that we identify, but like vitamin D is so cheap, it's so easy and so many people are deficient and insufficient, you know, like, so yes, as you mentioned, there is, you know, you don't want to take too much vitamin D. You don't want to like, you know, overdose on it. But I think in the short term, you know, particularly like in the short term and particularly in patients, people that have already been infected, you know, it may be wise to try giving your patient like if you're a physician, you know, dealing with this, maybe wise to try and see their vitamin D levels and perhaps give them some, you know. Is this being explored public? I mean, is this something that people are talking about publicly? Because all I'm hearing is drugs and possible drug remedies, potential vaccine that they're working on in the future. I'm not hearing anything about methods, nutrition that boosts your immune system. This is one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk to you right now. Yeah, let's definitely talk more. There are, yes, it is. So there are clinical studies, unfortunately, not a ton of them in the United States that are looking randomized controlled trials looking at vitamin D, the effects of vitamin D on already, you know, patients with COVID-19, which what would be great is like giving them to like first responders or healthcare workers and seeing like how does it, what role does it play in prevention? Because that's really the easiest thing, right? I'm involved, a friend of mine, Dr. Eric Gordon, he's put together so I kind of, with his help, I've helped him design an open arm trial, very small, 40 patients, where he is going to be giving them 50,000 IUs every five days of vitamin D. So it's like a weekly dose because a lot of times these people are severely deficient and so you want to give them a higher dose, you know, and for, you know, doing 50,000 IUs weekly isn't, you know, something that's necessarily going to be toxic or anything like that. And then we're going to, you know, we're doing some other things, vitamin C, three grams, three times a day, and then vitamin B1, we can talk about that, thiamine as well. So yeah, there are, I think there's like open label trials, open label trials are just kind of a star. It's like if you see something, plus we're doing like kitchen sink, right? We got this, this, and this, and this. So I think vitamin D really is the star, you know, I think that potentially, you know, I think it really should be explored. I think it has huge potential. It has to be shown. Like this isn't something that people can just, you know, take it home and think I'm protected. Like that is not the case. We don't know that. There's no data showing that, but I think it has huge potential, you know, so. How would one do a randomized control study on vitamin D and people that have COVID-19? Like it seems like, Well, they're going to do it in addition to, they're going to, in addition to standard of care. So it's basically whatever the standard of care is. And that's, that's what, you know, is happening at the hundred and hospital in New Jersey. But as you said, it seems like what's really critical is getting into people before they get it. Yeah. I would love to see that study done. If anyone can do that study, amazing. That would be, because that would be like, to me. Get it to nurses, get it to first responders, EMT workers. Yeah. Or you can just get the information out there and have nurse or nurses and first responders take it. I mean, you know, vitamin D is something again, like 70% of the US population has insufficient levels. You know, That is such a crazy number. It is. And it's generally safe to take like, like 4,000 IUs a day. It is. But you're taking five. I am, but 4,000 is the top, the, the, what they indicated as the tolerable upper intake. So why do you take five? I'm just taking 5,000 right now because that's like the, I could buy the five. I was like, I didn't want to take two pills of the 2000. Right. Well, that's me too. I got one pill. It's 5,000. Right. And I'm like, well, so I had my, my levels measured literally like I did went to, to Quest, Quest Labs, like a month before all this lockdown happened. So I got my data back pretty, pretty recent and I still hover around 50 nanograms per mil, even though before I was taking 4,000 it didn't generally speaking, 1,000 IUs will raise your blood levels by about five nanograms per mil. And there are people with different variations and genes that are related to vitamin D metabolism where they have lower levels and they need a higher dose. The only way you're going to know that is by of course, measuring your vitamin D levels multiple times, and then potentially even doing like a genetic analysis, you know, as well. You have to measure your levels. Like that's the only way to know. Of course, right now it's like you can't go to a lab. It's like hard to do any of that. I mean, the things that are like, you know, yeah, but right now when you need it, but the vitamin D, I mean, I'm just so like, I just, I have so much, I have high hopes for it, you know, and maybe, maybe I'm a bit of an enthusiast with it. You know, I do like I've studied vitamin D so much. I've got two publications on it. Certainly like, you know, so, so, you know, they're take that with a grain of salt as well. But I just think the data is strong. I really think the data is, I think it's mounting data and I think that eventually something will come out and it's going to just like the randomized controlled trials, showing that it protects against respiratory tract infections. Of course, everyone wants randomized controlled trials. Like no one wants to believe anything until it's a randomized controlled trial. I'm just, I'm amazed that the numbers of people that are deficient, it's so stunning. And when you point out the number of people that are deficient that actually wind up having severe COVID-19 problems. Right. Yeah, I know. It's stunning. Like some of those numbers. It's like the missing link. It's like, it's right there. I think that's a really good hypothesis. I do. I think it's a really good hypothesis. I want to believe it because it's easy. It's safe. And I think people need vitamin D anyways. I mean, you know, so, so of course I want to believe it, you know, but like, there was this interesting study where African Americans who are very deficient in vitamin D, they were given a vitamin D supplement for like a month and it decreased their epigenetic age by like two years. I mean, yeah. So that's a marker. For a month? Something like a month, I think. Yeah. In a month, they decrease their epigenetic age by two years. Okay. Don't hold me to the month. Give me some month or two months, but I think it was a month. Most of these clinical studies. Even if it's three months, that's crazy. Most of these studies are about a month. Yeah. That's okay. 1.8 years. So what it's indicative of, they're suffering from this vitamin D deficiency. This alleviates that suffering and then puts the body in homeostasis. It's a hormone. Yeah. It's a hormone. It's changing 5% of the human genome. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. That's a crazy number when you think about it. It is. One vitamin doing that. It's not just a vitamin though. Right. Yeah. Hormone. Super vitamin. Can you imagine? It's like, what happens when you go into menopause? I mean, stuff goes wrong. I mean, it's a hormone like estrogen. Estrogen's a hormone. You know, testosterone's a hormone. It's a hormone. You know, it's important. Wow. So, you know. So that's the, if you have the Dr. Ron de Patrick pyramid of supplementation for preventative symptoms of COVID-19 or preventative measures dealing with COVID-19, that's your base. That's number one. I take vitamin D. I certainly don't know if it's going to prevent COVID-19, but I'm hoping it does. Yes. I'm not saying that. I take it hoping it works. But I'm not even saying preventative. I mean, like keeping your body healthy. Totally. I mean, my mom, I've got my mom, I've got my dad, I've got my whole family, everyone's on the routine. You know, vitamin D is like the most important. So that's the foundation is vitamin D. Right now. Yeah. I mean, it's, I'm always trying to get them to have that, but like it's easier to convince when people are scared. People are more likely to make change when like you can't like, if something, they have to be motivated to make the change themselves. They're just otherwise it doesn't work. So I think that in this case, people are motivated, especially people in my parents' generation that are older because they're more scared. They're more scared that they could be affected by a severe case of this. Right? So I think that's certainly the issue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.