Hi Mobyjoby, if you dont have any of the problems that I mentioned in my last post, there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking the amount that your doctor has prescribed, these kinds of amounts are routinely given to people with vitamin D deficiency with no side effects. The amounts only sound a lot because IUs are an incredible small unit of measurement.
Sure you can treat it by taking 10,000 IUs a day, but this will delay your recovery and mean you suffer longer, with what your doctor is advising you will get 280,000 IUs in a week, at 10,000 a day it will take you about a month to take the same amount. If you have any of the three problem areas I mentioned in my last post you will experience problems weather you are taking 10,000 or 40,000 IUs a day.
At your level of 15 you are severely vitamin D deficient, which puts you at risk of Osteoporosis, vitamin D deficiency causes profound chronic fatigue because it is needed to absorb Phosphorous, which is needed for your ATP to work properly, ATP is like little batteries inside all your cells if they dont work properly you have no energy for everything, Vitamin D deficiency also causes muscle pain, bone pain, respiratory problems, depressed mood, poor concentration and sleep and stomach problems, without enough your immune system cannot work properly and you will be susceptible to all infections, a lack of it is linked to causing a large number of cancers and other diseases, so it is a major problem that may account for all or at least a major part of your symptoms, it is after all a essential Hormone not a Vitamin.
My concern with the treatment that your doctor is recommending is not the initial weeks treatment, it is the two 20,000 IU doses a month and then retest in 6months. The reference range that your doctor is quoting you 50- 150 is the old one which has been used for decades, modern research says that it should be 125-200 this is because people do not start storing vitamin D below 125nmol/L, so you are 110 below that level, however with the old reference range below 50 was considered deficient, but below 75 was considered sub optimal and levels should be above 75, so you are 60 below that level.
Although they are only estimates it has been found that 600,000 IUs raises Vitamin D levels by about 50nmol/L, you will be taking 280,000 in the first week and 240,000 IUs over the next six months, so a total of 520,000 so if that raises you level by about 50 nmol you will only be around the 65 level still at sub optimal levels according to the old information, and only half way towards where the new research says that people should be.
If I were you I would be wanting to get retested after at the most a couple of months to make sure that levels are going up enough and if they are not I would want the dose increased, dont know if you have been tested for it, but conditions like Celiac will stop you absorbing the vitamin D it is a common cause of Vitamin D deficiency, also if your levels of co factors are low it will also affect your ability to absorb vitamin D and your levels will not rise as much as is needed, if you get retested sooner you will be able to see if these kind of problems are going on, waiting six months in my opinion is too long.
To give you some idea of treatment levels, my test showed a level of 56 nmol/L way higher than yours, I got my levels up above 125nmol/L and have experienced considerable improvements from doing this, but I would have taken about a million IUs to do this, again sounds like a ridiculously high amount but only because IUs are an incredibly small unit of measurement, I also had a lot of sun exposure as well, I did experience some side effects but those were fixed by taking co factors, I was Magnesium and zinc deficient.
Regarding the sun, you only stop taking in vitamin D from the sun when the body is full and nearing toxicity this is at levels of about 375 nmol you are about 360 nmol/L away from toxicity. From what Ive read the body doesnt have a daily limit of how much vitamin D it will take in from sun exposure, if you are deficient it will take in as much as it can get every day until the deficiency is cured, after that it starts to store the vitamin D this is at levels above 125 nmol/L. I would imagine that because you are so severely deficient it would take you many months of sun exposure in very good weather before your body came anywhere near these levels.
As far as I know sun sensitivity is not a contra indication for taking vitamin D supplementation, but ask your doctor about it.
My opinion is to make sure that you are not taking any medications that interact with vitamin d, ask your doctor to make sure that you dont have any of the conditions that you shouldnt take vitamin D with, and make sure they have tested for Celiac, and if all that is OK try a dose, if it is fine keep taking it as prescribed, if you have some side effects like the ones mentioned on this page for magnesium
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-cofactors/magnesium/
You may need to take cofactors, and then try and get retested in a few months to make sure that your levels are rising enough.
Vitamin D deficiency at the level you have is a very serious, but very treatable illness, and the quicker you can get it fixed the better, it may be the sole cause of your health problems, but even if it isnt getting it fixed and curing all the symptoms it is causing will give your doctor a far clearer picture of what is going on and will help them to find the problem, vitamin D deficiency can cause a lot of symptoms and leave you susceptible to a lot of other infections which you wouldnt have if your vitamin D level was normal, which can make it impossible for a doctor to work out what is going on until it is fixed.
Hope this helps, and taking the vitamin D goes well, you are actually very lucky to have a doctor who thought of vitamin D deficiency, It took me about 16 years to get it tested and that was only because I demanded it, even then they told me it was fine, when it actually showed I had sub optimal levels even under the old reference ranges.
All the best
