PTH Improving . . . Yayyy!!!!!!!

I'm so sorry to hear that you went through so much when I "fell off" the boards last year.  Now that it sounds like you've found a good balance, and I don't know if you already do this, but you might consider taking magnesium & boron with each of your calcium doses b/c they also help absorption . . . as does K, I believe.  I'm really glad to hear you're doing better!

ETA:
Just occurred to me - you are taking citrate & not carbonate, right?

Yes, I take the citrical petites - tried the regular size for just one pill per dose, but don't like swallowing it.  I have been taking 1 magnesium oxide tablet (250mg) with each calcium dose.  I haven't taken any Boron, though.

I don't know whether it's possible for you to switch your mag oxide to mag citrate, but in terms of which is best for your bones, it's the mag citrate b/c it's absorbed significantly better.  On the other hand, mag oxide is good for regular bowels, hence I don't know how your bowels would respond to the switch.  I found a REALLY good published study . . . 3 groups, double-blind (patient & dr didn't know which group they were in) study with multiple measures of magnesium.  Here's a link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14596323

Mg citrate found more bioavailable than other Mg preparations in a randomised, double-blind study.

Walker AF, Marakis G, Christie S, Byng M.

Source

Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition, School of Food Biosciences, The University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, UK. [email protected]

Abstract

Published data on the bioavailability of various Mg preparations is too fragmented and scanty to inform proper choice of Mg preparation for clinical studies. In this study, the relative bioavailability of three preparations of Mg (amino-acid chelate, citrate and oxide) were compared at a daily dose of 300 mg of elemental Mg in 46 healthy individuals. The study was a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel intervention, of 60 days duration. Urine, blood and saliva samples were taken at baseline, 24 h after the first Mg supplement was taken ('acute' supplementation) and after 60 days of daily Mg consumption ('chronic' supplementation). Results showed that supplementation of the organic forms of Mg (citrate and amino-acid chelate) showed greater absorption (P = 0.033) at 60 days than MgO, as assessed by the 24-h urinary Mg excretion. Mg citrate led to the greatest mean serum Mg concentration compared with other treatments following both acute (P = 0.026) and chronic (P = 0.006) supplementation. Furthermore, although mean erythrocyte Mg concentration showed no differences among groups, chronic Mg citrate supplementation resulted in the greatest (P = 0.027) mean salivary Mg concentration compared with all other treatments. Mg oxide supplementation resulted in no differences compared to placebo. We conclude that a daily supplementation with Mg citrate shows superior bioavailability after 60 days of treatment when compared with other treatments studied.

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As far as boron, there's a lot of studies that suggest that boron is helpful for bone formation & density, but they're not as scientifically well-controlled in human subjects than is the above study for magnesium.  Try searching boron bone health, go to respectable sites like nih.gov to read up on it.  There IS good evidence to suggest it, but not as strong as the above study.

I was taking the mag citrate for a short time, could only find them one place and they were huge.  So, I focused on just the oxide for the bowel benefit under the cir****tances.  I'll check with my hematologist on Monday just to make sure and start back.  I imagine they'll want to check my calcium and pth again in 3 months so we'll see how it's doing then.  Thanks for the input.