Dr. Berg’s Healthy Keto and Intermittent Fasting Podcast

The Vitamin D DANGER They Ignored (For Profit)

9 min
Feb 20, 20263 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Dr. Berg argues that vitamin D has been unfairly demonized by mainstream medicine and pharmaceutical companies due to profit motives, not safety concerns. He explains two distinct vitamin D systems in the body—one for bone/calcium regulation and another (autocrine/paracrine) for immune function, brain health, and disease prevention—and contends that recommended doses are far too low to be therapeutically effective.

Insights
  • Pharmaceutical industry has financial incentive to suppress vitamin D research since it could reduce demand for cancer drugs ($300B/year), autoimmune drugs ($10B+), and treatments for diabetes, hypertension, and depression
  • Two separate vitamin D metabolic pathways exist with different requirements: bone regulation (600-800 IU/3 weeks) vs. immune/cellular function (8,000-10,000 IU daily), but medicine focuses only on the first
  • Vitamin D toxicity is extremely rare and requires hundreds of thousands of IUs for months, whereas deficiency is common and linked to cancer risk, immune suppression, and metabolic dysfunction
  • Medical establishment's fear-based messaging about sun exposure and vitamin D contradicts evolutionary biology and ignores that 20 minutes of summer sun provides 10,000 IUs naturally
  • Magnesium and vitamin K2 are critical co-nutrients rarely studied alongside vitamin D, potentially explaining perceived toxicity risks that don't materialize in comprehensive protocols
Trends
Growing skepticism of pharmaceutical industry's influence on medical guidelines and research publication standardsShift toward understanding hormonal vs. nutritional roles of micronutrients in disease preventionIncreased interest in seasonal/cyclical nutrient protocols aligned with evolutionary biology rather than static RDAsRising focus on multi-nutrient synergy (vitamin D + K2 + magnesium) rather than isolated supplementationChallenge to sun-avoidance paradigm with emerging data on outdoor workers and melanoma riskExpansion of high-dose vitamin D protocols in functional medicine (Coimbra protocol for MS with 90% success rates)Questioning of 'safe dose' frameworks that prioritize avoiding toxicity over achieving therapeutic efficacyIntegration of gene expression (1,000+ genes regulated by vitamin D) into nutritional medicine discussions
Topics
Vitamin D deficiency and toxicity thresholdsPharmaceutical industry influence on medical guidelinesAutocrine and paracrine vitamin D systemsHigh-dose vitamin D protocols for autoimmune diseaseVitamin D and cancer risk reductionMagnesium and vitamin K2 co-supplementationSun exposure and melanoma riskSeasonal vitamin D cycling and metabolismGene expression regulation by vitamin DCoimbra protocol for multiple sclerosisMedical school curriculum gaps in biochemistryJournal publication bias against vitamin D researchSunscreen and vitamin D synthesis blockingIndoor lifestyle and vitamin D deficiencyEvolutionary biology and nutrient requirements
Companies
Harvard University
Conducted randomized clinical trial of 26,000 people showing vitamin D reduced autoimmune diseases by 22%
People
Dr. Coimbra
Brazilian doctor who developed Coimbra protocol for MS using high-dose vitamin D with reported 90% success rate
Quotes
"What happens to big pharma if vitamin D actually works? Cancer drugs right now make revenues like $300 billion a year."
Dr. Berg
"Vitamin D is not really a vitamin. A vitamin is typically something you get from food. Vitamin D is actually made by your own skin with the help of the raw material, cholesterol."
Dr. Berg
"20 minutes of summer sun will give you 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3. Is that toxic?"
Dr. Berg
"Vitamin D toxicity is extremely rare. You'd have to take hundreds of thousands of international units of vitamin D3 for months, many months, before you start developing one problem."
Dr. Berg
"Is it safe to take high doses of vitamin D3? But we never ask this question right here. Is it safe to be deficient in vitamin D?"
Dr. Berg
Full Transcript
Why you were taught to fear vitamin D. You know, vitamin D can be dangerous. It can raise your calcium levels in your blood. It can even damage your kidneys. It can be very toxic. At least that's what we've been told. But here's the question that very few people are asking. Is it safe to stay deficient? Because humans have not evolved from avoiding vitamin D. We have evolved under massive amounts of sun exposure. daily, intense, unfiltered, without sunscreen. And now suddenly we're told that the sun is dangerous, vitamin D is risky if you take too much, and you must take safe amounts. What is a safe amount? It's never been established. The conventional medical idea of safe amounts is amounts so small that it's not even biologically effective for most conditions. Another thing that you have to realize is vitamin D is not really a vitamin. A vitamin is typically something you get from food. And you can get vitamin D from salmon and other foods, but you can't even get close to the amounts that you really need from food. What's interesting about vitamin D is vitamin D is actually made by your own skin with the help of the raw material, cholesterol. So if you really think about what vitamin D is, it acts like a hormone that turns on many genes, like over a thousand different genes. And you're definitely not going to hear this from your medical doctor because this is rarely taught in medical school unless you're at a higher level in biochemistry. So you have one system of vitamin D right here that really focuses on the bone and calcium regulation. This system right here requires your liver and your kidneys for the conversion into the active form. So in other words, when you take vitamin D or you have sun hitting your skin, it turns into the vitamin D that's inactive. It's not active yet It doesn really do anything until it has to go through these different pathways and get to the point where it activated and it ends up in your cell Now this system over here rarely talked about It called the autocrine or paracrine system And what that basically means is you don't need the kidney or the liver for the conversion. The conversion of the inactive form happens within your cells. And this system right here helps run the immune system, the brain, also your muscles and your nervous system, the breast tissue, your colon, prostate, and many other tissues. The vitamin D in this system right here has a half-life of 24 hours. What does that mean? It means that you need regular amounts of vitamin D every 24 hours, okay? This system right here takes like three weeks, so you don't require everyday vitamin D for this system right here. This system right here needs at least 8,000 to 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3 every single day to maintain it. This system over here only needs 600 to 800 IUs every three weeks to maintain it. You see the problem? Medicine has been focused on this primarily forever, and they completely ignore this section right here. So now I'm going to answer the trillion dollar question. What happens to big pharma if vitamin D actually works? Now think about vitamin D, what it can do for reducing cancer risk. Massive. Cancer drugs right now make revenues like $300 billion a year. What about the effects of vitamin D and autoimmune disease? Dr. Coimbra out of Brazil has developed the Coimbra protocol. And with MS, for example, there's like a 90% success rate using high doses of vitamin D. I will put the link of my interview with him down below in the description. But think about how much money right now is spent on autoimmune drugs. You're talking about tens of billions of dollars. And then you have drugs that suppress the immune system prednisone for example and there many others as well and that roughly about 77 billion dollars Now what about the effects of vitamin D for diabetes right Or high blood pressure or depression All of the big pharma drugs make billions of dollars just for those symptoms alone. So imagine a free, unpatentable hormone made by sunlight that can easily reduce these diseases at the very minimum 10 to 15 to 20 percent. That would be a serious dent into revenues. Okay, so mainstream medicine does not like vitamin D. In fact, certain journals and medical institutions do not like to publish anything positive, anything good about vitamin D, period. And I've had quite a few interviews with some of the top doctors that actually told me that. I'm not just making this up. A Harvard randomized clinical trial of nearly 26,000 people found that vitamin D reduced autoimmune diseases by 22%, 22% of a multi-billion dollar market. So is the problem really vitamin D toxicity? Is that such a common problem? So this is why there's been a lot of hyper-focus on narrowing in what your vitamin D levels should be between 600 and 800 IUs, completely insignificant amounts. And then when you get up to 2,000, 4,000 IUs of vitamin D, which is still like just half of what you need on a daily basis, some doctors call that toxicity. I mean, think about this. 20 minutes of summer sun will give you 10,000 IUs of vitamin D3. 20 minutes. Is that toxic? And another thing that's interesting about vitamin D is that your body doesn't read vitamin D as a supplement. It reads it as a time of the year because in the winter, vitamin D drops. So this is programmed in our DNA. It's cyclical by seasons. Winter comes, our vitamin D goes down. The summer comes, the vitamin D goes up. But when you're actually vitamin D deficient your body starts getting signals that oh it winter Slow down the metabolism Start changing things and prepare for the winter So this is why people that are deficient in vitamin D tend to gain weight easier They have metabolism issues They have other issues too, like their mood goes down. They get the blues. Their immune system gets suppressed. But think about the average person, how much time they spend indoors, not even outside. It's 365 days of winter. Not to mention we go outside and wear sunscreen, right? We're going to block any potential for getting vitamin D because we're worried about getting melanoma. Did you realize that melanoma, skin cancer, has exploded after 1980 when we started being sun-phobic, when we started scaring people about the sun and avoiding the sun? That's when we had the explosion of melanoma, not before. In fact, certain studies show people that work outdoors have a lesser risk of getting melanoma than people working indoors. So we've been asking the wrong question. Is it safe to take high doses of vitamin D3? But we never ask this question right here. Is it safe to be deficient in vitamin D? Vitamin D toxicity is extremely rare. You'd have to take hundreds of thousands of international units of vitamin D3 for months, many months, before you start developing one problem, too much calcium in the blood, which can lead to kidney stones. But let's just compare and contrast that with being deficient of vitamin D, which is super common. What kind of problems would you have from that? Well, problems with immune suppression, cognitive function, increased risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer. And on top of that, a lot of the research done with vitamin D rarely, if ever, looks at magnesium and vitamin K2, the two key nutrients to protect you against excess calcium accumulation, magnesium and vitamin K2. So now you know why we've been taught to fear vitamin D. I have done over 280 videos on vitamin D. My favorite vitamin D video is this one right here. Check it out.