Alyson and Dr. Abby Kramer address seasonal affective disorder (SAD) — not just as a clinical diagnosis but as a spectrum that affects nearly everyone who lives through shorter winter days. The root is circadian rhythm disruption: when light exposure drops, so does the synchronization of the biological clock that regulates sleep, mood, energy, and hormones. Understanding this makes the solutions intuitive — get outside for 20–30 minutes in the morning, redesign your evening light environment (dim overhead lights, swap bulbs for red, amber, or candlelight), and use targeted tools to fill in the gaps.
Dr. Abby breaks down the role of melatonin (a symptom indicator, not a sleep fix), the consistent efficacy of SAD lamps for morning light exposure, and why supplementing vitamin D becomes especially critical in winter months. Her target blood level is 40–60+ ng/mL, and she walks through why water-soluble D&K is worth the upgrade. Magnesium glycinate gets a strong recommendation for winter specifically — both for sleep quality and mood support, with Dr. Abby noting she personally doubles her dose in winter months.
The Fringe head wrap closes out the conversation: 20 minutes before bed, delivering red and near-infrared light transcranially to support the glymphatic system’s nightly brain-clearing process. Published research on PBM and depression provides the clinical grounding. This episode is practical, specific, and timely — whether you dread winter or just notice your energy dipping with the daylight.
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Transcript
Alyson: Hello everyone. I'm Dr. Allison and this is Dr. Abby and we're coming to you from the fringe, our podcast where we talk about all the things to make ourselves feel better and live better lives and thrive and today we are going to talk about what a bummer it is that it's so dark in the winter in the majority of this country.
Dr. Abby Kramer: What? Yes.
Alyson: And i'm coming from colorado where we have tons of sun in the day but it still is dark right now at five pm and it really affects you so today we're talking about seasonal depression disorder. want to start this podcast by saying i really don't think you have to be diagnosed with it the amount of people that get diagnosed with it i really feel for them because it's probably a very severe case.
Dr. Abby Kramer: early.
Alyson: Of depression for them in these winter and darker months but i would say for everyone who lives somewhere. In this country where it is dark at five pm and especially in if you're in the northern latitudes the midwest areas where it's dark and gray and you're not able to get sun in the day and then you finish your work day or whatever it may be and it's dark. This podcast is for you.
Dr. Abby Kramer: rough. Yeah. Yep.
Alyson: So yeah, so we're talking about seasonal depression disorder disclaimer. You don't have to be diagnosed with it. You basically just have to feel a little down in the winter, not motivated winter blues. That's it. Yeah. So what is what is it by definition, Abby? And then how do you sort of Abby is still in clinic. So I'm sure you see an influx this time of year of people just saying like.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Winter Blues.
Alyson: I'm in more pain, you know, everything relates to our mental health. They are not separate. Our mental and physical health, everything's worse. Yeah. So, so how do you explain it to patients and, and what are you seeing this time of year?
Dr. Abby Kramer: I see it a lot because I live in Wisconsin and so basically Canada, right? So I mean, when I drive my daughter to school in the morning, right now we barely just started, the sun is rising when I'm driving her to school. But a month ago it was dark, right? And it's dark again at like four, 430, it's pretty wild. And I remember that growing up, I grew up in the Midwest as well.
Alyson: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Abby Kramer: and I was a swimmer and it would be dark when I went to school and dark when I left the school. And you never see the sun, Jim was inside. honestly, yikes. So I mean, our bodies are, How I explain it to patients is our bodies are designed fundamentally to be outside so much more than we actually are. And it really comes down to circadian rhythm health. So overall, even in the summer, people have problems with this, but especially in the winter, we really should be outside seeing the sun during the day. And that helps set our circadian rhythm for nighttime. So it's not really, a lot of people don't think about this, like getting morning sunlight is actually so impactful for your sleep. And if your sleep is off, everything else is off, but you know, we should be getting like UV rays and real sunshine in our eyeballs, even when it's five degrees outside and cloudy, right? We still get. that like light signaling to our body, even if it's overcast, even if it's snowing, being out for even just a few minutes a day is super beneficial. I definitely find my patients with either young children where they like are outside with them more, or even animals, dogs, tend to do better because just it's part of your lifestyle. You've got to take your dog on a walk, like, or kids tend to do a lot better. They've got recess, you know, like my daughter's school, unless it's under 10, they go outside.
Dr. Abby Kramer: for two recesses a day, right? So the children, I think, are faring better getting that natural light. But the data is really just kind of like you were saying, if you feel like you have the winter blues, if you know come fall, especially for a lot of people, daylight savings is usually where a lot of people go downhill. And you just notice like it's a lot of the same keynotes for depression, low energy, lack of motivation, you don't find joy in the same things you usually would find joy in like you all of a sudden you stop doing xyz in the winter time. Low energy, low metabolism, and there's science to that our metabolism does slow down a bit in the winter and that's kind of the way we're designed to be but a lot of people feel like they don't even necessarily change a lot of their habits when they gain 10 pounds every winter. Right? So, and then like you were saying as well, think inflammation just tends to go for people as well. People with joint issues, inflammation, arthritis. You hear this all the time. People are like, I feel it in my bones, right? My pain is worse in the winter. My eczema is worse in the winter. A lot of people just, they're kind of, I don't want to say normal because it's not normal, but quote normal problems tend to be amplified in the winter months. So if that's you and you just don't feel as well, in the winter as you do in the summer, which is true for many people. The good news is there's so much you can do about it and a lot of traditional Western medicine doesn't have great answers other than prescription drugs, know, having to be on medications and so between lifestyle, light therapies, supplementation, you can make a massive impact.
Alyson: Yeah, it's it's a lift, you know, it's it's an effort when what you just described is, you know, a situation within people's bodies where effort becomes even harder. But there is quite a bit that you can do to feel better in these dark and dreary months. So I definitely think we should tackle them something, you know, to help people understand when you talk about circadian rhythms.
Alyson: It's really I think that's maybe a term that people don't understand it it's basically summarizing that our physiology and our biology is really set to the sun. And so inside of us are our hormones are neurotransmitters all the feel good feel bad chemicals inside of us really regulate to the sun so this sort of like.
Alyson: The sun is down the sun rises the sun goes down again when you look at so many of the chemicals that we study in our body they do the exact same thing and it's in response. To essentially the sun so if you don't have that signaling when you wake up in the morning. And it's dark you right off the bat or like your body's like what's happening here because we are designed to sort of wake and rise with the sun. and then you know as our.
Alyson: Bodies are waking and our energy starts to increase were supposed to be receiving all this bright blue light from the sunlight that energizes us it brings our cortisol levels up which are good we need cortisol not just too much of it or excessive it but we need it to be energized and to be productive throughout the day and then our bodies really. The one of the more powerful signal going for our bodies is the disappearance of light.
Alyson: or the arrival of darkness because darkness signals melatonin, which is that hormone in our body to sort of relax us and get us in a sleepy state. So when you think of the fact that for some people, like you said, wake up dark, drive in dark, inside all day, basically, yeah, go home dark, never see real light, your physiology, all those feel good, feel bad hormones are all like, what is going on?
Alyson: You know what's happening inside of me so let's start with a conversation about light and it's comical to say because the best advice to everybody is that they wake up that they go outside that they get twenty to thirty minutes of natural light every single morning in through their eyes no sunglasses. You know it'd be great if you pair it with a walk or whatever it may be but at the end of the day you are not through your windows. actually outside. I know that you're not doing that this time of year in Wisconsin. It's sunny here and I don't do that any morning. I have things to do.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yeah, and I think this is important to talk about because at least in my bubble in the holistic, crunchy world, right? Everyone's like, here's my perfect life. I'm my homestead with my homemade cheese and I'm stepping outside barefoot with my goats with the sunrise every day. Like, no. For the majority of people, it's just not realistic.
Alyson: Bright.
Dr. Abby Kramer: If that is you, that's amazing. But you know what? When the real feel is negative four, I'm not going outside with the sunrise. It's not happening.
Alyson: Yes, yeah, yeah. And I think the compromise there is, okay, there's going to be people where it is actually just too cold. They're not going to be outside. Maybe they have little kids or whatever. I don't do it first thing. I've so many things to go do, but I do try to walk my dogs sometime before noon and get that 20, 30 minutes, or probably outside 30 to 45 minutes of bright.
Alyson: Natural sunlight so that's my compromise but if you're in a scenario where for a few months that's really hard to do there are. Things that you can do to supplement like people they actually have names for them they call them sad lights seasonal effective disorder lights but at the end of the day basically people try to simulate that bright bright bright sunlight.
Alyson: In their homes in the day so if you read all the research on seasonal affective disorder. You know this sort of state of sort of depressed. Way of feeling. You can go get a sad lamp you can go get a really it's a bright white lamp it's super bright you sit in front of it and you basically just. It's really intense and you basically blast yourself with bright light so that is a way to tackle these hard months we obviously we don't.
Alyson: make at fringe those bright white lights you can buy them on amazon or or wherever and i think for some people they they really help we try to talk more about. of these natural wavelengths of light we receive from the sun like in the morning with sunrise this red and near infrared and then in the evening with you know sunset this red and near infrared so how are you. Talking to your patients maybe just about like lighting in their home and what you want them to be doing to try and. make a couple changes to their lighting environment.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yeah. it's like you said, I think, man, it's such, you get such a big bang for your buck and it's really, it can be a very affordable change to make for people. And it's, you know, not sexy. It's not some like fun new, you know, crazy vibration plate you need to buy. It's like changing your lighting environment. So you can go all the way, like the cheapest, easiest way to start. is at the beginning of the day, that period where it's still dark, maybe like a little bit of sunrise, at both bookends of the day, you wanna keep your lighting as low as possible. That can be just dimming your lights. That can be using candles instead of these bright overhead LEDs that everyone has in their home now, right? No one has those soft, glowy lights anymore, but I do think there's a big movement back to that.
Dr. Abby Kramer: You can do like salt lamps instead. You can even buy like LED little fake candles that are more orangey. Like that's going to help all the way to there's some companies out there that make really, really healthy lighting for your home that are in like good healing wavelengths of light that are no flicker, that are low EMF. You know, that's kind of the top tier, but even if you don't have those lights right now, you can just start having really low lighting. Like I have a lot of lamps in my house. I don't like the overhead bright strips LEDs and we like dim everything and then my ultimate favorite is you know, of course I have one a lot of my patients have a red light therapy panel okay, so I tell my patients you want to have that sucker in like your main living area on the ground and have it on like the first hour you're awake an hour to before bed. Makes a really really big difference for people because that's how
Dr. Abby Kramer: we're designed to see, you know, sunrise, sunset, right? Like higher red, it doesn't disrupt your circadian health. So, and they're really quite bright. I don't know if you guys could like kind of tell from that visual, but that panel lights up our entire family room area. No problem. You really don't need much else. So, and we did like, I have red bulbs in our bedrooms, in our nightstands. So, but there's companies that make ones that can switch from like, blue to red to amber based on the time of day. So the really nice thing is there is like we've been talking about, this should be like an empowering conversation, not a doomsday. We're all dying from LEDs. Like now we just have an awareness of why we feel so crappy in the winter. And there's so many easy things we can change to shift that.
Alyson: Right. So basically in the day, absolutely everyone's working. We do work in some harsh lighting environments. If you can change your lighting in the day to be more natural lighting, it's really great for you. But basically in the evening, dimming your space because like what I said, when we started this podcast, the absence of light or that sun going down is what signals the release of melatonin in our body, which is our rest hormone.
Alyson: and a lot of people supplement melatonin. So let's unpack that because I would think a lot of people get into these winter months, their sleep gets super disrupted because they're in dark all day, and then they're popping melatonin gummies left, right, and center, whereas light can actually be and is what's designed to be what stimulates that melatonin release.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yep. Yeah, mean, true light deficiency is really the root cause of people needing melatonin, right? So I just did a post about this, about how melatonin isn't fixing your sleep. If you need it, it's actually showing you what's wrong. If you have sleep problems and melatonin doesn't help you, then your circadian clock is probably pretty well established. But sun goes down, cortisol lowers. That is what allows melatonin to rise. So if your house is lit up bright blue like it's 2 p.m., you don't stand a chance. There's no way, right? And then that commonly shows up at least for my patients as they often explain feeling wired and tired at night. So they're physically exhausted, but their brain is going, going, going. They could like.
Alyson: No cortisol stays high. Yep, yep.
Dr. Abby Kramer: plow through emails at 930. Like that's so not normal, especially when it gets dark at 430. So your body thinks it's, you know, after lunch and it's time to get ready for bed. And it's really hard to fight that. And so then of course that person, I would much rather have them taking melatonin than like a sleep aid, right? Or like Nyquil. But what that really just means is what we've just said. You need to get outside earlier in the day, throughout the day, in a five minute break on your lunch.
Dr. Abby Kramer: get your eyeballs on the sun, right? And dim lights as the sun goes down, just make your indoor environment in alignment with the outdoor environment. And very quickly people see a difference and then they usually can wean off melatonin completely.
Alyson: Which is, it's important, like that conversation about melatonin is a hormone that our body makes. And so when you supplement it, your body is like, what are you doing? I'm making this.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yeah, correct. It's what's called a negative feedback loop. So if you are stuck taking melatonin, I really feel for you because it is kind of like a catch 22 that it can work really well and your body has then shut off making it on its own because it's present in your system from your supplement. Right? So my goal with patients is always to get them off melatonin, eventually. It doesn't have to be like a cold turkey situation where then you don't sleep. But, you know, there's good data on melatonin supplementation for other things, but for sleep support, it's more just showing you where the cracks are.
Alyson: Yes, for sure. Okay, so to summarize, for me, my whole house just glows. I don't know what the neighbors think and I don't care, everybody. This house glows a nice amber-y red in the evenings. You walk in here and you may need to adjust a little bit because there isn't bright lights anywhere. I do change my light bulbs. I have incandescents. They have a low, like, glow to them.
Alyson: I have those over my kitchen island, which is the busiest place.
Dr. Abby Kramer: And tell people too, when you switched to that, you immediately feel different. It's nuts.
Alyson: Yeah. You immediately feel different. It's so for your kids, for you and your family members in your home, just saying, OK, I'm going to try and make, if you have one, some sort of panel, use it to illuminate the room that everybody's kind of hanging out in after dinner. It's after the sun goes down, low and dim lighting in your house. The panels are a red wavelength of light that we do receive through our retina in our eyes and have a lot of effects on our physiology. But it's just it's so important for me to then honestly say to that that darkness, lack of sunlight is so important for our bodies too, so don't take it like i have to have a red light panel to illuminate my home. Nope.
Alyson: That's not the message here the messages that bright light in the day needs to be natural in the evenings our environments need to be dim. And low, you know, orange-y, red-y environments if they can be. If not, like you said, just dimming your lights, keeping the darkness there so the body isn't confused in the evening. So that's a summary on light. I would say the panel for us, a lot of people use it on their body which can have a lot of benefits for depression as well too. You can sit 10 to 12 inches from it and just take light in all through basically like a third of my body. I do eyes closed just because it's so bright and I just do that.
Dr. Abby Kramer: And you do eyes closed. Correct.
Alyson: As a session which also is helpful for depression. So just switching from my home environment, how does that affect things? Also there's a lot of things you can do for your body to make you feel good. Before we talk about the internal environment and talk a little bit about the lack of sunlight and that effect on vitamin D levels, let's talk about magnesium because I know that you recommend that for a lot of your patients who are dependent on melatonin, wanting to improve their sleep, depressed, all this sort of stuff.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Magnesium, man, it's probably up there in my top three supplements that everyone should take every day for a million reasons. This being one of them. It's such a low lift, big bang for your buck, relatively inexpensive. You know, if you struggle with stress, sleep, you want to address heart health, inflammation levels, muscle tension, like magnesium, headaches, I could go on and on. But magnesium...
Dr. Abby Kramer: is really effective at helping to calm. And so, I mean, there's a reason so many people, it's like been a trend for a couple years now on TikTok, like magnesium cocktail before bed, right? There's a reason because it's super effective for a lot of people. And magnesium also helps lower cortisol. which we were talking about earlier. So many people, I do a lot of hormonal and cortisol testing in my practice and so many people are high cortisol at night. when you do a cortisol map test, which kind of maps your cortisol throughout the daytime hours, right? A lot of people get a spike at night. In my opinion, that's hugely due to light environment, right? So nighttime, body doesn't know what time it is. You're looking at, you know, blue light right here in your face. Hi, right? Anyone here that feels like they get a second wind, like, at 9 p.m., I'm like ready to go again at 7:45, I'm exhausted, but then I get a second wind, that's a cortisol spike. Magnesium is super powerful at lowering that cortisol. Thus, in a roundabout way, magnesium can also help melatonin, which we were saying. But I also really love one of the forms of magnesium in our product is magnesium glycinate. And glycinate specifically, glycine, is very effective at calming the mind. So especially if you're the type of person where you're tired, but your brain won't shut off at night, you lay down and you're like making lists in your head and thinking about the day or the next day and just can't shut your brain off, magnesium could really help that come down. So I love to have my patients take it, you know, after dinner, an hour or two before bed, somewhere in that window, just part of their kind of nighttime routine. And it really is helpful.
Alyson: Would you say for patients that sort of are in the winter blues, seasonal affective disorder, are they taking more magnesium than normal or just normal amounts?
Dr. Abby Kramer: That's a good question. I would say more the people that struggle with a specific symptom would take more. So a good example would be people with more pain and inflammation during the winter. People that get a real bad second wind and can't sleep. People that are more stressed out, more anxious in the winter. But I would always tell people first start out with like one dose a day at night and see. If that does it for you, but if you feel like you take magnesium and it does great and you don't feel like it works as well in the winter, then you certainly could double up on the magnesium you're taking, especially if it's one like ours that doesn't disrupt the gut and have any negative digestive effects.
Alyson: Yes. Yeah. I'm doing two scoops right now. And that's new for me, doing a scoop in the morning, always do a scoop at night, but doing a scoop in the morning, just to see if it helps with some of the inflammation, that sort of stuff, you know, that happens more this time of year for me, plus just hormone stuff as well. Okay, so vitamin D. So if you pull up seasonal affective disorder, and you read about it, and you read the research, yes, there's a lot of pharmaceuticals that are prescribed, a lot of antidepressants. Basically, that's first line of defense. If you go in, doc, I'm really feeling down, like here's all my symptoms, you'll more than likely be prescribed antidepressants. We've talked about light, we've talked about magnesium as two really incredible approaches to help with some of the symptoms. But the interesting thing is starting to look at vitamin D, which we talk about a lot.
Alyson: how we're so deficient in light and what those effects are on our circadian rhythm. But the effect on our vitamin D status and the impact of that on more than just being able to fight the average cold and flu is staggering. So talk about vitamin D, mental health, physical health, like the whole picture.
Dr. Abby Kramer: I mean most people realize this because they notice, they just feel a better mood in the summer. Or even like today, the sun's out. I was outside with my dogs, it's like 30 degrees, I'm like, it's amazing, I wanna stay outside, right? you just, I mean, some people are now classifying vitamin D as more like a hormone. It's like one of the happy hormones, right? And we make it naturally from the sun. So like how we were just talking about, then in the winter, we especially don't see the sun. You like don't stand a chance at making vitamin D, which kind of like magnesium is so foundational for so many effects in the body. But I mean, I could go on all day about patients that actually I think don't really have seasonal depression. They just have extreme vitamin D deficiency.
Dr. Abby Kramer: I've seen people in the single digits. For reference, I want people between usually 40 to 80. 60 is like a great target in my practice and I've seen people at like eight. The majority of people I test, even in the summer, are under 20. I mean, it's shocking. And they will, most Western medical doctors won't even test their vitamin D because they tell them it doesn't matter. Even if they will, the scale, the normal range for vitamin D is between 30 and 80. That's such a massive range. So patients test and they're like 27. They're told, ah, you're fine. You're close enough. And I'm like, oh my gosh, at 27, you probably have pain. You're probably inflamed. You probably feel depressed or anxious. And they're like, yep, yep, yep, yep. You probably get sick all the time. Like it's such an easy fix. It makes me so mad that basics like this are missed.
Dr. Abby Kramer: And they're told to go on medication. And it's like, let's just get your vitamin D up and see how you feel. So I've had, I just had a patient, kind of the perfect storm postpartum, baby blues plus winter blues, really not feeling well, considering medication. Her doctor of course said blood work isn't important. She doesn't need it. So we drew labs. Her vitamin D was like 13. I put her on a higher dose and in like a week, she was better. So it's just so impactful. So I always tell people start there, you know, because a lot of people for whatever reason, light environment, not being outside enough, genetics, they just don't absorb vitamin D well and especially in the winter.
Dr. Abby Kramer: It's such a no-brainer to get your levels checked. And a lot of people need to take two or three times their normal dosage in the winter to maintain a healthy level. There's a genetic thing, it's called a SNP, it's like a blip in your genes if you want to look at it that way, that makes it so it's really hard for you to absorb vitamin D and to get your levels higher. A ton of people have it. A lot of people don't know they have it. I'm this case, so I have to supplement vitamin D year round. Even in the summer, I would be under 30. It doesn't matter if I was at a soccer tournament all day long. It doesn't matter. I just run low. And so I always encourage people, we say this at Fringe, like once a year, at least get your vitamin D levels checked. You can now just go get that yourself at most lab companies. It's a benign test, and see where you're at, because then you can really customize your dosage for your physiology.
Alyson: Right? Yes, because you can take too much vitamin D. So here's an important fact, because we get asked this all the time. We make vitamin D in our bodies through the absorption of UVB light. None of the red light therapy products you buy in anyone's markets have UVB light. There's very few products that have UVB light in them, but your tanning salon does.
Alyson: So we make vitamin D in our body from the absorption of UVB light on our skin. Think of your environment — not through clothing, not through sunscreen, not through your windows. So if I even think of myself in the summer, I don't want to burn, so I protect and try to avoid midday sun and just wear hats or covering or whatever. But in no way or form am I getting hours a day of sunlight through the majority of skin on my body. And I don't think most people are. The lifeguards, power to you, you probably are. So I do think you're right. Some people in the summer, they don't need to supplement vitamin D. They get enough light exposure. Their genes are right. But for the rest of us, it's pretty hard to get that much UVB exposure.
Alyson: Which is why we talk, when we started making supplements, I said to you, as the worst supplement taker possibly in America of all time, I said, okay, I think this is gonna be a great pair because you and our scientific director, Jen, are so knowledgeable and so good at this stuff and you guys would like drink mud if it was good for you. I'm not drinking mud.
Alyson: I need it to taste good. I need it to be easy to do. And I hate pills. So Fringe, owned by the worst supplement taker in America, now has to create a good balance. And so I said to you and Jen, I said, what I want is a very honest account as to what we tell people is actually essential to take. There is so much we can take that helps us. I want a company to be honest about what you actually need to take because you cannot get it every day from the environment we live in. And yes, there are some exceptions to the rule with some people with vitamin D and some exceptions to seasonality. But for the most part, for most people, supplementing vitamin D is essential.
Alyson: Then we went down this road of making vitamin D. And I do think talking about vitamin D for seasonal affective disorder is so important. It should be foundational that if you are feeling down in these dark months, that you go test your vitamin D levels, and you understand — ask your doctor, can you please check my vitamin D levels? They're 27. You know what? I'd like that to be 50 or 60 or 70. And then you start taking vitamin D. So then you go to Walgreens and you stand there and you look at the sea of vitamin D and what do people need to know, Abby?
Dr. Abby Kramer: They all suck. Turn around and walk out the door. Because this is the other thing I have seen over and over and over again in 10 years is that many of the people with the vitamin D of 27 are actually taking vitamin D every single day, but they're taking a poorly absorbed form and they're taking a dose that is way too low, that it will never raise their levels. So most if you guys go in Walgreens, even Whole Foods, I'd say the standard over the counter vitamin D supplement is around 1000 to 1500 IUs. And they'll say that's the daily recommended dose, right? One capsule, one squirt of your tincture, you get your 1000 IUs.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Most people need 4,000 IUs a day to even maintain their levels. So that's not even to raise them. right? And let alone raise them quickly. So it can take quite a bit of time. In my practice, I will put patients on a very high dose for a few weeks, and then retest their labs to move the needle so that in a week or two, they're feeling better, right? So 1000 to 2000 IUs is just not going to do that for most people. Which is why most higher quality vitamin D supplements you will see, the average dose is gonna be around 5,000 IUs in a capsule, in a scoop, in your daily dose, and it needs to also be, for the people listening, vitamin D3, which is the active form of vitamin D.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Many Western medical doctors actually prescribe prescription strength vitamin D that you have to get from the pharmacy. And it's vitamin D2, which is the inactive form. So people will be taking like 20,000 IUs of vitamin D2. Their levels are still low. It's like, yeah, because you don't absorb it well. It's not the active form.
Alyson: And so, so there's the form of the D. There's also what it's paired with, which can you talk about, and then we'll talk about the delivery oil versus what we went and did.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yes. So most super high quality vitamin D products are also paired with vitamin K, specifically vitamin K2. So a lot of people get that confused and are like, doesn't that give you bleeding disorders or whatever, because they've heard of K1. That is kind of responsible for that and blood clotting and all of that. Vitamin K2, it's actually not really for the absorption of vitamin D, but it's really important that D and K go together. Think of them like superhero sidekicks, right? So what D does when it gets into our system is it frees up a bunch of calcium. If you do not have enough vitamin K2, which, spoiler alert, you don't — it's in really weird foods we don't eat enough of. Much like vitamin D, much like magnesium, most people are deficient in K2. K2 is really, really cool. It goes and scavenges all this free calcium in our tissues and puts it back where it needs to go, which is the bones and the teeth. So there are studies on K2 and osteoporosis. It's amazing. It's amazing for heart health. There's studies on athletes supplementing K2 and their aerobic capacity increases as if they were training in altitude just from supplementing K2. It's so cool. So D3 and K2 should go together, especially for that calcium regulation.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Because if we have a bunch of free calcium floating around in our system, which so many of our foods are fortified with calcium, it can stick to the arteries and then plaque sticks to that causing atherosclerosis. It can cause stones. A lot of people have kidney stones, bladder stones. It just builds up in places it shouldn't go because you don't have the vitamin K2. So especially if you are taking a higher dose vitamin D in isolation without K2, you want to pair those together so you don't end up with issues down the road.
Alyson: Correct. And then for me, who was taking 5,000 IUs of vitamin D regularly as like a general daily dose, but taking it in an oil format. There's actually nothing wrong with it in an oil format. You just need to know the nuances of the fact that when we take any supplement, not just vitamin D, any supplement in an oil format, the absorption into our small intestine is really reduced. It's affected by what we're eating when we take the supplement and just the fact that oils are very poorly absorbed.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yeah, it still works. You just need more.
Alyson: We dove into that. We knew quite a bit about making water soluble supplements at the time. I was super excited because my vitamin D was in a capsule and I'm the worst pill taker in the world. So we went down the road of making a vitamin D K supplement that's in a powder that people can take 5,000 IUs and actually get 5,000 IUs, which is really important. They don't have to take as much of our supplement to feel the benefit of supplementing vitamin D.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yes, and I feel like a huge benefit of it as well is because so many people don't eat breakfast, right? They're running out the door, whatever. Vitamin D and vitamin K are fat soluble vitamins, meaning they're oils. Meaning in order to absorb them, you have to eat something with fat in it, which a lot of people don't. Either they're having a quick smoothie or they're not eating till 11, but what are they doing? You wake up, you take your supplements, you run out the door. And so then that's also working against you to absorb the vitamin D. Right? So you need to do the food or your kids are picky. They don't want breakfast that day. It's kind of a mess, right? So you're just doing your best to get it in them. But it's so poorly absorbed when it's in an oil format. And that's what I've seen with patients on oils. They'll have to take 20, 30, 40, 50,000 IUs to really get their levels up because also how many people's guts don't absorb things well? They have gut issues, they have leaky gut, they have low enzyme load. So this just makes it so easy and takes the work off of your body too. It's completely flavorless. I have moms that sprinkle it on their kids' oatmeal in the morning and they eat it, right? But you can put it in water, a smoothie, juice, whatever you want. It's so easy.
Alyson: Yeah. Yeah, if everyone else out there is just a normal person trying to navigate feeling better and living on this earth, I'm with you. Send me an email. So if it's easy to do and easy to integrate, you know that we're going to try to have it be a part of products that we offer. Okay. So I think that that's amazing. Change your lighting.
Alyson: Look at what you're doing to support your sleep. Consider looking at melatonin and what you're doing. Magnesium, foundational and so important. Vitamin D, really, really critical for how you feel during these winter blues. There's one thing that we forgot to talk about and we'll close out our talk today on it, which is the Fringe head wrap. This is designed to deliver red and near infrared light into your brain. And there is definitely some really great information out there about depression, severe depression, studying and looking at red and near, mainly near infrared light absorbed into the brain to help with inflammation in the brain.
Alyson: And then also the brain's ability to kind of rid itself of toxic buildup or waste. So utilizing this hat, this head wrap, and actually utilizing it at night before you go to bed. So doing your 20 minute session before you go to bed at night. When you sleep, that's when your brain washes itself. It's when a lot of your body washes itself, but especially your brain at night.
Alyson: That's when there's a system in your brain called the glymphatic system. It's basically like the lymphatic system in our body, but for our brains. And it washes your brain and gets rid of any sort of gunk that's built up in there throughout the day. We've had some incredible testimonies of people with mental health and other mental health struggles utilizing this before bed. So seasonal affective disorder, lighting in your house, magnesium, vitamin D K, and then also looking at treating your brain with some light.
Dr. Abby Kramer: The last thing I would add, for a lot of my patients, I think it's almost like a constitutional thing you're born with if you're just really struggling with the cold winter. Honestly, I like prescribe them — you have to go on a vacation somewhere warm. Like it makes a real difference. If they know in February, I'm going to Florida for a long weekend or whatever, it honestly makes a big difference. It's really underrated. Get somewhere where there's more sunshine and where you can have some time off. That can really boost your vitamin D levels really fast if you're somewhere outside that's warm for a bit.
Alyson: Right. So now we've prescribed you a vacation as well, which is really important. I will say, you know, like you said today, it's 30 degrees and you got outside. It's not the easiest thing to force yourself outside when it's super cold. But I do it for the dogs. I just thank them in the process because there I am, out there, and I'm like, oh my God.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Yeah, it's helping you too.
Alyson: I'm also not the person who's like, ooh, I am really enjoying this. Walking these dogs in the freezing cold, you know, it's like, I'm like, wow, this is extremely cold. And I'm head to toe geared up, but you know, the more we push ourselves to do things like that, the easier it becomes.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Listen, our ancestors were still having to be outside regardless of the weather. Like, it's not fun, but they were out there and it helped their bodies in a lot of ways.
Alyson: Anyway, thank you for listening with us today talking about the winter blues. They're almost over guys. Sun's setting here now like 5:30, which seems celebratory because it was 4:30 about three weeks ago. And I think the seasons are extremely healthy for us. So for our southern neighbors who don't know the struggle that we're on up here, we're just going to come vacation where you guys live all year.
Dr. Abby Kramer: We got more grit. Yes.
Alyson: Yes, but we're tougher. We're tougher than you. Just kidding. OK, thanks for joining us, everybody. Bye bye.
Dr. Abby Kramer: Bye.
