VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, hope you're having a great day! Excited to be back here, chit chatting to you guys.
So today, one thing I wanted to bring up because this came up in my practice today is, hey, I've heard that I'm vitamin D deficient. You know, I've had some labs done, what do I do? I just go get a supplement. You know at Walgreens, and why you might think that it's an easy thing and logical thing to do. It just prompted me to talk about why supplements can really be more beneficial than we even know they are when they are used correctly. And on the flip side, why supplements, even supplements that you might think of as very benign, can actually cause you more harm than good.
So Hi, guys, I'm Tanya Zucco. I'm a board-certified physician assistant, and functional medicine practitioner, and hormone expert. And my passion is helping women 40 Plus optimize their health and their hormones so they can lose weight and feel and look fabulous.
So let's get back to vitamin D. Okay, so quick recap on vitamin D, and its benefits, okay, many, many, many different benefits, strengthens bones and muscles, boosts your immunity improves your mood, reduces inflammation improves heart function. So really, really important hormone topic for another day because vitamin D is a hormone with how it functions.
So vitamin D is really important. So you might think, Okay, I've had some labs done, whatever I saw, it was low, I've gone to the store, and I've gotten some vitamin D, and I've been taking it, and I don't really notice any difference. Okay, so one thing to be aware of that actually a lot of people don't know is that vitamin D, just like any supplement, requires sort of a chain of command in order for it to do its thing. So the old adage, you are what you eat isn't really accurate at all, right? In fact, you are what you eat, you are what you digest, absorb, you are what you can, what you convert to final forms, and then what actually gets passed the cell membrane, and they're actually where relevant what actually gets through a selective receptor to get in the cell.
Okay, so nutrients do not act independently. All right, so let's use the example of vitamin D, maybe you think, Okay, I just need to get more sunlight, right, you're laying out, they're getting all this sunshine, get them all this vitamin D exposure, but you still have low vitamin D levels. Well, something in the chain is broken or needs a bit of a boost. Okay? So, you know, that's something really important to realize, too.
Now, here's, here's the key point that I was getting at, okay, let's say you go to Walgreens and you get some vitamin D, okay. And surprisingly, your symptoms, you know, that you thought might be a little bit better from taking vitamin D; you actually have these new symptoms, you've got headaches, now you've got some muscle cramps, you've got some acid reflux, maybe you're not sleeping as good. Maybe you've got some, you know, anxiety now. And they might say, Well, okay, obviously, I just started taking the vitamin D. It must be the vitamin D. Okay, well, in fact, those symptoms are actually insufficient magnesium symptoms, okay. And remember, magnesium is actually the top American nutrient deficiency, and it has been for many, many years, okay.
And so what happens is, you need to make sure that you've supplemented. You have an optimal amount of magnesium before you start to use vitamin D, okay, because magnesium, the body needs magnesium to convert vitamin D into its final usable form. And if you are already deficient in magnesium, vitamin D can trigger the symptoms of magnesium deficiency. Okay. So this is just one example of the intricacies of nutrients and supplements and how, you know, taking them incorrectly can cause you to have unwanted symptoms.
But also on the flip side, how using supplements and nutrients, whether it's through food or supplementation, can be really beneficial when done consistently over time, in the correct ways, and using the correct ones because there are certainly, you know, money that can be wasted and you know, symptoms that can be prevented by using the correct forms.
So, hopefully, this was helpful. If you think this would be helpful to someone else, please do go ahead and share it. And as always, I love all your questions. If you have any questions for me, please reach out. Have an amazing rest of the day. And I'll catch you guys on the flip side.