my vitamin D is back down to 39. it was at a high of 60 in december.

it went from 50 to 60 in one month when i was accidentally taking 10,000 IU a day instead of the 4,000 IU i thought i was taking (i had just switched from a 2000 IU pill to a 5000 IU pill but had forgotten), thus the 10,000 IU a day.

thus i thought if i backed off to 5000 IU a day, it would either stay at 60 or maybe even slowly go up. especially since in december the new endocrinologist admonished me for taking 5000 IU a day, saying that was way too much, i was going to OD on the stuff, get into the toxic range, etc etc.

and instead, lost 20 points in 5 months on 5000 IU a day, which is supposed to be the upper limit of what people are supposed to take.

since then, only one day of undigested food bowel issues. otherwise, bowels either good or constipated.

questions for the audience:

so where is all the D going?

is it still not being absorbed by the small intestine?

or not processed by the liver? (i do have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. ALT back up to 51, from a low of 34 (since being borderline high)

my doctor today recommend i try the sublingual vitamin D (place the drops under the tongue).

anyone try this form of D over the pills?

more or less effective?

how many drops do you find you need?

i just want to find a level of D that keeps me at a steady state. i seem to either go up or down. haven't been able to maintain.

i could just try something between 5000 and 10,000 IU. maybe 10,000 IU daily over the next few months to get it back up. then back down to 7000 IU daily or something like that.

and being in the sun doesn't seem to do it for me. when this all first started, it was at the end of a summer when i had been out for walks every day in the mid day sun, had a nice tan on my arms and legs, etc, and at the end of all of that, i was at 33. another summer i went from 39 to 30, again out in the sun quite a bit.

does anyone else find that they must supplement at over 5000 IU daily to hit a steady state?

why are we so low in D? its not just a sun issue for me. otherwise i wouldn't drop in the summer the way i do without the supplements.

Sue - I posted a whole sheaf of info on Vit D3 - don't bother with D2, total waste of time. There was a thread on osteoporosis and I posted it in there.

I take 100,000 per month, liquid cholecalciferol. Have got the sublingual, powder form, but don't like that one much. Prefer the single ampoule, it's easier. Have got mine up from 9 to 32 - not there yet, need to get to at least 65.

Suggest you take 10,000 for a month, then go to 7000 IU per diem for another month then get the test done. Readings advised to aim for: between 60 - 80 that is ng/mL. But run everything past yr doctor first.

But all the information is in that thread. OK?

http://www.kickas.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=467660&page=2

Here's the link Sue - you were posting on it as well - only a couple of weeks + ago...

Here's the other thread - from the 15 May

http://www.kickas.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=469452#Post469452

Heck of a lot of meat in this thread - how to get brain ache...!

thanks molly,

read through each of these three posts. clicked and read through each link. yes, remember each of these threads. but back then, nothing too new that i wasn't already familiar with.....a lot of that from reading things you post, btw, so thank you for all of that.

thus, armed with all that info, i thought surely 5000 IU a day every day would at the least keep me at a steady state if not go up. at least that's what most of the writings claim.

and read that big 1000+ manifesto on calcium and D that i posted a while back. surely that was the definitive word. warned in there not to supplement with more than 4000 IU a day.

surely i was going to have to be careful and back off of my 5000 IU a day.

thus quite shocked to see my levels drop 20+ points in the last few months on this regiment.

a lot more to all of this than first meets the eye.

my questions still stand.

i see you taking the 100,000 per month. that comes to only 3333 daily.

when i took 50,000 monthly, no good. 50,000 once every other week, no good. 50,000 once a week, then my levels went up. that averages about 7000 a day.
so if 7000 a day increased it, thought 5000 a day would keep it steady. looks like my personal daily amount is higher than most.

but we are not the norm.

so wondering what others here have found to be their steady state. if they ever found one.

good to see yours increases with only 3333 daily. but will it continue to do so as you try to raise it? i apparently need about double that it seems.

well, as you said, think i will either try the sublingual or maybe instead finish off my pills by taking 10,000 a day for a month or two to raise it back to 60 at the least, then switching to 7000 once i get it high enough, and see what happens.

and all this time i thought it was going up.....while it was going down.

all the info in those threads made me think the same thing.

guess this is partly a warning to others that even 5000 IU daily may not be enough for some of us.

and even after all the reading i've done, i still wonder why some of us need so much more than is recommended.

and why the sun isn't good enough either. surely that should be the way to go. but its not. at least not for some of us. but that's the natural way. so why not?

much more complicated than it appears on the surface.

answering some of my own questions:

this is the only site i've found so far that talks about the higher levels i am finding in my own experience:

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/

Sue

Have you ever had your Parathyroid Hormone checked? If not - at the same time have your calcium checked. When Parathyroid Hormone is high - it pulls calcium from bones - causing Vitamin D to decrease. When Parathyroid Hormone is high and calcium is high, this signals that you have a Parathyroid Adenoma (benign.)

Hugs
Gerri & Makaylah

Multiple doctors have had me on 10,000 IU daily, which I maintain. Suspect my low levels to warrant this high dosage is due to poor absorption. I am beginning to suspect, due to impressive (I mean real impressive) results with a digestive enzyme that contains two different forms of HCL, that something has been suppressing my stomach acid for a long time. I think I was malnourished, not in the sense of starving children around the globe, but not getting nutrients or as much of the nutrients my body needs due to food not breaking down properly. Pretty elementary. MDs don't have a clue in my opinion.

We are going to retest soon. One doctor from awhile ago actually "jump started" me on 100,000IU for two consecutive days. Then I was on 10,000 IU daily for a month. That normalized it. I dropped down to 5,000 IU daily but I fell out of range again.

I really suspect that if you want to increase it you need to take larger doses (10,000 IU or greater). I don't know about maintenance. We are still trying to figure that out.

just a few ideas that you've probably already covered

- vit d is a fat soluble vitamin so need to take with a meal containing fat to absorb properly

- high fibre diets can lead to enhanced elimination of vit d - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6299329

- polyunsaturated fats (such as fish oil) may reduce vit D levels after supplementing - http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v7/n10/full/nrendo.2011.150.html

- low magnesium can reduce vit d levels - http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co.nz/2010/04/low-vitamin-d-cause-or-result-of.html

- chronic gut and systemic inflammation probably lead to low vitamin d. statins improve vitamin d possibly by reducing inflammation. - http://coolinginflammation.blogspot.co.nz/2009/08/inflammation-and-vitamin-d-deficiency.html

another link - http://donmatesz.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/practically-paleo-diet-supplementation.html

Hi Sue: I take 6,000 IU a day of vitamin D3 liquid drops on my tongue. When my D levels were tested, my level was normal so I am going to continue taking the drops daily.

Shari