AN EXPERT VIEW ON VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY
John Cannell, MD, executive director of the Vitamin D Council (www.VitaminD-Council.org), has extensively researched the topic of vitamin D and athletic performance. He believes that the right amount of vitamin D will make you faster, stronger, improve your balance and timing, etc. How much it will improve your athletic ability depends on how deficient you are to begin with. However, peak athletic performance also depends upon the neuromuscular cells in your body and brain having unfettered access to the steroid hormone, activated vitamin D.
As the lead author of a study entitled “Athletic Performance and Vitamin D” (in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise), Cannell reviewed reports on the use of sunlamps during the early and mid-1900s in Russia and East Germany to increase vitamin D levels in athletes. They showed this form of artificial ultraviolet irradiation—which increases vitamin D levels—improved athletic function. And these actions caused some to argue that this little known routine provided an unfair advantage during competition. In my earliest days of training and competition in high school and college, there were often news reports about the well-kept secrets that helped former Soviet Union and East German athletes perform better; some claim this was one of their secrets.
In a recent issue of his “Vitamin D Newsletter,” Cannell thoroughly described a conversation he once had with a young athletic patient regarding the importance of Vitamin D. Excerpts from that exchange are reproduced here:
“No way, doc,” the patient told me. I had just finished telling him about the benefits of vitamin D, explaining that he should take 4,000 IU per day. But he claimed that the U.S. government said he only needed 200 IU per day, not 4,000. He also knew the official Upper Limit was 2,000 IU a day. “What are you trying to do kill me?” I told him his 25(OH)-vitamin D blood test was low, only 13 ng/ml. He had read about that too, in a medical textbook, where it said normal levels are between 10 and 40 ng/ ml. “I’m fine doc,” adding, “Are you in the vitamin business?” I explained I was not; that the government used outdated values. So I tried a different tact. I brought him copies of recent press articles. “Look,” I said, “look at these.” Science News called vitamin D the Antibiotic Vitamin. The Independent in England says vitamin D explains why people die from influenza in the winter, and not the summer. U.S. News and World Report says almost everyone needs more. Newsweek says it prevents cancer and helps fight infection. In four different recent reports, United Press International says that it reduces falls in the elderly, many pregnant women are deficient, it reduces stress fractures, and that it helps heal wounds.
He glanced at the articles, showing a little interest in stress fractures. Then he told me what he was really thinking. “Look doc, all this stuff may be important to old guys like you. I’m 22. All I care about are girls and sports. When I get older, maybe I’ll think about it. I’m too young to worry about it. I’m in great condition.” I couldn’t argue. He was in good health and a very good basketball player, playing several hours every day, always on indoor courts.
What could I do to open my patient’s eyes? As an African American, his risk of early death was very high, although the risk for blacks doesn’t start to dramatically increase until their forties and fifties. Like all young people, he saw himself as forever young. The U.S. government was no help, relying on a ten-year-old report from the Institute of Medicine that is full of misinformation.
I tried to tell him that the 200 IU per day the U.S. government recommends for twentyyear-olds is to prevent bone disease, not to treat low vitamin D levels like his. I pointed out the U.S. government’s official current Upper Limit of 2,000 IU/day is the same for a 300-pound adult as it is for a 25-pound toddler. That is, the government says it’s safe for a one-year-old, 25-pound child to take 2,000 IU per day but it’s not safe for a thirty-year old, 300-pound adult to take 2,000 and one IU a day. I mean, whoever thought up these Upper Limits must have left their thinking caps at home. Nevertheless, nothing worked. My vitamin D-deficient patient was not interested in taking any vitamin D.
What are young men interested in? I remembered that he had told me: “Sex and sports.” Two years ago I had researched the medical literature looking for any evidence vitamin D enhanced sexual performance. Absolutely nothing. That would have been nice. Can you imagine the interest?
Then I remembered that several readers had written to ask me if vitamin D could possibly improve their athletic performance. They told me that after taking 2,000 to 5,000 IU per day for several months, they seemed just a little faster, a little stronger, maybe had a little better balance and timing. A pianist had written to tell me she even played a better piano, her fingers moved over the keys more effortlessly! Was vitamin D responsible for these subtle changes or was it a placebo effect? That is, did readers just think their athletic performance improved because they knew vitamin D was a steroid hormone precursor (hormone, from the Greek, meaning “to set in motion”)?
The active form of vitamin D is a steroid (actually a seco-steroid) in the same way that testosterone is a steroid and vitamin D is a hormone in the same way that growth hormone is a hormone. Steroid hormones are substances made from cholesterol, which circulate in the body, and work at distant sites by “setting in motion” genetic protein transcription. That is, both vitamin D and testosterone regulate your genome, the stuff of life. While testosterone is a sex steroid hormone, vitamin D is a pleomorphic (multiple function) steroid hormone.
All of a sudden, it didn’t seem so silly. Certainly steroids can improve athletic performance although they can be quite dangerous. In addition, few people are deficient in growth hormone or testosterone, so when athletes take sex steroids or growth hormone they are cheating, or doping. The case with vitamin D is quite different because natural vitamin D levels are about 50 ng/ml and, since almost no one has such levels, extra vitamin D is not doping, it’s just good treatment. I decided to exhaustively research the medical literature on vitamin D and athletic performance. It took me over a year.
To my surprise, I discovered that there are five totally independent bodies of research that all converge on an inescapable conclusion: vitamin D will improve athletic performance in vitamin D deficient people (and that includes most people). Even more interesting is who published this literature, and when. Are you old enough to remember when the Germans and Russians won every Olympics in the ’60s and ’70s? Well, it turns out that the most convincing evidence that vitamin D improves athletic performance was published in old German and Russian medical literature.
With the help of my wife and mother-in-law, both of whom are Russian, and with the help of Marc Sorenson, whose book Solar Power is a must-read, I finally was able to look at translations of much of the old Russian and German literature. When one combines that old literature with the modern English language literature on neuromuscular performance, the conclusion is inescapable. The readers who wrote me are right.
If you are vitamin D-deficient, the medical literature indicates that the right amount of vitamin D will make you faster, stronger, improve your balance and timing, etc. How much it will improve your athletic ability depends on how deficient you are to begin with. How good an athlete you will be depends on your innate ability, training, and dedication. However, peak athletic performance also depends upon the neuromuscular cells in your body and brain having unfettered access to the steroid hormone, activated vitamin D. In addition, how much activated vitamin D is available to your brain, muscle, and nerves depends on having ideal levels of vitamin D in your blood—about 50 ng/ml, to be precise.
Why would I write about such a frivolous topic like peak athletic performance when cancer patients all across this land are dying vitamin D deficient? Like many vitamin D advocates, I have been disappointed that the medical profession and the public don’t seem to care about vitamin D. Maybe people, like my young basketball player, will care if it makes better athletes.
The medical literature indicates vitamin D levels of about 50 ng/ml are associated with peak athletic performance. Of course, recent studies show such levels are ideal for preventing cancer, diabetes, hypertension, influenza, multiple sclerosis, major depression, cognitive impairments, etc. But who cares about all that disease stuff old people get, we’re talking about something really important: speed, balance, reaction time, muscle mass, muscle strength, squats, reps, etc. And guess who’s now taking 4,000 IU/ day? Yes he is, and he tells me his timing is better, he can jump a little higher, run a little faster, and the ball feels “sweeter,” whatever that means.