Dr. Mary Claire Haver

We only take care of menopause patients.

Most women, due to the aging process, due to different, the microbiome changing across menopause, due to the way we are protecting, rightly so, our skin against the sun for

so we don't get skin cancer.

And if you don't believe sun causes skin cancer, you are listening to the wrong podcast.

You need to move on.

We are deficient in vitamin D.

80% of my patients, when we surveyed the labs, are not just low, deficient in vitamin D. A deficiency means that you are not getting enough vitamin D to reach the basic minimum processes.

Okay, that's different than optimal.

Optimal means you're getting enough for everything to be working at an optimal level.

There's a big gap between I am horribly deficient and I am at an optimal level.

So you should know what your vitamin D level is.

In our clinic, we try to make sure that our patients are reaching a level of 60 to about 100, okay?

Deficiency starts at 30.

The cutoff for deficiency in our labs is 30.

But that's not enough.

We don't want you to just be barely over the line.

We want you to be at an optimal level.

So all of our patients, we are checking a vitamin D level.

If it is low, sometimes we have to give them a prescription amount, which is 50,000 IUs per day.

We'll do that as a loading dose.