10 WEIRDEST Signs of Vitamin D Deficiency

Everyone probably knows that vitamin D helps with calcium and strong bones. But most people don't realize that vitamin D acts more like a hormone. And when you don't have enough, it can cause some very strange things like sudden sweating, crawling sensations in your legs, or even unexplained anxiety. Hello Health Champions! Today we're going to talk about the 10 weirdest signs of a vitamin D deficiency. And we're also going to cover some of the mechanisms so that you really understand how far-reaching and critical this vitamin or hormone is. So when we talk about vitamin D, we typically talk about things like immune system support, strong immune function. And if you don't have enough, then you might get frequent infections. Classically, even before that, we talked about vitamin D related to bone health. And it was the classic sign of something called rickets. If kids grew up really bowlegged, if their legs, if their bones didn't calcify properly, then that was because they had a severe vitamin D deficiency. And also today we know that it's related to osteoporosis. But bone health goes so much further. So vitamin D can actually be associated with bone, tooth, or even with back pain. So when vitamin D is low, then we're not able to absorb calcium as efficiently. But we have to have calcium in the bloodstream. Calcium is a signaling molecule. So if we don't have enough, it's much more important we have it in the blood than in the bone. So the parathyroid, which is the tiny gland up on the front of your neck, it's going to release a hormone called parathormone, which will pull calcium from the bone so that we always maintain proper levels in the bloodstream. But now as we're losing calcium, as we're losing strength of the bones, now we might end up with bone pain, tooth pain, or even back pain. But more than that, vitamin D actually also signals for the osteoblasts. Those are the cells that make bone. Those are the cells that form strong bone from collagen and protein and calcium and phosphorus. So with less vitamin D, there's going to be less stimulation of these osteoblasts in addition to the fact that we don't have enough calcium. And now what's going to happen is we could have unexplained bone fractures. And because of this poor bone formation, we might also end up with slow healing of bones. But vitamin D also helps move calcium and phosphorus into the teeth. So when vitamin D levels fall, now we could end up with weak dentine and weak enamel. But vitamin D also helps move calcium and phosphorus into the teeth. So if vitamin D levels fall, now we could end up with weak dentine and enamel. And as a result, we could actually get gum disease and tooth sensitivity or tooth pain as a result of low vitamin D. And sign number two is muscle weakness because vitamin D helps transport calcium into the muscles. So yes, we need a signal from the nervous system. We need an electrical signal to the muscle. But then to cause the actual muscle contraction, we have to have that calcium activate the muscle fiber. And with low vitamin D, we're not going to have as much calcium. And as a result, now we could end up with some muscle weakness. And those are going to affect mostly what's called the proximal muscles. Proximal means close to. And we're talking about close to the trunk, close to the center of the body. And those are usually the large muscles like the upper leg, like your thigh muscles, your glute muscles, hip muscles, things like that. The big muscles that help you climb stairs and stand up and so forth. So if they weaken, you could have a hard time lifting things. You could have a hard time standing up from a chair or climbing stairs. And sign number three is depressed mood. So even though we call it a vitamin, vitamin D is actually much more of a hormone. It acts more like a hormone because most vitamins, they are sort of like catalysts. They're cofactors. They just help a reaction move forward. Whereas vitamin D being a hormone acts much more like a signaling molecule. And one thing that it does in terms of mood and brain is that it helps regulate two neurotransmitters called dopamine and serotonin. And dopamine is our moving towards something neurotransmitter. It's our motivation. It's our desire. Whereas serotonin is more of a feel-good, more of a satisfaction neurotransmitter. And there are receptors for both of those neurotransmitters in the prefrontal cortex. That's the area in the front of the brain where we have our executive function, our humanity, our motivation, but also in the hippocampus and the limbic system. Hippocampus is an area of the limbic system that have to do with memory and emotional regulation. So vitamin D is involved with the regulation of mood, motivation, and emotional balance. And when vitamin D falls low, we could find ourselves much more likely to be irritable and to have a depressed mood and a lack of interest. Sign number four is excessive sweating on the head or the scalp, primarily in the hairline. And this is a very well-known, very classic sign, both in infants and in adults. So back in the day, before we ran a bunch of tests and before we had sophisticated testing available, they would actually ask the new mothers how their babies were doing shortly after birth. And if they had head sweating, then that was a sign that they were actually vitamin D deficient. So if we're low on vitamin D, then we're going to be low on calcium. And this is going to cause an increased firing and a hyper excitability of the autonomic nervous system, your fight-flight response and your feed-breathe responses. So when your vitamin D is low, we already said that that means your calcium is also going to be low. And calcium is a super important signaling molecule. When calcium is low, that's going to increase the firing of your autonomic nervous system of your stress responses. So that means if we have a hyper excitability of your stress response, now what can happen is you basically can get excess sweating without having an actual stress response or without actually doing any exertion. And the primary ways that this would show up would be damp hairline, like you're sweating in the scalp or in the hairline, and also that you find you have night sweats. Sign number five is a craving for sunlight or feeling better instantly after it. So if you feel bad and then you get some sun exposure and you find yourself almost immediately that you have improved mood, you have more calm and more focus, this is more than just a psychological response because it could feel so good with the sun that you just relax, but it's much more than that. And it's a real biochemical response. And this is really interesting how the body works because the sun exposure, the UVB frequency of light does stimulate vitamin D synthesis, but it's not going to happen that quickly. So it's what they call a neurochemical reflex and the brain is basically anticipating, it's predicting. So the brain has a predictive regulation system that it gets this sunlight and it knows what's about to come. So it makes you feel good already even if there's several hours before that vitamin D actually kicks in. And there are many, many other examples of how the body works that way with this predictive response system. For example, if you have a type 2 diabetic who takes a little bit too much insulin or even a type 1 diabetic who is on a pump maybe and they get too much insulin and their blood sugar drops too much, they get hypoglycemic. And the first thing you're supposed to do is to give them some sugar or some orange juice or candy bar or something to raise their blood sugar. And when you do, very often they will come to, they'll feel better. If they were totally passed out, they might wake up. If they were just lightheaded and feeling terrible, they might feel better instantly, like within a couple of seconds. And there's no way for the orange juice or the sugar or the candy bar to actually get to the brain in that amount of time. So it's a predictive response. Same thing if you're so hungry or so starved, maybe you're even shaking, you're that hungry and you just take one bite of food, that first bite of food, and as soon as you have it in your mouth, you feel better. Even though it's going to be quite some time before any of that food actually gets distributed into the system. Number six is fatigue and low energy. So how does that work? Well, few people know that vitamin D actually affects the mitochondria. They help regulate the mitochondrial enzymes. And mitochondria are those little inclusion things in our cells. We could have hundreds or we could have thousands of these little things in our cells, and they actually make all of our energy. So if vitamin D isn't there to regulate these enzymes, now we lose mitochondrial efficiency. It's like an engine that just has less power all of a sudden. And as a result, we get less of the ATP production. And ATP, of course, is the body's energy currency that we don't run on calories, we run on ATP. We take fuel and we oxidize it and we turn it into ATP or adenosine triphosphate. So again, with less efficiency, we're going to output less ATP and we're going to find we have early fatigue, we get tired much faster. But since every cell in the body runs on ATP, this could also affect the brain, of course, it will affect the brain. So we could also find ourselves with sluggish thinking and a lack of motivation. Number seven is hair shedding or alopecia areata. And that means baldness, alopecia means baldness and areata means that it comes out in patches. It's very unlike the male pattern baldness that you see with yours truly. But here it's like big patches, big bald spots in the middle of the hair. And the mechanism is twofold. So vitamin D regulates the hair follicle cycles. So there's three phases to hair growth. They have the growth phase, they have the resting phase, and then the shedding phase. And with low vitamin D, the hair follicle could get stuck in the resting phase. And if it gets stuck there, then it can't move into shedding or regrowth. It just kind of sits there and hair gets brittle and falls out. And the second way that vitamin D is involved with hair growth is that vitamin D regulates autoimmunity or immunity in general, but part of that is autoimmunity responses. So with a low vitamin D, if your immune system gets dysregulated, now your immune system could start attacking your own tissues, including hair follicles. So by bringing more vitamin D in, you could actually calm down the immune system and lessen that autoimmune attack, as well as you could improve the growth by restoring the proper regulation of these phases. So increasing vitamin D in this case may or may not help because it's going to depend on how far progressed the disease process is. If the follicles are still somewhat viable, if they still have a little bit of life left in them, then there is a chance that you can reverse this process, but there is sort of a point of no return. Sign number eight is restless legs, which can be described as a crawling sensation in your legs at night. And again, there's two ways that vitamin D influences this mechanism. And one is through dopamine because dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It's an emotional signaling molecule. And just like it helps us move toward a desire, it also helps directly with movement. And the classic disease that involves dopamine is Parkinson's, which is a movement disorder when we don't have enough dopamine. So with less vitamin D, there's going to be less dopamine, like we talked about before. And now there's going to be a type of misfiring in the nervous system. And this misfiring is going to make it feel like your legs need to move. Even though you're in bed maybe and you're trying to rest, you get this crawling sensation and this irresistible urge to move your legs. And this is made a little bit worse by the fact that dopamine naturally decreases at night because it has to do with movement and we're not supposed to move at night. And the second mechanism has to do with calcium. Again, low vitamin D leads to low calcium, which leads to overexcitability, a little bit of irritation of the nerves. And this in turn can cause some involuntary contractions and twitches in the legs. Number nine is poor concentration or brain fog. And again, we have to appreciate how different vitamin D is, how far reaching its effects are. And it's more of a hormone than a vitamin. You could even call it a neurosteroid. So a steroid is a growth hormone. It's a hormone that makes things grow, like testosterone, for example. But this is for your brain. And vitamin D is critical for both brain communication, for sending the proper signals, and for repair. So vitamin D controls calcium. And when we have enough vitamin D, then we can make the proper signals. We can make clean, fast signals that communicate properly. But when vitamin D levels suffer, now we can get sort of an erratic behavior of this calcium if the inflow and the signaling is less well controlled. It's more random. And we can liken this to a noise, a neural noise in the nervous system. And as a result of this, you could get forgetfulness, and you could experience reduced clarity and focus. So that part is about the signaling. But you could also make a case for vitamin D being a steroid, has to do with repair and growth. And that's because vitamin D also drives BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is like miracle grow for your brain. So with less vitamin D, there's going to be less BDNF and less neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to make new connections, to reshape itself, to make new pathways for signals to go. And every time that you learn a new skill or you recover from something strenuous that did damage to the brain, you're using neuroplasticity to reshape it. You can't learn anything. You can't adapt to anything without neuroplasticity. So vitamin D can be so far-reaching that when vitamin D levels are low, you could actually have reduced learning, reduced adapting, and reduced recovery. And the 10th weird sign of a vitamin D deficiency is chronic pain. And in the peripheral nervous system, in the PNS, vitamin D helps maintain accurate signals. So we have receptors in the that send signals into the central nervous system. And then in the central nervous system, vitamin D binds to brain and spinal cord receptors to modulate the pain, to turn up and down our experience of that pain. So with low vitamin D, we can actually get like a double whammy here. On the one hand, we can have a hypersensitivity in the peripheral nervous system. So out in your fingertips and your skin, every part of the body, you have receptors, pain receptors. That's not called pain yet. It's called nociception. It's just a signal that could be interpreted as pain. But for the same level of stimulus, for the same pressure, for the same intensity, the peripheral nervous system could start sending stronger signals. We get hypersensitivity at that level. But then in the central nervous system that interprets this and turns it into pain, we could turn that part up also because we have these receptors in the brain and spinal cord that are not as well regulated. And on top of that, we could increase the duration of the experience of pain. So all of these would strongly contribute to chronic pain syndromes. But there's even one more way that this could contribute to chronic pain. And that is that with a decreased vitamin D level, we also have less suppression of some inflammatory markers, some cytokines like interleukin-6 and TNF-alpha. And if we have less inhibition there, we get more system-wide inflammation and more irritation of these peripheral nerve endings. So this is often called a central sensitization that we get a global increase in pain and experience of more pain everywhere in the body, but it's because of a central mechanism. And like we said before, with less vitamin D, we're going to have less serotonin, our feel-good neurotransmitter. And serotonin is actually involved with mood and pain inhibition. So here's one more way that a low vitamin D level contributes to chronic pain. So vitamin D is definitely something that's worth looking into as far as supplementing. And a safe level is usually 2,000 IUs to 5,000 IUs. But if you take it long term, it's definitely worth checking it. Get it tested once in a while because you do not want to get too high. Vitamin D is something that is toxic when you have too much. So there are some supplements out there where they're selling you units of 10,000 per capsule. And that is not something that you want to take long term because the likelihood of toxicity is very high. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.