Security Now 1058 Holiday Special Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

Leo Laporte [00:00:02]:
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Twit. This is Security now with Steve Gibson. Episode 1058 For December 30, 2025, a gift for the new year. It's time for Security now, the New Year's Eve Edition. Hello, I'm Leo Laporte. Say hello to Mr. Steve Gib of GRC.com and the host of Security Now.

Leo Laporte [00:00:35]:
Happy New Year, Steve.

Steve Gibson [00:00:37]:
Happy. I can't believe 2025 is gone and we're launching into 2026, ready or not. Wow.

Leo Laporte [00:00:47]:
Now, we figured there probably wasn't a lot of security news at the end of the year. Certainly if there was, we covered it last week. So we thought we'd do something special for our New Year's Eve edition.

Steve Gibson [00:00:59]:
And we might be recovering from eggnog. So, you know.

Leo Laporte [00:01:06]:
Is there any vitamin D in eggnog? That's the real question.

Steve Gibson [00:01:11]:
No.

Leo Laporte [00:01:12]:
Way back when in the day. This goes back to the cottage days, 2009, when we weren't even doing video. Steve surprised me with a Security now that was devoted not to cybersecurity, now to personal security, to supplements. How did you get into this whole thing?

Steve Gibson [00:01:35]:
So shortly after Spinrite 5 was finished and published, I, it was doing well and I had a lot of time on my hands. I had, I had scaled the company down to just sue and Greg and me. And I like, well, okay, now what? And I, it was before I was 50, I was in my late 40s, and I.

Leo Laporte [00:02:00]:
Young man.

Steve Gibson [00:02:01]:
Ah, yeah, those were the days. And I remember thinking, okay, when am I going to get serious about focusing on my health? And, and, you know, as a scientist, as a sort of health, curious person, I thought, okay, I'm going to start, I'm going to study supplementation, you know, adding stuff to my diet because it makes sense.

Leo Laporte [00:02:27]:
And isn't our existing diet sufficient? No, that's kind of a softball question. Yeah, but that's what they always say. Oh, if you just eat properly, you don't have to have supplementations.

Steve Gibson [00:02:43]:
The problem is we massively process food. We're now indoors, behind glass. I mean, we've made a huge number of changes to the way we operate. We don't get the exercise that we used to. We're not spending most of our day out gathering food or hunting and exercising. So we've changed our environment dramatically. And this, of course, it does map onto vitamin D, because the way our bodies, as we're about to learn, anyone who doesn't already know, and it's a useful refresher Even if you kind of do that, like moms used to say, get outside, get in the sun. You need to get some sun.

Steve Gibson [00:03:29]:
Well, it turns out there was a lot more to it than us just getting out of her hair. It was good for us. As we will learn. UVB radiation, when it hits the cholesterol in our skin is what creates vitamin.

Leo Laporte [00:03:48]:
D. It's an amazing thing, actually. Yes.

Steve Gibson [00:03:51]:
And there aren't many good dietary sources.

Leo Laporte [00:03:55]:
And in fact, that's why they started putting it in milk, because.

Steve Gibson [00:03:58]:
Exactly. Milk is vitamin D fortified. Because our government said, oh, you need some. Unfortunately, they had no idea how much the whole RDA system is based on. You will die if you don't get this much.

Leo Laporte [00:04:15]:
Minimum daily requirement. Yeah. Yes.

Steve Gibson [00:04:18]:
It is not the healthy daily requirement, which is one of the things that has steered so many people wrong. I think it used to be 400iu a day. I know that. I'll talk about this in the podcast.

Leo Laporte [00:04:29]:
Yeah. I don't want to. I don't want to steal your thunder because we're going to talk about this. But what I did want to talk about before we get into it is in the intervening 16 years since you've done this, is there anything new to report?

Steve Gibson [00:04:42]:
Yes. What I did not talk about at the time, because it wasn't appreciated, was that it's very good to also add some vitamin K2 in addition to D3. We'll be talking a lot about D2 and D3 here in a minute. I didn't talk about K. And I've updated the vitamin D page on grc. You can't go see it right now. Cause it's in front of me, Leo. And I haven't put it online yet, but it will be.

Steve Gibson [00:05:14]:
It'll be online by the time people are hearing this to talk about the need to add some K. What happens is that raising your blood level of D also causes calcium and phosphorus to be more strongly absorbed from your diet, increases the calcium in your blood and you don't want loose calcium floating around. It can get up to some mischief like plating out onto your arterial walls and clogging up your kidneys. So adding some K2, K2 carboxylates, two proteins, which have the effect of driving the calcium into your bones, which is where you want it to go and keeping it out of your arteries. So on updated vitamin D page, I show three different strengths of a supplement that I am now taking and have been for some time. So I'm glad to be able to have this opportunity, Leo, to Update, people who have been following along know about vitamin D but probably need to add some K in order to sort of balance the effects of a really strong D presence. And we should also mention that in these intervening 16 years, one of the things that happened. First of all, there has been a lot of follow on research.

Steve Gibson [00:06:46]:
Research has been kind of scarce because vitamin D doesn't cost anything and research does.

Leo Laporte [00:06:52]:
Nobody makes any money on it.

Steve Gibson [00:06:54]:
Yeah, yeah. But one of the things that we saw, aside from many of our listeners who did follow the advice in the original podcast and added some vitamin D to their diet, who then, after going through the winter, reported that wow, for the first time, like in their memory, they didn't come down with the common cold or sniffles or like, or if they expose their whole family to more D, nobody got sick. So that was just anecdotally interesting. But the other thing that we learned is that Covid status there were. It's also often it's always necessary to remind people that correlation is not causation. So we don't know that it was vitamin D that that created far better outcomes for those who got Covid than those who were on had low vitamin D status. It could be that people who took vitamin D also, you know, tended to stand on their head more often and that that was actually the reason that Covid was better. We don't know.

Steve Gibson [00:08:07]:
But I believe, because we also know that vitamin D is a very strong immune support vitamin which actually is not a vitamin. I explain all this in the podcast, that it's actually a hormone. It was completely misunderstood in the beginning, but we still call it vitamin D even though it's not. Anyway, we saw some real effect during COVID of, of vitamin D status. Those who had high vitamin D status had much better Covid outcomes. So anyway, vitamin D3K2. Check out the vitamin D page at GRC, which I've updated with some recommendations for which supplements to take. And with that, Leo, let's go for a blast from the past.

Leo Laporte [00:08:54]:
A blast from the past. GRC.com for the vitamin D page. Go to Research Health. You'll see vitamin D. It will be updated after the show. Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is a very appropriate way for us to spend the New Year's Eve. You might be having a little something later in the evening, enjoying yourself a little bit. Maybe you did last night.

Leo Laporte [00:09:19]:
Let's listen. And I did want to mention you hear a lot of ads for vitamins on a lot of other people's podcasts. This is not an ad But I should also mention we are not doctors. And so you should always check with your health professional, your medical professional, before embarking on any health regimen, including this. But I think most doctors will encourage you to do this.

Steve Gibson [00:09:42]:
Yes. And a good example is that I mentioned K2. The K vitamins are blood thinners and I'm sorry, no, they are the reverse. They are blood clotters. Okay, so if you are on a blood thinner, a prescription like that. Warfarin. Exactly. And that's the example I give on this updated page because I do caution people that if you're taking prescription blood thinners, check with a physician before you.

Leo Laporte [00:10:13]:
Send a note to your doc saying, I'm thinking of 5000iu of vitamin D and I'm thinking of taking K2. Is that okay with my existing medications?

Steve Gibson [00:10:21]:
And so, speaking of which, that's the other thing that has changed. I remember asking my physician, I know back then for a vitamin D test when I did my just my annual blood test, and he said, what? Why do you want that?

Leo Laporte [00:10:34]:
Why would you care?

Steve Gibson [00:10:35]:
It is now. It's routine.

Leo Laporte [00:10:38]:
It's true, it's true.

Steve Gibson [00:10:39]:
The world has, you know, caught up with this. So.

Leo Laporte [00:10:42]:
So we're not doctors. Consult your physician. This is not an ad. We don't have an advertiser selling vitamin D, not like those other podcasts. This is a man who is brilliant, an autodidact who loves researching deeply into a variety of fields. And this is the result of his research back in my current appearance. Yes, people are wondering about your green hair, by the way. Generally talk about that.

Leo Laporte [00:11:06]:
Without further ado, let's take a time travel trip back to 2009 and we'll see no video. This was audio only, but Anthony has prepared a lovely video kind of geek Yule log for you. So if you're watching it on YouTube, you can see that. And Steve will reconvene after with some final thoughts and well wishes. Thank you, Steve Gibson. And now back in time. Hey, don't let me interrupt. I know we're having a blast here reliving 2025, but I thought this would be a good time to mention something we do every year around this time that's very important to us and to our ad sales.

Leo Laporte [00:11:43]:
It's our twit survey. We do it because we don't really. And no podcast does know anything about you. That's, I think, a good thing. We respect your privacy, but we also would like to know a little bit about you to the degree you're willing to help us out. Just some basic information that helps us go to advertisers and say things like, well, 80% of our audience is it decision makers, that kind of thing. That's why we do this annual survey should only take a few minutes of your time, as I said, is one of the ways you can contribute to keeping Twit on the air. If you would like to, before too long in the next couple of weeks, do it now while you're watching, go to TWiT TV Survey 26.

Leo Laporte [00:12:27]:
It's our annual 2026 TWiT listener and viewer survey. It's very important to us and I thank you. I really appreciate. And of course, if you don't want to do it or there's questions you don't want to answer, that's fine too. But any way you can help us out, we appreciate it. All right, now back to the show. That's it. You know, I think that was kind of a landmark.

Leo Laporte [01:23:54]:
It sure surprised me.

Steve Gibson [01:23:57]:
I loved it. I remember you, actually, you prompted me saying, well, Steve, what security problems are we going to talk about this week? And I said, well, we're going to do something a little different this week.

Leo Laporte [01:24:10]:
Now, I'm glad you did because I've been taking vitamin D ever since and my health has been excellent.

Steve Gibson [01:24:13]:
And I was motivated by what I learned. It was that, like, okay, this is, I mean, there's a bunch of other stuff I have taped that I do take that you and I have talked about off the, off the record. I mean, so there's way more that I'm doing. But if I had to choose one single supplement that I would like, if I could only take one thing, I think it would be Vitamin D because of its, of its powerful immune support.

Leo Laporte [01:24:41]:
We will be back next Tuesday, of course, January 7, with another edition of Security now in which we will talk about security. We do it every Tuesday right after Mac Break weekly. That's 1:30 Pacific, 4:30 Eastern, 21:30 UTC. I hope you'll watch the show. You can do it live, of course, as with all of our programming on Twitch and X.com, facebook, LinkedIn, Kick. And of course, if you're a Club Twit member, you get special behind the velvet rope access in our Club Twit Discord. We chat in there as well, of course, download it after the fact twit tv sn. Or subscribe in your favorite podcast player.

Leo Laporte [01:25:16]:
Steve's website, GRC.com has special versions of it. 16 kilobit, 64 kilobit. He also has got the Show Notes there. You can subscribe to the Show Notes there if you click the email link. And let's not forget, Steve's bread and Butter is at GRC.com Spinrite, the world's best mass storage, maintenance, recovery and performance enhancing utility. And now his DNS Benchmark Pro for making sure you got the fastest Internet you can get in your house. All of that version two just came out@grc.com Steve have a wonderful New Year's. We'll see you 26.

Steve Gibson [01:25:53]:
Can't wait. Bye.