What If We Got Sunlight All Wrong? The Truth About Vitamin D & Chronic Disease

0:00Dr. Mark Hyman:Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. You really could make a dramatic difference by just getting people's levels of vitamin D up to 45 nanograms per milliliter. And that would literally lead to 400 ,000 fewer premature deaths a year. That is no joke. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive, for live Q &As, exclusive content, and direct connection.

0:35Dr. Mark Hyman:For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial. Finding safety with sun exposure is important. So you do it right. You don't overdo it. But you kind of need the sun for many reasons because of our hormonal systems, our circadian rhythms, vitamin D, which is critical for our health.

1:13Dr. Mark Hyman:And I do get why people are a little worried about sun exposure. I mean, according to the Environmental Working Group or EWG, more than 2 million Americans get skin cancer every year. And half of those who live to 65 get at least once. Now, these skin cancers that are basal cell and squamous cells are not fatal. They don't spread. They can be disfiguring. My grandmother had a big one on her scalp, which was terrible. She never wanted to get it treated, and it was kind of nasty. But basically, the squamous and basal cell cancers that you get on your skin are linked to sun exposure. Melanoma, not so much.

1:48Dr. Mark Hyman:And that can occur in non-sun exposed areas and be a little bit of a different animal. Now, the other thing about sun exposure is particularly on your face, it's going to cause something called oxidative stress. And that leads to inflammation. And oxidation is kind of like your car rusting or an apple turning brown in the air. But it's really the same thing that happens on your skin. You get wrinkles. So the wrinkling is from the oxidative stress from the sun. You see people who've sort of been in the sun a long time, they get kind of wrinkly, leathery skin. And ladies who wear parasols have this beautiful porcelain skin.

2:23Dr. Mark Hyman:as they get older. So your face is something you definitely want to protect. But also, we're supposed to be out in the sun. And so staying out of the sun or overlying on sunblock actually can cause issues because vitamin D is critical for mood, for energy, for thyroid function, for cancer protection, for immune function, preventing infections, even COVID. And it's a problem if you don't get enough vitamin D. And the problem is most of us don't get vitamin D because we don't live out and work outside anymore. Most of us are inside most of the time. And we get deficient in this really important vitamin called vitamin D.

3:02Dr. Mark Hyman:And the truth is that probably 80 % of Americans are deficient or have insufficient levels of vitamin D, levels that don't protect them optimally from the things that you want to have vitamin D protect you from, whether it's osteoporosis or depression or cancer or to boost your immune system so you don't get things like the flu or COVID. I mean, if you have a high vitamin D levels, your reduction in flu is 75%. That's more than the flu vaccine. So it really is a powerful nutrient. It's very safe at the recommended doses. It's easy to take. There's no side effects. It's very cheap. And it's such an incredibly important vitamin for optimizing your health in every way, including longevity.

3:46Dr. Mark Hyman:So let's talk about vitamin D a little bit. Now, people think they should be avoiding the sun to not get skin cancer, but vitamin D actually protects you against skin cancer, believe it or not, and reduces the risk of melanoma dramatically and many other cancers, not just skin cancer. It actually reduces overall mortality by 7%. So just having good vitamin D levels reduced the risk of death by 7%. And vitamin D, we used to get from sun running around naked hunting gathering. And also, if we were living in colder climates, we would eat fish, wild fish like herring and sardines and mackerel. And these fatty small fish have pretty high levels of vitamin D.

4:28Dr. Mark Hyman:Also, mushrooms. So if you're foraging and going for mushrooms, there's a lot of like porcini mushrooms have the highest levels of vitamin D. But it's still hard to get enough. We're not getting these foods anymore. So we saw such a, with the Industrial Revolution, this incredible advent of rickets and vitamin D deficiency. And it's one of the major areas where we've seen a public health improvement by getting awareness of vitamin D. Now, it's been fortified in milk. Milk doesn't necessarily have vitamin D. It actually doesn't have vitamin D. It only has vitamin D because it's added in to the milk.

5:01Dr. Mark Hyman:So if you think you need vitamin D to get your, I mean, milk to get your vitamin D, that's not actually true. You don't get a vitamin D for milk only because it's added. Now, most of the problem with vitamin D is that doctors don't understand how to diagnose it. They might even order the wrong test. They don't know the right treatment. They don't know the doses. They don't understand its importance. And they see the reference levels on lab tests, which are typically like 20 nanograms per deciliter. Now that is ridiculously low. And I think if you look at what's optimal, it should be over 45 or 50.

5:34Dr. Mark Hyman:And so many, many people are in this sort of borderline area of less than 20 or 20 to 50, where they do need more vitamin D. Now, most doctors think, oh, you don't have rickets, you don't have vitamin deficiency, or your number is like 20 or 30, you're fine. And they're actually wrong. And the question is, what's the dose you need to not get rickets? It's probably like 30 units a day. It's not what we need for optimal health. What we need for optimal health might be more like 5 ,000 units a day. I mean, even the government's upper limit is 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 a day is a safe dose. You're not going to get into trouble with that.

6:08Dr. Mark Hyman:Some people are very good at absorbing it. Others aren't. Some people need actually up to 10 ,000 units a day. There was one study where they gave healthy young adults 10 ,000 units of vitamin D for three months, and there was no toxicity from that. Now, you can't get toxicity if you take a lot more. I mean, and it can cause a problem, but it's far lower than that we think. And in fact, your level has to be over 250. Even though the reference range on the labs is up to 100, it doesn't really become toxic until about 250. So the real question is, how much should we be taking on a daily basis? And I think depending on you and your vitamin D level, your sun exposure, I mean, I have a friend who lives on the beach and goes out surfing every day and his vitamin D level is about 45, which is pretty good with no vitamin D supplementation.

6:54Dr. Mark Hyman:But I rarely see that She's living in Mexico on the beach all the time. But if you aren't, you probably need between 2 ,000 to 5 ,000 units a day of vitamin D. What's really concerning is when you look at the data, it's 80 % of us who are insufficient or deficient. This is either frankly deficient, let's say less than 30, which is now the reference range on most labs. Some still say 20, and those who are between 20 and 50. So I think that's important because vitamin D deficiency is linked to many cancers. There's high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression. We call it seasonal affective disorder or SAD, fibromyalgia.

7:33Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, you know, people have muscle aches and pains. These are often from low vitamin D levels. Bone loss, obviously osteoporosis. Even autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis is found in much higher levels in northern latitudes and where there's low vitamin D. And so vitamin D is really important for everything, including autoimmune disease. And it's really not hard to do. I mean, you really could make a dramatic difference by just getting people's levels of vitamin D up to 45 nanograms per milliliter. And that would literally lead to 400 ,000 fewer premature deaths a year. That is no joke. There was one study that showed that if your vitamin D levels were low, you were 75 % more likely to end up in the hospital or in the ICU from COVID.

8:18Dr. Mark Hyman:If your vitamin D levels were over 50 from one big Israeli study, there was no death. like zero. Now, that may be not true if you keep doing the study and it may be a little bit bigger, there may be occasional deaths. But the point is here that vitamin D is highly protective. So, you know, I think, you know, we probably should have a vitamin D mandate in this country. Now, when my patients get their levels up, they feel better, they have more mood improvements, their muscles recover better, their thyroid works better, their energy is better, their whole system works better. And so it's a really important thing to make sure you get.

8:55Dr. Mark Hyman:So how does your body like make vitamin D? Now, we obviously never had to take supplements when we were hunting and gathering and evolving because we're outside most of the time. And in fact, 80 to 100 % of the vitamin D that we need is created because of exposure to the sun. And when you get a little bit of a sunburn, you know, we call a minimal erythrimal dose, which means basically the dose that makes your skin a bit red, you know, when you get a sunburn, that might produce between 10 to 25 ,000 units of vitamin D in our bodies, which is great. But the problem is most of us don't get that kind of sun exposure.

9:29Dr. Mark Hyman:And a lot of times we use a lot of sunscreen, which is not necessarily bad. Well, it depends on which sunscreen you're using, but they block a lot of the benefits of getting vitamin D. So you might be out in the sun, but using sunblock and then not getting vitamin D. Now, if you live in a Northern climate, you're for sure not getting enough sun and vitamin D, especially in the winter. And you're probably not eating a lot of the porcini mushrooms and background herring and cod liver oil. Also, the other problem is as we get older, our skin does not convert the sun into vitamin D in the way that we did when we were younger.

10:07Dr. Mark Hyman:So the average 70-year-old creates only 25 % of the vitamin D that a 20-year-old does. Also, depending on your skin color, if you have dark skin, if you're African-American, you basically will produce far less vitamin D and you need a lot more sun exposure. So most African-Americans are very deficient in vitamin D. I'll also recommend that everybody supplement. Now, I think it's one of those basic supplements that everybody should get. It makes such a difference. And you should have a level between 45 to 75, let's say. And the only way to know what that is is to test. You need to test and find out what's going on.

10:45Dr. Mark Hyman:And you can guess, but you often will be off. Some people need 2 ,000 units. Some people need 5 ,000, 10 ,000 units to get their vitamin levels up to the ideal level. And you can do that through your doctor or I co-founded a company called Function Health. You go to functionhealth.com. You can join the wait list and get testing. that actually helps you to get your actual levels, to know what you're doing, to check it over time. I think if you use the code YOUNGFOREVER, you can get in and actually get off the wait list. So try that and see how your vitamin D levels are. But it's important to know.

11:24Dr. Mark Hyman:And often doctors say, oh, don't worry, just take the vitamin D. But you really want to know what your levels are. Also, if you want to get sun exposure, the best is 10 to 2. in obviously the summertime, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., full body sun exposure for 20 minutes. That will, I mean, you can cover your face or put sunblock on your face, but you really want to have full body exposure. I mean, it only works in the summer and only works if you live below Atlanta. So I recommend taking vitamin D and probably 2 ,000 to 5 ,000 of vitamin D3. It's important to take vitamin D3, not vitamin D2. Most doctors will prescribe vitamin D2, which is unfortunate, but make sure you get the right vitamin D.

12:07Dr. Mark Hyman:And again, it depends on your age, your genetics, where you live, how much time you're in the sun, time of year. But if you're in the summer, I don't need it. But it's actually not true. You need it during the summer unless you're out there all the time. So check your vitamin D levels and find out what's going on. Now, what about protecting yourself from skin cancer? That's important, right? You want to make sure you don't get skin cancer, particularly on your face. So I think if you want to go out in the sun, great. Use sunscreen on your face. If you're worried about getting a sunburn and you're really out there a lot, you can use high SPF sunscreen.

12:38Dr. Mark Hyman:But you're going to get vitamin D from your supplements, so you should be okay. The high SPF, it kind of gives people a sense of security that you can go out there and just burn up. But you want to be careful. You don't want to do that. You want to make sure you just moderate your sun exposure, avoiding the high ultraviolet radiation exposures that you can get from prolonged sun exposure. So basically use sunscreen. And also, by the way, you want to use sunscreen that doesn't have crap in it. And we'll talk about that in a minute. So over-the-counter sunscreens are fine, but they're often full of crappy, harmful ingredients.

13:15Dr. Mark Hyman:EWG found 80 % of the 1 ,700 products they looked at that were sunscreen had inferior sun protection or had like really weird ingredients like oxybenzone or other parabens. I had a woman once who was at my practice and she had super high levels of toxins in her urine from parabens. And she's like a super health nut. And I'm like, what are you doing? What are you exposed to? What plastics or chemicals? She said, oh, well, I use a ton of sunscreen all the time, every day. And so she had high levels of these toxic petrochemical plastics in her urine that were coming from the sunscreen. A lot of it wasn't getting out of her body.

13:51Dr. Mark Hyman:So it wasn't great. Also, you should be worried about sunscreen with vitamin A. if you use vitamin A, it actually can make the skin cancer more likely. So I would be particularly careful of that. But the bottom line is choose, you know, good average low SPF sunscreen. Don't rely on it for total protection. Cover your face mostly. And you'll be able to go out and enjoy the sun. So what are the seven strategies I use to get, you know, safe sun exposure? Well, don't be afraid of the sun on your vacation. Don't obviously get overexposed, right? because getting overexposed doesn't just ruin your vacation and give you a sunburn.

14:31Dr. Mark Hyman:It can lead to long-term issues with skin damage and skin cancers and more wrinkles, which nobody wants. So try to get at least 20 minutes of sun exposure every day. First thing in the morning, ideally, which is the morning sunlight helps trigger your brain to release chemicals and hormones like melatonin. It kind of resets your circadian rhythms. It helps mood, healthy aging. Use sunscreen, but only when you need it. and particularly use the safe sunscreens. You can check out Skin Deep, which is a database from EWG, and it's great. Be proactive about protection. So don't, you know, overdo it, right?

15:08Dr. Mark Hyman:Try to get shade, umbrella, tree, you know, hat. I mean, protective clothing, that's fine. If you don't get skin cancer, which I don't want to get, make sure you cover up. Sunglasses are important. You don't actually get, obviously, sunburn in your eyes, but you get cataracts from prolonged sun exposure without UV blocking sunglasses. So that's important. Don't get burned. Burning is really bad because that leads to more risk of skin cancer. Choose a skin cancer that has optimal UVA protection. Don't do tanning beds. Get vitamin D, which will help reduce your risk of skin cancer. And, you know, there's good evidence that sunblock prevents suamose cells, but not necessarily basal cells.

15:48Dr. Mark Hyman:So make sure you get skin checks. Get your skin checked for cancer on a regular basis every year. Make sure you get a good dermatologist to look at it, and they can get things when they're early, and they're really not a problem. You don't die from skin cancer except melanoma, which is not necessarily sun-related. Also, again, make sure you check the ingredients. You don't want to have parabens, petrochemicals, lead, toxins. They all get absorbed in your skin. Go to the EWG website, ewg.org. You can look at the sunscreen guide, the skin deep guide. But also stay hydrated. And a lot of us are drinking out caffeine, having alcohol on the beach, makes us stay hydrated.

16:24Dr. Mark Hyman:And that can actually just make you feel crappy and not make your vacation fun. Let's take sunscreen, for example. This is something, you know, summertime people want to get skin cancer. They're putting on sunscreen in it. And is it okay? Like, what should we be doing? And how do we figure out what's going on? A lot of the sunscreens also have compounds that destroy reefs, too. There's like reef dice, the coral reefs. So you're only killing yourself, but you're killing the reefs. Right. Well, there's a lot of the chemical sunscreens like adabenzone. I don't even know all of the names of them, the chemical sunscreens.

16:58And many of those are potentially endocrine-destructing chemicals as well. The flip side is, Mark, I'm one of those people who grew up in the South, had more than my share of sunburns, had my first skin cancer when I was 37. So I also want to slow down skin aging and wrinkles and skin cancer. So we kind of have to say, well, how do you get the protection you want without putting yourself at risk? I personally am a real fan of the zinc and titanium, the mineral based sunscreens, or even just a hat covering your skin, staying out of the sun in the middle of the day. I mean, I think there's a lot of other things we can do that are going to be safer for us and safer for the planet.

17:37one of my favorite one-stop shopping places to learn more about safety levels and which either skincare or sunscreens the one things we do or don't want is the environmental environmental working group and i know you you've been a big supporter of their work for years i think they were some of the pioneers really raising awareness and what i love about them is they have a safe cosmetics database that you can search by type so you could search sunscreens or you could search by brand, plug in your favorite brand and see how it rates to others on their list.

18:21Dr. Mark Hyman:As a fat-soluble vitamin, vitamin D needs to be absorbed with fats from our diet and then stored in our body, in our fat tissue, in our liver, similar to other fat-soluble vitamins like A, E, and K. This episode will help you understand the crucial role that vitamin D plays in our health and why maintaining adequate levels is super important. Now, vitamin D is best known for its critical role in bone health and in immune system function. It enhances calcium absorption, which is really important. That's how calcium gets in your body with the help of vitamin D. And that's why a deficiency in vitamin D leads to bone deformities and things like rickets in children and osteoporosis in adults.

19:01Dr. Mark Hyman:But vitamin D does so much more than just support our bones. It's a powerhouse for our immune system. It helps fight inflammation. It helps reduce the risk of all the chronic diseases which we suffer from, from obesity, type 2 diabetes, to heart disease, and dementia, and autoimmunity. And I could go on and on, mental health, depression, I mean, the list goes on. Now, it even plays a role in lowering the risk of autoimmune conditions and reduces your risk of infection. And this is really crazy data, but the COVID pandemic highlighted the importance of vitamin D and immunity with many studies showing that low levels of vitamin D increase the risk of severe infection, hospitalization, and death.

19:40Dr. Mark Hyman:In other words, if your vitamin D was low, you were more likely to end up with a severe infection in the hospital or die. Now, beyond bone health and immunity, vitamin D has a lot of jobs, including thyroid and many, many other things. It affects the expression of over a thousand genes. It's more like a hormone than a vitamin. And it supports the brain really critically by aiding in cognition, helping with memory, mood, and depression. And it also helps protect against really bad things like notogenesis, like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Vitamin D is also critical for hormonal balance, fertility, and gut health.

20:17Dr. Mark Hyman:Literally everything, okay, everything. Vitamins are not like drugs that have a single action on a single receptor with a single effect for a single disease, vitamin D and other vitamins are what we call pleomorphic. They have many, many, many effects in the body. And that's what makes them so amazing. And they're very safe and effective. And they have no side effects because they're the things your body uses to do its job. And so you just need to have optimal levels, not overdose, obviously, but the optimal levels. Now, despite its importance, many people are really deficient or insufficient in this vital nutrient, and they miss out on many of the protective benefits.

20:47Dr. Mark Hyman:So let's explore why vitamin D deficiency is so common and how it impacts our health and also what we can do to ensure we're getting enough of this essential vitamin. Now, we all hear about the benefits of vitamin D, but what exactly is it and what does it do in our bodies? Well, as I mentioned, vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin, which means it must be absorbed with fats from our diet, like other fat-soluble vitamins like A, E, and K. And it's stored in our body's fat tissue and liver. So let's sort of dive into the bone health and immunity, which are the most well-known effects, but there's many, many more.

21:20Dr. Mark Hyman:Vitamin D is obviously known for its critical role in bone health and in supporting immune function. And how does it work? Well, it enhances the absorption of calcium, which is why deficiency is linked to all kinds of bone deformities like rickets and osteomalacia, which is bone softening, and osteoporosis in adults. In fact, if you want to do a cheap vitamin D test, you just stick your thumb on your shin and push in hard. And if it hurts, you are likely either insufficient or vitamin D deficient. So just try that now, but not if you're driving. In addition to bone health, vitamin D is a superpower house when it comes to supporting our immune system and fighting inflammation.

21:58Dr. Mark Hyman:And that's why having sufficient levels is associated with low risk of so many chronic diseases that are all inflammatory diseases. Things like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and so forth. And also diseases like autoimmune disease, which includes multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes. But that's not all. Vitamin D is also a key player in reducing the risk of infection. In fact, if your vitamin D level is adequately elevated, it means in the high normal range, not like what the reference range is, but optimal levels, your risk of getting the flu is 75 % lower. That's better than the flu vaccine, guys.

22:32Dr. Mark Hyman:So this is really cheap, really inexpensive, and it's really safe. It also helps support our immune system, and it protects us from just getting sick and cold. And I get my vitamin levels up, and I never get sick. I'm I don't remember the last time I had a cold because I just take my vitamin D every day and it just does its job and I'm good to go. Now, it does this by modulating the production of immune cells and immune molecules or messengers like cytokines. It regulates T cells and B cells. T cells are your immune cells like your lymphocytes and natural killer cells. B cells make antibodies.

23:04Dr. Mark Hyman:And these play a critical role in our innate and adaptive immune systems. The ancient immune system, which is the innate immune system, has been there forever. and is sort of a general all-purpose but not specific immune system. And the adaptive immune system is really the specific targeted immune system that sort of makes laser-guided bombs. Like you get antibodies to COVID. Well, that's a target against COVID. That's what your immune system does. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic shined a very much needed light on the impact of vitamin D on immunity. We learned from countless studies that low vitamin D levels increase the risk of severe infection, hospitalization, and death.

23:38Dr. Mark Hyman:And this is just scratching the surface. If you look at the data, it was quite striking. Shout out to Israel. If your level of vitamin D was over 50 nanograms per deciliter, we're going to get talking about what the level should be. That's probably the optimal level. If your level was 50 or more, your risk of death from COVID was zero, like zero. That's amazing. And if your vitamin D levels are low, you are 70 % more likely to end up in the hospital, end up in the ICU, or die from COVID. Now, what else does vitamin D do for the body? Well, it's an incredibly powerful vitamin that affects, as I mentioned, over a thousand genes.

24:17Dr. Mark Hyman:We're going to put all the links and the references of everything I'm saying in the show notes, so don't worry. Now, most people agree it's actually more of a hormone than a vitamin. It impacts all kinds of cellular functions across all of our organs and tissues. For example, the brain uses vitamin D to support cognition, to mood, and mental health. You've heard of seasonal affective disorder or SAD or the winter blues. well, that's vitamin D deficiency, folks. That's why they say use a UV light because UV light makes your body make vitamin D. But you can also just take vitamin D. It also protects against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.