Sleep disorders cured by 60-80 ng of vitamin D and some B vitamins

A few of Dr. Gominak's slides,
all slides are attached at the bottom of this page
Updates:
Sleep, Vitamin D, Vitamin B-12, IBS, Fibromyalgia - Gominak March 2015
Sleep problems cured by vitamin D, etc. – workshops and patient workbooks – Gominak 2018
What’s the right dose?
We make 20,000 IU of vitamin D on our skin in 1-6 hours in a bathing suit, middle of the day middle of the summer.
Time needed to accomplish this is related to skin color.
1,000 IU/day is clearly not going to replace this.
There are two types of doses :
1) Repleating dose ( going from 15 ng/ml to 65 ng/ml ) and
2) Maintenance dose (staying at 65ng/ml)
The one time dose to go from 18 to 60 is much higher than the maintenance dose.
Repleating dose is 10-20K/day for 4-6 weeks depending on the first measured level and, what month it’s measured in, and how long it’s been that low.
Dosing vitamin D
Summer dose is zero to 10,000 and different for each person based on where they live, how much they go outside and how fast they make it, ie skin color.
Dark skinned people make it slower, they are made for very high sun environment and use melanin in their skin to block D formation so they don’t get too high.
We know that darker skinned people have more sleep disorders, this is why.
Each person needs to learn their own winter dose and summer dose that keeps them 60-80 ng/ml.
Dosing vitamin D
Surprisingly, once my patients wake up strong, happy and pain free for several months they can often tell by the way they feel that their level isn’t right.
When they feel worse they decrease or increase by half of their dose.
If, within a day or so, they’re feeling good again it usually means they went the right way.
Always insist on numbers to support these moves in the first to second year. After that they may not need to be done as often.
All insurances will do four vitamin D levels per year with the ICD 9 of 268.9; vitamin D deficiency. All of your patients make that diagnosis so don’t be afraid to use it.
Other vitamin deficiencies that affect sleep may develop after long periods of D deficiency
D hormone has other cofactors that are necessary for its action in each cell, so I always give a multivitamin.
B12 helps the sleep and should be >500. If it’s below 500 I supplement with 1000 mcg per day for several years.
D has receptors in the parietal cells of the stomach that make acid and intrinsic factor so B12 deficiency is usually a secondary deficiency to D deficiency and what we’ve been taught about “pernicious anemia” is actually wrong, once you replace the D as well as the B12 the anemia usually corrects.
Anemia of “chronic disease” always has a low D level in the background, and in my experience usually corrects with the proper vitamin D replacement, 60-80 ng/ml.
All the cells of the bone marrow, including red cells and platelets have vitamin D receptors on their surface.
Vitamin D side effects
Leg cramps or worsening headaches may suggest magnesium is low, give sunflower or pumpkin seeds as a magnesium source daily or take magnesium gluconate 500 mg/day. (not oxide) send them to www.vitamindcouncil.org. for any questions.
If D causes diarrhea (1/50 of my patients) put the D on the skin instead of orally for a while or try the powdered form instead of D dissolved in oil. Or carefully use a tanning bed.
Be careful of giving supplemental D to people who are not sick. They may not need it and if it gets too high it will goof up their sleep.
If they feel worse immediately lower the dose.
In the third year of giving lots of patients vitamin D some questions remain
Why are some of my daily headache sufferers developing burning in their hands and feet?
Why don’t all of the patients who came to see me for burning in the hands and feet get completely better with D?
Why do some vitamin D deficient patients have pain and some do not?
Why are some people cured of pain using D and some not?
Why haven’t the irritable bowel symptoms gone away even though the reflux has?
Why aren’t my patients losing weight at the rate that they gained it when they became D deficient?
Why are some of my patients still not sleeping normally with everything I know of in range?
What is it that their brain still wants to sleep normally?
Why do all of these people have “abnormal colonic microbiomes”?
Hypertension
Heart disease
High cholesterol
Obesity
Stroke
- (All who we know have sleep apnea and low D)
Multiple Sclerosis
Rheumatoid arthritis
Psoriasis
Ulcerative colitis, crohn’s
Lupus
Autoimmune diseases of almost any kind
See also VitaminDWiki
Search for Gominak on VitaminDWiki 450 items as of Jan 2018
Poor sleep and lack of vitamin D - Nov 2011 also by Gominak
Sleep disorder and nonspecific pain implies low vitamin D, especially if dark skin – March 2013
Many sleep disorders cured with vitamin D levels of 60 to 80 nanograms – May 2012
All items in category Sleep items
Need 40 to 80 ng of vitamin D to lose weight – Colgan Sept 2013
Need at least 80 ng of vitamin D if have chronic kidney disease – May 2012
Update on Treating Multiple Sclerosis with high dose vitamin D - Sept 2013 150 ng
Overview Loading of vitamin D many way to restore levels in a month or two
VitaminDWiki: there are several other forms of Vitamin D for poor guts
Nanoencapsulated vitamin D is stable and bioavailable – May 2012
Vaginal suppository of 6300 IU vitamin D stopped vaginal infection – Feb 2011
See also web
- Vitamin D Improves Selected Metabolic Parameters but Not Neuropsychological or Quality of Life Indices in OSA: A Pilot Study Jan 2017
- RCT used only 4,000 IU daily for only 15 weeks
- Not enough, for not long enough: 8,000 IU for 30 weeks would likely have found a benefit