Hay House Radio Episode Recap
- Episode Name: “The Truth About Vitamin D Part 1”
- Live Broadcast: February 19th, 2018 at 12:00 pm Pacific Time
Episode Summary Re-cap
Studies show that low vitamin D is a worldwide health problem. Symptoms like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, osteoporosis and neuro-degenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease have all been linked to low vitamin D. So what’s really going on? What is the real root cause? Joining Heather is Wellness Coach, Morley Robbins, to discuss what’s really happening with this “vitamin D epidemic” and how you can resolve the underlying symptoms.
Special Guest: Morley Robbins
Morley Robbins started out in the mainstream medical industry as a hospital executive and consultant for 32 years when he developed a condition called “frozen shoulder” that changed his path to a focus on natural health. While his doctor recommended surgery as the only option, Morley chose light touch chiropractic care and achieved surgery-free recovery within just a couple of weeks. This experience was so life-changing that Morley began to question everything he thought he knew about healing. He left hospital administration and became a Wellness Coach, eventually finding Carol Dean’s book, The Magnesium Miracle, which set him on his current path.
Morley and his partner, Dr. Liz Erkenswick, DC, began incorporating magnesium into their healing practice and witnessed profound changes in their clients’ health.
Their clients’ “need” for statins, anti-depressants, digestive meds, sleeping pills, and osteoporosis medications (just to name a few) were effectively offset by concerted efforts to manage their stress response, eating REAL foods rich in minerals, vitamins and fats, and undertaking protocols to restore magnesium. Seeing these results created a passion for restoring mineral balance in people’s lives, so he founded the Magnesium Advocacy Group (MAG) and quickly became known as “The Magnesium Man.”
Through MAG, Morley is committed to educating as many people as possible about the MAG–nificence of magnesium — and all minerals — and ending the epidemic of mineral imbalance plaguing people’s health and well-being.
Please join him in his Facebook community to gain greater insights into the importance of minerals, in general, and magnesium, in particular.
Learn more about Morley:
Websites: www.gotmag.org | www.rootcauseprotocol.com
Facebook: Magnesium Advocacy Group (closed group) | Root Cause Protocol Group
Twitter: @MAGChat
Get Your Minerals Tested with an HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis)
Do You Have Vitamin D Deficiency?
According to Wellness Coach and mineral expert, Morley Robbins, most people don’t have a vitamin D deficiency, even if your tests are low. How is this possible? Well, first, you have to know how vitamin D works, so let’s break this down!
Morley got us started with an important question: If vitamin D is made from cholesterol (it is), then how is it that the nation of people with the highest cholesterol on the planet also has the lowest vitamin D?
5 Critical Truths You Need to Know About Vitamin D
#1 – To Have Energy, Copper and Magnesium Rule
Everything is energy, including the human body. In fact, your body is run by 9,000 enzymatic functions. What runs these functions are minerals (electrolytes). Morley calls minerals the sparkplugs of your body. The energy currency in human cells is called ATP (Adenosine triphosphate). In order to create ATP, copper enzymes are necessary, which means your body must have bioavailable copper to create energy. However, in order for ATP energy to activate, it needs magnesium.
Magnesium is a master mineral, found in all cell types within all organisms. It runs thousands of enzymatic functions and with copper, is key for creating the energy that runs your body.
In other words, for your body to do anything requiring energy (that’s everything!), it needs bioavailable copper and magnesium.
#2 – Stress Depletes Magnesium and Chronic Stress Promotes Inflammation
Okay, so we’ve determined how important magnesium is for energy. And yet, stress – which is ubiquitous in modern life – depletes magnesium. Stress is not an event, it’s how you perceive the event. Your thoughts, emotions, and responses to it.
It doesn’t matter what the event is. It could be a bad night’s sleep, a bad meal, a bad day at work, a trauma or injury, your body doesn’t distinguish the what, it simply responds by raising stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline). Your body responds to this by using magnesium (magnesium loss!). If stress becomes chronic, the loss affects electrolyte (mineral) balance, there’s energy loss, and with energy loss comes cell death.
Your body’s way to clear cell death is promoting inflammation. During inflammation response, your body tries to patch up the mess by laying down calcium to cover things up. The result can include symptoms like mood and memory problems, fatigue, adrenal fatigue (as your body recruits magnesium from your adrenals to fix the increase in calcium), and various chronic illnesses and mood disorders.
This research is hardly new, according to Morley. He shared the work of Dr. Hans Fiedler, a Viennese physician, who theorized all the way back in 1899 that it’s not stress but our response to stress that’s the problem. From the 1930’s to the 1970’s, Dr. Hans Seyle’s experiments proved Dr. Fiedler to be correct. In other words, the research behind the mechanisms and mineral deficiencies involved in the biology of stress and inflammation has been proven out for some time now.
#3 – To Have Enough Vitamin D, You Need Magnesium AND Cholesterol
Okay, so the plot thickens. We’ve already seen that stress depletes magnesium and yet, in order to have enough vitamin D, you need enough magnesium (Morley referenced the research of Dr. Deng in 2013 if you want to learn more).
Aha, now this vitamin D deficiency epidemic is getting clearer. However, there’s more to this picture.
To make vitamin D, you also need cholesterol. Cholesterol is a controversial topic when viewed by allopathic vs. natural medicine. For a long time, allopathic medicine taught us that cholesterol is bad and yet, there’s a reason it got out of whack, according to Morley. That reason is the processed food industry! In 1941, Morley tells us, food manufacturers began adding iron shavings to wheat flour. This created a rise in iron that caused a dysregulation in copper.
Remember how important copper is for energy? Well, it’s also important for healthy cholesterol levels. When iron rises, it dysregulates copper. The resulting high iron/low copper causes cholesterol to rise because cholesterol is the body’s response to dealing with inflammation! Morley referenced the research of Leslie Klevay in 1973, which was further proven by approximately 30 labs around the world. And in 2016, cholesterol research by Ravnskov, Diamond, et. al, found that cholesterol not the villain behind cardiovascular disease that scientists once thought and pharmaceutical interventions needed to be re-evaluated.
In summary, low vitamin D is a sign of low magnesium and clinical inflammation. So is the fix to take vitamin D? Let’s find out!
#4 – Could Vitamin D Supplementation Exacerbate the Problem?
Unfortunately many allopathic and natural health practitioners have latched onto vitamin D supplementation as the answer to vitamin D deficiency. However, from what we saw in #3, there’s a whole different root cause!
To figure this out, let’s look at vitamin D testing. Most doctors and natural health practitioners only test for storage vitamin D or 25(OH)D, called calcidiol. The reference range that doctors look for is 20 – 100 ng/mL and yet a 2013 study found that there is no clinical benefit to having storage D above 21 ng/mL.
Now, storage D is only part of the picture here! It’s critical to also know the results of your active vitamin D levels. Practitioners rarely test for active vitamin D or 1,25 (OH)2 D3 or calcitriol. Active vitamin D should be about 2 – 2.5 times higher than storage vitamin D.
Unfortunately, doctors have latched on to promoting storage vitamin D levels of 30 ng/mL or higher, which is a major problem. Per the 2013 study, if storage D over 21 isn’t helpful, we shouldn’t see active D above 50 and yet, Morley has seen clients with ranges of 70 – 100 for active vitamin D.
Now remember what happens with low vitamin D – it starts recruiting calcium to deal with the inflammation, thereby increasing calcium in the blood. This can set the stage for heart attacks and other health problems. In fact, Morley mentioned that studies by Reid and Bolland between 2010 – 2018 showed that increased use of vitamin D could be contributing to heart attacks globally. Morley also referenced the 2019 research reported in Science News: Vitamin D supplements aren’t living up to their hype.
The final word? Make sure you know your active vitamin D, storage vitamin D and mineral results. This is the test Morley recommends for vitamin D: Magnesium-Vitamin D Panel. To test for minerals, Morley recommends looking at serum tests for Ceruloplasmin, Copper and Iron and TIBC; along with RBC magnesium, plasma zinc, ferritin, transferrin and hemoglobin (Hb, HgB) and an HTMA (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis) and Magnesium-Zinc-Copper-Iron-Panel Test (a blood and serum test for Magnesium RBC, Copper, Zinc, Ceruloplasmin, Iron & TIBC, Ferritin and Transferrin blood tests).
#5 – Don’t Forget Your Vitamin A!
Vitamin A or retinol (the animal form of vitamin A, not the plant form called beta carotene) is blocked if you take too much vitamin D. Vitamin A is found in animal fats. When the fat free hype began decades ago, many people began to experience vitamin A deficiency.
Vitamin A deficiency can cause symptoms like night blindness, dry eyes, macular degeneration, fertility problems, respiratory tract infections and skin problems (collagen issues, like dry skin, itchy skin, poor wound healing, etc.).
Healthy animal fats that supply retinol are animal fats like raw butter, ghee, duck fat, beef tallow, chicken schmaltz, lard, cod liver oil and other fatty animal proteins from organic grass/pasture fed animals and wild caught fish.
Tips to Balance Vitamin D, Vitamin A, and Minerals
Morley has found, in working with thousands of people, that when people stop taking vitamin D supplements, they feel better. Instead, he works with them to focus on supporting resolution of the root cause: mineral imbalance and related vitamin co-factor imbalances.
Morley’s favorite natural solutions for a balanced source of vitamin D and vitamin A are: 1 teaspoon daily of cod liver oil and 1 – 2 two-ounce servings of beef liver weekly (or at least 3 times per month). Here’s a liver pate recipe that you’ll love (you can use beef liver in this recipe). If you can’t bring yourself to make beef liver meals, a decent alternative is taking a quality desiccated liver supplement daily.
To learn more tips for balancing minerals, watch the non-profit video class The Mitochondria Fix: Balancing Minerals with Morley Robbins.
Sources and Studies Morley Referenced
Please take 15 minutes and read this wonderful overview on iron’s link to chronic conditions.
Vitamin D supplements aren’t living up to their hype.
Deng et al, 2013, does a GREAT job explaining the physiology of Vitamin D.
Amer et al, 2013, reveals that there is no clinical benefit to having Storage-D greater than 21ng/mL.
Mangin et al, 2014, pulls the curtain back low vitamin D as a clinical sign of inflammation caused by a lack of magnesium, which is essential for the activation of 25(OH) enzyme to make storage D.
Jim Stephenson, Jr.’s FB Group “Secosteroid Hormone-D“.
Listen Again!
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Tune in Next Week
Tune in next week to 21st Century Medicine Woman, when Morley Robbins and I, in part 2 of our series about the low vitamin D epidemic, look at how deficiencies in key nutrients affect your hair health. Is your scalp dry and itchy? Hair falling out or turning gray prematurely? Let’s find out what’s going on.
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