Sleep disorders cured by 60-80 ng of vitamin D and some B vitamins – March 2013

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

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See also VitaminDWiki

• Sleep longer if have more vitamin D – many studies
• Search VitaminDWiki for SLEEP
• 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
• Handout on Vitamin D (Hormone D) and sleep - Gominak 2012
• All items in category Sleep 101 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
• Vitamin B12

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
• Alternatives if not swallow pills or not absorb vitamin D
• Gut-Friendly Vitamin D
• Sublingual vitamin D

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