Posted by Tomatheus on April 17, 2014, at 11:53:51
In reply to check your vitamin D, posted by Phil on April 17, 2014, at 11:01:28
Phil,
I think that your suggestion to get our vitamin D levels checked is a good one. There seems to be some evidence that vitamin D levels are lower in patients with depressive and psychotic disorders than they are in the general population, and from my understanding, there's also some evidence that the vitamin (or hormone, to be more precise) regulates enzymes that are involved in the synthesis of neurotransmitters.
I take vitamin D3 myself after a blood test came back with my level being insufficient (at 21.9 ng/mL). My current trial's been going on for about 2.5 months, and I was taking the D3 for 3.5 months before stopping it a while before I started this trial. I'm noticing what might be the beginning of a response, although I've had some ups and downs energy wise as of late. As of right now, I think that the vitamin D3 might be helping with my hypersomnia more than anything else, but it's still early into my trial.
As you might be able to tell from what I wrote about my response, there seems to be a lot of thinking that supplementing with vitamin D3 tends to take a while (several months, sometimes) to produce results, at least if my understanding is correct. Some doctors like to give their patients "loading doses" consisting of very high doses of the vitamin-hormone for some time before lowering to the maintenance dose to speed up the process of optimizing a person's vitamin D level. Given your extremely low vitamin D level, this might be an option for you. Has your GP or his nurse discussed with you how he wants to proceed with vitamin D supplementation? If he hasn't yet, you might want to ask about the possibility of a loading dose.
At any rate, I'd like to wish you luck with getting your vitamin D up to an optimal level. I hope that you'll notice a reduction in some of your mental illness symptoms in the process.
Take care,
TomatheusHas schizophrenia with strong negative and cognitive symptoms
Taking Abilify & vitamins B3 & D3
poster:Tomatheus
thread:1064363
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20140328/msgs/1064371.html