Vit D caused magnesium deficiency and insomnia

[caledonia]

Just throwing this out there in case anyone else is struggling with this.

My vit. D was suboptimal so one or more of my docs wanted me to take several thousand i.u.'s. After some time I noticed my energy levels were off.

After about 6 months I finally realized it was an issue with sleep. I started going to a sleep doctor. I had two attempts at doing a sleep test, but for various reasons, was unable to sleep long enough to get any data to speak of.

The doctor wanted me to work on sleep hygiene by reducing my daytime nap. I gave it try but failed after a few weeks, more tired and frustrated than ever.

More months went by. I finally realized my feet were twitching again during sleep, causing me to wake up multiple times during the night. This was a problem I thought I had previously conquered by taking magnesium.

So I increased my magnesium until I couldn't go any higher. It helped some, but not completely. It was ridiculous how much magnesium I had to take - about 2800 mg of elemental magnesium - like 5 teaspoons per day.

Finally I was reading an ebook from Carolyn Dean regarding magnesium (she sells a super absorbing liquid mag that's not supposed to cause diarrhea).

I got some of her mag and tried that in the hopes of finally being able to get in enough mag. But I had issues with the sorbic acid which is a preservative - only 4 drops caused achiness and an overall crappy feeling, so I discontinued.

Then I remembered I had read in her ebook that if vit. D is supplemented over 1000-2000iu, it can cause a depletion of magnesium. I checked back in my symptom journal, and indeed, I had increased vit. D to 4000iu a little prior to the time I noticed my energy levels were off.

So I tried reducing the vit. D. First I went down to 2000iu. My magnesium needs went down to 1400 mg. But I was still deficient.

Finally I went down to 1000iu. Bingo! My need for mag has dropped to about 500mg. I am starting to sleep a lot better and feel more rested.

It only took me 14 months of being a walking zombie to figure this out....:-(

I hope this is helpful to someone!

 

[Mary]

@caledonia - this is good information. I don't have that issue, I do fine with 5000 iu of vitamin D, but I imagine there must be many more who react as you did to high dose vitamin D - yes, only 14 months of hell to figure it out!

 

[lafarfelue]

Great information, thanks for sharing.
Sorry you had to go through so much to figure it out though! Yikes! :thumbdown:

 

[caledonia]

ps. I tried no vitamin D just for the completeness for my experiment.

My need for magnesium went down even further, but I started feeling a bit depressed and my sleep got worse (had a bad night of apnea type symptoms). So I've gone back to 1000iu as the "sweet spot" where I feel the best.

I did some research on central sleep apnea and it does look like vit. D and magnesium as well as 5htp (serotonin) are related to it.

I still need to go back and do another sleep study, because even with these improvements, things are still not 100%. At least I should be able to have a successful study this time.

 

[kelly8]

I'm so sorry you had to go through this! But I'm so appreciative of your knowledge! I will be keeping this in my mind as I've been increasing magnesium and have been taking vitamin d for a year now. Sleep had always been an issue so it seems like an experiment is in order. Thank you for posting this!

 

[AlwaysTired]

Oh wow. I don't take magnesium but have been taking 5000 iu Vitamin D since my cfs began. Insomnia has been a more recent occurrence for me so I'm gonna try what you're doing. Thanks for sharing this info.

 

[Banana94]

Hey caledonia

I did exactly the same experience! When I started my mitochondrial protocol (included high dosage of vitamin d) I developed some severe other symptoms like painful and cramped muscles and I couldnt figure out why.. I also took magnesium in low dose but maybe couldt absorb it well enough. What realy helped me was subcutanous magnesium injection (with procain, that takes the pain) which is explained on dr sarah myhills MD page! My magnesium levels went up and i felt much better with my pain and my energy level highly increased! I was not able to fill up my magnesium per oral so the injections were the solution! My doctor also told me that Calcium (as Calciumcitrat for example) should be added if you supplement with Vit. D. I think Calcium helped me with my bonepain but it was probably also the magnesium... It took also month and a real deacrease of symptoms until i figuerd it out! What i learned: High dosage of supplement can also make you feel worse if you dont take it in the right combination!!

 

[sb4]

I thought that oral vit D increases absorption of calcium, which is not something you really want to be doing, especially if you have low magnesium. Using UVB light skirts this issue as far as I'm aware.

 

[Banana94]

Yes actually it should increase the resorption in the gut, but most uf us have problems to absorb enough nutrition (leaky gut) an if you are on a dairy free diet you have to eat other calicumrich foods whats maybe sometimes is not enough. Vitam D uses Magnesium and Calcium to function, so Vitamin D supplementation goes on with a Hypercalcemia in the blood, so the body takes it from the bones if he cant absorb enough ober the gut. This is whats my doctor told me

 

[pamojja]

so Vitamin D supplementation goes on with a Hypercalcemia in the blood, so the body takes it from the bones if he cant absorb enough ober the gut. This is whats my doctor told me

You probably meant hypocalcemia, were the calcium from the bones is used for the missing.

It's also my experience with high doses of vitamin D3 to get at least a level of 60 ng/ml 25(OH)D (=8000 IUs), I need at least 1.8 g/d of elemental Mg (to cease painful muscle-cramps from Mg-deficiency), and about 0.7 g/d of supplemental calcium. Which normalized too low serum calcium levels (confirmed by hair tissue test) on a somewhat restricted dairy diet (only fermented).