Severe Vitamin D Deficiency...So Bummed!

[YawnGirl]

I think I am falling apart I had bi-yearly labwork done last week, just talked to my GP, I have severe Vitamin D deficiency. He gave me prescription for a VITAMIN! Good grief! On top of that ,I have to go back to taking a Calcium supplement, which he took me off of 4 years ago because of kidney stones!

In my mind's eye, I keep seeing my mother's lazy susan in the kitchen cabinet, instead of spices, it held her daily prescriptions.

I have never heard of a vitamin D deficiency. Is this common? I searched a thread here, but it mostly just listed foods and their vitamin D content.

[Guest]

Given what most people eat and the way they slather on the sunscreen, it's not surprising that more and more people are showing up as vitamin D deficient

[SleepyT]

There is a current thread going on about this very thing...you have to scroll down a bit...but here it is....on page 1 currently:

viewtopic/t47183/Reminder-about-corelat ... ssion.html

T.

[Catnapper]

Here is a recent thread devoted to D.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=46800&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... =Vitamin+D

The prescription for Vitamin D is for the D2. You would be better off taking the actual D3. The D2 will eventually be processed by the body into D3, and you can go straight to what your body needs without paying for a prescription. Be sure to get the D3 that is in a gel cap as it has to be in fat for your body to use it.

That thread above has lots of links to get you started if you care to read about it.

Catnapper - Joanie

[Jay K]

Vitamin D deficiency is EXTREMELY common. Off the top of my head I would guess maybe 70 percent of Americans suffer from this although there is some debate about what the appropriate cut-off value is for declaring someone D deficient. Even though vitamin D results from sun exposure and those in northern climates are more likely to suffer a deficiency, I recently ran across a study that claimed over one-half of the surfers in Hawaii are D deficient.

I suspect because D deficiency is so common and seems only recently to have been taken very seriously by the medical community, many more people will be diagnosed with this in the near future.

I take D3 every day because I understand it is the best D vitamin to take. It is readily available over the counter and is very cheap.

[bearded_two]

A diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency can actually be good news because vitamin D deficiency can cause some otherwise hard to diagnose problems. Vitamin D is not expensive to treat (it can even be treated with sunlight exposure, as long as you don't use sunscreen) and there aren't really any bad side effects; although you may have problems because you also need calcium and have a history of kidney stone(s).

[katherinefulmer]

Vitamin D deficiency was extremely common during the Industrial Revolution (it may have been its first major appearance). People just weren't outside much, and the outside air was full of smog and tall buildings anyway. Pair that with little access to all those Vitamin rich foods and you had a lot of American, French, British, and other Western Civs full of people with rickets.

Today Rickets is common in developing countries (places undergoing their own Industrial Revolutions now). With many working in doors all day with little outdoor activity I'd say Rickets has a chance of making a comeback. However most of our food is fortified with vitamins and if you eat whole foods and fish, you're doing better than this famous family:


Try getting 10 mins of sun a day without sunscreen, or look into ultraviolet light therapy if the sun is nowhere to be seen: wiki/index.php/Light_Therapy

Adults can get Rickets but it's mainly a childhood disease. Basically bones are soft in childhood which can lead to fractures and deformity. This proves difficult throughout life and life threatening during child birth (deformed pelvises).

[Jay K]

Present-day research on the detrimental effects of a vitamin D deficiency has gone well beyond rickets!!

[rbtgjns]

Here is a link to a video. Vitamin D3 in 2000iu three each day is the amount that I have read is appropiate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chy1003 ... re=related

[tattooyu]

Here is a recent thread devoted to D.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=46800&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... =Vitamin+D

The prescription for Vitamin D is for the D2. You would be better off taking the actual D3. The D2 will eventually be processed by the body into D3, and you can go straight to what your body needs without paying for a prescription. Be sure to get the D3 that is in a gel cap as it has to be in fat for your body to use it.

That thread above has lots of links to get you started if you care to read about it.

Catnapper - Joanie

I suspect that my sister has a Vitamin (hormone) D deficiency, but she cannot swallow large pills, so I was going to have her use chewables from Blue Bonnet Nutrition. Would that not work? What if she took it with some food that had a food amount of fat in it?

[YawnGirl]

Wow. Thanks everyone for all the info. I have been reading for about an hour straight!!

I guess I have a good reason for owning that summer car with a drop top!!

I had my script filled and took my first pill. Hopefully, I can get back to my old self.

I asked my doctor if a D deficiency can cause sleep apnea, he said "Perhaps or is it the apnea causing the D deficiency, either directly or indirectly?" He became curious because my cholesterol, when last checked one year ago was 131 and I have always had blood pressure a little low (115/72). He asked me to bring my report from my apap next visit and told me he would know more on my next visit in 30 days.

[Kiralynx]

Tatooyu:

You could get the gel-caps from Carlson. SHe can crush them between her teeth and swallow the liquid. It's not the best tasting, but it works.

I used this method after my surgery when I was still on liquids to get my Omega 3s and Vitamin D and Vitamin E.

[Slinky]

I don't know about the D3 supplements - but the D2 capsules are NOT large. And they are soft gel capsules so really nice and slippery going down. I was put on 100,000 IU once a week for about 2 years, maybe it was 3 years, before being dropped to 50,000 IU once a week and then this year down to 50,000 IU every other week. My script was for the 50,000 IU soft gel capsules so it was just a matter of 2 capsules a week when I was at 100,000 IU weekly. I didn't even have to take both capsules the same day, I could have taken one twice a week.

Rickets in children is called osteomalacia in adults.

I can't handle calcium supplements. Those calcium tablets are WAY too huge for me to swallow down. And I can't do a lot of dairy. I wasn't willing to risk the bisphosphonate pills for osteorosis and opted to take Forteo which is a daily self-injection for osteoporosis. Vitamin D levels are especially important when taking Forteo as it is a form of a portion of parathyroid hormone. Despite the strong recommendation that one also take calcium supplements whilst on Forteo I couldn't and didn't. Yet in two years I gained bone density back to my T-scores in 1996!!! The gain was dramatic.

I did try the infusion bisphosphonate, pamidronate (Aredia), but only held my own one year and actually lost ground the second year.

[Jay K]

Dr. Weil brand makes 1,000 IU Vitamin D3 micro-tabs that are really really small, about as small as a pill can possibly be. They are presently on sale for less than $5 per hundred at one of the internet drugstore sites. Twinlab makes Vitamin D3 1,000 IU + K2 "tabs," which are equally small but can be sucked on rather than swallowed. They are more expensive though, around $10 to $15 per 60.

I take about 3,000 IU per day, rotating between the two, and it has brought my Vitamin D test results up to where I want it from a situation that the lab flagged as deficient. This despite that the pills I use are not in gel form, or in some sort of fat.

As before, vitamin D deficiency is a very common problem, and one that recent research seems to suggest can contribute to a wide range of health problems.

[sagesteve]

I'm a HUGE d3 fan! It's been keeping the swine flu away and much more. We take 5000 units a day (the max human tolerance is 70,000 units!). This is the best on the market because it also has trace minerals and has a cherry flavor. Really easy to take and a superior product:
http://www.evenbetternow.com/proddetail ... itiontech3