Can vitamin D make you a bigger, faster, stronger athlete?? This is a cool subject and it might just help spread the word about the importance of knowing your vitamin D level.

I’ve always been a fitness nut and sports fan. I’ve coached a ton of baseball in the past 8 years, so I’m always curious about ways to help my players become better athletes and or heal from their injuries. I also specialize in treating sports injuries with acupuncture, so I guess you could say it’s “my thing” (or at least one of them). read on………

Let’s take a look at a piece of the Q and A from the new issue of the Vitamin D councils April newsletter…

Dear Dr. Cannell:
After reading your previous newsletter, I looked for and found a definite correlation between the average UV radiation in a state and the number of quality athletes the state produces per million population. Hawaii is way in front and the southern states way ahead of northern states. I’ve also found a correlation of multiple super bowl appearances/wins with team geographic UV radiation. I’ve also found a correlation between the per capita number of PGA golfers (with most annual wins) and UV radiation (not published yet). Thought you might find my website of interest: Sunshine and Peak Performance.

Tonis, Greensboro, NC

Dear Tonis:
Good work. And once again, the first reference in the world’s literature that vitamin D will help athletes was published by this newsletter. Can you imagine what will happen in professional sports when athletes realize that vitamin D improves their speed, strength, timing and quickness?

John Jacob Cannell MD

That’s the end of the piece from the April news letter, so I went to dig up more info that Dr. Cannell refers to. It’s from the Vitamin D Council’s March 2007 newsletter. you can read the whole thing here, but I’ve pasted the summary below.

In Summary (John Jacob Cannell MD)
Five converging—but totally separate—lines of scientific evidence leave little doubt that vitamin D improves athletic performance. There is actually a sixth line of evidence that i left out due to its complexity: the two studies I found on muscle strength and vitamin D receptor polymorphisms (genetic variations), both were positive. Anyway, the scientific evidence that UVB radiation, either from the sun or a sunbed, will improve athletic performance is overwhelming and the mechanism is almost certainly vitamin D production. Peak athletic performance will probably occur with 25OHD levels of about 50 ng/mL, a level that can be obtained through the use of supplements as well.

All that is missing is a big time professional or college team identifying, and then treating, their elite athletes who are vitamin D deficient. Can you imagine what such performance enhancing effects would do for basketball players, the majority of which are black and practice and play indoors all winter? Or gymnasts? Weight lifters? Can you imagine what it might do for those chronic neuromuscular injuries which are so common in sports medicine?

A word of caution, though. The above studies suggest that taking too much vitamin D (more than 5,000 IU/day) may actually worsen athletic performance. So take the right amount, not all you can swallow. Take enough to keep your 25 hydroxyvitamin D levels around 50 ng/mL, year round. Easier yet, regularly use the sun in the summer and a sun bed (once a week should be about right) in the winter—with care not to burn.

When you think about it, none of this should surprise anyone. Every bodybuilder knows that steroid hormones can improve athletic performance and they certainly increase muscle mass. Barry Bonds knows they increase timing and power. Activated vitamin D is as potent a steroid hormone as exists in the human body. However, unlike other steroids, levels of activated vitamin D in muscle and nerve tissue are primarily regulated by sun exposure. That’s right, the rate limiting step for the autocrine function of activated vitamin D is under your control and depends on how much daily vitamin D you receive. It’s ironic that many athletes now avoid the sun. Organized baseball is even promoting sun avoidance and sunblocks. The ancient Greeks knew better; they had their elite athletes train on the beach and in the nude.

So the level of vitamin D (50 ng/mL) associated with peak athletic performance is the very same level that recent studies show also helps to prevent cancer, diabetes, hypertension, influenza, multiple sclerosis, major depression, cognitive decline, etc. But who cares about all that disease stuff old people get! We’re talking about important stuff here: speed, balance, reaction time, muscle mass and strength, squats, reps. As for my young basketball player, guess who’s now taking 4,000 IU vitamin D a day? That’s right! And his 25?hydroxyvitamin D level is now 54 ng/mL. Has this improved his game? Well…he said to me he feels his timing is better, can jump a little higher, run faster and…oh yeah! and that the ball feels “sweeter”—whatever that means.

John Jacob Cannell MD Executive Director

So there you have it. Pretty interesting stuff wouldn’t you say? Based on this information, evaluating your vitamin D level and maintaining it in the 50-65 ng/mL part of the range seems like a reasonable thing to do if you’re an athlete trying to improve your game. I’d be curious to know if anyone hears any buzz about this in sports circles out there!