GAHHHHH!

[baratron]

Oh, I am so pissed off, I really am. Spoke to my doctor this evening, and it turns out that my vitamin D level is WAY WAY low. Ridiculously low. The bottom of the reference range for "normal" is 75 nmol/L, and mine is 14When I phoned up the surgery three weeks ago to ask about the results of my blood test, this was the sort of information they were

Comments

[barakta]

OFFS. If you can find energy that's a worthy of a complaint to the practice manager. That's APPALLING!

Glad it's something you can get treatment for although I hear sometimes it is not as straight forward as it seems as even with treatment can take a while to kick in. Will you have to change your head meds for it?

[baratron]

The thing is, I don't know where it went wrong. My doctor, who is retiring on 30th April (apparently he is almost 70!), said that the reference ranges for vitamin D are not well understood. So it could be that the other doctor who looked at it didn't notice a problem, or that it wasn't flagged up properly for the nurse to tell me about. Meh.

I refuse to change my mood stabilisers now that I've found something that works properly, though we'll have to see what effect a megadose supplement has.

[barakta]

*nods* possible worth flagging up to them so they can run a check on all vitD results for people. 'Nice complaint' rather than 'stinky one'.

Good plan re mega supplement. Are you more at risk of lower levels cos of being half-Burmese? I know doctors are supposed to lookout for it in 'non whites' for that reason.

IIRC yo can get VitD via jab too, but dunno if that's problematic for you. Either way hope treatment works ASAP.

[firecat]

Doctors know j*cksh*t about side effects. I always have to do that research myself. I hope you can get your levels up soon.

[jenett]

So glad you kicked about this! (My endocrinologist said that the bare minimum is 30, though a lot of people he treats feel better somewhere between 50 and 80 - so you might start feeling better sooner than later

[x_mass]

i have no idea how IU you works what does it mean?
can you point me towards anywhere i can read about it

[jenett]

IU stands for International Unit: it's used here (US) for standardised amounts of certain things, including some vitamins.

Wikipedia tells me (since I really need to aim at bed, and want to answer this now) that one IU of "is the biological equivalent of 0.025 μg cholecalciferol/ergocalciferol"

Here, the over the counter supplements you can get are usually 1000 or 2000 IU (sometimes you'll see 3000), and the recommended daily dose is around 4000 IU (including intake from food: it's regularly added as a supplement in milk and some other products.)

Wikipedia also tells me that the EU is more likely to label it in μg (micrograms), with a daily suggested intake of 5 micrograms a day (which comes out to about 200 IU) while Australia and New Zealand recommend somewhere between 5 and 15 micrograms based on age.

As knows, but I didn't mention directly, I got diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency last year (at the same time I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism.) As I said above, I'm on massive prescription doses (50,000 IU twice a week,

[suzanne]

Ack! I'm glad you found out about it at least. Bad doctors! Bad nurses. Grr.

[x_mass]

how easy is it to get the doctor to test my vitamin levels and what can they check?

[baratron]

a) A simple blood test.
b) Mine checked vitamin B12, folate and vitamin D, but I don't know what else can be checked. You'd be best asking any doctor friends you happen to have :)