Vitamin D Expert: The Supplement World Is Giving The WRONG Advice!

We’ve been taught the wrong things about vitamins, and if you do not know what you’re doing, they can be as risky as any drug. Taking vitamin D is not the same as getting sun, and when D is low, the brain can literally lose the knack for sleep.

Billions struggle with sleep, yet most advice is behavioral, which fails the people I see. My work led me to indoor living, vitamin gaps, the microbiome, and the fact that vitamin D is actually a hormone.

Before we dive in, please hit follow so our best episodes reach you. For those just joining, what will they gain from this conversation, and how will it help their lives?

A new lens on why sleep and health break down, and a nudge to check if their brain chemistry for sleep is on track.

You trained at Harvard and Stanford, then fell in love with sleep. How broad is your experience with patients and symptoms?

I’ve worked with thousands in practice and coaching, building a stepwise approach based on brain chemistry rather than scolding people for bad habits.

Early cases upended stereotypes. A young, thin woman with headaches had sleep apnea; CPAP ended five years of daily pain. Many others had little or no REM despite no classic apnea.

REM is when we’re most paralyzed, the brainstem runs the show, and mood and memory consolidate there. My patients were missing that state, especially in the first half of the night, which pointed me to brainstem chemistry, not throat anatomy.

So you asked which cells and chemicals create that paralysis and REM, right?

Exactly. The trail led to acetylcholine and to D driving the enzyme that helps make it. Move indoors, add sunscreen, screens, and air con, and you set up a deficiency pattern modern medicine often overlooks.

Most advice I hear is blackout curtains and cold rooms. You’re saying vitamins are tied to sleep. That’s new to me.

Also, on chronotypes, once we stabilized chemistry and got people outside more, even lifelong night workers drifted toward a ten to six rhythm. We’re daytime creatures when our biology is right.

You claim vitamin D links to many sleep problems. How do you show that?

Two patients frame it. Madeline, a redhead with endometriosis, PCOS, gestational diabetes, daily headaches, burning feet, constipation, reflux, and poor sleep; CPAP helped a bit. Natalie, a tall triathlete who slept fine until her second baby, then could not get back to sleep and developed postpartum depression.

An eighteen year old with perfect vitals had no deep sleep on her study. B12 was profoundly low. When I checked D and B12 across hundreds of patients in fall 2009, nearly all Ds were low. Two CPAP users said their sleep and headaches finally cleared when they added D.

PubMed then led me to Walter Stumpf’s work showing D receptors in brainstem nuclei that run sleep timing and paralysis. His view of D as a hibernation signal made the pattern make sense.

Many people still think D is just a vitamin.

It’s a hormone made on skin, not meant to be sourced from food. Calling it a vitamin sidelined it and let dose-by-guesswork replace blood-level targets, even though hormones live in tight ranges.

And the studies often use fixed doses without measuring levels, so people could be getting too much or too little.

Right. Hormones should be individualized, yet clinicians are told to avoid D levels rather than learn to manage them. That’s how the public ended up seeking answers online.

What happened when you treated Madeline and Natalie?

As I raised D, many improved once their blood level passed the sixties, but a subset later developed new issues like burning hands and feet or diffuse pain. That pushed me to B vitamins.

High-dose B5 from a book made me and several patients wired and sleepless, while a balanced B-complex (B100, later B50) often calmed pain and restored sleep, which hinted that dose and balance mattered.

So D can increase the body’s need for Bs?

The gut makes the Bs, and D appears to shape that ecosystem. D alone didn’t fix the microbiome; adding a moderate B-complex for about three months often “jumpstarted” it, then we tapered off.

You’re basically giving growth factors so the right bacteria repopulate, then stepping back so they carry the load.

Yes. Probiotics are travelers; without the nutrients they need, they will not stick. When the native community regains its food supply, it reproduces and resumes making Bs daily.

Madeline needed 30,000 IUs daily to hold a D in the sixties while her body caught up on repairs. Her pain faded, mood lifted, she came off several meds, energy returned, and she prepared to work again, though weight loss lagged until deeper fixes completed.

So D remains central because most of us lack sun, with Bs used short term if D was taken alone for years.

Correct. Keep D near the sixties if you’re unwell, pair it with a time-limited B50 when needed, then step down to a multivitamin or none as the gut recovers. Minerals and gut metabolites matter too, like reuterin from Lactobacillus reuteri.

Some sources say D does not deplete Bs. You published a hypothesis in 2016 proposing a D–microbiome–B link. Is there room for intermediaries like magnesium in this chain?

It is complex and could flow through coenzyme A and mitochondrial energy, but clinically the D plus balanced Bs pattern repeatedly restored sleep and reduced pain. Natalie improved with D, then D plus B50 after postpartum issues, lost the excess weight, normalized mood and heart rate, and eventually needed only a multivitamin, then none.

If we zoom out, what should listeners do to improve sleep?

You’ve developed the Right Sleep protocol—what is it, and how does it work?

It’s a stepwise plan that brings vitamin D to a target range, adds B12 if you’re low, uses a strong B‑complex for a few months, and then a multivitamin. I ask people to check D regularly, adjust dosing, keep a simple sleep log, and read their body’s signals—if sleep improves then dips months later, that usually means it’s time to add more Bs; and I also show a better way to test D because the usual labs can be misleading.

Why not skip pills and fix sleep with fermented foods and sunshine?

If you’re not very off course, that’s a great path; but supplement D is not the same as sunlight.

How is swallowing vitamin D different from getting it outside, especially if a blood test says I’m low?

Sunlight makes a sulfated form of D on the skin and also triggers many other protective compounds you do not get from a single D3 pill. Those extras matter for inflammation control and skin resilience.

Could the prescription just be a better diet?

Fermented foods work because you’re eating live microbes that secrete B vitamins and other metabolites, which can act like a built‑in B‑complex. Diet and daylight are ideal, but when someone is struggling, a structured supplement plan is faster and more predictable; I still fully support doing it the food and sunshine way if that fits you.

What about people in cloudy places?

Melanin protects the skin but also slows D production, which is why lighter‑skinned redhead genetics emerged in the far north to capture scarce light; move that biology to intense sun and it struggles. So I do not see D pills as the whole answer—kids and adults need much more time outside, and we should still respect safe sun.

Most of us live indoors now, and that affects more than sleep, right?

Diet is a problem, but parallel deficiencies also show up—like gestational diabetes in lean patients—which points to missing cofactors such as coenzyme A and B vitamins. Those same nutrients underpin acetylcholine, cortisol, and melatonin, so shortages ripple across metabolism, stress, and sleep.

Actionably, we have your vitamin‑based protocol, getting more daylight, and the standard temperature and routine tips; the big insight is that vitamins and the gut really move sleep. What did we miss?

People told they have narcolepsy or sleep apnea are often at an end‑stage of the same chemistry issues, so they can improve through this lens but usually need extra guidance and patience through transitions like vivid dreams as REM returns. One striking case used nicotine patches to mimic acetylcholine around the clock and erased narcolepsy symptoms, which fits how acetylcholine drives focus by day and REM at night.

I read a summary about how sleep medicine boomed, then indoor life and round‑the‑clock light broke our clocks—too little sun by day, too much artificial light at night.

Was that AI? I love that it can surface ideas without institutional bias; beyond melatonin in the pineal, vitamin D receptors live in the brainstem, and AI will make these connections easier to see.

What’s your core claim the mainstream resists? I asked an AI model and it agreed the gut–sleep loop is huge and bi‑directional; anatomy and light still matter, but fixing chronic insomnia often means healing the gut.

Even near infrared light came up, which medicine sees as fringe; still, those ideas are now on the table.

Our tradition: what was your best recent day?

Sitting under a misting umbrella in Seville, playing Canasta with my husband for no reason other than being together—that was perfect.

Where should people go to learn more from you?

drgomanak.com—no periods—and my YouTube channel has a series of Sleep Chats that apply the Right Sleep approach to real issues.

We’ll link everything in the episode notes; thank you so much.