How Vitamin D Changed Hospital Patient Outcomes: An Interview with Dr. Leslie Ray Matthews

Published on August 26, 2024

Learn how vitamin D deficiency can be deadlier and costlier than vitamin D toxicity with this exclusive interview

Listen in to this fun and informative interview with Dr. Leslie Ray Matthews, M.D., FACS, FCCM. Discover some interesting facts about his family and upbringing, and about his experiences with vitamin D in practice as a hospital intensive care doctor and critical care surgeon.

Dr. Matthews’ knowledge of the biochemical and physiological actions of vitamin D within the body, combined with his awareness of the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, prompted him to test vitamin D levels for all patients upon hospital admission and treat them with high doses of vitamin D. This resulted in improved health outcomes, decreased mortality rates, shorter hospital stays, lower healthcare costs, and zero cases of vitamin D toxicity. As he says, “Vitamin D deficiency is deadlier than vitamin D toxicity!”

Dr. Matthews wraps up the interview with key points and important advice that is essential for other health care practitioners to hear, especially if they are interested in keeping their patients healthy. They can make a big difference for their patients, simply by increasing their knowledge of vitamin D and by testing for and treating vitamin D deficiency.

A big thanks to Dr. Matthews for sharing his time and expertise! Listen in, read the key points below, or access the full transcript here.

Watch the Video

Key Points from the Interview

The nutrition advice that Dr. Matthews got in medical school said that enough of all nutrients could be obtained simply by eating 3 healthy meals a day – which is untrue, especially for vitamin D.

Vitamin D deficiency is among all populations; it is the most common nutritional deficiency in the world.

We are meant to get vitamin D from exposing skin to the sun, but most people hide from the sun, stay indoors, use sunscreen or cover up when outside; cloud cover and air pollution also block vitamin D production. The darker the skin, the longer it needs to be exposed to the sun to make the same amount of vitamin D.

Being sick and staying in the hospital automatically meant vitamin D levels were going to decrease; when Dr. Matthews started testing his patients, he found they were all vitamin D deficient, however, African American women had the lowest levels, followed by African American males.

He began to compare mortality rates to vitamin D levels and found that those with the lowest vitamin D levels had the highest mortality rates as well as the highest ICU cost and the longest ICU stay.

Dr. Matthews started supplementing all of his patients with 50,000 IU vitamin D3 per day and noticed a decrease in mortality rate among all of his patients.

Supplementing ICU patients with 50,000 IU vitamin D per day caused the mortality rates between different groups to drop to the same – it eliminated the disparity between racial groups.

“Healthcare disparities are due to physiologic, biologic vitamin D deficiency, not so much as socio-economic factors. And we noticed that the mortality rates of all these different groups that I described you drop to the same. So, most health care disparities are due to their physiologic or biologic vitamin D deficiency, and not so much as socioeconomic factors like the medical community thought.”

Working in the 4th busiest level 1 trauma center in the US, he was able to cut the rate of heart attacks, strokes, falls, pneumonia, overall mortality, readmissions and the length of hospital stay just with vitamin D

There were also zero lawsuits while he was in practice – “Normally you have a malpractice lawsuit in trauma, critical care, surgery every 3,000 cases…. We went 30,000 cases without a lawsuit.”

He wrote a paper on the cost effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation in the ICU, which can be found at
https://journals.lww.com/ccmjournal/citation/2015/12001/1300__economic_impact_of_vitamin_d_levels_less.1303.aspx

He mentioned the importance of understanding how vitamin D works in the body, but because most doctors do not have a deep understanding of this, they don’t understand the need for it

There is no one-size-fits-all dose of vitamin D

Vitamin D controls close to 10% of our DNA, and is especially important for immune cells, immune function, and inflammation regulation

Dr. Matthews is developing a new patent that combines vitamin D, heat shock protein, and glutathione (“the strongest antioxidant on the planet”)

Magnesium is a very important cofactor for vitamin D; Dr. Matthews does not recommend taking calcium with vitamin D since taking more vitamin D will automatically increase the amount of calcium absorbed from the diet

His suggested target level is 50-55 ng/ml, up to 80 ng/ml in special cases, such as with cancer

Vitamin D can also cut the risk of heart attack and could help reverse congestive heart failure by helping the heart pump more efficiently

Dr. Matthews shares several key messages about vitamin D:

Because vitamin D regulates about 10% of your genes, when you’re vitamin D deficient, you have lost some function in your body, so something is not functioning properly… usually the immune system.

There is a need to get enough vitamin D “from the cradle to the grave” starting before conception; checking vitamin D during pregnancy is absolutely vital

Even though he got push back from hospital administrators and even hospital dieticians and nutritionists, he pushed forward with his vitamin D protocol (and shared the research to show that it was safe and effective)

“Vitamin D deficiency is deadlier than vitamin D toxicity”

Research has shown that low vitamin D levels can increase the risk of death

According to Dr. Matthews, vitamin D levels should be checked yearly at least, just like any other routine blood test

“Vitamin D is important for bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic infections, cancer surveillance. So, it does all that. So that’s a gift from God. Actually, I call vitamin D God’s miracle vitamin.”

His message to doctors: Test all patients for vitamin D at admission or first visit!

Measure Your Levels of Vitamin D, Magnesium, and Other Important Nutrients and Markers

Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3s, zinc and other nutrient levels can help improve your health now and for your future. Choose which to measure, such as your vitamin D, omega-3s, and essential minerals including magnesium and zinc, by creating your custom home test kit today. Take steps to improve the status of each of these measurements to benefit your overall health. You can also track your own intakes, symptoms and results to see what works best for YOU.

Enroll and test your levels today, learn what steps to take to improve your status of vitamin D (see below) and other nutrients and blood markers, and take action! By enrolling in the GrassrootsHealth projects, you are not only contributing valuable information to everyone, you are also gaining knowledge about how you could improve your own health through measuring and tracking your nutrient status, and educating yourself on how to improve it.

How Can You Use this Information for YOUR Health?

Having and maintaining healthy vitamin D and other nutrient levels can help improve your health now and for your future. Measuring is the only way to make sure you are getting enough!

STEP 1 Order your at-home blood spot test kit to measure vitamin D and other nutrients of concern to you, such as omega-3s, magnesium, essential and toxic elements (zinc, copper, selenium, lead, cadmium, mercury); include hsCRP as a marker of inflammation or HbA1c for blood sugar health

STEP 2 Answer the online questionnaire as part of the GrassrootsHealth study

STEP 3 Using our educational materials and tools (such as our dose calculators), assess your results to determine if you are in your desired target range or if actions should be taken to get there

STEP 4 After 3-6 months of implementing your changes, re-test to see if you have achieved your target level(s)

Enroll in D*action and Build Your Custom Test Kit!

You may also like

Reducing COVID-19 Risks and Improving Patient Survival – A Summary of Research on Vitamin D, Other Nutrients & Immune Health ICU and Surgical Outcomes Improve with Higher Vitamin D Status Vitamin C Shown to Reduce Length of ICU Stay and Mechanical Ventilation Dr. Patrick McCullough Shares about his Experiences with Vitamin D in Practice