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Episode 3. Vitamin D and Magnesium Part 1
The Nugent Report, the science behind health and nutrition. Welcome to this episode of The Nugent Report, a definitive source for objective information on health and nutrition. Featuring Dr. Steve Nugent, the renowned psychologist, author, public speaker and expert on science, health, wellness and nutrition. Be sure to visit our website at ‘drnugen.com’ and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @TheNugentReport.

Steve Nugent: Hello my friends and welcome to another episode of The Nugent Report. This episode is going to be the first in a series about Vitamin D and Magnesium. Two of the most important nutrients for the 21st century. In these episodes, you're going to learn some things about Vitamin D and Magnesium that you've probably never heard before. In fact, I’m nearly 100% certain of that. The scientific research team led by a scientist named NR Parva states that, Vitamin D deficiency is becoming epidemic in the United States. And if we were to use the same statistical measures and apply it to the nutrient called Magnesium, then we'd have to say the same of Magnesium as well.

Every time a nutrient gets mentioned on TV or in popular media, I pretty much immediately get people contacting me from countries all over the world asking me about that nutrient. For many people, it's the first time they've heard about it or they know very little about it generally. So, they want to know if they should be taking that nutrient that they saw on the popular media. The problem with getting your nutrition information from TV shows and other forms of popular media is that, they're rarely objective. Television shows earn their money through advertisement and the higher the shows are rated, the more money they can charge to their advertisers.

Unfortunately, this means that most media is typically more concerned with ratings than representing information objectively. Journalism students are typically taught the phrase, ‘If it bleeds it leads.’ That's not about facts that's not about objectivity, that's about catching people's attention. Unfortunately, most people are more likely to be captured by extremes than by objectivity. Objective data typically falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum versus one extreme or the other. Simply speaking, objectivity is rarely extreme and sometimes not the best thing for ratings, okay.

Let's talk about Vitamin D and again, this is going to be a series of episodes. Remember, I did promise my subscribers that I would cover all nutrients from A to Z. I didn't promise that I would do it in alphabetical order. So, with Vitamin D in mind, that's where we're going to start. Before a laboratory test became available to practicing physicians, the belief that virtually no one needed to supplement Vitamin D and certainly no one would ever need to supplement more than 400 international units of Vitamin D in a single day. That belief was almost universal.

In fact, physicians were cautioned to avoid giving too much Vitamin D. Because they were told it could become toxic. Well, that's true just about everything can become toxic if you get too much of it. In fact, if you drink too much clean pure water even that could become toxic, but we're talking about ridiculous amounts obviously. So, the 400 IU rule was observed pretty strictly for a very long time for decades. Once physicians began to test people for Vitamin D, that tired old belief was shattered very quickly. To the great surprise of all the physicians that I’ve spoken with, the new blood test was showing very high percentages of people who needed more Vitamin D.

And in fact, physicians were finding that they needed to recommend not hundreds of units, but thousands of international units per week just to get their patients back up to adequate levels. Later on,