What Dr. Martin saw low, again and again
Ask him what a woman at 65 should take and he does not start with a list of twenty bottles. He starts with what actually came back low on the blood work in front of him, for decades.
Dr. Martin on what he kept finding:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 988Here's what I used to see in my office without fail, consistently three things.
Low vitamin D. Low B12. Low magnesium. Those three, over and over, in patient after patient.
He is talking in that passage about atrial fibrillation, where the heart's electrical grid goes out of whack, and the pattern he saw in those cases was the same three plus low CoQ10, which he says you get from steak. But the three are the three regardless of what brought the person in.
That is why this is a short list. It is not a theory about what an older body might need. It is what he found missing.
Vitamin D, the one he never moved on
Fifty years of practice and plenty of changed minds along the way. Vitamin D is not one of them.
His frame for it is the one he has used for years. You are a human solar panel. Solar panels only work when the sun is up. You have them on your arms and your legs, and he says those are the best ones, and you have them in your brain and even in your eyes.
The best way to get it is the sun, no doubt about it, and that is the setting for the line people quote at him.
Dr. Martin on getting it from the sun:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 988Your body will never overdose on vitamin D ever.
Read what he says next, because it is the whole meaning of that sentence. If you get it from the sun you can burn, but you are not going to get too much vitamin D from it. Your body tops itself off and that is the end of it, about twenty minutes, arms and legs. He is talking about sunshine there, not about what is in a bottle.
Which becomes a problem in the winter. That is the season that turns vitamin D from a sunshine question into a supplement question, and for a woman at 65 in the northern half of the world, that is most of the year.
He also ties it back to the blood vessels. Sitting in the sun raises nitric oxide, he says, which opens the vessels up. That is part of why people feel better in it.
What optimised actually meant on his blood tests
He does not say adequate. He says optimised, and he had a number he was working towards.
For his patients in the United States he wanted a blood level over 60. The scale is different in other countries, so the figure looks different depending on where the lab is. And this was his practice preference, not a published guideline.
When a patient got there he was satisfied their immune system was at the top of its game, out fighting cancer and fighting inflammation, because he treats vitamin D as an anti-inflammatory from head to toe.
Then the brain, and a study he brings up in the same breath.
Dr. Martin on the brain:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 988The higher your vitamin D levels are, your blood serum vitamin D levels are the better.
You have a solar panel in the brain too, is how he puts it.
Is there such a thing as too much vitamin D
This is the question that gets asked in every comment section, and he answers it without dodging.
Dr. Martin on toxicity:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 988But can I be honest with you, I've never seen a lot of vitamin D toxicity.
He knows it is written up. He has read the side effect lists. His point is that when you look at it statistically it is almost non-existent compared to how often he found the opposite problem.
And he puts the guardrail on himself in the same passage, so it belongs here too. He is not telling anyone to blow a gasket taking high, high vitamin D and push their numbers to something crazy. High levels do turn up in people, he says, particularly people on medications. What he is arguing for is optimised, not extreme.
B12, and why it travels with vitamin D
The second of the three almost never showed up alone.
Dr. Martin on what he found in memory cases:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 988When I used to see patients with dementia, we'd often find vitamin D deficiencies often oftentimes find B12 deficiencies.
Those two go together, he says. They really go together. Almost everything vitamin D does, B12 does too.
For a woman at 65 that pairing matters more than it did at 45, because the things that drain B12 stack up with age. Less stomach acid, more medication, less red meat. That is its own story, and he tells it in why people are so low in B12.
Magnesium, the quiet third one
Magnesium gets the least airtime of the three and he still puts it on the list without hesitating. It was there in the atrial fibrillation cases, alongside the low vitamin D and the low B12, in a rhythm problem he describes as the heart's grid getting out of whack.
It is the quiet one because low magnesium rarely announces itself as one obvious symptom. It sits underneath sleep, muscles and rhythm, and it was simply, consistently, low in the people he tested.
What this does not mean
Three things, so that nothing here gets stretched past what he said.
None of this replaces food. He is the man whose book is called Sun, Steak and Steel, and the first two of his three come from sunshine and red meat before they come from a bottle.
None of this is a dose. He names what was low and what he wanted the blood level to be. He does not hand out amounts on a podcast, and neither will we.
And none of it is a reason to change a prescription. If you are on medication, or you have a condition being managed, the practitioner who knows your history is the person to talk to before you add anything.
Common questions
What supplements should a 65 year old woman take?
Dr. Martin's short list is the three he says came back low in his office without fail: vitamin D, B12 and magnesium. He starts there rather than with a long shelf of bottles.
Why does he rate vitamin D so highly?
He calls it the one he never changed his mind on in fifty years, and describes the body as a human solar panel. He wants it from the sun first, and treats it as a supplement question in winter.
What vitamin D level did he want?
For his patients in the United States he wanted a blood level over 60. He is clear that is his own practice preference and not a published guideline, and the scale differs by country.
Can you take too much vitamin D?
He says he rarely saw toxicity and calls it almost non-existent statistically, while saying plainly that he is not telling anyone to take extreme doses. High levels do happen. That is a conversation with your practitioner.
Read next: Should A Woman Over 60 Take Creatine? and B12 Deficiency Symptoms In Women Over 60.
Two of his three, from the clinic shop
The clinic shop carries two of the three he names here: a sublingual Vitamin B12 and Magnesium Bisglycinate. Vitamin D he wants you getting from the sun first.
60-day money-back guarantee. Talk to your own practitioner before adding anything, especially if you take medication. Nothing here is a dose recommendation.These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult your healthcare practitioner before starting a new supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition.
