Vitamin D comes with a lot of benefits, such as supporting bone health, immune function, and mood regulation. In this video, Dr.

is-vitamin-d-really-a-testosterone-booster-urologist-weighs-in

Is Vitamin D Really a Testosterone Booster? Urologist Weighs In

vitamin D everyone loves vitamin D but does it actually help with testosterone I'm Dr Reena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today we're going to talk all about this data on vitamin D in terms of does it increase testosterone now before I get started I just want to remind you guys that I have a free ebook called better sex better life that goes over my top 10 tips to improve your sex life it is completely free so check it out in the description below and would love for you to read it and give me your feedback back so according to a study in 2008 1 billion people in the world suffer from vitamin D deficiency and it's in medicine we know that vitamin D is a risk factor for things like insulin resistance cardiovascular disease infectious disease and autoimmune disease and even increased mortality now even in the male reproductive system there are vitamin D receptors in multiple locations and particular in the ladig cells now these are the cells in the testicles that are responsible for testosterone production they have a gene called zip 2r1 which encodes enzyme 25 hydroxy now this is the enzyme that helps convert choc calciferol into 25 ohd which is a form of vitamin D and so it's hypothesized that if these ladic cells don't work properly it could lead to lower levels of both androgens meaning testosterone or other male hormones as well as vitamin D in the body and in the lab when they look at human lading cells in a uh in a dish exposed to vitamin D they actually change how certain genes related to steroid production are expressed in the lab then leads to a notable increase in the production of testosterone in my studies they've seen that vitamin D improves the functionality of sperm and improves testosterone levels so let's get down to human data in 2019 they published a systematic review looking at eight studies that were randomized controll trials investigating adult men who receive vitamin D supplementation and assess the impact on serum total testosterone or sex hormone binding globulin level in compared to sio now in these eight studies they looked anywhere from 40 to 129 men in each study and in totality they had over a thousand participants now all of these men had a baseline vitamin D level of less than 75 abnormal is somewhere around less than 25 and most of these studies were conducted in Europe this is important because in Europe you're going to get a lot of fair skinned individuals who don't have a ton of sun exposure and so their Baseline vitamin D needs may be different most of them got supplementation called Cola califer all by mouth or orally ranging from 600 units to 4,000 units per day or 60,000 units per week now they followed these guys anywhere from 6 weeks to 144 weeks and they also looked at study quality and risk of bias in the studies using these sort of standardized ways to assess bias and generally they were all good quality except for one that had Fair quality so generally good stud randomized control trials and so the overall effect of vitamin D on total testosterone based on all of these studies was not significant meaning that there was no significant difference even when you looked at subgroups meaning they got vitamin D prescriptions weekly versus daily they had vitamin D for longer versus shorter meaning less than 16 weeks or more than 16 weeks or they got a different dose meaning less than 3,000 units per day or greater than 3 ,000 units per day there was again no significant difference no matter how you sort of slic the data there was no significant impact on testosterone levels or sex hormone binding gulin now again if you're new here I've talked about sex hormone binding gulin before in a previous video but essentially it is a binder it binds testosterone so it's not available to the body for other purposes ultimately this study concludes that vitamin D supplementation doesn't really impact testosterone levels however they do acknowledge that having additional studies looking at vitamin D for a longer period of time in men who have both low levels of testosterone as well as low levels of vitamin D may show different results so another systematic review was conducted in 2020 and they looked at two different groups of men one group of men had vitamin D levels of Baseline below 20 and the other group had greater than 20 and they essentially found 18 studies with nearly 10,000 men so this is a significantly bigger study than that thousand group and they had 10,000 men who had vitamin D deficiency and 10,000 controls and they wanted to assess whether there was a difference in circulating total testosterone levels in these men so this is not like giving supplementation and seeing if there's a difference this is actually looking at Baseline testosterone levels and vitamin D deficiency as I mentioned before is defined by the endocrine Society is having a vitamin D level of below 20 nanog per milliliter and generally all of these studies were considered high quality again except for one that only recruited young men between the ages of 18 to 21 so it was not really generalizable so they also did again a subanalysis and in this sub analysis they called this group frail and so what this group was was men who had over typog gism meaning they had low serum testosterone levels with symptoms men who had chronic spinal cord injury or who were elderly or referred for coronary angiography or essentially Imaging of your heart vessels and lastly men who were recruited from hospitals so they were already hospitalized for some reason and so these all together were taken as men who were frail so in this study they found that in all comers there was a slightly significant difference in terms of men who had low vitamin D also having lower levels of testosterone specifically total testosterone but when they looked at the frail subgroup those those men who had all those conditions that made them less healthy versus men who were not frail they found that that difference was significantly greater meaning men who were frail had even lower levels of testosterone compared to men who were not frail so what does this mean simply it means that men who have low vitamin D levels and low testosterone likely have similar risk factors so if you have chronic medical issues you're more likely to have both vitamin D deficiency as well as low testosterone but this study in and of itself does not confirm that supplementing with vitamin D is going to improve testosterone so another review in 2023 looked at 10 randomized control trial using vitamin D supplementation in terms of looking at testosterone boosting and so the two largest trials reported negative results so they did not see an increase in testosterone compared to those who did not receive vitamin D there was one small study that showed a significant benefit and this was specifically in football players in Eastern Europe during the winter and they had the goal of preventing a vitamin D deficiency due to the lack of sun exposure in the winter and they did see a significant increase in serum testosterone levels of 6.2% in men who received vitamin D versus those who did not however when I look at the totality of the evidence there is essentially no robust scientific evidence that supports that taking vitamin D as a supplement actually increases serum total testosterone now if you have vitamin D deficiency you should be supplementing your vitamin D there's a whole host of benefits in terms of receiving vitamin D and remember vitamin D is important for bone health muscle function immunity and even brain health it's thought to maybe even reduce the risk of more serious issues like heart disease and autoimmune conditions so I highly recommend that you get your vitamin D checked at your primary care doctor to make sure that you are getting an optimal level of vitamin D especially if you don't have a lot of sun exposure your dayto day or if you have darker melanated skin you may need more vitamin D now is Vitamin C safe well there are some adverse effects that have been reported now most of the risks or side effects tend to happen in people who are taking high do long-term supplementation or those in children now that's not to say adverse effects never happen at all according to the American poison control it actually has been reported that the cases of hyp exposure to vitamin D causing adverse effects has nearly doubled and in fact half of those cases about 11,700 cases per year are related to or involving children under the age of five now what are some side effects so one of them is hypercalciuria which is essentially having too much calcium in the urine which is a concern for me as a urologist because it can put you at higher risk for stone disease or kidney stones in one of the trials they saw this hyper calca in anywhere between 4 to 8% of participants now in rare circumstances if you continue to have high levels of calcium not just in your urine but your blood that can lead to kidney damage or even calcification of some of the tissues in your body now this is again very very rare bottom line get your vitamin D levels checked if you're low supplement them make sure to continue check cheing your vitamin D levels because the issue with supplements is sometimes the amount that's in the supplement is significantly higher than what's on the bottle so we want to make sure that you're not getting too much and so continue to monitor that uh but ultimately it's for a multitude of benefits and that may or may not and in this case unlikely to be boosting testosterone hope you guys enjoyed this uh if you are enjoying this make sure you check out my playlist on testosterone boosters I've made a whole host of videos and I've got a couple more to share with you coming up in the next couple weeks as always we going to take care of yourself because you're worth it

Dr.

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