I had an email today about pain and vitamin d and I thought perhaps others here may like to see a copy of my reply.
I used to suffer from neurogenic pain resulting from the late effects of polio.
My Ankles and wrists and sometimes other joints were affected with a constant low level pain that no prescription pain killers would touch unless taken in amounts to affected quality of life.
I suffered with this pain for mainly years and been through the gamut of prescription pain killers. The prospect of it getting worse was simply intolerable and I was afraid the rate at which I was exhausting the range of pain relief available would mean that by the time I was old (Late Effects of Polio doesn't shorten life it just affects quality of life) There would be no alternatives left to deal with pain in old age, which is why I went on my search for how best to slow the progression of the condition and control the pain without medication.
The Biochemical Origin of Pain – Proposing a new law of Pain: The origin of all Pain is Inflammation and the Inflammatory Response PART 1 of 3 – A unifying law of pain Part 2 is also online free full text. It may be worth reading this before the rest of my post as the rest is simply the anti inflammatory agents I've added to my list.
Increasing my natural anti inflammatory status seemed to be worth doing.
I doubt the 5000iu will be sufficient to rebuild your 25(OH)D level.
Topping up your vitamin D tank
Dr Davis finds his patients require MORE than the 5000iu/daily/D3 you are suggesting and over a longer term before they reach the point their bodies start increasing 25(OH)D significantly above 60ng/ml. 150nmol/l I'm nor that much heavier than you. I take 5000iu/daily BUT I also use a UVB high sunbed every other day in winter and get full body sun in the summer whenever available or use the sunbed if it's too cold. I keep my 25(OH)D around 60ng/ml
I get tested twice yearly at Grassrootshealth
I was already posting about using Vitamin D in conjunction with omega 3 for chronic pain, back in the MSE days. The omega 3 DHA is in fact a Vitamin D receptor ligand so helps D3 function, but omega 3 also resolves inflammation. and I found that keeping my omega 3 status high with 2g daily omega 3 (EPA+DHA) while not consuming any omega 6 industrial seed oils (corn,sunflower, soyabean, cottonseed) also helped.
When you increase the amount of vitamin D you consume you inevitably increase the ability of your body to absorb calcium from your diet.
While there are plenty of calcium sources our grains now have much less magnesium than was the case prior to 1960 so we are now all magnesium deficient as well as vitamin d deficient. ( low magnesium also leads to excess iron absorption) So it's a good idea to increase magnesium intake to improve neuropathic pain control, with a magnesium Albion Patent mineral magnesium chelate (the best absorbed magnesium) with each meal through the day.
To add to your anti inflammatory arsenal another Vitamin D receptor ligand that also works in other ways is curcumin I take 500mg night and morning.
You may also want to consider Resveratrol alongside the curcumin, They tend to work in synergy improving the impact of each other although they are working in different ways
While I do use resveratrol as the excuse for opening another bottle of red I don't think drinking yourself blotto is a sensible pain relief strategy the hangover next morning is somewhat counterproductive but supplements are available.
I do want to make the point that these strategies ALL have to be in place at the same time.
While I love the idea of the scientific method I don't think people in pain have the luxury of trying one thing and then another.
The Vitamin D will take around 3yrs to reach a level where you can be sure it is actually stored in tissue cells rather than just circulating. Most scientific studies don't use sufficient for long enough for any of the participants to actually have stored vitamin D reserves.
Omega 6 out competes omega 3 for space in cells at ratios above 5 onega 6 to 1 omega 3 and as most people have ratios around 20 to 1 and the half life of omega 6 is 2 yrs in the body it's going to take several years of omega 3 surplus and omega 6 elimination to drop that below the 5<>1 ratio.
98% of our magnesium should be stored in our bones. Our skeleton is refurbished on a 10yr schedule so staying in mangesium surplus for 10yrs is required to rebuild magnesium stores. As most people don't meet the current RDA for magnesium and that's too low persuading people to take effective amounts of magnesium for long enough to solve the underlying problem is difficult.
Do bear in mind I'm NOT a health professional, simply someone who was desperate to solve to problem of constant pain, depression and overweight. Whether my attack pain from all angles approach works for you is something you will have to discover for yourself.
Another anti inflammatory anti oxidant you may want to use is Melatonin. I used to dread the time just after going to bed when in that period before actually going to sleep all I was aware of was the pain in my joints. I'd manage to distract myself, more or less through the day but going to sleep and indeed in the morning on waking I found it difficult not to focus on the pain. Improving melatonin secretion and using melatonin TR supplements is another supplementary layer.
Implications of melatonin therapy in irritable bowel syndrome this mentions melatonin relation to pain.
Effects of melatonin on nociception processes in experimentally model of neurophatic pain
I should perhaps mention that weight loss is a good way to reduce chronic inflammation and lower sensitivity to pain.
I used this Low Carbohydrate plan Obviously exercise isn't an option for me and I didn't fancy the idea of semi starvation either so a plan which didn't require calorie counting, carbohydrate counting or deliberate calorie restriction was ideal for me. I lost 2lbs a week for 25weeks and reached my target weight without problems. I suspect that going into this plan with a high anti inflammatory status enabled it to work better. I've not regained weight since. The reason why losing fat is important is that fats cells emit pro inflammatory cytokines so overweight people have a higher inflammatory status and therefore are more sensitive to pain.
Originally Posted by treborc
