1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:08,820
Vitamin D is one of the most well-studied nutrients out there, yet many of us have no idea about its proven or possible health benefits.

2
00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:14,200
What exactly do the data show, and are there any risks to taking vitamin D?

3
00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:16,920
Is it possible to consume too much?

4
00:00:17,680 --> 00:00:20,240
And what about zinc, another well-studied mineral?

5
00:00:21,220 --> 00:00:26,640
Join us on this episode of Fallout, where we'll tackle these questions and more.

6
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:51,080
Hello everyone, and welcome to Fallout, with Dr. Robert Malone and myself, Jan Jekielek, Senior Editor with the Epoch Times.

7
00:00:51,080 --> 00:01:00,780
Today we're going to talk about what's possibly the most profound public health intervention that has never been applied on a large scale.

8
00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:03,940
Robert, tell me what you think.

9
00:01:03,940 --> 00:01:16,680
So, this mystery intervention seems to have effectiveness against respiratory viruses, against bone health,

10
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:24,840
and new information from a randomized clinical trial, a properly constructed clinical trial,

11
00:01:25,200 --> 00:01:31,880
that has been highlighted by Paul Merrick, indicates that it might be extremely effective against cancer

12
00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:38,060
when used together with other interventions like fish oil and good exercise.

13
00:01:38,060 --> 00:01:41,060
So, what is this mystery?

14
00:01:41,940 --> 00:01:46,240
You know, what is this stuff that we might take as a nutritional supplement?

15
00:01:48,040 --> 00:01:49,980
It's simply vitamin D.

16
00:01:50,480 --> 00:01:56,260
Vitamin D together with the key co-factors that it needs in order to be effective, such as zinc.

17
00:01:56,580 --> 00:01:59,180
And this is an amazing story.

18
00:01:59,180 --> 00:02:11,780
There's signs that there's been an intentional effort to delegitimize the use of higher levels of doses of vitamin D plus zinc.

19
00:02:12,620 --> 00:02:14,480
For what end, I don't know.

20
00:02:14,580 --> 00:02:21,480
I mean, we can only speculate whose interest would be served by suppressing public knowledge

21
00:02:21,480 --> 00:02:28,460
of a relatively inexpensive nutritional supplement that would have such a profound effect.

22
00:02:28,460 --> 00:02:34,080
I had Paul Merrick on the show some months ago, and, you know, the viewers of American Thought Leaders

23
00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:38,500
might remember this commentary, because I asked him, we were talking, he has this huge cancer monograph,

24
00:02:38,640 --> 00:02:44,360
which he's put together, looking at all the peer-reviewed research around cancer prevention, cancer treatment, and so forth.

25
00:02:44,760 --> 00:02:49,420
So, I asked him, you know, what is the most significant thing you've found across the board?

26
00:02:49,480 --> 00:02:52,660
And he said, well, it must be this randomized control trial.

27
00:02:52,660 --> 00:03:03,580
And what the randomized control trial was, vitamin D plus omega-3 fatty acids plus a regimen of moderate exercise.

28
00:03:04,360 --> 00:03:10,620
Okay, so I kind of glibly said sun, salmon, and going for a walk.

29
00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:16,660
Okay, and that reduces the risk of cancer by 60%.

30
00:03:16,660 --> 00:03:19,520
And I was thinking, hold the presses.

31
00:03:19,740 --> 00:03:20,840
Whoa, whoa, whoa, run that.

32
00:03:20,940 --> 00:03:22,020
Let me repeat that.

33
00:03:22,700 --> 00:03:23,740
Tell, is, really?

34
00:03:24,840 --> 00:03:25,280
Right?

35
00:03:25,700 --> 00:03:26,200
It's amazing.

36
00:03:26,200 --> 00:03:34,460
It's an astonishing finding, and it's a very well-powered study, very solid study, right, by his own estimation, and he knows, right?

37
00:03:34,640 --> 00:03:35,320
So, what?

38
00:03:36,420 --> 00:03:45,860
Yeah, and we've heard again and again and again physicians talking about vitamin D supplementation, typically with zinc, for COVID,

39
00:03:46,320 --> 00:03:50,000
and COVID prevention, really, not as a direct intervention.

40
00:03:50,260 --> 00:03:54,740
It doesn't have an actual anti-demonstrable antiviral effect.

41
00:03:54,740 --> 00:03:57,520
It's kind of like the ivermectin story.

42
00:03:57,880 --> 00:04:09,040
It doesn't seem to be a direct acting agent as an antiviral, and yet it seems to have profound effects in terms of reduction of disease severity.

43
00:04:09,460 --> 00:04:22,540
Remember, reduction of disease severity has been the justification promoted by government officials for the SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 vaccines, the genetic vaccines.

44
00:04:22,540 --> 00:04:38,640
There's been an acknowledgment that the vaccines are not effective at prevention of infection, but as Deborah Birx just posted or said in an interview yesterday with Chris Cuomo,

45
00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:45,440
In her opinion, the primary reason for administering the vaccines has been prevention from severe disease.

46
00:04:45,940 --> 00:04:55,920
And yet, this is well-documented as an activity of vitamin D together with zinc, not only for COVID, but also for all upper respiratory infections,

47
00:04:55,920 --> 00:05:06,940
particularly notable flu, as we're hearing all of the promoted concern, let's say gently, concerning bird flu right now.

48
00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:14,880
Still, we're not hearing from the CDC, the NIH, or the WHO about the benefits of vitamin D and zinc.

49
00:05:14,880 --> 00:05:18,200
You know, you actually have a story.

50
00:05:18,320 --> 00:05:22,560
I remember reading a few years ago, you published on a subject.

51
00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:33,520
You actually had an interaction, you know, specifically around this issue in your own work prior to, I mean, many years prior to the whole COVID-19 situation.

52
00:05:33,520 --> 00:05:46,660
It happened, so it, one of these bizarre events that happened during COVID, I was attending and speaking at the truckers rally in Hagerstown, Maryland.

53
00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:47,200
Okay.

54
00:05:47,200 --> 00:06:00,520
And out of the blue, I'm approached by an Army doc, a physician associated with the U.S. Army, a longstanding senior government official, essentially,

55
00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:05,040
who came to me and said, I want to talk to you about vitamin D.

56
00:06:05,040 --> 00:06:19,520
And he told me this story, that in 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, and I went and looked this up, found the papers, wrote a substack in which I described this and cited the references.

57
00:06:20,580 --> 00:06:31,520
But the U.S. Army was seeking information through retrospective analysis, so this is an epidemiology study,

58
00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:41,660
about things that would explain why some warfighters got more severe influenza and other upper respiratory infections.

59
00:06:41,660 --> 00:06:52,360
This means, when I say that, we're talking about respiratory syncytial virus, the common cold, coronaviruses, all kinds of upper respiratory infections, including influenza.

60
00:06:52,840 --> 00:07:01,240
So why did those soldiers that got these upper respiratory infections have very different clinical courses?

61
00:07:01,520 --> 00:07:07,900
Some had severe disease, and some recovered with almost no consequences.

62
00:07:08,180 --> 00:07:10,460
This is very similar to what we hear about COVID.

63
00:07:10,900 --> 00:07:16,620
Some people just, it just seems to bounce right off them, and other people, like myself, get really sick.

64
00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:18,640
Why is that?

65
00:07:18,760 --> 00:07:26,760
So the Army had one, they have this huge database where they're monitoring people's blood levels of all kinds of stuff.

66
00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:38,720
And when they went through that database and looked for correlations, they found that vitamin D levels correlated with protection from severe influenza and other upper respiratory infections.

67
00:07:39,640 --> 00:07:46,260
And so they tested this further, examined, tortured the data, tried to find other explanations.

68
00:07:46,260 --> 00:07:56,980
And it just seemed really clear that high levels of vitamin D relative to the normal recommendations that are promoted by the USDA,

69
00:07:57,860 --> 00:08:13,080
higher levels of vitamin D in soldiers' bloods correlated with those soldiers having much milder clinical courses if they were infected with influenza or these other upper respiratory virus infections.

70
00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:28,380
And the DOD was so excited about that that they tasked this particular medical officer with communicating this back to the NIH because it wasn't in the mission space of DOD to do fundamental investigations.

71
00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:31,420
I mean, everybody has to stay in their lane in D.C., right?

72
00:08:31,420 --> 00:08:40,100
And so they're not supposed to do this fundamental research, and it should have been passed off to the NIH who has that mission space.

73
00:08:40,640 --> 00:08:47,440
And so he was tasked with going to speak with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease,

74
00:08:47,940 --> 00:08:51,080
a name we all are very familiar with, Dr. Tony Fauci.

75
00:08:51,080 --> 00:09:00,820
And so he made his appointment with Tony Fauci and presented the DOD data very respectfully, very exciting data, very compelling.

76
00:09:01,040 --> 00:09:01,880
It went nowhere.

77
00:09:02,680 --> 00:09:11,160
And he was told flat out, we don't treat respiratory viruses and influenza with supplements.

78
00:09:11,980 --> 00:09:14,080
These are treated with vaccines.

79
00:09:14,080 --> 00:09:19,700
That's the official NIAID policy, is these are vaccine-preventable diseases.

80
00:09:20,180 --> 00:09:25,480
And he wasn't interested, Dr. Fauci, and by representation, all of NIH and NIAID.

81
00:09:25,700 --> 00:09:27,180
Is that the official policy?

82
00:09:27,840 --> 00:09:35,740
Apparently, under Dr. Fauci, that is what was related to this physician in 2006.

83
00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:36,440
I see.

84
00:09:37,180 --> 00:09:40,880
So it could be like it's kind of an unwritten rule, I guess that's what he was saying.

85
00:09:40,920 --> 00:09:41,780
Yeah, I think so.

86
00:09:42,260 --> 00:09:42,720
Fascinating.

87
00:09:42,720 --> 00:09:53,600
So that, you know, fast forward to the present and all the way through COVID, one of the things that I think Dr. Corey, myself,

88
00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:59,300
I'm sure Dr. McCullough has spoken about this, Dr. Merrick, and so many others.

89
00:09:59,860 --> 00:10:10,260
And as we've traveled in Europe with the International COVID Summit, this has been a constant topic that's been brought up by a variety of European physicians,

90
00:10:10,260 --> 00:10:21,940
physicians, including British physicians, where it's long been known that this seasonal variation in incidence of upper respiratory infections,

91
00:10:21,940 --> 00:10:30,120
so fall into winter being the typical flu season correlates precisely but inversely with vitamin D levels.

92
00:10:30,360 --> 00:10:39,420
So, you know, people in the British Isles with the wonderful weather during the winter, where they're not getting much sunlight, their vitamin D levels fall,

93
00:10:39,420 --> 00:10:49,560
and you can just look at the curves, they just go completely inverted to each other as the vitamin D levels in the general population drop,

94
00:10:49,700 --> 00:10:52,440
the incidence of upper respiratory infections increases.

95
00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:57,060
A strong inverse correlation, basically, is what we would call it.

96
00:10:57,140 --> 00:10:57,680
Precisely.

97
00:10:57,840 --> 00:10:58,000
Yeah.

98
00:10:58,220 --> 00:10:58,380
Yeah.

99
00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:08,120
So, matter of fact, it was, I was, as a trained physician working in infectious disease and vaccines, et cetera, for my entire career,

100
00:11:08,120 --> 00:11:19,400
I was completely ignorant, I'll be honest, about the role of vitamin D in this correlation until I saw it presented at the first International COVID Summit by a British scientist

101
00:11:19,400 --> 00:11:34,760
who wrote a book about vitamin D, and he laid out this data, and I was gobsmacked, just like you were when you heard about Paul's story concerning this randomized clinical trial in cancer.

102
00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:56,520
It's one of the most profoundly effective interventions that could be deployed, and yet the official channels for recommending public health activity and interventions are silent on the topic.

103
00:11:56,520 --> 00:12:05,140
And, you know, Paul also mentioned higher levels are inversely correlated with depression, and then similarly also with Alzheimer's even.

104
00:12:05,360 --> 00:12:12,360
And, I mean, I don't know, maybe this hasn't been nearly as well developed as the cancer piece or the, you know, upper respiratory tract viruses.

105
00:12:12,460 --> 00:12:18,160
The point is, I'm trying to make, is this seems to have a positive effect on a heck of a lot of things, right?

106
00:12:18,160 --> 00:12:24,500
And it doesn't have a lot of downside, like the levels that you would need to have for it to be toxic would, are quite high.

107
00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:27,620
You would have to really, you know, take huge amounts.

108
00:12:27,880 --> 00:12:37,140
So let's, let's touch on that because everybody asks that question, what levels of vitamin D are considered toxic?

109
00:12:37,380 --> 00:12:41,120
Let's go all the way across, like what's recommended and then what's toxic?

110
00:12:41,120 --> 00:12:57,560
So what's recommended is kind of ambiguous because we have some very low recommendations coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that are set for kind of minimum to avoid rickets of bone disease, of bone and joint disease.

111
00:12:58,200 --> 00:13:02,580
And that's the basis for the supplementation of vitamin D in milk.

112
00:13:02,580 --> 00:13:14,460
And it, it has nothing to do with these other effects associated with infectious disease or immune function prevention of these other things.

113
00:13:14,460 --> 00:13:26,580
Then there's the kind of recommendation for those, from those physicians that are, let's say, alert and sensitized to the literature, which is a small subset.

114
00:13:26,580 --> 00:13:39,040
It's typically considered in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 international units orally per day is considered to be in a safe and effective dose.

115
00:13:39,140 --> 00:13:40,200
However, there's a caveat.

116
00:13:41,120 --> 00:13:43,400
Number one, you have to take it with zinc.

117
00:13:44,120 --> 00:13:49,560
Zinc is super important that you have the proper levels of zinc in order for vitamin D to work.

118
00:13:49,620 --> 00:13:52,860
And we can go into that and talk about the underlying science.

119
00:13:52,860 --> 00:14:01,880
The other thing is that different people metabolize and take up and store vitamin D at very different levels.

120
00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:09,740
It has to do with all kinds of aspects of your own metabolism, your body weight, body weight index, et cetera.

121
00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:14,120
In other words, the amount of fat that you have because vitamin D is fat soluble.

122
00:14:14,120 --> 00:14:34,400
And so speaking as a physician, not that I'm giving medical advice over the Internet, but generally it's considered good practice to monitor patient levels of vitamin D periodically in the blood rather than just suggest a given dose.

123
00:14:34,400 --> 00:14:45,500
Because if you get above 50 nanograms per ml, that's considered to be largely protective against many of these things.

124
00:14:45,640 --> 00:14:50,040
But 100 nanograms per ml seems to have an even greater benefit.

125
00:14:50,300 --> 00:15:01,100
So there seems to be some threshold in terms of your blood level, about 50 nanograms, not for the rickets problem, but for enhancing immune response.

126
00:15:01,100 --> 00:15:04,700
But then it continues to improve up to about 100.

127
00:15:05,540 --> 00:15:15,020
But then if you get up to 150, then you're starting to risk toxicity effects over the long-term sustained intake day after day.

128
00:15:15,700 --> 00:15:19,220
So you want to stay at about 50 to 100.

129
00:15:19,400 --> 00:15:27,740
And the only way you're going to know that, because you're different from me and I'm different from my wife, is you have to go and get blood levels.

130
00:15:27,740 --> 00:15:38,460
So you want to see those blood levels periodically tested at ranging from 50 to 100 nanograms per ml, and then adjust your dosing according to that.

131
00:15:39,100 --> 00:15:52,360
You know, and I'm just going to step out and just comment that toxicity of the vitamin D, how does that, when it does get toxic, toxic levels, how does that manifest in people?

132
00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:53,980
What do the harms look like?

133
00:15:53,980 --> 00:15:56,980
The list is modest.

134
00:15:57,800 --> 00:16:00,300
Constipation, decreased appetite.

135
00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:03,880
A lot of these are gastrointestinal, so your digestive system.

136
00:16:04,260 --> 00:16:12,600
Dehydration, fatigue or confusion, frequent urination, irritability, muscle weakness, vomiting, and hypertension.

137
00:16:12,860 --> 00:16:19,740
So that's the long list of potential things that might happen if you overdosed on vitamin D.

138
00:16:19,740 --> 00:16:23,540
Very rare, hardly ever seen.

139
00:16:23,960 --> 00:16:26,680
It's hard to overdose on vitamin D, is the truth.

140
00:16:27,520 --> 00:16:30,820
You'd have to take massive doses for a prolonged period of time.

141
00:16:31,060 --> 00:16:36,140
I haven't seen too many studies, and I've looked a little bit, about vitamin D doing bad things.

142
00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:36,800
No.

143
00:16:36,880 --> 00:16:46,340
You mentioned these kind of side effects, but it's just, it's one of these interventions, and please, please comment on this, that just seems to be mostly upside.

144
00:16:46,340 --> 00:16:47,220
I agree.

145
00:16:47,220 --> 00:16:47,260
I agree.

146
00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:47,560
Yeah.

147
00:16:47,900 --> 00:16:52,760
We always talk in pharmacology, you talk about the therapeutic window.

148
00:16:52,760 --> 00:16:58,220
And a lot of drugs have a fairly narrow therapeutic window.

149
00:16:58,340 --> 00:17:05,180
They can be very effective, but you have to stay within the right dosing, and if you go too high, you can have a lot of bad things happen.

150
00:17:05,180 --> 00:17:24,820
Vitamin D seems to have a really broad therapeutic window from the levels that's included in milk to prevent rickets up through these more advanced protections of cancer and infectious disease at higher levels up to 100 nanograms per mil.

151
00:17:24,820 --> 00:17:28,820
So, in other words, we should rent billboards or something?

152
00:17:29,240 --> 00:17:30,240
Yeah, exactly.

153
00:17:30,780 --> 00:17:36,180
Why isn't this trumpeted by the CDC and the NIH?

154
00:17:36,880 --> 00:17:45,640
Why aren't we hearing public service messaging in all channels about vitamin D and zinc?

155
00:17:45,640 --> 00:18:06,900
On this, another part of a conversation I had, and I think Pierre Corey has this in his book, that when he was looking at ivermectin and was kind of trying to figure out why it was being attacked as much as it was, someone wrote to him who was a vitamin D researcher and sent him this union of concerned scientists.

156
00:18:06,900 --> 00:18:14,220
There's an article in there, I remember reading it a while back, it explains how a smear is created, right?

157
00:18:14,320 --> 00:18:22,160
And the person just, I think it was a short line, I don't remember exactly, but he said, look, what's happening to ivermectin right now is something that's been done to vitamin D.

158
00:18:22,260 --> 00:18:29,180
I guess there's some folks who really don't like the idea of vitamin D being out there, which is, I find, terrible and sad.

159
00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:32,100
And paradoxical is the good word, thank you.

160
00:18:32,100 --> 00:18:46,000
Yeah, I think nutritional supplements, I've, over the last four years, I've had an opportunity to learn a whole lot more about that industry and what goes on in the regulatory positions here in the U.S. and Canada.

161
00:18:46,000 --> 00:19:05,500
And I think that, and I think we've covered this before in Fallout, the industry represents a significant financial threat to mainstream petroleum-based pharmaceuticals.

162
00:19:05,500 --> 00:19:24,720
This kind of nutritional supplement that was a core part of medicine before the Rockefellers got involved in the rise of this modern approach to allopathic medicine is often downplayed.

163
00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:50,640
There's all kinds of disincentives that have been put in place, and it's hard not to resort to, you know, they call it conspiracy thinking, about the role of the biopharmaceutical industrial complex in suppressing this kind of information about nutritional supplements like vitamin D.

164
00:19:50,640 --> 00:20:03,240
So there is a movement to bring medicine back to what it was supposed to be, which I'm very excited about, and perhaps we'll see some of that come out of that.

165
00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:04,580
Yeah, it's encouraging.

166
00:20:04,580 --> 00:20:24,240
We have to be, I think it's important to stay objective and balanced and try to focus on whether things are actually supported by data, which can be a challenge, right?

167
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:34,520
And even in standard pharmaceutical interventions, now we've learned about so many ways that clinical trials can be biased or skewed.

168
00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:41,780
And this is something else that Pierre speaks about quite eloquently, is all the ways that clinical data can be manipulated.

169
00:20:41,780 --> 00:21:01,380
But I think there's a lot that's encouraging about this movement towards recognizing the importance of overall health and exercise and eating properly.

170
00:21:01,380 --> 00:21:21,560
One fun little fact that surprised me as I was reading about vitamin D and zinc is that there are components of foods that are often found in the vegetarian diet that combine these molecules

171
00:21:21,560 --> 00:21:30,160
and result in people having lower levels and result in people having lower levels of these key compounds compared to non-vegetarians.

172
00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,860
So there's a whole lot of complexity in this space.

173
00:21:34,860 --> 00:21:51,840
The good news is that the mystery of why vitamin D and zinc have these effects is really becoming clarified by modern science, cell biology, and molecular biology.

174
00:21:52,260 --> 00:21:53,520
Vitamin D is a hormone.

175
00:21:53,520 --> 00:22:06,420
But more than that, its activity has to do with its interaction with a specific protein that's generically called the vitamin D receptor.

176
00:22:06,820 --> 00:22:12,780
So it binds this vitamin D receptor that's associated with cell membranes and cell surfaces.

177
00:22:12,780 --> 00:22:23,860
And that complex, which requires zinc in order to have that vitamin D receptor fully structured in a proper way,

178
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:34,660
then goes into the nucleus and directly affects gene expression, turning the switch on or off for different key genes.

179
00:22:34,660 --> 00:22:48,120
So we now know that this isn't just a mystery, and they regulate zinc together with vitamin D, regulate the expression of thousands of proteins.

180
00:22:48,740 --> 00:23:02,140
So it's key in terms of cell signaling, control of cell division, differentiation, all of which is central to the ability of your immune system to function.

181
00:23:02,140 --> 00:23:12,180
So now that we understand that part of the science, it really clarifies why this is such an important agent,

182
00:23:12,460 --> 00:23:21,540
because it's central to the functioning of our immune system and so many other things, growth and development, development of the brain,

183
00:23:22,900 --> 00:23:31,900
all kinds of aspects of normal biology, because vitamin D, together with the vitamin D receptor that it binds,

184
00:23:32,140 --> 00:23:40,100
is crucial in regulating all kinds of things in our cell biology, in our normal metabolism.

185
00:23:41,300 --> 00:23:47,560
You know, it kind of gives me a bit of a hint about why it might work, you know, so broadly.

186
00:23:48,120 --> 00:23:49,000
Yeah, right.

187
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:56,000
Well, I think what that and the ivermectin story that's looking like, remember,

188
00:23:56,520 --> 00:24:04,060
I can tell you that one of the reasons why the FDA wouldn't allow the DOD team that I was working with

189
00:24:04,060 --> 00:24:10,740
to move forward with clinical trials that included ivermectin is they insisted that we demonstrate in a test tube

190
00:24:10,740 --> 00:24:13,580
that ivermectin was an antiviral one.

191
00:24:13,580 --> 00:24:17,960
And they wouldn't allow us to move forward with the clinical trials unless we were able to demonstrate that.

192
00:24:18,540 --> 00:24:24,640
But that whole obsession that in order for something to work against an infectious disease,

193
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:29,760
it has to work directly against that pathogen, is a false assumption.

194
00:24:29,760 --> 00:24:40,480
Because something can be active by upregulating or enabling or, in the case of steroids, dampening,

195
00:24:41,080 --> 00:24:43,580
inflammatory responses, immune responses.

196
00:24:43,860 --> 00:24:46,620
And remember, the immune system is extraordinarily complex.

197
00:24:47,620 --> 00:24:53,800
It's, you know, compartmentalized in all these different things like antibodies and cellular immunity

198
00:24:53,800 --> 00:24:55,420
and innate immunity, et cetera.

199
00:24:55,420 --> 00:24:57,900
Well, and it does amazing things, right?

200
00:24:58,020 --> 00:25:03,300
Like this is the point is if you can kind of activate it or fine-tune it or give it a bit of a boost

201
00:25:03,300 --> 00:25:09,020
for a certain issue, for a certain disease, wow, that seems like almost like a better approach

202
00:25:09,020 --> 00:25:14,680
because these things that, you know, that directly act, they don't tend to act only on that one thing.

203
00:25:14,800 --> 00:25:19,380
They tend to act against a more broader set of life, let's say, right?

204
00:25:19,380 --> 00:25:22,520
Yeah, they call it off-target effects in the pharmaceutical industry.

205
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:29,160
And in the case of these things that augment or enable the immune response,

206
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:40,040
what's fascinating about that is the immune system is so important in controlling so many aspects of our health

207
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:41,560
and disease.

208
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:42,460
Of course it is.

209
00:25:43,180 --> 00:25:44,820
Why would you expect it otherwise?

210
00:25:44,820 --> 00:25:54,840
So that vitamin D's effects in cancer, which we know is very much a disease of immune response.

211
00:25:55,560 --> 00:26:01,780
I was taught as a young pathologist in training that we all have cancers developing in our body

212
00:26:01,780 --> 00:26:03,220
on a continuous basis.

213
00:26:03,220 --> 00:26:11,180
And when we develop a metastatic tumor, a large mass that compromises our health,

214
00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:17,320
really that reflects some failure of immunologic surveillance and suppression.

215
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:23,920
And, you know, this relates to the new turbo cancer diagnoses, et cetera, et cetera.

216
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:29,060
It all comes back to the immune system and the ability of the immune system to maintain,

217
00:26:29,180 --> 00:26:33,060
here's a big fancy word, homeostasis, our health.

218
00:26:33,780 --> 00:26:35,120
It's central to it.

219
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:42,780
And so what's amazing about this whole story that we're speaking here about vitamin D and zinc

220
00:26:42,780 --> 00:26:47,660
is that it's almost like a key food for the immune system.

221
00:26:47,660 --> 00:26:53,520
And the immune system has to have enough of it in order to function properly.

222
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:55,640
And if it functions properly, what does it do?

223
00:26:55,820 --> 00:26:58,540
It suppresses cancer and infectious disease.

224
00:26:58,860 --> 00:27:00,100
Well, that's no surprise.

225
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:07,060
And so these effects really, in retrospect, aren't amazing.

226
00:27:07,220 --> 00:27:08,120
They aren't that shocking.

227
00:27:08,580 --> 00:27:10,100
Yeah, that's what you would expect.

228
00:27:10,260 --> 00:27:10,400
Right.

229
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:15,440
And I just might add, right, in northern climates, there's less sun.

230
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:19,680
We develop our vitamin D, right, through getting sun.

231
00:27:19,920 --> 00:27:21,020
That's the method.

232
00:27:21,020 --> 00:27:21,900
So this is key.

233
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:27,360
What we're talking about with that is the conversion of a precursor compound.

234
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:34,220
This is the vitamin D that's included in our milk, for instance, into an active compound, vitamin D3.

235
00:27:34,980 --> 00:27:38,900
And that can be done through exposure to sunlight.

236
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:43,900
But it can also be done before you even take it.

237
00:27:43,900 --> 00:27:48,840
So that's the active vitamin D3 that many people focus on.

238
00:27:49,300 --> 00:27:56,040
And that's an opportunity to highlight another key point, which is, as we've said before in prior segments,

239
00:27:56,360 --> 00:28:03,100
it's super important to know that you're getting and do the diligence to ensure that you're getting a high-quality product

240
00:28:03,100 --> 00:28:06,420
when you buy a nutritional supplement, any nutritional supplement.

241
00:28:06,420 --> 00:28:07,860
And this includes vitamin D.

242
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:14,640
So take the time to check out the manufacturer that you're buying it from.

243
00:28:15,700 --> 00:28:25,360
Remember, there's this whole separate discussion about the fact that a lot of the things that we take as generics

244
00:28:25,360 --> 00:28:31,520
are coming from offshore manufacturers that aren't well monitored by the FDA.

245
00:28:32,260 --> 00:28:41,660
And sometimes the quality there can be a little sketchy compared to going to perhaps slightly more expensive sources

246
00:28:41,660 --> 00:28:50,240
that are verified to produce a high-quality product that's pure and has the activity that it's marketed as having.

247
00:28:50,240 --> 00:29:01,140
The designation U.S. Pharmacopeia, U.S.P. on the label, is kind of an assurance that it's meeting some standards.

248
00:29:02,140 --> 00:29:10,180
And those standards have been verified in some way as opposed to just somebody cooking something in a small operation

249
00:29:10,180 --> 00:29:18,380
in an emerging economy, just not to cast aspersions, but you get the point.

250
00:29:18,380 --> 00:29:22,000
So it's really good to seek out quality.

251
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:30,640
And the U.S.P. designation is one indication that you're getting material that is as purported on the label.

252
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:35,540
Robert, as we finish up this segment, let's talk a little bit about the element of zinc,

253
00:29:35,540 --> 00:29:38,320
because that's something that maybe a lot of people have heard about.

254
00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:41,120
Not everybody necessarily knows its importance.

255
00:29:41,500 --> 00:29:46,940
We talked about its function, but maybe let's finish up with a little bit more about zinc.

256
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:51,740
And that is also presumably a supplement that you would be taking.

257
00:29:52,240 --> 00:30:02,600
So one of the stories that are spread often is that zinc is important to take with vitamin D

258
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:04,800
in order to get vitamin D uptake.

259
00:30:05,540 --> 00:30:07,600
But in fact, the opposite is true.

260
00:30:08,560 --> 00:30:11,860
Vitamin D influences zinc uptake.

261
00:30:12,500 --> 00:30:18,020
And we don't really have a good reservoir of zinc in our bodies.

262
00:30:18,020 --> 00:30:21,920
It seems to be stored in the cells lining our intestine.

263
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:29,200
And it seems to be regulated in some way by whether those cells are retained or shed.

264
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:37,460
But absolutely uptake of zinc seems to be significantly dependent on vitamin D.

265
00:30:37,580 --> 00:30:41,360
And the zinc receptors seem to be influenced by vitamin D.

266
00:30:41,940 --> 00:30:45,820
So it's important to have both of these things, as we discussed.

267
00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:48,820
But how much zinc is the key question.

268
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:50,540
How much zinc should I take?

269
00:30:50,540 --> 00:30:56,360
The general recommendation is to take something like 30 mg a day.

270
00:30:57,580 --> 00:31:00,880
And zinc deficiency is actually really common.

271
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:07,900
35 to 45% of elderly are zinc deficient, which means their vitamin D isn't working.

272
00:31:08,540 --> 00:31:14,560
So this whole kind of complex relationship between the two are, you can think of it as a codependency.

273
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:19,360
So a large fraction of the elderly are zinc deficient.

274
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:24,900
Something in the range of 20 to 25% of the general population is zinc deficient.

275
00:31:25,020 --> 00:31:26,420
So that's a big number.

276
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:30,400
You could be taking your high levels of vitamin D, but it's really not getting...

277
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:31,560
It's not going to...

278
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:33,120
You're just going to be shooting blanks.

279
00:31:33,140 --> 00:31:35,880
But you would get the hint through the testing your levels.

280
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:41,860
Actually, that wouldn't even show up because you're getting vitamin D levels.

281
00:31:42,180 --> 00:31:46,300
And unless you're also getting zinc levels, you wouldn't know that you're deficient in zinc.

282
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:48,740
So make sure that you take your zinc.

283
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:53,260
But again, this is another case where you don't want to overdo a good thing.

284
00:31:53,740 --> 00:31:55,760
30 mg a day seems to be good.

285
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,940
40 mg, starting to get a little bit high.

286
00:31:58,940 --> 00:32:00,420
Don't go beyond that.

287
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:05,780
And this is another case where just because some is good, more isn't necessarily better.

288
00:32:06,220 --> 00:32:09,780
But absolutely take your zinc together with the vitamin D.

289
00:32:10,300 --> 00:32:18,520
And the uptake of zinc is partially dependent on your having adequate vitamin D levels.

290
00:32:19,280 --> 00:32:21,300
Well, I think that's it for today.

291
00:32:21,420 --> 00:32:22,860
We've learned about vitamin D.

292
00:32:22,980 --> 00:32:23,940
We've learned about zinc.

293
00:32:23,940 --> 00:32:31,620
And we've learned about what an incredible high-impact health intervention it could be for many people.

294
00:32:31,980 --> 00:32:32,080
Yep.

295
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:36,100
So maybe the best thing that we could have done in terms of public health

296
00:32:36,100 --> 00:32:40,540
was to just help people to be aware that this is available

297
00:32:40,540 --> 00:32:46,240
and it can have such a huge impact on their health in terms of infectious disease and cancer.

298
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:48,700
And we'll see you next week on Fallout.

299
00:32:48,700 --> 00:33:18,680
We'll see you then.