Memory Loss Stopped in Its Tracks

Well, we had a hell of a summer, glorious warm weather, but you can now feel it, the autumn is well and truly on its way.

The shadows are getting longer and fingers crossed you all know what that means – no more natural vitamin D production (at least, unless you have a vitamin D UVB lamp like me, I love 10 mins on my Sperti lamp first thing).

The concept of vitamin D production via healthy sun exposure still eludes many patients.

Just this afternoon, I had a lady I care for online for gut issues in Jersey tells me confidently that she stopped her vitamin D in the summer, but she always puts her sun lotion on before she leaves the house and doesn’t go out in the midday sun, but leaves it until late in the afternoon/evening.

She then says that weirdly she was tested last summer and was still low in vitamin D. They just couldn’t understand it – a medical mystery !!

That is why I created this infographic for clinic, explaining the concept of shadow length and the ability to make vitamin D (see attached).

It is important to keep in the reception and treatment rooms, so they know that now we are headed to autumn/winter, vitamin D supplementation is mandatory.

That is why we made the vitamin D/K2 sublingual to make sure everyone can get the vitamin D needed to have a healthy immune system.

Remember low vitamin D = sustained low grade inflammatory response = pain/lower pain thresholds, fatigue and depression.

Vitamin D also ensures optimal calcium absorption, so we must have optimal K2 included.

Remember vitamin K2 effectively turns bone proteins on, which pull calcium into the bone. If calcium is not in the bone, it could then end up in the artery, leading to heart attacks and strokes.

We want to aim for 150-200 mcg daily K2 to mimic an optimal dietary intake.

150 mcg from the sublingual plus another 50 mcg from the multi one a day essential if prescribed.

Did you know there are many types of vitamin K2?

But only one passes the placenta to nourish the mammal’s unborn baby, MK4.

MK4 is the form used in virtually all the RCT’s showing K2’s amazing benefits for bone health.

MK4 is so essential that even K1 and MK7 can be used as the substrate to make it if the intake of MK4 is low, like a back up supply.

MK4 may also help with sex hormones and cancer cells.

That’s why we use 100 mcg of MK4 plus a backup of 50 mcg MK7 in the sublingual.

If you are already taking vitamin D3/K2, check which forms and the dose, the devil is in the detail.

We also have brand new research from the UK biobank showing that if your vitamin D levels are below 25 nmol/L (considered grossly deficient by most), you are at a 54% higher risk of developing dementia than those over 50 nmol/L (we like to keep it over 100 nmol/L ideally for immune health).

Thus, they conclude 17% of dementia could be prevented with vitamin D levels coming up.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348994/pdf/nqac107.pdf

One simply tablet tucked between cheek and gum for optimal absorption to bypass any digestive issues, and we can drop the risk of dementia, how that for wellness care?

This is not hard to do.

Your patients want to be told what to do to get better. A pouch of vitamin D/K2 lasts 60 days, for £13.50 at retail, that is 22p a day to slash your risk of dementia…..they will bite your hand off.

What are you waiting for, click the link.

But I will go one further.

How about we tack on a one a day multi essential too with high dose B vitamins as standard?

Feel free to check out doses against what you are using now.

Well, it would drop your homocysteine, and that could stop or slow down massively early cognitive decline (which is a soft fluffy term but leads to dementia/Alzheimer’s) in its tracks.

Check this out, take a group of elderly people with early cognitive decline (ECD) , MRI their brains, give them B12, folate and B6 or placebo, then scan them again 2 years later and see how much grey matter they have lost.

The results are mind-bending given the complete lack of treatment the elderly get from the NHS in this area.

It is considered a terminal diagnosis.

In effect, if they have ECD it is just a matter of time before dementia fully sets in, right?

No.

In those with high homocysteine – side note, this is important, if you want to study the benefits of reducing the highly toxic and inflammatory homocysteine in those with ECD, by giving B vitamins, they must have high homocysteine to start with. I know this sounds obvious but so much of the research done with nutrients is done incredibly badly, possibly deliberately, generating negative or equivocal results, if they do not have high homocystine the B vitamins are not going to work are they? – anyhoo, in those with high homocysteine given B vitamins not placebo only lost an average of 0.6% grey matter, while those on the placebo lost on average 5.2 %.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1301816110

You can use the one a day multi essential to bring homocysteine down in most, but not all patients. At £14.85 a pouch, it costs them 49p a day, to stop early cognitive decline, a precursor to dementia.

For those more stubborn cases (often genetically linked, often with a strong family history of dementia, heart issues and strokes) we have a specialist formula called Methyl B rescue coming soon with higher doses of folate and B12 with B2, B6 and Tri-Methyl glycine (TMG).