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ICU - need Vitamin D ASAP - interview and transcript, Matthews Aug 2024

50 minute Interview of Dr. Matthews by GrassrootsHealth


Highlights

  • Healthcare providers can make a big difference for their patients simply by increasing their knowledge of vitamin D and by testing for and treating vitamin D deficiency
  • Supplementing ICU patients with 50,000 IU vitamin D per day caused the mortality rates between different groups to drop to the same; more specifically, it eliminated the disparity between racial groups
  • Working in the 4th busiest level 1 trauma center in the US, Dr. Matthews was able to cut the rate of heart attacks, strokes, falls, pneumonia, overall mortality, readmissions and the length of hospital stay just with vitamin D
  • There is a need to get enough vitamin D “from the cradle to the grave” starting before conception, and checking vitamin D throughout life is absolutely vital; vitamin D regulates about 10% of your genes, so when you’re vitamin D deficient, you have lost some function in your body, and something is not functioning properly… usually the immune system…

Measure Your Vitamin D Level


Image Listen in to this fun and informative interview with Dr. Leslie Ray Matthews, M.D., FACS, FCCM. Discover some interesting facts about his family and upbringing, and about his experiences with vitamin D in practice as a hospital intensive care doctor and critical care surgeon.

Dr. Matthews’ knowledge of the biochemical and physiological actions of vitamin D within the body, combined with his awareness of the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, prompted him to test vitamin D levels for all patients upon hospital admission and treat them with high doses of vitamin D. This resulted in improved health outcomes, decreased mortality rates, shorter hospital stays, lower healthcare costs, and zero cases of vitamin D toxicity. As he says, “Vitamin D deficiency is deadlier than vitamin D toxicity!”

Dr. Matthews wraps up the interview with key points and important advice that is essential for other health care practitioners to hear, especially if they are interested in keeping their patients healthy. They can make a big difference for their patients, simply by increasing their knowledge of vitamin D and by testing for and treating vitamin D deficiency.

A big thanks to Dr. Matthews for sharing his time and expertise! Listen in or read the key points below.

Watch the Video

Key Points from the Interview

The nutrition advice that Dr. Matthews got in medical school said that enough of all nutrients could be obtained simply by eating 3 healthy meals a day – which is untrue, especially for vitamin D.

Vitamin D deficiency is among all populations; it is the most common nutritional deficiency in the world.

We are meant to get vitamin D from exposing skin to the sun, but most people hide from the sun, stay indoors, use sunscreen or cover up when outside; cloud cover and air pollution also block vitamin D production. The darker the skin, the longer it needs to be exposed to the sun to make the same amount of vitamin D.

Being sick and staying in the hospital automatically meant vitamin D levels were going to decrease; when Dr. Matthews started testing his patients, he found they were all vitamin D deficient, however, African American women had the lowest levels, followed by African American males.

He began to compare mortality rates to vitamin D levels and found that those with the lowest vitamin D levels had the highest mortality rates as well as the highest ICU cost and the longest ICU stay.

Dr. Matthews started supplementing all of his patients with 50,000 IU vitamin D3 per day and noticed a decrease in mortality rate among all of his patients.

Supplementing ICU patients with 50,000 IU vitamin D per day caused the mortality rates between different groups to drop to the same – it eliminated the disparity between racial groups.

“Healthcare disparities are due to physiologic, biologic vitamin D deficiency, not so much as socio-economic factors. And we noticed that the mortality rates of all these different groups that I described you drop to the same. So, most health care disparities are due to their physiologic or biologic vitamin D deficiency, and not so much as socioeconomic factors like the medical community thought.”

Working in the 4th busiest level 1 trauma center in the US, he was able to cut the rate of heart attacks, strokes, falls, pneumonia, overall mortality, readmissions and the length of hospital stay just with vitamin D

There were also zero lawsuits while he was in practice
– “Normally you have a malpractice lawsuit in trauma, critical care, surgery every 3,000 cases….
  We went 30,000 cases without a lawsuit.”

He wrote a paper on the cost effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation in the ICU, which can be found here

He mentioned the importance of understanding how vitamin D works in the body, but because most doctors do not have a deep understanding of this, they don’t understand the need for it

There is no one-size-fits-all dose of vitamin D

Vitamin D controls close to 10% of our DNA, and is especially important for immune cells, immune function, and inflammation regulation

Dr. Matthews is developing a new patent that combines vitamin D, heat shock protein, and glutathione (“the strongest antioxidant on the planet”)

Magnesium is a very important cofactor for vitamin D; Dr. Matthews does not recommend taking calcium with vitamin D since taking more vitamin D will automatically increase the amount of calcium absorbed from the diet

His suggested target level is 50-55 ng/ml, up to 80 ng/ml in special cases, such as with cancer

Vitamin D can also cut the risk of heart attack and could help reverse congestive heart failure by helping the heart pump more efficiently

Dr. Matthews shares 7 key messages about vitamin D:
  • Because vitamin D regulates about 10% of your genes, when you’re vitamin D deficient, you have lost some function in your body, so something is not functioning properly… usually the immune system.
  • There is a need to get enough vitamin D “from the cradle to the grave” starting before conception; checking vitamin D during pregnancy is absolutely vital
  • Even though he got push back from hospital administrators and even hospital dieticians and nutritionists, he pushed forward with his vitamin D protocol (and shared the research to show that it was safe and effective)
  • “Vitamin D deficiency is deadlier than vitamin D toxicity”
  • Research has shown that low vitamin D levels can increase the risk of death
  • According to Dr. Matthews, vitamin D levels should be checked yearly at least, just like any other routine blood test
  • “Vitamin D is important for bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic infections, cancer surveillance. So, it does all that. So that’s a gift from God. Actually, I call vitamin D God’s miracle vitamin.”
His message to doctors: Test all patients for vitamin D at admission or first visit!

Transcript

 Download the transcript from VitaminDWiki


VitaminDWiki - 25 studies in both of the categories Trauma-Surgery and Mortality

This list is automatically updated


VitaminDWiki - 38 studies in both of the categories Trauma-Surgery and Loading Dose (often 300,000 IU)

This list is automatically updated


14+ VitaminDWiki pages have MATTHEWS in the title

The list is automatically updated

Items found: 14

Dr. Matthews has many followers - both in trauma and surgery


Unfortunately, unaware of any hospital that has adopted Vitamin D as standard of practice for ICU or surgery

The medical profession is VERY slow to change
It took, for example, 80 years for the medical profession conclude that Rickets is fought by vitamin D


Note: Many forms of vitamin D activate the immune system far faster than standard Vitamin D

standard (fat soluble) form takes 10-20 hours to get into the blood stream

  1. Water soluable vitamin D - skips delay thru the lymph system - guess 5 to 10 hours to get to blood
    Also it is more bio-available for people with poor guts, no gallbladder - see Gut-Friendly Vitamin D
  2. Nanoemulsion vitamin D - swished in mouth. Appears to get into blood in < 1 hour
    It can also be applied topically if the patient unable to swallow
  3. Calcitriol is a fast acting form - but unaware if it has been tried in trauma or surgery settings

The delay of a Vitamin D test can eliminated 99.9% of the time

Can just ask the person if they have a level > say 50 ng. No need to wait for a test to discover it


25 most-visited pages in Trauma-Surgery

Id Page Hits Last modification Creator Categories
1855 Sepsis is both prevented and treated by Vitamin D - many studies 625883
03 Jul, 2024 11:31
admin Breathing
Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Intervention
Infant-Child
Inflammation
AI
5149 Military and Vitamin D - many studies 363261
02 Oct, 2023 12:04
admin Deficiency of Vitamin D
Bone - Health
Trauma and surgery
6048 Burns, ulcers, and wounds healed by Vitamin D - many studies 321472
11 Aug, 2024 14:07
admin Trauma and surgery
Skin
10669 Orthopaedic surgeries need Vitamin D – many studies 184427
25 Jan, 2024 22:08
admin Bone - Health
Immunity
Trauma and surgery
5999 Superbug (Clostridium difficile) Infections strongly associated with low vitamin D - many studies 182710
07 Oct, 2024 20:00
admin Immunity
Trauma and surgery
14083 Vitamin D is needed before most surgeries – many studies and RCTs 179647
15 Nov, 2024 18:51
admin Trauma and surgery
Loading dose for Vitamin D
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Top news
13791 Traumatic Brain Injury treated by Vitamin D - many studies 161720
19 Oct, 2024 15:48
admin Trauma and surgery
Overview for doctors
14404 Bariatric Surgery and Vitamin D - many studies 158962
25 Dec, 2024 00:40
admin Obesity
Trauma and surgery
3411 Trauma and surgery 76625
09 Feb, 2024 18:23
ricks99 Trauma and surgery
Category
Associations
3673 Magnesium may be an important way to treat brain trauma 34394
07 Oct, 2017 16:50
admin Vitamin D and Magnesium
Trauma and surgery
Cognitive
14014 Doctors Still Struggle to Diagnose a Condition That Kills More Than Stroke (Sepsis, Vitamin D helps) Oct 2022 30018
27 Sep, 2023 23:27
admin Trauma and surgery
3640 Vitamin D aided progesterone in reducing traumatic brain injury – RCT Dec 2012 29788
10 Oct, 2017 14:39
admin Trauma and surgery
Intervention
Cognitive
15323 Some ICU patients got 540,000 IU of Vitamin D: good responders lived longer than controls or poor responders – RCT Ju... 26949
07 Jun, 2024 16:52
admin Trauma and surgery
Loading dose for Vitamin D
629 HMOs will save millions of dollars with vitamin D 22815
03 Jun, 2013 16:02
admin Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
1288 Vitamin D helps organ transplant - many studies 22041
28 Oct, 2024 12:27
admin Cardiovascular
Liver
Kidney
Trauma and surgery
2755 Vitamin D's potential to reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infections – May 2012 20898
09 Feb, 2020 02:15
admin Immunity
Trauma and surgery
5819 Mild Traumatic Brain Injury reduced by Vitamin D – May 2014 20792
23 Sep, 2018 14:12
admin Trauma and surgery
5868 Acute Rehab. patients 2.3X more likely to have musculoskeletal pain if low vitamin D – Oct 2014 20669
29 Dec, 2016 01:56
admin Pain - chronic
Trauma and surgery
6451 Acute respiratory distress – 100 percent of patients were vitamin D deficient– April 2015 20391
01 Feb, 2020 18:05
admin Breathing
Trauma and surgery
8287 Vitamin D and Glutamine reduced Trauma Center deaths by half – Matthews March 2017 19846
27 Aug, 2024 20:11
admin Mortality and D
Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Intervention
Cognitive
2644 Sepsis associated with low vitamin D - April 2012 18870
22 Mar, 2016 14:24
admin Trauma and surgery
7162 Congenital Heart problems - vitamin D levels drop even lower after surgery, loading dose probably required - thesis 2015 18615
29 Dec, 2018 19:39
admin Cardiovascular
Trauma and surgery
Infant-Child
3176 Loss of muscle strength –sarcopenia – one of the suspects is vitamin D – Aug 2012 17740
01 Apr, 2023 01:21
admin Seniors
Trauma and surgery
7928 Children in Intensive Care need Vitamin D loading dose of 10000 IU per kg (nearing a consensus) - Oct 2016 17666
20 Sep, 2024 16:22
admin Deficiency of Vitamin D
Trauma and surgery
Loading dose for Vitamin D
Infant-Child
8163 Spinal Surgery patients – almost all have low vitamin D – Nov 2016 17336
23 Jul, 2020 21:14
admin Trauma and surgery
Spinal Cord




Attached files

ID Name Comment Uploaded Size Downloads
21667 Matthews transcript Aug 2024.pdf admin 30 Aug, 2024 166.41 Kb 26