Sometimes I feel like beating a dead horse... Vitamin D

My vitamin D is low.  I have had the shot from Dr Stewarts office (Due for another) and take two of Vitalady's D a day yet am still low.  And think the deficiency may have something to do with my chronic back pain.

I am wanting to know any "tricks" that you guys/gals may have on getting this up.

I follow vitalady's schedule, plus some folate, potassium citrate, and B6 added with my b batch.  Have recently added some calcium carbonate to my meals too to bind with some oxalates to avoid Kidney stones.  Still take my calcium citrate after meals (cinnamon flavor as an after meal "mint").

So... should I try to take D on an empty tummy?  Avoid other things or should I add something to help absorb it?   Read somewhere about vitamin K helping D... how does this work?  Do you think I take it with too many other things and it gets missed?

REALLY want this up to see if it will help with the back pain.  Not to mention, bone loss and other fun stuff that may be happening with it low...

Thanks for your help!

HOW about the novel approach of getting 30 min a day of sunshine?
       Be sure to not use sunscreen when you are trying to build your D.

You can try taking it in the middle of the night away from everything.  You can take more than 2 a day of her Dry D.  You can try real sun or tanning booths.

Edited to add:  What is your calcium and PTH?  From what I understand those are as critical or more so than your D.  If you Calcium and PTH are good then a low D may not be hurting you that much.

How low is your D?

~Becky

I'm pre op and my D is low. I take 50,000 of vitamin D and get my 30 min a day of the bright yellow orb's rays. I worry about after surgery, so I'd like to know too.

Calcium was fine, PTH is still out.  Literally, the PTH results have not been given to me yet.  Don't know if DR has them back, but they have not called me.  Will call and ask tomorrow.

As for sun.  I am a Lilly white girl that goes lobster red in less than 10 minutes in the TX sun.  So, I use sun screen.   Guess I could go out for a few minutes at a time.  Do you think early morning sun counts?   That is when it is only 100 degrees now a days.  But don't think 30 minutes is going to happen without some skin cancer issues.

I personally don't think we can safely get enough sun to make a difference.  I know Gina gets her tanning booth tan on, but VitaLady told me that if sun made such a huge difference then she thought she would see differences in VitD levels of people who live in the sunny climes v. people who live farther away from the sun.  I dunno.

Your Calcium and PTH along with your D (well along with ALL your labs) are really what you need to post to get the vets to give you advice.

I don't know much about nothin' but I have learned that our labs are all interconnected and that to get the best advice you need to post all of them and post previous labs as well and post exactly what supplements/vites you are taking.

If you post all of that then the lab experts are really good about giving great advice.  At least they have for me. 

~Becky

Oh, and here are the numbers:

Calcium 9.5
 Vitamin D 25 OH   41
D3  41
D2

Granted, your D is lower than DSers like to see (60-80 or 80-100 depending on who you ask), but at 41, you're not really "LOW".... as long as it's not trending downward.  if you can bring it up a little - slowly but surely, that's great.... worse case, if you maintain where you currently are, you're still better off with D than the majority of people in the US.

That said, you CAN bring it up, and fairly quickly with mega-doses of D3.

A couple years ago, I was stupid (or absent minded - the jury is still out) and my D tanked at 13.... When I got the results, I ordered a few bottles of D3-50 from Vitalady and mega-dosed... 5 a day (spaced fairly evenly) for a month, then 4 a day for a month, then 3 a day for a month, then retested and I was at 64.

from 13 (!!!) to 64 (!!!) in 3 months! My Dr (pcp, not surgeon) was floored and asked me how I did it.  When I told her, she just about fell over LOL.  after that, I dropped my dosage to 2 a day and have been there ever since.  6 months after my 64, I was retested and was at 72.  Since then, each test has been floating in the 75-85 range.

Once you bring it up to a more comfortable level, 2 a day might do it for you... or you might need to stay at 3 a day.  only periodic retesting will tell you for sure.

Good luck

What is your PTH ? 

Like the others have stated these are not optimal, and I have seen worse.

Just as an FYI, I had to increase to 3 doses  of D3 50,000 daily as my D was dropping and so was my PTH.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-cof actors/

fwiw, I take 150k IU (but no injections)