VitaminDWiki interview and transcript - Lahore Jan 2022

Craig Stewart (New Zealand) became an evangelist for high dose Vitamin D after it cured him of cluster headaches.
Craig's YouTube Videos  Vitamin D3, Cluster & Migraine Headache - My Journey
   Test your Vitamin D Level at Home    Vitamin D - with Dr. Judson Somervill
Henry Lahore started the VitaminDWiki.com a non-profit website in 2010.
It now has over 30,000 studies -  90% on Vitamin D and 10% on co-factors and the Vitamin D receptor.

0:00:05.0 Craig: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Of course, it's Inspired Conversations with Craig, and... Well, look, today, I'm gonna be sharing a website that I've been visiting multiple times per week over the past six years. It's the VitaminDWiki. There it is on screen, and I'm joined today by Mr. Henry Lahore. He is the founder of VitaminDWiki, there he is on screen. And this video, look, I'm gonna give you an introduction to the Wiki, and I'm gonna probe this very knowledgeable man about some commonly asked questions around Vitamin D and supplementation that I know will be of value to you if you're interested in exploring literature. And we're gonna wrap up with a philosophical round-off and a where-to from here for you, for me, for Henry and the Wiki. So Henry, welcome to my podcast. And I've got to say thank you so much for agreeing to come on and chat with me. Now, I'm told that you're a retired Boeing engineer. Tell us a little bit about that for the folks at home, a little bit about yourself and your background into the world of Vitamin D.

0:01:18.6 Henry: Sure. My background was electronics engineering and I worked at Boeing, retired 20 years ago. I had been interested in health all my life, been following many different nutritional supplements. I've probably tried over a hundred of them during my life, then got started with VitaminDWiki because a person told me. He knew I was interested in health, that Vitamin D was helping some people with back problems. And I've had back problems most of my life and I investigated it and found that indeed, it was helping, tremendously. And while I was retired, I proceeded to get into studying through Vitamin D. And about a month later, I started VitaminDWiki. And now, we've got 13,000 webpages on Vitamin D and other associated things on VitaminDWiki.

0:02:19.5 Craig: So when did you found the Wiki? When did it all kick off?

0:02:22.7 Henry: About 2010, is the start date.

0:02:26.6 Craig: Right. And the motivation for doing it?

0:02:32.6 Henry: I wanted to share with other people around the world what I had learned about Vitamin D. I had been sharing other things with some publications I made under a rubric of Health Prints, little bits of information, pamphlets about health, and I wanted to share things in a non-paper way that I can share it around the world about how much people can get benefits from Vitamin D.

0:03:06.1 Craig: And so, look, I know the Wiki is just this amazing place to find all the information on Vitamin D. It's ranked by disease and disorder. Tell me, how does the back-end work? Are you, like, literally spending all your time collating studies? And how many did you say were available?

0:03:27.9 Henry: There are 13,000 studies on the website. Most of them are available as full text, and for about 10% of them, I expand the full text so you can see it and actually have it translated into any of 105 languages. But a great number of them are... The rest of them are attached there, just we'll show the abstract. It tends to take me about an hour to three hours to extract an entire study and put it on the web page, so I tend to not to do that. I keep it more at the 10-minute level. I spend of the order of about 2,000 hours each year as the master of the VitaminDWiki website.
[chuckle]

All 13,000 VitaminDWiki pages can be read in 100+ languages

0:04:22.1 Craig: And in terms of language, you did... I mean, you know I come from New Zealand, it's a very diverse society down this part of the world, Henry. We've got Maori and a lot of Asian, Chinese-speaking people. Any one of those cultures can jump on the Wiki, and view any one of those pages in their language. Is that correct?

0:04:46.4 Henry: Yep. There's the translate button, and then you can select the languages that you want it to go to. There, so that's the list of languages, and you just pick the language you want. Here is an example:

And oh, Bengali, and there it gets translated, that page to Bengali or any of the 105 different languages. And it's done that quickly.

0:05:17.3 Craig: Yeah.

0:05:19.0 Henry: And switch it again to some other... To Arabic, for instance.

0:05:23.8 Craig: That's absolutely unreal in terms of connecting with a global audience. Now, you know my background into Vitamin D, Henry, is cluster headache. Is there a mechanism for me to just look at everything relating to cluster headache, or migraine disorder? So, I'm not so much interested in some of the other aspects, just headaches.

0:05:51.5 Henry: There's about 180 categories of information, of health problems that I've gotten a lot of information on where Vitamin D is either involved in treating it or preventing it. And anyone can look at those 180 items, it will be shown it later on, here in the interview.

0:06:16.4 Craig: Right. And look, tell me how many people are flocking to the Wiki and looking over your site?

0:06:23.9 Henry: Generally, only about 40,000 people per month. I haven't advertised it at all. They've got various methods of doing it, I haven't had the time to do any of the... Advertising.

0:06:39.1 Craig: And out of curiosity, where are those folks coming from?

0:06:44.8 Henry: Generally, from English-speaking countries, but also, we've got some from Spain, and... Seems as though some languages are being used from India, the Philippines, I guess about 10% of them are from Germany. So, an assortment of places. I guess it's of the order of about 40 countries, people that come and visit the website, there's a top 10 of countries that are most frequent.

0:07:18.5 Craig: Yeah. How does... Does New Zealand appear on the list? Do you notice many folks from New Zealand coming in there?

0:07:26.0 Henry: I have not noticed. I only look at that about once a year.

0:07:30.4 Craig: I say that because look, it's a conversation that is coming up more and more down here as people become aware of the effects and benefits of Vitamin D. Now, before I start to pick your brains, Henry, you're clearly a knowledgeable guy that's read more papers on the subject, certainly, than I have. It's a timely reminder just to say that anything we discuss here, team, is certainly not to be construed as medical advice, it's for your educational purposes only, and I hope you take something of value away from it. Now, before I get started on some of the questions I get asked all the time about Vitamin D, Henry, first, just tell me what is all this fuss about? Why is it coming up in conversations more and more and is it actually worth having a conversation about?

0:08:25.5 Henry: We wouldn't be having this conversation back in the 1970s. Most people around the world had a good level of Vitamin D and were fairly healthy relative to what's happening now. Since that time, however, due to over 20 reasons that I've got documented on the website in detail, the Vitamin D levels have been dropping or crashing tremendously. We'll be showing that later on here in the interview, that the problems that... There used not to be a need to supplement with Vitamin D, but now that people primarily are staying indoors more and are fearful of getting Vitamin D from the sun, this is causing a great number of other problems.

0:09:18.5 Craig: And you've got an amazing five-and-a-half minute video that I have posted, you can check that out, and it gives you just the most amazing background into the world of deficiency, and it would lead into one of my first questions there, Henry. Vitamin D recommendations... What blood level should we be aiming for? And I can tell you, in New Zealand, and I'm gonna bring up New Zealand recommendations on the screen for you folks at home, but we've got recommendations that seem very low when you compare them to the Endocrinological Society's guidelines, and even then, there are recommendations that differ from this. So, as an ordinary everyday kind of bloke, how am I supposed to navigate this and where does the truth lie?

No consensus Vitamin D levels

 
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0:10:13.5 Henry: I like to think of... As I'm trying to tell this to different people, I like to think of what do other people around the world believe in a particular society, religion, Vitamin D level, calories, alcohol, whatever. You can see the 4X differences in what humans need. (Note Veterinarians around the world agree on the Vitamin D needed for each species). So, here in this chart that we're looking at, New Zealand's on the second row, along with the Institute of Medicine, Australia, New Zealand, Nordic countries, that's... They're saying that at 50 nanomoles or... 20 nanograms of Vitamin D is sufficient, you're in the green region. Now, some other countries are even lower. You can be at the 30 nanomoles to be okay. The United Kingdom is even lower than that, but if you look around at the various countries around the world and groups around the world, you see that now, you can't get into the green level until you're about 75 nanomoles, which is 30 nanograms, or some of them say you need even higher than that to be in a good region. I personally think it should be even higher than that, but this is just a quick overview of... There's almost an equal number of countries in each of those different categories, where they think the certain level is okay.

0:11:54.5 Craig: And so, in terms of recommended daily intake, again, down here in New Zealand, the recommendation is between 200 and 400 international units of Vitamin D, and maximum potency, I can tell you, if you walk into a chemist, pharmacy, is 1000 international units. Now, I think the burning question is at that kind of dose level, is it significant enough to be able to increase your Vitamin D serum level into the green range in that first table with the Vitamin D Council?

Recommendations around the world

 
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0:12:37.0 Henry: So, here is a summary of chart that I had, looking at various recommendations around the world. I don't have New Zealand here explicitly, but it shows some of the others, and the higher up you are on the chart, some of them are at 2000 IUs and that there's some groups that say that's quite adequate. Some groups say, "We want 4000 IUs... " Well, this is actually not adequate,... We're referring to this as the upper maximum. So some say 2000 maximum, some say 4,000, some say 10,000 maximum. But in all cases, it's actually the maximum that is far, far higher than any of these, but just showing you the position that various of the groups around the world have taken as to what is a good level, there's probably 40 some countries that have 2000 IUs as the maximum to take and that's all that can be sold by companies inside of that country, later on, you'll see that there are ways of getting a much larger doses of Vitamin D to get a good amount by buying things internationally.

0:13:52.5 Craig: Yeah, you're right. So look, in my case Henry, it's 80 nanograms per milliliter, in order for me not to get cluster headache attacks, and it's as simple as that Now, if I had started off like the average Kiwi with a serum, around 24, 25 nanograms per milliliter, would taking 1000 or 2000 international units of vitamin D get me to 80 nanograms per milliliter?

0:14:24.8 Henry: Putting it slightly differently, I rarely see a single study on any health problem that says 1000 IUs of vitamin D will help. 2000 IUs, it starts to help on some problems, but things like cluster headaches, multiple sclerosis, sleep problems and others need much, much higher doses to achieve that.

0:14:53.2 Craig: And so, I guess then, the question becomes why, the why behind why regulate the maximum dose that one can purchase if these lower doses aren't going to touch or elevate your level up to around what the Vitamin D Council is now suggesting looks like optimal. It seems like you end up taking away a person's choice to choose what they do with their body, it seems almost ridiculous, to be fair.

0:15:26.5 Craig: What's the risk? Why are they doing this?

0:15:31.2 Henry: [chuckle] It's based on a problem that came up in the 1950s in the United Kingdom. They had an outbreak with some problems and they thought was due to the vitamin D in milk that they had recently given, and they at that point then slammed down and said, "No vitamin D at all", and they greatly reduced how much vitamin D people could be having. Vitamin D was given to the tune of much higher doses, of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 per day back in the 1930s, with excellent help, to dental groups. There's quite a few studies of that, of showing how the American Dental Association was strongly recommending a good level of Vitamin D way back then. But due to that mistaken problem in the UK, which got perpetrated as being a problem in a great number of medical textbooks, that even up until two years ago, it was still saying that, "Oops, you could have a toxic level of vitamin D if you have 2000 IUs". Due to that mistake that's done back in the 1950s, slowly, slowly things are changing, but that's the problem.

0:16:50.9 Craig: Well, the offshoot of that is I'm perplexed at the situation behind it all, but you look at this paper from the Journal of Health Population and Nutrition, one in seven of us are now deficient in Vitamin D and that's about a billion human beings of the recommended daily intakes are so low, you start to get an understanding of why we have such a high level of deficiency down here in New Zealand, and again, I've got a link here for Kiwis that wanna have a look at that now.

0:17:32.9 Henry: It really depends, Craig, on what your definition of deficiency is. Yes, about one in seven or 10 are deficient, if you have a very low level as to what you call deficient, but if you look it up at say 30 nanograms, if you're less than 30 nanograms, then it's around about 60% of the world is deficient. If you look at the level where you really should be and where people used to be at 50 nanograms, then it's more like 90% of the world is deficient.

0:18:06.2 Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, one of the things that I hear all the time when people start talking about Vitamin D is you can get all the Vitamin D that you need from the sun, so how much is enough sun? And I prefaced that question, Henry, because I was reading an interview article in the New Zealand Stuff news publication looking at an increased risk of melanoma because more women are opting for G-string style bikinis, and the skin specialist went on to say that spending two sessions, five minutes per week is adequate for Vitamin D production. Is that enough?

0:18:54.7 Henry: Not nearly enough. By the way, the main problem with skin problems, skin cancer and Vitamin D is when you go out in the sun infrequently, and then all of a sudden you try and get a lot of Vitamin D and sun... Your skin is not used to it. If you go at it more gradually during the year and just get more and more and more as you would normally if, say, you were an outdoor worker, you don't have any problems at all. My dad was a carpenter, for instance, and he would have no skin problems whatsoever because he was gradually, as the months were going along, getting more and more sun and that builds up your Vitamin D level in your skin. Once the Vitamin D level in your skin is built up, it's able to deal with having more UV coming in, and so you have paradoxically less problems as you are more used to the sun. But people who only go out, say, on the weekend and try to get all their Vitamin D at that particular time, that doesn't work out too well.

0:20:03.5 Craig: So, in terms of consistency of exposure, more so than bursts over the summer break.

0:20:15.3 Henry: Right. Right.

0:20:18.0 Craig: Yeah.

What blood level deficient?

0:20:18.1 Henry: So, for instance... At the little chart I have there, it kind of works out that if your target is in the lower left-hand corner, 10 nanograms of vitamin D, then you probably... 10 minutes will be enough for you per day during the summer. But if your target is more like 50 nanograms and you're trying to get it all from UV, or from the sun, then it's more like 90 minutes that you have to have in order to get that 50 nanograms, and that's per, each day... That's assuming, as I say in here, that it's a young person, white skin, lying down in a bathing suit. We're not all that way, of course, but...

0:21:04.1 Craig: Indeed. My eyebrows raised when I was reading the articles, to suggest two five-minute sessions was enough and... My mother and grandfather both died from melanoma, so it's not a conversation or a topic that I approach lightly at all. And it leads, I guess, onto my next question, because I'll have a lot of older folks, my mom's age, in their 60s and 70s, that perhaps watch this video, and they're gonna associate vitamin D with recommendations from their doctor regarding osteoporosis, and the classically understood function of vitamin D, of course, is and the regulation and mineralization of calcium and phosphorus. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, including why everyone talks about calcium and what is phosphorous and how does vitamin D kind of fit into that whole process?

0:22:07.2 Henry: I just noticed this morning actually, that there were 20,000 published studies in the last decade on vitamin D in bones, so I will try to condense that down to a 30-second sound bite that, yes, indeed, it's been noticed for a long time... It was first noticed... 1919, I think it was, that vitamin D was given to people with rickets, that rickets would go away. And then, only 90 years later, people came up with a consensus that yes, vitamin D does stop rickets Well, that was the first start there, and since then, they're noticing more and more that vitamin D allows the body to make better use of phosphorus and calcium, and vitamin K and magnesium and other things to build bones. Each of those things are needed, but oftentimes, people are the most deficient in vitamin D, so there's... I think I have 280 studies now... On the left-hand column:
Bone - Health (285+)
Breathing (403+)
Burns, wounds (30+)

0:23:36.1 Craig: And if you could just briefly talk to the mechanism, so kind of people understand that the sun hits the skin and right through to the kidneys and all.

0:23:45.3 Henry: Okay. Yeah, the sun hits the skin, and the body has learned to put a type of cholesterol in those parts of your body that will be seeing the skin. It doesn't put it through all your body, doesn't put it on your lower bathing suit part of your body, for instance, but it puts it very heavily on your face and on your hands and on your feet. And so, you'll gain a lot of... When the sun gets the UV there, it creates a vitamin D in the skin, and then, as it comes into the skin, it comes at one of these two pathways, either... Well, the pathway here is the skin, the topical, or also you can get vitamin D that you can apply on your skin rather than getting it from the sun, and it works pretty well, but then it gets processed through the body... A lot of it gets processed through the body through many of the different cells in the body, but some of it goes through the liver and through the kidneys. That's the classic way that it's... Was thought of as the only way of... It was thought of 20 years ago, that's it's being processed in the body, but now it's found that majority, maybe 75, perhaps... Some people say 90% of it doesn't go through the kidneys or the liver and kidneys, but it's processed locally in your muscles, etcetera.

0:25:21.8 Craig: So, the kidneys, how does that whole process get regulated, and how do the parathyroid glands fit into that piece?

Vitamin D blood level can be high, but cells may not get much

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0:25:37.2 Henry: The vitamin D generated either from you taking it as a supplement or from food or from... Topically from the sun or whatever, gets into the bloodstream, and then the classic approach is considered is that the vitamin D then goes into the liver. The vitamin D molecule becomes semi-activated by a portiion of a water molecule. Then it becomes Calcidiol, which is shown right here, and that's what you actually see in your blood test, is the amount of... The level of vitamin D that you see coming out of the liver and seen in the blood test is shown right there. Now, after that, it proceeds on further. It can be used right there by the body, but some of it needs to be... Another water molecule needs to be added on, it gets involved in these two genes, and then it becomes calcitriol, which is the fully activated Vitamin D, which gets... Can be brought into the cells and used by the cells.

0:27:00.1 Craig: And so, it's either calcitriol is either made by the kidneys in the classical pathway of regulating calcium and phosphorous, but above and beyond that, we now know that vitamin D is not only processed by the kidneys, but many other cells in the body, and is that kinda where the magic comes into play and is that how it works? I mean to say that, a lot of people say, "Vitamin D is not a vitamin, it's a hormone," so I guess the pathway that you're showing there shows that sunlight is converted into pre-vitamin D and then taken to the liver where a hydroxyl group is added by an enzyme, and then, that is the blood storage form, but from there, it's not only the kidneys that will convert that calcitriol to regulate calcium and ensuring you don't get rickets, but also, the other cells in the body have the ability to grab hold of that storage form of vitamin D and use it for their own requirements.

0:28:19.7 Henry: Right. Most of the cells in the body can actually process the vitamin D as it just originally generated at the top of this slide. In that form, it can be processed by the cells or it can grab it right there and in the cell... This is the description of the cell, the cell can take that and make another calcitriol and use some of the parts of the body, the immune system uses this form of vitamin D, and most of the... Of the parts of the body uses this form of vitamin D, the calcitriol form of vitamin D, but all of that can be done locally without any kidney or liver involvement whatsoever.

0:29:06.8 Craig: Right, and that's what people... Physicians mean when they say that, the Vitamin D receptor is evident, and not just in many cells, but in most cells

0:29:25.1 Henry: The Vitamin D receptor has been around for, some people say 750 million years, that animal forms before they were even having... Before they were having skeletons, were using the Vitamin D receptor, so it's been a popular thing to have for most animals.

0:29:47.4 Craig: Yeah, I mean I've heard other doctors and researchers, Dr. Gominak talks about how vitamin D is indeed one of the oldest hormones on the earth and enabled our seabound ancestors to be able to develop and migrate onto the land, and mineralized calcium and their skeletons carried around with them, drawing on it when they don't have any available in their diet and adding to it when they're able to, through that regulation of sunlight and to pre-Vitamin D, Vitamin D, and then its active forms, just... It really is an interesting background into the subject.

0:30:32.2 Henry: Another little factoid here is that many animals, including humans, have learned how to store vitamin D because they can be in environments, the winter or in a rainy season or whatever, in which they don't get vitamin D every day, so the body has learned how to properly store that, so it makes use of it when it's available. Kind of like the camel storing water, we store vitamin D, but we don't get a big lump because of it.

0:31:03.7 Craig: And so, understanding that vitamin D can be used by many of the cells in the body, what's the benefit, Henry? I mean, most people say, "Well, who cares?", but what is the benefit of the cell being able to use vitamin D in terms of health outcomes?

50,000 IU of Vitamin D every two weeks fights 27 health problems

Diabetes + Heart Failure + Chronic Pain + Depression + Autism + Breast Cancer + Colon Cancer + Prostate Cancer + BPH (prostate) + Preeclampsia + Premature Birth + Falls + Cognitive Decline + Respiratory Tract Infection + Influenza + Tuberculosis + Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease + Lupus + Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome + Urinary Tract Infection + Poor Sleep + Growing Pain + Multiple Sclerosis + PMS + Schizophrenia + Endometriosis + Smoking    27 problems
   Note: Once a week also fights: COVID, Headaches, Colds, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Hives, Colitis etc.

• Click here for more data, including weekly

0:31:27.0 Henry: There have been a lot of randomized control trials in which people having various health problems, half of the people were given, in this case, 50,000 IUs of vitamin D every two weeks, and half of them were given a placebo in which there is no Vitamin D inside of the pill whatsoever. And so this shows the 27 health problems that have been proven to be treated, prevented or treated... I use the word fight... By Vitamin D, and that's just under this particular amount of vitamin D 50,000, IUs vitamin D once every two weeks.

0:32:17.0 Henry: So on the website you can click on it and get the full details of how much of fighting that was involved having 50,000 IUs of vitamin D.

0:32:31.7 Craig: Yeah, I mean, looking at that list, Henry, here in New Zealand that list has got some heavy hitters in there. I tell you, breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, those things are gonna ring a note with people... Endometriosis is something that is gonna strike a lot of people, and multiple sclerosis is gonna be something I'm gonna ask you about shortly. So a lot of folks kinda watch this and go, "Well, I'm keen to start supplementing vitamin D," and I pretty much guarantee that some of them are gonna go and see their doctor and discuss it, and they're gonna run into a brick wall. Tell us about... And before we start talking about diseases specifically, why this reluctance, when you go to see your family doctor, to even have a discussion about vitamin D? It's really difficult. It's like the first barrier I came across back in '15.

5-minute video introduction to Vitamin D

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0:33:38.9 Henry: There are many, many reasons why the doctors are reluctant to recommend vitamin D. Later on, I'll show you some of the ways you can ask your doctor to do it, but here is one example of a case we made a video out of, where the doctor got all of his 2000 patients up to 80 nanograms of vitamin D, and he ran into some problems with this, and most doctors will run into the same problem. He found that the number of visits to his group, that's... He had 2000 people, had quite a few doctors involved, it dropped from four visits per year down to one visit per year because the person there with the cast, you'd still get a broken leg, you get a big injury, but the other people that weren't feeling good, they're gone. They are no longer coming to his office. So, he actually had to stop his practice because he was no longer earning enough money.

0:34:43.7 Henry: Now, most doctors aren't quite so aware that this is the problem, but that's one of the problems that doctors have of recommending some... Okay, doctors are focused on treating problems, they're not focused on preventing problems. That's for human doctors. Veterinary doctors, doctors for animals, especially on farms, they're paid to keep their patients healthy, and so they prescribe on a per pound basis three times as much vitamin D as humans get.

0:35:24.6 Craig: That's not the first time I've heard... I heard someone talk about veterinary supplementation. [chuckle] Is that correct?

0:35:33.6 Henry: Yeah, but that was one of my first information sources for vitamin D. So I have 180 categories of information on vitamin D. The very first one was veterinary, because they appeared to be... And they still are about 10 years ahead of the doctors for human because they are paid to keep their patients healthy. They're rewarded.

0:35:58.0 Craig: Yeah. I've got a question about veterinary coming up for you, Henry, but I have to say, across literature, 80 nanograms per milliliter keeps on popping up here, there and everywhere as a physiologically significant kind of level to achieve, and I can tell you, once I reach 80 nanograms per milliliter, my cluster headaches cease to be. It's absolutely amazing. So when I started, I was taking significant amounts of vitamin D. What is the go in terms of folks that are watching this that are keen to start supplementing, that is it enough to cruise down to the pharmacy and pick up one of those bottles of 1000 international units, and are they gonna reach 80 nanograms per milliliter, or what's your view about taking higher amounts when you start supplementing vitamin D in order to reach that level?

40-150 ng of Vitamin D need to treat health problems

Vitamin D	Treats
150 ng	Multiple Sclerosis *
80 ng	Cluster Headache * Reduced office visits by 4X *
70 ng	Sleep *
60 ng	Breast Cancer death reduced 60% Preeclampsia RCT
50 ng	COVID-19 T1 Diabetes Fertility Psoriasis Infections Review Infection after surgery
40 ng	Breast Cancer 65% lower risk Depression ACL recovery Hypertension Asthma?
30 ng	Rickets

* Evolution of experiments with patients, often also need co-factors

• Click here for more information

Can quickly increase Vitamin D levels with loading doses

0:37:07.7 Henry: That's the whole subject of being on a maintenance level of getting vitamin D versus having a loading dose. First of all, the... Last week, a friend gave us a call. She said that she had gotten COVID, and what could do, and I said, "Hey, you just need to take 200,000 IUs of vitamin D as soon as you can and it'll go away." Well, the only size she had was 5000 IUs, so she went ahead and took the 40 pills that she had, and she felt really great the next day, and has been doing very fine since then. So it's a little bit of a problem if you are limited as to the size of pills that you have. It's quite difficult to try to swallow a lot of pills, so I recommend people have the 5-,000 IU pills of vitamin D ahead of time to be able to handle emergencies like that.

0:38:11.7 Henry: But now, going back on to the subject of loading dose and maintenance dose, you can get to the 80 nanogram level of vitamin D, provided you have... I think it's about 7000... Between 5000 and 7000 IUs of vitamin D on a daily basis, you'll get there in about three to four months. But if you wanna hurry it up a bit, the body, as I'd mentioned before, has really learned how to store quite nicely vitamin D. When it becomes available, it says, "Oh, I'll take this in. I'll store it away," and can use it again for... On a rainy day. And so it turns out that you can get your levels up to 80 nanograms or 100 nanograms or for something like that, if you wish, within a few days, instead of having to wait a few months.

0:39:07.9 Craig: And so understandably, for a person that is potentially taking 1000 international units per day, it's a big jump, and understandably that person will be like, "Hold on a minute, 600,000 international... 200,000 international? That's like taking 200 of these pills. Surely, that cannot be good for you. Cannot be safe." What do you kind of say?

0:39:30.4 Henry: Well, let's look at it in terms of the 200,000 IUs of vitamin D that are recommended for people having a loading dose. That's the same as if you were on a sunny beach, trying to get a suntan on a beach for 10 days in a row, that's about how much vitamin D you get, so it's not that awful excessive, the body is used to being able to absorb that. Now you don't wanna start that off for your skin, as I mentioned earlier, all at once of, "I've not been out in the sun at all. I'm gonna be out there now for three or four hours every noontime." No, that doesn't work out. You have to kinda gradual up, get it more gradually.

0:40:13.7 Craig: Yeah, okay. As a parallel, in terms of a loading dose for the treatment of cluster headache and migraine, Pete Bachelor's regimen calls for 600,000 international units over 12 days, so 50k a day and then reduce to 10,000 international units per day in order to maintain your level around 80 and it's worked for many people. Now, I wanna talk about raising your levels because I've noticed some folks elevate very quickly, and as I just said it, if I take 600,000 international units, I'm pretty much guaranteed that my level will be somewhere between that 80 and 100 nanograms per milliliter, and I wanna tell you the story of a friend of mine who also took 600,000 international units in November last year, and he checked his level, it was 21 nanograms per milliliter. He was like, "What's going on?" At any rate, I caught up with him last week and he had decided to take 30,000 international units every day since for a total amount of get this, 1,560,000 international units, and he rechecked his level and it had risen to 52 nanograms per milliliter. Talk to me about this.

0:41:49.9 Craig: Yeah, I mean some people will seem to increase quickly, some people take like significant amounts of vitamin D and their levels gradually increase, what's all that got to do with?

Huge variation in response to Vitamin D between individuals

increase in Obese due to 50,000 Vitamin D weekly
  Click here for details

0:42:05.4 Henry: There's two things to be discussed in there. One is that there's a huge variability, about a four to one variability in how much vitamin D you need to get to a certain level. So this little histogram here shows that for some people who are obese and taking 50,000 IUs of vitamin D weekly as to how much variation they had on how much they gained. Many of them gained like 10 nanograms, but all the ones in the pink section, they actually dropped in their vitamin D levels. But in this other region, you can see that there's a fair amount of range, it's generally acknowledged to be about four to one for one person who gets 50,000 IUs of vitamin D a week will get to a certain level, but some people will get four times as much as that. It varies tremendously between individuals. Fortunately, getting a very high level of vitamin D is not a problem, so it's quite good to recommend to people that they take a certain amount of vitamin D for, say, three months, and then get the vitamin D test to confirm that you're in the region that you thought you were expecting to get to. A few people will have to increase it even more than they were taking because they found that, "Whoops, I didn't get as much as I was expecting to." Many people say, "Oh, I have got to the level I wanted to get to," say, 80 nanograms or 50 nanograms or whatever your goal is. And then you can drop back down to a smaller dosage on a frequent basis, so I'd say once a week.

0:43:57.9 Craig: Yeah, yeah. And so, sticking with my friend's situation, I had mentioned a lot of people who would take 600,000 as a loading dose and then find that their level was still quite low would go, "Oh, something's wrong here, I've got to stop taking it." And not persevere through. So what you're saying is that people that are larger than... Large, obese require more, and so that could be a reason why his level didn't increase as fast as perhaps what, as what mine did?

Top Reasons for low blood response to vitamin D

There are 40+ reasons for poor blood response
Here are some of the common reasons

Obese Elderly Poor gut	2X more needed or gut-friendly
Health problem reduces levels examples Autism, Anemia, Diabetes Some Cancers	2X more needed
Fail to take with the largest meal	1.3X more needed
Low Magnesium, smoking	1.3X more needed
Click here for more information

 
0:44:38.1 Henry: So during the last 10 years, I've been documenting the reasons why people have a poor... Generally looking at poor response, slow response is another thing again, but poor vitamin D response, these are the ones which were the prominent ones out of the 40, you can click on the bottom link there, you get all the details, but being obese, being elderly or having a poor gut, you generally need about two times more vitamin D or a gut-friendly form. If you have various health problems like autism, anemia, diabetes, some cancers, and about 15 others, you need about double the amount of vitamin D, and then there's magnesium... You don't have enough magnesium or you're smoking, then you need a little bit more.
0:45:31.6 Craig: Yeah, and we'll talk about cofactors, but that's not the first time I've seen take your vitamin D with your largest meal, can you... Yeah, enlighten me, as to why that is?

0:45:47.7 Henry: There's probably been 30 studies on that, but intellectually, it works out to be pretty easy to understand, is that when you take the vitamin D orally, it gets into your gut and into your intestine, and it's the small intestine that does the absorbing of whatever nutrient you have, and if you think about... And then next meal comes along, whoops, all the stuff goes out of the small intestine and into the large intestine, and so you're no longer able to access what is there. So if, for instance, you take the vitamin D at breakfast and then it gets to be in your small intestine for four hours and okay, it's, "I'm coming along, I'm getting the vitamin D out of here", but then whoops, it's getting pushed up and here comes lunch. But for most people though, the largest meal of the day is supper, so I'll use that as an example. There the vitamin D gets into your small intestine after supper and kind of the intestine gets a 12 hours to work on getting this stuff out of there, getting all the nutrients out of there, so the largest meal of the day, or actually, the meal in which it's the longest time until you have another meal, which is generally considered to be supper for most people, is the best time to take vitamin D, either before the meal or during the meal or after the meal, somewhere in that time period.

0:47:17.4 Craig: You have said before to me, Henry, that you cannot just restore the levels to an optimum level. They must be maintained. Now, I know myself, I take 10,000 international units in order to be able to keep my level at around 80. Talk to me about yourself, like, what do you need to take in order to stick in the range, and what is that range that you aim to kinda stick around?

0:47:49.1 Henry: As I had been progressing along over the last 12 years now, the vitamin D level that I was trying to achieve, I did, and then I was reading about it, that hey, more is better, then I tried that. And more is better, I've tried that. And so I'm currently at 200 nanogram level of vitamin D, and that seems enough. It feels very, very good. Anything over about 40 nanograms of vitamin D though, you need to balance out with the cofactors, some of which I've got shown on this screen of Omega-3 and magnesium are particularly important ones, vitamin K2, iodine, boron are some of the, among the lesser ones that need to be balanced out.

Vitamin D is the 3rd best way to improve your health (but the most cost-effective)

  click on image for more information

 

0:48:34.8 Craig: Sorry, Henry, I think I'm still in shock... I'm still in shock. So 200 nanograms per milliliter, and just for any Kiwis that are watching, that's 200 times 2.5, that's 500 nanomoles per liter, so it's a high level. What do you need to take in terms of a daily or weekly dose to keep your level in that range, out of curiosity?

0:49:06.1 Henry: Taking vitamin D on an irregular basis, not on a daily basis is the best. Got 16 studies showing that. So I actually take 100,000 IUs of vitamin D once every four days. But I would not recommend people to do that just by itself, you have to... At that level of taking vitamin D, add in magnesium, as an example, occasionally I get forgetful and not take the magnesium, I run into some difficulties, but Omega-3 and vitamin K2 are also very essential on a long-term basis, or where long-term is you wouldn't notice the problem of not having enough vitamin K or enough Omega for probably two, three, four years, but then, starts to have problems like hardening of the arteries, for instance, if you don't have the vitamin K2 in there, if you're above about 40 nanograms.

0:50:05.6 Craig: Before we start asking you questions about co-factors, because it's a, again, it's another piece for people to understand, I wanna ask you a question in and an around what is the consequence of keeping your level at a level that is the same all year round? That is suffice to say, isn't your vitamin D level kind of supposed to change with the seasons? So is there a consideration around being 80 nanograms in the middle of the winter, wouldn't my body internally be thinking, "Oh, it's summertime", when in an actual fact, outside it's winter?

0:50:46.8 Henry: I had asked myself 10 questions about vitamin D when I started, before starting VitaminDWiki, that was one of the questions is, should the vitamin D levels go up and down with season? Haven't really got that one answered, but the best I can understand is probably there wasn't the concept of season back when humans were starting off in Africa or other places near the tropics. And then, when you had no seasonality, then humans went on for 100,000 years or longer of not actually having seasons to have to deal with, so maybe when you're living in a climate further away from the sun and you've been living, your ancestors have been living there for thousands or tens of thousands of years, maybe you should go up and down with the season, but I haven't really gotten that one understood. I've kind of come to the conclusion a good level all the time. Note that there is a 30% increase in deaths from infectious diseases during the winter

0:51:54.1 Craig: Okay, thank you. And I'm pleased to know that I'm not the only one kind of rolling that particular question around my head.

0:52:02.2 Henry: That's a big one.

0:52:03.4 Craig: So I'm really interested in your comments, if you're watching this, what do you know? Link us a paper and share your thoughts. Now cofactors, Henry. I always... I think the first two that people talk to me about are you must take your K when you take your D, some folks say, you need to include both fish oil and magnesium, and I know the cluster headache regimen calls for the inclusion of both boron and zinc. Talk to me about cofactors, what are they and what are they doing to support vitamin D?

0:52:41.8 Henry: Let's take magnesium for a moment. Magnesium is involved in the processing of vitamin D at eight different locations in the body. I was mentioning, in the liver and the kidney, that it adds the OH, to semi-activate or fully-activate the vitamin D. Well, magnesium is a catalyst that's involved in doing that. And if the magnesium isn't there, it doesn't get processed as well. So overall, it works out that if you have a low level of magnesium, you need 30% more vitamin D to get to the same level. So, that by itself is just saying... If I just looked at that, by itself, I'd say, "Oh, I'll just take more vitamin D, it's cheaper and easier to take than the magnesium." But it turns out, there's a lot of other things that goes beyond that, in terms of the importance of these other cofactors. Vitamin K, by the way, is an interesting item that I think I've got about 130 studies on Vitamin K. Yes, I agree that Vitamin K is needed along with vitamin D. There's some disagreement about it being needed at the same time, because it turns out that Vitamin K and vitamin D access the same sort of receptors in various places in the body. So the vitamin K can actually... If done at the same time, it will block the Vitamin D somewhat. So it's best to have it on our off day it appears to... This data is not in... Not finished up on that particular subject.

0:54:30.5 Craig: And Omega-3 fish oil. What's the deal?

0:54:41.4 Henry: Omega-3 is both a cofactor for vitamin D, that is to say, it helps with the use of vitamin D in the body, but it is also by itself a very good, helpful thing to have. Omega-3 reduces inflammation - one of its major claims to fame. I got 350+ different studies on this - that it greatly reduces inflammation of all kinds in the body. Vitamin D also decreases inflammation and they work synergistically together very, very nicely on probably 40 health problems that I've got documented.

0:55:29.8 Craig: And the other smaller ones up on your graphic Henry, zinc, boron and I... Is the I for iodine is it?

0:55:38.4 Henry: Yes, it is.

0:55:39.6 Craig: And so, can folks get what they need out of... Like I take a means multi. Is that what we're talking about?

0:55:49.1 Henry: For most people, the boron, zinc and iodine are not essential. They are not essential cofactors at all. In fact, when I recommend people take vitamin D, I say, "Hey, let's just go with vitamin D by itself, you're good to go for six months." Even if you're taking a fair amount of vitamin D and then you can start to get around to thinking about, let's improve the health even more with magnesium and omega-3 and other things. And I actually rarely get around to recommending people take the boron and zinc. Some people... Anyway, there are other things to do with your health as this chart was showing, the exercise and healthy foods are more important than all the other things we're talking about.

No consensus of which B vitamins are needed with high-dose Vitamin D

0:56:41.1 Craig: Yeah, rate that number one and number two. Now, Stasha Gominak includes and talks at length about a B50 or B100 complex now, and that doesn't appear in the circles up on the screen. Just talk to me about your thoughts around vitamin B as a complex to take alongside D.

0:57:04.4 Henry: There are quite a few... I'm not sure where that section is right now. Oh, well. There are quite a few groups that when they are experimenting along and seeing, and not being constrained by randomized controlled trials and they give people a lot of vitamin D then oh, they don't... That didn't do everything. And then they start to stumble across and say, "Oh, some of these B vitamins seem to be essential." There's some disagreement between the cluster headache people and the sleep people with Dr. Gominak and Dr. Coimbra with multiple sclerosis as to how much and what kind of B vitamins are needed. So I don't really have a consensus there. It turns out that between all the B vitamins, is B12 is the one that's really needed? That may be the case, I've got about 40 different studies on B12. But sometimes B3 looks important. But just as a general sort of way, many manufacturers have come up with the B50 and a B100. That's what they are, is actually a combination of the B vitamins to the tune of about 50 milligrams each or 100 milligrams each and you just take that and you say, "Okay, I don't know exactly how much I want of each of these, others take that."

0:58:41.0 Craig: Right.

0:58:41.1 Henry: And that seems to work out pretty well for most people. It's when you get up to the very high levels, with the cluster headaches, multiple sclerosis, etcetera, that maybe getting a particular B vitamin is necessary, but since I've lacked it, I haven't gotten the consistency among the different groups as to what B vitamins are needed. I don't have a conclusion as to what specific ones are needed.

0:59:08.6 Craig: And I think it is an area where the literature continues to evolve, it's certainly a fascinating aspect of vitamin D to follow and...

0:59:19.4 Henry: Yes.

0:59:21.3 Craig: Yeah, I think it was Dr. Gominak that talks and particularly about B5 or pantothenic acid being somewhat involved intricately in the slate process. Now, vitamin D itself and ring number three in your graphic...
  click on image for more information

 

Craig: ....shear the wool. Now, someone told me a couple of weeks ago it comes from lamb's wool grease when you buy it at the pharmacy. I'd be really keen to hear your thoughts about how and where vitamin D comes from. The same person that was talking to me said that if you took one lamb's fleece, it contains enough lanolin to produce 1 million doses of vitamin D3 for human consumption. That's just absolutely outrageous, and I imagine wouldn't cost a lot to produce. Talk to me about how vitamin D is made and the supplement.

1:00:17.5 Henry: Vitamin D can be made from various animal sources. The most popular one by far is getting it from the sheep lanolin. Don't have to kill any sheep involved in this, just shear the wool to get the vitamin D. You have to go through a fair number of processes to do it, but you get that and then actually, what's involved is that somewhat like the lanolin, right there isn't the vitamin D, but after treating it and getting out the essence of the chemicals off of the sheep, then they apply the UV just as you apply the UV in the skin, and then that creates the vitamin D.

1:01:04.9 Craig: How interesting.

1:01:07.1 Henry: So, it's got some commonality with the way we do it. It turns out that cats and dogs get the vitamin D the same way, and that's one of the reasons that cats like to lick themselves to get the vitamin D from the fur. Likewise, you can see lots of birds that are preening themselves, and it turns out that they are getting the vitamin D from their feathers. They wouldn't get it otherwise.

1:01:33.1 Craig: Yeah, I don't have any cats, Henry, but I've got two dogs. I've got a long-haired border collie and I've noticed over the past couple of weeks, it's summer down here... He loves to sit out in the sun and I'm thinking, "Mate, you must be just roasting," but he's making his vitamin D, is he not?

1:01:55.6 Henry: A few years ago, I did an experiment with a person's cat with two different places for the cat to sit. One place had a sun lamp and the other place, with the same amount of warmth, had a UV lamp, and it preferred sitting under the UV lamp.

1:02:17.1 Craig: Unreal.

1:02:18.1 Henry: So, it was... Becoming aware of that. There are other examples, another person in New Zealand, actually, had a dog that was getting on in years, and gave it vitamin D and it became almost like a puppy in terms of being all energetic again.

1:02:38.0 Craig: Is that the 17-year-old Labrador named Beau, I think, you can read about it on your...

1:02:41.3 Henry: Yes, that was the one. Yeah, yeah.

1:02:44.4 Craig: We'll make sure we include that link because it's a really cool story to read and it just gives you another avenue and angle to appreciate the subject. So, Henry, different forms of vitamin D, D3, D2 from foods, from the sun... What's best? And I preface, again, this question by saying, if you go to a supermarket in New Zealand and go to buy a packet of mushrooms, they have a prominent label on them promoting the vitamin D... There you go, there's the image up on screen. Talk to me about this, is vitamin D2 that you'll find in mushrooms... What is that? Why is it different to vitamin D3 and should I be eating more mushrooms?

Use Vitamin D3, not D2

 Click here for more information

 

1:03:28.4 Henry: Vitamin D2, for a fair number of years when I was starting off, was looking like it would be, should be a good as vitamin D3, but there have been now well over 50 studies that vitamin D2 is not nearly as good as vitamin D3 for the body and isn't absorbed as well, and doesn't provide the same kind of benefits. There are a couple of studies that have even indicated that taking more vitamin D2 decreases your vitamin D3 levels. So, although there are quite a few people that are going for the mushroom form of vitamin D2, it's most likely not the right one to go for.

1:04:31.6 Craig: Right, and so, I know if you go and see a doc New Zealand, the chances are you will end up with cholecalciferol (vitamin D3). But in other countries, doctors may look to prescribe vitamin D and when that script is filled at a pharmacy they may give you D2. Now, talk to me about that. Should folks just be saying, "Hey, I'd prefer vitamin D3 please?", or is it no biggie, or... What are your views?

1:05:02.0 Henry: It's a large biggie, actually. One of the other aspects of vitamin D2 is it stays in the body for a much shorter period of time, and so you... For vitamin D2, you have to take it on daily or, at worst, every three-day basis versus vitamin D3 can be taken every two weeks or every month. It's stored in the body far better. The body's not used to dealing with vitamin D2, it's far more practiced up, if you will, with dealing with vitamin D3.

1:05:35.3 Craig: And so, sticking with, sticking with the topic of the different forms of vitamin D, when we look at vitamin D3, there's the option of folks going for these liquid emulsions and the dropper bottles or the gel capsules. What's the benefit of going with either or, would be a question that I ask. Is there any difference at all?

1:06:04.5 Henry: There's some amount of difference between it, but not nearly as large as the difference between vitamin D3 and vitamin D2. There's some difference and it depends on the person. Sometimes the gel cap will contain a kind of oil that makes it such that all of the Vitamin D is not absorbed by all 30% of the population, it's less than 20% reduction in the absorption. In some cases, for infants, there used to be a kind of, still there is, a kind of vitamin D drop that they would be given that they'd spit back out because they found it just to be incorrect for them. And later on, the research found out why and so that kind is generally not given anymore. To go back on your comment about the Vitamin D2 being prescribed... That again goes back into the '60s or so, in which Vitamin D2 was the form to be prescribed because maybe the reason being unfortunately, is that the companies got a lot more money out of prescribing D2 than D3. And so the whole dog on chain got going there.

1:07:29.8 Henry: There was a fair amount of effort through a friend of mine, actually, who got around to talking to the various drug distribution companies in the United States and making D3 available for the doctors to prescribe, and so now, pretty much all of the doctors now in the United States prescribe D3, but probably in 40 or 50 countries right now around the world, if the doctor prescribes vitamin D to you, it will be D2 it because she didn't get around to telling all the rest of the world.

Topical Vitamin D is better than oral for some people

1:08:12.4 Craig: [laughter] Right, right. And look, while we are still on the subject, talk to me about topical D3. You mentioned it earlier, and it just piqued my interest. I know my sister's husband deals with psoriasis, he gets it quite bad. So what's is this topical vitamin D? Never heard of it before.

1:08:37.4 Henry: Topical Vitamin D comes in various forms: some as a liquid, some have a spray and some of them as a cream. For myself, I used to have psoriasis on my right knee from a bicycle injury. Looked kind of yuck but I found for myself and many other people do, if you apply the vitamin D cream or oil to a portion of your skin where you want the skin to be improved, whether it be psoriasis or a burn or a wart or various other odds and ends, applying it topically, it goes into the body right there, and it appears as though you end up just below the skin with about 100 times more concentration of vitamin D getting there than if you had taken it orally through your mouth, and then it finally gets around down to your knee. If you put it directly on the spot that you want to deal with, it works far far better.

1:09:40.3 Craig: Right. Now, the next question is a somewhat complicated one, and I still find myself kind of struggling to understand. I wanted to ask you, people talk about genetic polymorphisms, and it's a big long word that sounds super complex, and in and around the genes related to vitamin D metabolism, converting vitamin D from the supplement form into the storage form, into the active form now, is that something that folks should be worried about before they start taking vitamin D? And what are they?

1:10:23.0 Henry: Actually, some of those genes are mentioned back up here in this other screen. [chuckle]
  Click here for more information

Yes. So, the ellipses show the various genes which can increase or decrease the amount of Vitamin D that gets into your body. In general, they are not really large reductions, but like for instance in that, the upper two genes there, if you have a poor CYP2R1 or CYP27A1, if those aren't working too well, the amount of vitamin D that you take in through your mouth doesn't get down to your liver. And so that's one of the reasons that... I was mentioning the lack of sunshine being one of the reasons for having too little Vitamin D, but having a poor gene up there, ends up that your blood test isn't as high, and the best solution for that is to take more vitamin D. Unfortunately, you'll notice most of the ellipses are below the blood test level, so that you can get up to and have say, a 50 nanogram level of vitamin D, but if you had a poor vitamin D binding protein or a vitamin D receptor gene problem or some of these others, they don't have names, just acronyms, you can end up with having not as much vitamin D getting to your cells of your body, and that's invisible from the vitamin D test.

1:12:01.5 Craig: So should people be tested? Well, can you test for these gene issues and in your experience, being in the world of vitamin D for a while, how many people might have an issue with their genes related to their metabolism?

1:12:18.0 Henry: Approximately 30% of all people have a problem with the vitamin D receptor, that's where it gets actually into the mitochondria inside of the genes, but it is somewhat difficult to notice, or expensive to test, if you have those gene problems, but it doesn't really matter if you just look at, "How do I feel" and is... "Am I breathing better? Am I having less pain" and other... Just getting a feeling for things will summarize all of these and make it so they're not too consequential. There is a specific vitamin D receptor test that you can get, it costs $30. I tested and found out that, "Oh, rats, I have a poor vitamin D receptor." So independent of the cofactors, there are some things which increase the vitamin D receptor, the activation of that gene, and there are 14 of them that I have got listed currently on the webpage, that, and those activators are increasing at about one every six months, recently, and I'm currently taking nine of them, so that I'm kind of covering the bases or I like to think of it as a shotgun, that I don't know which of these is gonna particularly help. I'll do all of them.

1:13:43.5 Craig: Right. Folks would be interested maybe to explore where they can get that test done. Is there a link for more information on genetic vitamin D-related testing?

1:13:55.2 Henry: Yeah, if you click on this link here for more information, that gets you to the part on genes, and there's a large section there on the vitamin D receptor, and that has the information on the vitamin D receptor test, which you can also, by the way, get there's a gene company 23andMe, that tests genes, and it, in there, it gets the vitamin D receptor gene. It doesn't say what it's current activation is, it says what it should be activated as, as part of the genes that you got at the time of birth.

1:14:35.7 Craig: Right, I know folks will recognize 23andMe, I know Dr. Rhonda Patrick has talked about that a couple of times before, so there you go. And the link will be there. Now, I'm surprised the people that I talked to, the amount of people that have had issues with their parathyroid glands, and in some cases, are on thyroid hormone daily. Now, those folks, can they still take vitamin D, is there any considerations for someone that has issues with their parathyroid before supplementing?

1:15:18.7 Henry: I've been down that path a little bit. I've got maybe 30 studies on the parathyroid and thyroid operation, and it seems that that's not one of the problem, that's not a concern about your taking vitamin D, there are a couple of concerns of not taking vitamin D. The primary one that I'm quite aware of is with chemotherapy, because vitamin D enhances about a half of the chemotherapy drugs, it enhances them so much that people can die because of it. If the doctor doesn't watch the white blood cell level and he keeps on giving a certain level of chemotherapy. If the person has a high level of vitamin D, that chemotherapy drug is two to three times more potent than it would be if not, and so for most drugs, it's nice to be, have it more potent. Chemotherapy, it's not nice to be more potent.

1:16:24.7 Craig: Right. Okay, that's some good information. In terms of barriers, you find on folks starting a supplement like vitamin D now, in 2015, if you had asked me about it, I would have told you, "Just a waste of money mate, it will turn into expensive pay. I make everything I need through eating well and exercising," so what are kinda some of the common barriers that you find in people?

18 barriers to vitamin D supplementation - all solved

• Fear high cost
• Hassle of getting enough
• Think that a doctor's approval is required
• Need a vitamin D test? (fear of needles, hassle, and cost)
• Toxicity fear
• Fear long-term consequences - to self, fetus, child
• Difficulty in swallowing pills
• Worry about forgetting to take a pill
• Might have to modify current drugs/supplements (typically none)
• Have to know enough about Vitamin D to be able to justify to family/friends/doctor
• Concerned that others you know are not taking vitamin D
• Unsure of how much to take
• Unsure if Vitamin D will help, and not want to wait for months to find out
• Believe that food (still) has all nutrients needed for health
• Your country does not (yet) allow sales of capsules containing >1,000 IU of Vitamin D
• I get enough vitamin D from the sun - I am outdoors at least 10 minutes daily
  • Click here for solutions

 
1:16:57.2 Henry: There's quite a few barriers that people have and that doctors have that are down here a little ways. Okay, here are 18 problems that people have barriers for starting vitamin D supplementation, it turns out that all of them are really non-barriers, but you have to think through them and how to deal with them. But like for instance, some people think you have to get a vitamin D test. No, you don't. You don't need a vitamin D test before starting off. It's nice to see what your body's reaction is to the vitamin D level you have and get a test in a few months, but some people due to the fear of the needles or hassle of getting the test or the cost will say, "I'm not gonna go to the vitamin D at all because I'm afraid of the test," some people are afraid of the toxicity. Anyway, there's 18 of the things there, and I've described in detail each one of the 18 barriers.

1:18:05.5 Craig: Look, just glancing over that list, those I hear them all the time. Particularly, that one that says, "You don't need it, you make everything that you need," which turns out to be not so true at all. So, it's really cool that someone watching this is able to go through, click in and then understanding why that's not quite the case. My next question, I guess, and topic relates to one of those, and that's the concern around toxicity. Now, again, I preface this question and topic by saying there are some pretty severe side effects listed on the New Zealand government's health websites, and then around vitamin D. I'll just read couple out, adverse effects such as headaches, stomach upset, kidney stones, kidney failure, abnormal heart rhythms... You should only take vitamin D as recommended and prescribed by your doctor, health navigator, ,,,
1:19:08.1] What do you say to that?

1:19:13.5 Henry: Junk. Some of the reasons people that wanted to try the vitamin D didn't because they're not sure whether it's gonna be helping them or not, but I've had very good success at having the people take a loading dose of vitamin D and having them personally feel how much better they feel in a week or two. ,They don't have to have had cluster headaches go away to feel better. Sometimes it takes a little while and they'll say, "Doggone, I've got a higher level of vitamin D, now, I haven't had any colds or flus during the season." Others: "I'm just feeling happier during the day" or "I'm more alert during the day," or other odds and ends, and I find that people pass that barrier of trying out a new supplement and wondering does this help or not? Myself, I've tried out, as I said, hundreds of supplements, and I tend to give up on a supplement if I don't feel for myself that there's some benefit in a couple of months. So I know that some of them won't benefit me until decades later, but that tends to be the case for many people that, after they don't feel a benefit, they give up in a few months.

Vitamin D toxicity is extremely rare

1:20:40.7 Craig: And so toxicity, then, Henry... I know that some folks will even say, "Well, why would you take vitamin D? They give it to bloody possums and rats to poison the things now." How many people have hit the hay and passed away from vitamin D overdoses? Is it something, you know, tell me...

1:21:04.6 Henry: In the United States, 500 people die from aspirin overdose every year. Now, starting with that perspective in terms of overdose, there have been zero overdoses to the point of death due to vitamin D, zero in the last 10 years. And in our globe. So, it is a rare, rare thing.

1:21:35.4 Craig: And so, if that was a barrier for someone, "I'm, scared to take a higher dose," toxicity is probably not something that you should be concerned about. Quickly, talk to me about why are they knocking out possums and rats and mice with vitamin D?
1:21:53.0 Well, what's the deal there?

1:21:56.8 Henry: Well, it would knock you out too if you took an equivalent of about 10 million IUs each meal. That's what the rats and the possums are getting, and that would be very hard on you, you're somewhat larger than a possum or a rat. That would be very hard on you and yes, 10 million IUs of Vitamin D on a maybe several times a day basis or even a daily basis is a big problem. And if you look at that in terms of IUs per kilogram of body weight, that's how it works out that, yes, at really high doses, it does cause problems. But... By the way, that was one of the things I had looked at many years ago, looking at 50,000 IUs of vitamin D in a bottle, it turns out that you can consume that entire bottle in a single day, and not have a problem. You'll feel a little off, but not enough that you have to go to the hospital or anything. But if you took 10 of those bottles every day, that would cause a problem.

1:23:13.0 Craig: So I wanna talk to you about disease burden in particular, with the lens to the things that affect my fellow New Zealanders. Now, I've said a couple of times throughout this interview that cluster headaches, my cluster headaches were resolved with vitamin D. I do not get them anymore. Henry, tell me what other diseases respond to vitamin D?

Many health problems are associated with low Vitamin D

1:23:38.4 Henry: So here are... Just taken from the left-hand column of VitaminDWiki, here are the top health problems in terms of the number of studies for each of those, starting with autism in the upper left-hand corner at 138 studies, bone health, 285, and going on down to trauma and surgery at 300. So that gives you a little feeling as to how well thateach has been studied. Pregnancy, turns out vitamin D is very useful before, during and after pregnancy. 793 studies...

1:24:19.2 Craig: I have been told women really need to watch out if they're taking vitamin D. Make darn sure that you're taking birth control that increases fertility in both males and females. Talk to me about that, that's really interesting.

1:24:34.7 Henry: Yeah. The zoos learned. Quite a few learned decades ago that they become a birthing factory if they give vitamin D to their animals, that it greatly increases their fertility. In one of the studies, I was noticing that if you increase the vitamin D levels to 50 nanograms for both the mother and the father, it greatly increases their fertility. Also, we end up with much healthier children as a result.

1:25:12.4 Craig: Before we talk more about pregnancy, one of the things that caught my eye on that list, multiple sclerosis... I know a couple of friends that are going down this journey right now. Now, talk to me about... I've said again, Vitamin D really worked very, very well for cluster headache. Are we talking about some efficacy and help here, are we talking about remission in some cases... How far this thing go from...

1:25:42.2 Henry: Multiple Sclerosis is one of the poster children for vitamin D in as much as having a high dose of vitamin D, and through a particular protocol called the Coimbra Protocol, it's now being done by over 20,000 people around the world, they find that their multiple sclerosis essentially completly goes away. That is to say there are many, many, many testimonials I've got on my website, but an example of one is the person had been a runner and then got multiple sclerosis and was in a wheelchair, barely able to move around, got the high dose vitamin D, and she's off being a runner again, running 10 miles a day. There are hundreds of testimonies like that. There's also many images of brain scans of people with multiple sclerosis showing the white areas in which the brain isn't working anymore. And then they give them the high dose vitamin D and all the white areas go away, and they're thinking again and operating, walking, running jogging just fine afterwards. It has caused me to wonder about how many other diseases would get really cured by a high amount of vitamin D.

1:27:18.0 Craig: Yeah, and so let me ask you then, correlative or causative? I know a lot of academics maybe watch this and go, it's all very well to say, list a whole lot of topics and say that vitamin D is at the root of it all now, they're going to say, correlative does not mean causation, and...

27 Health problems proven to be fought by Vitamin D

Diabetes + Heart Failure + Chronic Pain + Depression + Autism + Breast Cancer + Colon Cancer + Prostate Cancer + BPH (prostate) + Preeclampsia + Premature Birth + Falls + Cognitive Decline + Respiratory Tract Infection + Influenza + Tuberculosis + Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease + Lupus + Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome + Urinary Tract Infection + Poor Sleep + Growing Pain + Multiple Sclerosis + PMS + Schizophrenia + Endometriosis + Smoking    27 problems
   Note: Once a week also fights: COVID, Headaches, Colds, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Hives, Colitis etc.

• Click here for more data, including weekly

 
1:27:41.2 Henry: That is a very important concern. All of the above health problems here were studied through randomized controlled trials giving 50,000 IUs of vitamin D once every two weeks, or a placebo to hundreds or thousands of people found the benefit in the vitamin D. That kind of eliminates the whole problem of correlation versus causation because the vitamin D caused that health problem to go down, to go away or decrease in various ways, I have to look at the details of each one of them, but it's that level... I think I've got 750 randomized controlled trials concerning vitamin D. I also have over 500 meta-analyses, which are summaries, overviews of randomized controlled trials on vitamin D, and they're all, or virtually all, finding that it really helps a lot.

1:29:00.9 Craig: So, sticking with pregnancy, you made a comment some time ago, when we were having a talk around 6,500 IUs being a good dose for a woman that's carrying a fetus. Is that because the fetus is sucking a bit of vitamin D out of Mum and using that for... Just, I'm such a knobby in that area, talk to me about what you understand about reproduction and vitamin D.

For a healthy pregnancy and baby take Vitamin D BEFORE conception

  click here for details

• As of 2021 W.H.O. still incorrectly recommends ZERO vitamin D while pregnant

1:29:36.6 Henry: I consider reproduction to be a little different from pregnancy. Let's concentrate on the pregnancy aspects of it. There are a whole bunch of trials by Dr. Hollis and Dr. Wagner - they tried different levels of vitamin and found success at 6,500 international units of vitamin D daily for the pregnant woman. In terms of decreased health problems: preeclampsia, stillbirths, etc, and ended up with much healthier infants.

Need to have a good level of Vitamin D before week 8 of pregnancy

  click here for details

1:30:37.1 Craig: Yeah, so my wife was born... Sorry, my stepson was born by Caesarean section, but I have read a couple of articles on your site that talk about that aspect as well, and that the lower the vitamin D serum, the increased risk of having a Caesarean section.

1:31:00.9 Henry: Women with a low level of vitamin D were 4X more likely to need a Cesarean section. Vitamin D helps broadly across the whole lot of health problems concerning pregnancy.

1:31:31.9 Craig: And so, really, those questions have been focused on mums. What's vitamin D's role in kind of fetal development and the health of your beautiful, new baby? What are the considerations there? What are your understandings and thoughts?

1:31:50.0 Henry: The previous chart shows the development of the fetus going from being a couple of cells to birth. The various parts of the fetus that are developed during that time and how vitamin D helps out during each of those different periods. For pregnancy, you just don't add vitamin D during the third trimester. You wanna add it actually before conception. But, as soon as possible of knowing about the pregnancy, the adding the Vitamin D is very, very important. Loading dose is best

Sex (now that I have got your attention)

1:32:31.5 Craig: Henry, and we're all bent upon being equal, please talk to me about my considerations as a bloke. What does vitamin D do to my reproductive system, my testes? [laughter]

1:32:50.7 Henry: Right. Well, it makes for much healthier swimmers and they survive better and they work better. But I can also relate that it makes sex a lot better too. [chuckle] It feels better. It's I think better than... I don't know. The need for Viagra is associated with low vitamin D.

1:33:14.2 Craig: And now this next question... Look, you don't even have to answer if you don't want to, but my mind wanders, I'm the kind of guy that thinks about things off the beaten track. And sticking with reproduction and whatnot, your views on sexuality. Is there any correlation? I know, for example, Dr. Waldo Stumpf published at length regarding the brain as a sex organ. What are your views? Do you think this may be kind of an emerging field we learn more about in the future of vitamin D and sexuality?

1:33:52.1 Henry: Most likely. So far, all I can see is positive indications in terms of sexuality and vitamin D. I've seen nothing negative whatsoever and so I'm leaning to saying, "Oh, that's probably a good thing." It turns out that the brain-blood barrier somewhat restricts vitamin D from getting into the brain. So, some Alzheimer's researchers said, "How can we get vitamin D into the brain? "Oh, there was a way of getting some chemicals into the brain." Cocaine users sniff the cocaine and it gets past the brain, blood-brain barrier, there's a particular place through the nose nerves that the chemicals get in. And so, they did an experiment with mice - having them inhale vitamin D trying to see: "How can we decrease the likelihood of getting Alzheimer's?" And they found that inhaling vitamin D works. They actually tested the vitamin D levels in the brain of the mice. After inhaling more vitamin D gets in. And so, they were happy and they were going off and doing other things. That study kind of tweaked my interest and so I ended up making a vitamin D inhaler and I have been using it myself now for the last four or five years.

Inhale 500 IU of Vitamin D from an ultrasonic mister

  Click here for details

1:35:36.0 Craig: Yeah. There's two aspects to that. And I wanna park the inhaler and I wanna park that philosophical piece in and around the brain as a sex organ and the brain and vitamin D 'cause I think it's very, very interesting and it can be seen from quite a spiritual perspective. But I wanna stick with disease burden and in particular, obesity and diabetes. Just over one in three Kiwis, Henry, are overweight. You know, 34% of our population. And I know many watching this wouldn't possibly mind losing a little bit of weight. Now, what are your views? Is there a specific level or threshold where metabolism starts to get influenced by Vitamin D? I know Dr. Judson Somerville's book talks about weight loss and Vitamin D. What are your views?

Obese need 2.5X more vitamin D to get to the same level

• Normal weight     Obese     (50 ng = 125 nanomole)   Click here to see the 2014 study

 
1:36:33.4 Henry: The more vitamin D you can have, the less your risk of diabetes. That has been shown by over 100 randomized controlled trials. The obesity, there's some other complications of the causes of obesity that would take another whole hour to describe and in any kind of detail, but in terms of weight loss, that's been a little bit better described. Many people are actively trying to lose weight gained during pandemic - Vitamin D will help. Just taking vitamin D itself doesn't really do it, but if they add exercise or if they reduce calories they will lose an extra 10-15 pounds of weight during that time period in which they were doing the randomized controlled trial. And most interestingly that having the high or low goal of vitamin D allows them to keep the weight off because that's a frequent problem that people have.the yo-yo diet problem: "I'll go on a diet, and then I'll lose some weight." And then, "Okay, I'll go off the diet." Whoops, all the weight comes back and sometimes even more, but if you do that same process, go on a diet and add vitamin D and then, when you go off the diet, you won't gain that weight back nearly as much.

1:38:14.7 Craig: And how does diabetes kind of fit into this picture?

1:38:19.9 Henry: Unfortunately, I don't have a mental model that I can describe as to how diabetes is involved with vitamin D. I can't remember what's on my webpage on diabetes right now. I don't have a good memory for all of those. However, prediabetesrisk of has been treated by many randomized controlled trials. Diabetes has likewise been treated in many randomized controlled trials.

1:39:23.8 Craig: And again, there's a section on your site?

1:39:26.6 Henry: Yeah, there's a section on the site there that's got 250 or 300 different studies on diabetes and vitamin D.

Gastrointestinal problems, IBS, Colon Cancer - all helped by Vitamin D

1:39:36.6 Craig: In terms of sticking with gastrointestinal exploring and fleshing that out...

1:39:42.2 Henry: Yeah.

1:39:43.6 Craig: I know so many people with IBS. It's just very, very common. Colon cancer is the second largest leading cause of cancer death in New Zealand. Above and beyond, which I haven't told you, but I'm a niche chef of 15 years, and I can tell you that when I started cooking, I wasn't getting the level of orders that I got towards the end of my career, saying, staggering... "Allergic to this, cannot have that, no this, no that, no this, no that, no... "

1:40:13.7 Henry: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:40:15.5 Craig: Why this increase, and is it related to vitamin D? Have you got literature that people can explore on this topic?

1:40:23.9 Henry: I have many charts of showing the huge increase in IBS, in multiple sclerosis, in sleep problems, infertility problems, in psoriasis, all of which have gone up, a fact... I've got a summary page of health problems that have increased by 2X to 35X in the last 40 years, and every single one of them are related to having a decrease in vitamin D level. Doctors are slow at changing. An example; colon cancer, which has now had 21, meta-analyses, all of which have found that a higher level of vitamin D decreased the likelihood of the person getting colon cancer or decreased the problems of colon cancer. Unfortunately, there is a huge industry involved in treating colon cancer, not preventing, treating, and there's been a great reluctance by those people who are... Have studied, they are experts at being colon cancer experts. They'll go out of business if the people get vitamin D. People are starting to notice that Vitamin D is helping.

1:41:53.4 Henry: For instance, on multiple sclerosis - recently i noticed that Blacks who got multiple sclerosis, they increased the vitamin D intake. There's a 16 times increase in the amount of vitamin D that they're getting. They elected to do it themselves. Their doctors weren't saying it. They elected to do it because they're starting to hear about it. I'm imagining there's sort of something similar to that in cluster headaches happening and sleep and sort of these other things.

Vitamin D first started helping dental problems in the 1930's

1:42:28.4 Craig: 100%... 100% because... Yeah, it is unbelievable how this whole thing is patient-led. We know what works. It has worked for over 3000 of us cluster heads now, and so it really is... And it's a really interesting aspect as this thing moves forward, and it's being led by the people talking about it amongst themselves and just increasing that awareness. And then around, one of the fascinating topics I've followed and with great interest was learning about Weston Price. Now, for those of you who don't know, Weston Price is probably one of the earlier names in the early 1900s that discovered the benefits of sunshine on oral health. Fast-forward today, you can search YouTube, and you will find, for example, a dentist by the name of Joel Gould, a man who talks at great length about vitamin D and oral health. What are your views about oral health? And talk to me about fluoride?

1:43:40.7 Henry: As I mentioned earlier, the American Dental Association was greatly promoting vitamin D in the 1930s. Unfortunately, some people came along and pointed out to the dentists that, "Hey, if you apply fluoride topically to your patient's teeth, that will decrease the number of cavities". So then they flip-flopped in about a 10-year time period, and then they're all pro-fluoride. Unfortunately, since that turnover fluoride is incorporated in toothpaste, and so people would be getting the fluoride that way, and it turns out it's not nearly as beneficial for oral health as the vitamin D. Various dentists around the world, and I'm in contact with some of them, are increasing the vitamin D level in their patients, and they're finding that the patients are having fewer gum problems, they're having fewer broken teeth, they're having fewer cavities, on and on and on. Dental implants even work better. Just when they're trying to insert a false tooth as a sort of stake in there, they find that applying a little layer of Vitamin D to the stake before they put it in there makes it so the implant isn't rejected nearly as much.

1:45:12.4 Craig: How interesting, and I recall in my interview with Judson Somerville, he mentioned vitamin K as well, and around periodontal disease, he said, "Watch out, the periodontists ain't gonna, won't like me much, they're gonna go out of business as people discover vitamin K is amazing for their condition". Speaking with Dr. Somerville, in his interview I did with him, he mentioned to me that his practice went from one of the highest prescribers of anti-depressants in the tri-state area to the lowest after introducing vitamin D into their clinical practice. Now, indeed, I can tell you mental health is a massive, massive concern. I've got a report here, Ministry of Health 2018, mental health issues and problems on the rise, particularly amongst young people. Now, I know vitamin D is not the whole perspective on this very perplexing issue around mental health, but please share your thoughts with me around mental health and vitamin D.

Vitamin D TREATS health problems - Part II

Vitamin D	Treats
150 ng	Multiple Sclerosis *
80 ng	Cluster Headache * Reduced office visits by 4X *
70 ng	Sleep *
60 ng	Breast Cancer death reduced 60% Preeclampsia RCT
50 ng	COVID-19 T1 Diabetes Fertility Psoriasis Infections Review Infection after surgery
40 ng	Breast Cancer 65% lower risk Depression ACL recovery Hypertension Asthma?
30 ng	Rickets

* Evolution of experiments with patients, often also need co-factors

• Click here for more information

 
1:46:20.8 Henry: Well, this table summarizes how much vitamin D you need to deal with various problems. Rickets is at the lowest needing 30 nanograms, if you bring the child who has rickets to the 30 nanogram level, rickets goes away. At about 40 nanograms there is a great decrease in depression. COVID-19, fertility and psoriasis are some of the ones that are fought quite nicely by 50 nanograms. Sleep seems need about 70, cluster headaches needs about 80, multiple sclerosis needs about 150.

1:47:13.6 Craig: Mm-hmm... And what do you think the mechanism is? I'm really keen to get your perspective, and I'll just make some comments around mental health from the perspective of some of the other researchers I've followed, and that is to say that vitamin D is very much a signaling molecule and it is your body's physiological way of knowing what season it is outside, and so Judson Somerville for example, talks about folks being in a winter syndrome where their vitamin D level is so low, that their... Physiologically, their body believes that they are stuck in an endless winter, and so elevate them out of that winter range. Naturally, to me, I feel really good in the summer, you know, don't we all? We love going to the beach and we love that, that... It just makes us feel good, and I just wondered what your views were from that aspect.

1:48:20.9 Henry: I think that's a good indication of how the body tells you that you're doing a good thing. It's kind of like the cat and the dog like to get out, or the cat particularly likes to get out in the sunshine or get some warmth and feels good. Likewise humans. Pretty much all humans on Earth, and most religions, kind of revere the sunshine, and there's probably, if you think about it a little bit, there's probably some connection there between improved health and having sunshine. For a long time when I was growing up, it was considered to be a good sexual thing, that the person looks more sexually attractive if they had a good suntan, and there was kind of a relationship there that, hey, if you have a good suntan, that's an indication, you're generally looking healthier for other reasons, than just the tan, you're looking brighter and happier, and such.

1:49:27.9 Craig: And more vital.

1:49:29.8 Henry: Yeah.

1:49:31.8 Craig: Vitality of life. Talking about those that have the vitality of life amongst them, I wanted to let you know, I had someone contact me recently whom had started taking high dose of vitamin D, and the commentary to me, Henry, was that they had very rapidly and very quickly increased their daily run stretch from 15 kilometers to 30 kilometers and noted with an absolute ease. They said to me, "Craig, I'm just absolutely amazed at muscle recovery and lack of a soreness the next day." Henry, talk to me a little bit about sport and nutrition. There will be people... Will folks see benefits like this when they take vitamin D?

1:50:23.2 Henry: The table ran out of room for 50 nanogram entires. Many, many professional sports teams and clubs around the world have come to see the benefits to their players in terms of performing better, jumping better in basketball, running for a longer period of time without soreness, having fewer injuries, recovering from the injuries more quickly, all of which comes across basketball, hockey, football, soccer, gymnastics, taekwondo, and quite a few others, have all found that 50 nanograms helps tremendously for all of, for sports people.

1:51:21.5 Craig: So I sent the particular gentleman to your website, to the Wiki and he contacted me shortly afterwards to say that he had found the papers that he was looking for and again wanted to thank me for introducing him to the vitamin D world. Now look, sticking with sports nutrition, shock horror, drop the mic, Henry, talk to me about inhaled vitamin D. What the absolute hang? I've never heard of it before. People are gonna be tearing their hair about this one, please, talk to me about this.

1:52:00.0 Henry: There's the inhaled vitamin D study that the Alzheimer's researchers did with the mice to get more vitamin D into the brain, and then I, being a connoisseur of all things vitamin D, I wondered, "what if you could... " They had had the mice inhale vitamin D. I said, "What if I could inhale the vitamin D?" So I proceeded to just buy some stuff on Amazon, some nanoemulsion vitamin D, added a little bit of water to it and bought some of inhalers/misters. I actually own 15 of them now. I've been lending them out to people, and that it works out very nicely. One can inhale vitamin D and I've not gotten an understanding of why, but as it says at the top here, I find that inhaling only 500 IUs of vitamin D, a really small amount, greatly improves my breathing ability and my ability to exercise tremendously, such that I rarely do any form of intense exercise without inhaling vitamin D about five minutes before the intense level.

1:53:19.1 Henry: So it's as something simple that, you go to my website here for more details, it gives all the details about how inhalers cost between, the mister costs between $9 and $25, the particular model that I've seen that I really like it costs $22. That's the one that's pictured, and it's a nice thing to do, there's no company selling it whatsoever. But I've been hoping that that would happen, but it hasn't.

1:53:53.4 Craig: Well, the details are on the site, I'm sure that there's gonna be someone that knows someone that talks about this thing, that tries it and says, "Oh my goodness!" And so, this could be something that we hear more about in the near future. Look, I wanted to and have so far stayed well out of the discussion on my podcast about vitamin D and COVID-19. Now it's come to the point Henry, I can't ignore it any longer. I've got my friends, my family, visitors to my website, asking me about vitamin D and COVID-19. Look, it's just become so politicized that you risk falling on one or on the other side of the fence and offending people. My interest is purely scientific. I wanna read, I wanna know what the literature is saying, and I know you're the kind of, you're a details guy. Talk to me about COVID-19 and just give it to us. What is literature saying, and where are we at?

Vitamin D is one of many ways to treat COVID early

Click here for more information
Note: Quercetin and Curcumin both increase the activation of the Vitamin D Receptor

1:55:03.5 Henry: Yes. Okay, there's many, many studies that have found that have less chance of getting COVID and a better chance of surviving it if you take any of a whole variety of different items. Ivermectin is one, vitamin D is another, omega-3 is another, Resveratrol is another, there's quite a few different ones. I happen to know a lot about the vitamin D part with COVID-19 and it greatly decreases the chance of getting COVID.
And also, if you start to get COVID, take a very high dose of vitamin D. For every person that I've recommended that to, their COVID symptoms virtually vanish within three days. I call it emergency vitamin D for COVID.

1:56:16.5 Craig: So, in terms of following the literature and seeing what has been posted on PubMed and various boards, is that information collated on the VitaminDWiki, so that we can kind of see...

COVID-19 treated by Vitamin D - studies, reports, videos

COVID-19 treated by Vitamin D - studies, reports, videos
As of March 31, 2024, the VitaminDWiki COVID page had:  trial results,   meta-analyses and reviews,   Mortality studies   see related:   Governments,   HealthProblems,   Hospitals,  Dark Skins,   All 26 COVID risk factors are associated with low Vit D,   Fight COVID-19 with 50K Vit D weekly   Vaccines   Take lots of Vitamin D at first signs of COVID   166 COVID Clinical Trials using Vitamin D (Aug 2023)   Prevent a COVID death: 9 dollars of Vitamin D or 900,000 dollars of vaccine - Aug 2023
5 most-recently changed Virus entries

1:56:32.1 Henry: Yes, there's a whole section that has, I think there's 800 studies now concerning Virus/COVID on VitaminDWiki. of which about 600 of them are about vitamin D and the 200 other are bout some of the other ways of preventing or fighting COVID.

1:56:53.0 Craig: Right. And so specifically, sticking with vitamin D, that's a lot of papers for people to kind of I guess be across. Is there any organization that is looking at all of these papers and kind of running a current and up-to-date meta-analysis of...

1:57:12.0 Henry: There's quite a few. There's one particular site, shown previously, that does an excellent review of, I think it's 23 different things that seem to be useful for early treatment of COVID and they update their information and it's extremely in good detail. I don't try to duplicate it at all, but they nicely update their information in a graphic form, and I've got it on my website that their information is updated on my page every single day. And so if you go look at it today, it will show the current date, whenever it is, as to what the latest information is on all of those different ways of fighting COVID.

1:58:05.0 Craig: And COVID-19 aside, it always bemuses me, Henry, I see news articles, and I'm gonna put some headlines, typical headlines from New Zealand news publications that folks will see every single winter. Look, let me read... Health authorities brace for...

1:58:29.8 Henry: Okay, you had shown me the headlines earlier. There are similar ones in many other countries.

1:58:38.1 Craig: So, can you tell me why is it that we, as humans, associate winter with a more severe or greater outbreaks of respiratory kind of type viruses, colds, flu, you name it, why is that happening in winter?

1:59:01.1 Henry: There are many different proposed reasons. Most people agree that there is something about winter that causes increased flus and colds, that's acknowledged. Now comes the disagreement as to what the reason is, or if there is a single reason, or are there multiple ones. Everything I've seen so far is that vitamin D is a very significant reason for that increase in flus and colds, the lack of vitamin D that happens when you're not out in the sun as much. Oh, by the way, one of the indications of that is that in terms of, it's not... And so, some people say it's the temperature, some people say it's the lack of sunshine, some people say it's the humidity. An example, in the Middle East, there they have such intense sunshine that they stay out of the sun so much during the summer that that's when they get their flus and colds. So to me, that was a good example of maybe it has to be the lack of the UV and the vitamin D that's causing the flus and colds/ Because of the intense summer sun, they run between a building and their car, and hit their air-conditioned car, and then run, not just walk, run to get into their home because it's such intense sunshine.

2:00:32.3 Craig: Right, right. It's almost staggering if there is a correlation or indeed a causation in and around the vitamin D serum level, how much vitamin D is in your tank heading into winter, and if you didn't increase or elevate your level when the sun was shining, then you're more at risk of having a bout of cold or flu over the winter season.

2:01:06.2 Henry: Or another example of lack of sunshine comes from multiple sclerosis om the US. The US Army has been testing, noting the amount of multiple sclerosis they got from the enlistees who lived in the southern part, closer to the equator in the United States, versus far away from the equator. There used to be about a 20 to one difference in the number of people with multiple sclerosis who were volunteering to become soldiers. That was the case up until about 40 years ago. Then air conditioning came along, and people in the southern part of the United States were no longer having to get too hot in the summer because they're able to stay inside with the air conditioning and now it's just about level in the United States, the same amount of people volunteering to go into the army from Florida, which is the closest to the equator versus Maine, which is the furthest from the equator, in the United States, they have about the same level of multiple sclerosis versus it used to be an order of magnitude difference between the two.

2:02:21.9 Craig: Again, New Zealanders watching this, as we kind of discussed multiple sclerosis from incidence rates from a United States perspective, you can do a simple Google search and reveal the data for MS incidence rates in New Zealand, and the data is pretty starkly clear that incidence rates increase the further south you go in New Zealand further and...

2:02:48.6 Henry: Yes. I've got maps like that for lots of countries. Here are a few maps of increase dementia, etc at higher latitude. That same sort of thing that happens in various places, that differential goes away as you get more and more air conditioning.

2:03:13.8 Craig: And look, as we kind of move on to a summary and philosophical section A, the first question I wanted to ask you, and again, I'm a weird dude, I think about strange things. I've always wondered about astronauts. You've worked in the aeronautical space before, the colonization of other planets and vitamin D, is this something these guys are even thinking about to astronauts, for example, that are working up the ISS supplement vitamin D. Do you know?

2:03:50.6 Henry: NASA, for a long time with the people up at the International Space Station, gave the people no supplements whatsoever. Then they finally got around to it, the only supplement they gave to the astronauts was vitamin D. And then I found that they're increasing the amount of vitamin D that they're recommending only 2,000 IU. I went through a calculation and found it costs a LOT of money to have an astronaut up there. The commute charge is really expensive and the supply chain and everything else is also really expensive I made a page: NASA might save 700,000 dollars a day by giving astronauts enough Vitamin D That was the result of a simple little calculation about a year and a half ago, and looking at how much more productive the astronauts would be in terms of running their science experiments, which is kind of the reason for being up there, how much more productive they would be in not having colds and flus and feeling better etcetera and it was a huge, just fantastic amount of money that they could save or increase productivity if they gave them an adequate amount of vitamin D.

2:05:20.0 Craig: And you know the problem here on earth is not, it's not just relegated to the folks working that science up at the International Space Station. The metaverse is something that I'm hearing about more and more, alongside Elon Musk's aspirations to colonize other planets. Do you think innovators of our 21st century like Mark Zuckerberg, have considered vitamin D in their process? Looking at the metaverse where we exist virtually with a headset on, what would be your message to 'em?

2:06:07.2 Henry: You can have increased productivity and health of people: no matter where they are, whether they're shut in. healthy, not getting outdoors at all, elderly, they're astronauts, are under the water, in the Antarctic... vitamin D would help a tremendous number of people.: Vitamin D can help virtually everyone.

2:06:45.0 Craig: We talked about domesticated animals and the fact that you've got a veterinarian section on the DWiki, which I know some folks are gonna head over and check out. Now, I've spoken about Dr. Gominak previously and I think one of the things she eloquently talks about is the migration, hibernation or the living off reserves in relation to vitamin D, the sun and the animals and the creatures that live on the earth. I think this is really interesting. Can you just talk about the equator and those three aspects, hibernate, migrate, live off reserves?

2:07:26.7 Henry: Dr. Jablonski has authored many excellent studies that relate to your question: Evolution of human skin color – Jablonski April 2021. There is a strong, but not 100%, agreement with her conclusion.

2:08:13.2 Craig: Like I said to you before the interview started, I just have so many people reaching out to me here in New Zealand regarding cluster headache. It'll be something that I look up in terms of incidence rates and maybe blog post in future about that. But it leads me to asking you, Henry, what's the way back for us? It's almost like... And I'm sure the viewers if they've followed and kind of grasped the idea of why we are deficient in vitamin D, what's the way back for us as a species? What needs to change in order for us to wake up and realize that we are living so out of whack with nature, that we're so off course? Philosophically speaking, doesn't this leave you with a, I guess a sense of melancholy as to where our species is at?

2:09:13.3 Henry: It's beyond melancholic. For quite a few years of doing VitaminDWiki, I thought, "Oh, if they just got a little bit more proof to the doctors, they would see that this seems to be something which is useful to do." But I've come to the conclusion starting about four years ago that no, you need to follow the money or see who's going to benefit from it. And if you're adding vitamin D, the health people do not benefit from it, they will decrease in the number of jobs that they have. One local example in Australia, near to New Zealand, they noticed that there was a 20 times increase in the total IUs sold to Australia over a period of 10 years. This was not due to the doctors doing it, but they found that there was a 36% decrease in the number of osteoporosis visits after that 20 times increase in vitamin D. We're seeing some of that happening at the grassroots level around the world.

2:10:35.8 Henry: I mentioned before, multiple sclerosis, the Blacks getting multiple sclerosis, they greatly increased their vitamin D levels. Same thing happening with Parkinson's disease. I've got it documented, that people who were getting Parkinson's, without their doctors recommending it, by looking on the internet and other places are saying, "Hey, this might help me," and they're taking more vitamin D. Unfortunately, not quite enough Vitamin D to make a big improvement, but it does help them somewhat. That's going on and on through many diseases. Look at the people or the groups who have a strong need (impacts their lives and no standard medical treatment). When those with a strong need learn of it, try it and benefit from it the continue to do it. The people who don't benefit from it, the health insurance companies, the hospitals, the doctors, many times have negative reasons for not recommending a useful amount of vitamin D. I've kind of given up trying to convince those groups and am focusing now more on, groups who will benefit. One of my favorite quotes: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary is dependent upon his not understanding it” - is in Do not expect a doctor to recommend a pill which will eliminate his job (vitamin D)

2:11:48.9 Henry: And for some people... My son, for instance, took extra vitamin D and he didn't notice any difference, but he's also younger, and as you get older, your vitamin D levels get down... Get worse and worse, and he wasn't having any health problems at all, with the exception of one health problem that went away: allergies to pollen

Immediately improve your health by taking 4 Vitamin D pills

Start by restoring vitamin D level with 4 pills (all in 1 day, or spread out over a week)
Then maintain the Vitamin D level by taking just 1 pill every 2 weeks
This pill count assumes:

• A healthy, normal-weight adult
• Other individuals will need more/fewer pills
• Pill = 50,000 IU of vitamin D (cost about 20 cents)
  • 30% of individuals with poor guts will need a gut-friendly form

Among all supplements, only Vitamin D has all of the following features:

• Is very low cost (<2 cents average per day)
• Is the safest
• Can be used by virtually everyone
  • <1% of individuals should not take vitamin D
  • not take Vitamin D if contraindicated: a few medications, chemotherapy, etc
• Can (and should) be taken non-daily
• Proven to fight the most health problems (>27)
  • 50,000 IU capsules of Vitamin D can be obtained everywhere - Jan 2022

So my recommendation is, as I have here: start by restoring your vitamin D levels with four pills and continue with 1 pill every 2 weeks for a month, and decide for yourself, "Did Vitamin D help me?" If it didn't help, don't continue on with it, but if it did help, which will usually be the case, then go ahead and proceed on as I have on the page here by adjusting your vitamin D dosing for the level you have set as a goal (80 ng, 60 ng, 50 ng, or whatever).

2:13:05.4 Craig: Tell me... Sharing this information isn't without its perils. Have there been any challenges over the years in terms of getting this information out there and censorship?

2:13:17.6 Henry: No, there's not been, however, there has been extreme censorship fn some of the COVID-19 alternative treatments like Ivermectin calling it a horse dewormer is a particularly outrageous claim because, actually 10 times as many humans get Ivermectin as do horses.

2:13:47.1 Craig: Really interesting, that whole topic, we're certainly not gonna... I'm not gonna wade into that debate, but... Look, I'm really interested to hear where to from here for the Wiki. Have you got any exciting projects or developments on the horizon?

2:14:06.8 Henry: The one that I had given myself a New Year's resolution for January 2020 was to get some employers... I've got all the documentation of how much... If they gave free vitamin D to all of their employees to offer free Vitamin D to their employees to improve their productivity by reducing, colds. flu, back ache, headache, etc for themselves and their families. I've got some pretty good documentation showing that that would save quite a lot of money. But then COVID came along and I got distracted. I'm hoping to get back to it soon.

2:15:12.6 Craig: Yeah, best-laid plans at times. Henry recently got thrown a curveball, and it appears, it doesn't matter where you live, none of us kinda got off lightly in terms of the disruption to normal life. There's a ton of good videos out there or... And interviews on vitamin D, if there was one that you would recommend to folks, that need... That wanna watch something else, what would that be?

2:15:39.1 Henry: I've got... My website has got a list of, I think, 100+ videos concerning vitamin D. In terms of a very short one, I think the one we produced five or six years ago, was pretty good. Does Less Sun mean More Disease. It describes how you get vitamin D from the sun and the health problems associated with having little vitamin D, etcetera.

2:16:14.6 Craig: I'm calling that the best five and a half minute video on the internet hands-down, it is one that you will want to share with your friends when you see it. It's on the Wiki, it's linked on my channel, go and watch it after this. You'll thank me later, I assure you. And finally, Henry, what would be your message to someone that is new to this, that's watched the video, that may be dealing with one of the conditions that we've touched on... Where to from here for that person?

2:16:56.6 Henry: Summary: If your are going to try vitamin D start quickly replenishing your Vitamin D levels. Too many people discontinue taking a supplement when they do not quickly notice a benefit. Daiiy dosing nor preceded by a loading dose can result in months to feel the benefit. By that time most people have forgotten how they had felt.

2:18:06.8 Henry: And then if it is, well, continue on doing that, the one pill every two weeks for a couple of months, and then fine-tune it by getting a vitamin D test and saying, "Oh, is it likely that I could... Okay, the vitamin D test says I'm at 30 nanograms and I should be at 50 or 80 nanograms, but I'm still feeling good, so maybe I need more." But also, maybe to the point of, "Oh, I'm feeling really good and yeah, I'm at a higher level of vitamin D, I don't have to continue at this level. I can drop down a little bit."

2:18:44.6 Craig: And so, anything that we've talked about today that you've seen, if you're watching this, Henry has very kindly linked all of this information in one page. So, you can go to the section where we, for example, talk about cluster headache, click on the link and go and view the literature on the VitaminDWiki. Is there anything you'd like to add, Henry?

2:19:10.2 Henry: Yeah, but it would take about another 10 hours... This is sufficient. I was thinking about all of the other things to that could be talked about, but at a certain level, I think this deals with the main issues... What people can try for themselves. And look up for your particular health problem, I've got 80 health problems listed on the left-hand column. And look at, for a particular health problem you have or that runs in your family, and take a look and see what the studies are actually showing. Being an engineer, I am extremely data-oriented, so I don't really like to look at people's testimonials, or "Gee, this individual found that XX helped them." I take very little interest in that. In fact, for a long time, and I've taken the policy of if I come along with a single study on a particular disease that's finding vitamin D helps, I don't put that on the website. Just from a single study, I rarely trust the results from a single study.

2:20:25.1 Henry: There are so many things to be right with it or wrong with it, but I generally will start to put the study on the VitaminDWiki after I've seen five studies and at least three of them say that vitamin D is of significant help. I'm allowing that there will be some disagreements. Generally, rarely will it say that the vitamin D hurts. There are one or two that they claim, I'm not too sure about it, that the vitamin D got the problem worse, but generally it's saying, "Hey, they gave vitamin D, but it did not help." But oftentimes I look at them, yeah, they gave only 500 IUs of vitamin D. One of the trial added 30 IUs of vitamin D and it didn't help that particular problem, and so they concluded vitamin D doesn't help at all.

2:21:14.1 Craig: And so, you will not find a study like that on your site? So, you're looking...

2:21:19.1 Henry: You'll find a couple of poor studies, just for flavoring, I throw a couple of those in each month using a ridiculously small doses or small durations, etc. They'll run a test in which they'll give a good amount of vitamin D, but with a trial duration of only one month, at which point, vitamin D level will not have even gotten up to the maintenance level that is needed, and they'll say at the end of that one month the vitamin D didn't help with this particular problem. There are lots of trials like that.

2:21:57.1 Craig: And so, it's somewhat reassuring then that I know the collection you've got there is somewhat curated and the papers have been viewed with an analytical... The critical eye that you would expect from someone that's been an aircraft engineer for his working life. Look Henry, as a person that knows the Wiki inside and out, I... Bless you, Sir, for the work you are doing there. I know it comes at a cost of time, and I also know that you've invested a lot of your own finances in getting the message out. So, I am absolutely certain that you will be kindly rewarded when you approach those pearly gates many, many years from now. If you've been watching the show, like and subscribe, we'll have more from Henry Lahore. The link's in the description. And go and visit the VitaminDWiki... It is just a sensational... A sensational place. Henry, my good man, thank you.

2:23:13.6 Henry: Yep. Bye