Overview Pain and Vitamin D

---

PAIN has been found to be associated with and treated by vitamin D for decades

Double blind clinical trials are now proving that Vitamin D reduces many kinds of pains

• Pain subjectively and objectively lower in people with higher levels of vitamin D – Aug 2014
• Menstrual Pain (PMS) reduced by vitamin D – RCT 2012, 2014, 2016
• Clinical Trials for PAIN with vitamin D INTERVENTION 213 as of Aug 2022

Chronic Pain

• Chronic Pain reported 38 percent less often if supplemented with Vitamin D – meta-analysis Sept 2016
• Chronic pain 40 percent less intense associated with 10 nanogram more vitamin D – April 2014
• Is there a role for vitamin D in the treatment of chronic pain – Oct 2014
• Following vitamin D intervention less chronic pain and slept better – June 2012
• 7 improvements in lives of veterans with chronic pain with 50,000 IU vitamin D weekly – June 2012
• 100 Million Americans Have Chronic pain – IoM June 2011 Good overview of both acute and chronic pain
  VitaminDWiki notices that the majority of the 10 types of pain listed are reduced by increased vitamin D levels
• All items in category Chronic Pain and vitamin D 157 items

Fibromyalgia and Widespread

• Fibromyalgia treated with Vitamin D (50,000 IU weekly for 3 months) – 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
• More likely to have Chronic Widespread pain when have less than 15 ng – May 2010
• Overview Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue and vitamin D
• Vitamin D and Chronic Widespread pain for women - who have less vitamin D than men

Rheumatoid Arthritis

• Overview Rheumatoid Arthritis and vitamin D RA pain reduction for over 300 years (cod-liver oil)
  • Rheumatoid Arthritis pain is reduced by vitamin D, but DAS28 score is not changed – Jan 2013

Headache Pain

• Cluster headaches virtually eliminated in 7,000 people with high-dose vitamin D and cofactors - Feb 2022
  A Cluster Headache is not chronic, but it is very intense
• All items in category Headache and vitamin D 41 items

Dark Skin Pain

• 150,000 IU vitamin D reduced pain in immigrants – RCT Dec 2012 Dark Skin ==> lower vitamin d ==> more pain
• Blacks had lower vitamin D and more quantifiable pain than whites with knee osteoarthritis – Nov 2012
  Dark Skin ==> lower vitamin d ==> more pain
• Sleep disorder and nonspecific pain implies low vitamin D, especially if dark skin – March 2013 Dark Skin ==> lower vitamin d ==> more pain

Unsorted Pain

• Does vitamin D treat pain – still not absolutely, positively sure – meta-analysis April 2015
• Knee osteoarthritis pain reduced by 60,000 IU monthly vitamin D following loading dose – RCT Nov 2013
• Discover the pain of Vitamin D Deficiency
• Patients like me survey found vitamin D to be #1 supplement - across ALL problems for pain reduction
• All items in category Back Pain and vitamin D 41 items
• All items in category Dental and vitamin D 105 items
• Half of seniors with pain had low levels of vitamin D – April 2012
• If you cannot get readily get medical treatment consider Alternative Med such as vitamin D
  Might eliminate the pain and occasionally eliminate the need for the medical treatment
• Vitamin D reduced skeletal pain in 85 percent of the patients – Nov 2012
• Breast Cancer medicine pain reduced with 4300 IU vitamin D – RCT June 2012
• RADICAL discussion of vitamin D and Nonspecific Musculoskeletal Pain– Nov 2012 single dose of 150,000 IU 35% reduction
• Can vitamin D help with chronic pain? Vitamin D Council March 2013
    one study they discussed: 50,000 IU/week for 2 weeks, 75% reported pain was completely eliminated, full text attached at bottom of this page
    The 25% which still have pain had very little increase in the vitamin D levels in their blood = poor responders.
     see How you might double your response to vitamin D   Reasons for low response >26 reasons as of Feb 2013
• 400,000 IU of vitamin D reduced adult pain and improved quality of life – March 2014
• Acute Rehab. patients 2.3X more likely to have musculoskeletal pain if low vitamin D – Oct 2014
• Less use of musculoskeletal pain drugs if get vitamin D – Feb 2015
• Opioid use in palliative cancer patients far less if high level of vitamin D – May 2015 has the following chart
  
• Testing your bone pain provides a free vitamin D test with confirmation Feb 2013
  Press with about 10 lbs (4 kg) of force at the bottom of your sternum and your tibia

Pain - chronic category has the following

157 items in category Chronic pain

See also

• Overview Pain and Vitamin D
• Percentage of people with pain increased 25 percent in 18 years – Jan 2019
• Pain not reduced by 60,000 IU monthly vitamin D (need 50,000 IU weekly) – RCT Aug 2023
• Overview Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue and vitamin D
• Overview Rheumatoid Arthritis and vitamin D
• Shingles and vitamin D
• Shin splints decrease with vitamin D
• Migraine and Vitamin D
• Headache category 76 items
• "musculoskeletal pain" 490 items as of Aug 2023
• "chronic fatigue" 185 items as of Jan 2017
• Category Back Pain 41 items
• 7 pain studies in VitaminDWiki with KNEE in the title as of Aug 2023 (see below)
• Opioid OR Opiate OR Morphine in the title 10 pages as of June 2021

Items in both of the categories Pain and Intervention:

---

VitaminDWiki - Proof that Vitamin D Works

93 health problems dealt with by Vitamin D intervention as of July 2023 include
Back Pain,   Raynaud's Pain,   Menstrual Pain,   Rheumatoid Arthritis,   Sickle Cell Pain,   Fibromyalgia   Knee pain , . . . . .
Note: Many pains are not treated by 1 pill every 2 weeks - they need 1 pill every week

---

Serious chronic pain list from Institute of Medicine
EVERY ONE of which are helped by Vitamin D

• Migraine and other serious headaches,
• Arthritis and other joint pain,
• Endometriosis,
• Irritable bowel syndrome,
• Trauma or postsurgical pain
• Lower-back pain,
• Shingles,
• Sickle-cell disease,
• Heart disease (angina),
• Cancer,
• Stroke

---

Vitamin D and Chronic Pain] iHerb Nov 2013

The health Haven

• People with inadequate vitamin D blood levels will need to take twice as much narcotic pain medication as those with adequate vitamin D for pain relief. So, while vitamin D does not cure chronic pain, it is an important adjuvant therapy to use in pain treatment management.
• Research studies on vitamin D have shown that many types of fatigue and chronic pain are linked to vitamin D deficiency, including chronic musculoskeletal pain, fibromyalgia syndrome, osteoarthritis, migraine headaches, rheumatic pain and hyperesthesia.
• 'For patients who do not respond to other therapy, vitamin D supplementation is recommended to alleviate or perhaps even resolve chronic fatigue and pain issues

---

Vitamin D - A Neglected 'Analgesic' for Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain- An Evidence-Based Review & Clinical Practice Guidance

Pain-Topics.org 2008, Author: Stewart B. Leavitt, MA, PhD
Medical Reviewers Bruce Hollis, PhD; Michael F. Holick, MD, PhD; Seth I. Kaufman, MD; Lee A. Kral, PharmD, BCPS; Paul W. Lofholm, PharmD, FACA; N. Lee Smith MD; James D. Toombs, MD; Winnie Dawson, RN, BSN, MA
 Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki.
Elderly Skin generates less Vitamin D Derived from chart in that study

---

Pain relievers can extend duration of back pain - and sometimes turning it into a chronic pain - May 2022

Common Medications Can Prolong Back Pain, Study Says New York Times

• "Guidelines from professional medical societies already say that people with back pain should start with nondrug treatments like exercise, physical therapy, heat or massage. Those measures turn out to be as effective as pain-suppressing drugs, without the same side effects."
• Biobank stiudy found ...2,163 people with acute back pain, 461 of whom went on to have chronic pain. Those taking a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory had nearly double the chance of developing chronic back pain as those taking other drugs or no drugs, the researchers found.
• "An analysis of randomized clinical trials found that these drugs had almost no benefit over placeboes in reducing low back pain."

Study - Acute inflammatory response via neutrophil activation protects against the development of chronic pain PDF

---

People in pain having low vitamin D levels will benefit from supplementation - Oct 2017

Vitamin D in Pain Management - review
 Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki

---

See also web

• 60,000 IU VitaminD monthly was not enought to reduce pain - Nov 2022  PDF
  • Mean vitamin Dwas 30 ng - so half would not be likely to benefit, No indications of % of obese, who need more
• One of the Few Pharma Pills I Wholeheartedly Endorse Mercola Nov 2020
  • "Low-dose naltrexone, an opiate antagonist, can benefit most autoimmune and chronic pain conditions"
• Search Google for "BACK PAIN" VITAMIN D" 1,460,000 hits Sept 2017
• Vitamin D Deficiency and Chronic Widespread Pain - June 2017
   Download the PDF from VitaminDWiki
• Google for "Musculoskeletal Pain" "VITAMIN D" 138,000 hits Sept 2017
• With a 10-day supply of opioids, 1 in 5 become long-term users March 2017
  
  2X probability of long-term use if first use was only a 10-day prescription
• Prescription painkillers are more widely used than tobacco, new federal study finds Wash. Post Sept 2016 Nothing about Vitamin D
  "The report indicates that in 2015, more American adults used prescription painkillers than used cigarettes, smokeless tobacco or cigars — combined"
  ". . opioid painkillers killed nearly 19,000 Americans. That's greater than the total number of Americans (15,809) who were murdered that year"
  " . . when it comes to lobbying, pro-painkiller groups outspend groups arguing for tighter restrictions by more than 200 to 1"
• CHRONIC PAIN: WHAT IT IS AND HOW PROPER TESTING HELPS Dec 2020 does not mention Vitamin D

Brief pain summary May 2016
The Opioid Epidemic We Failed to Foresee New York Times
I (Henry Lahore) sent the following comment to NYT

• Far less use of opioids if have high level of vitamin D (has chart)
• Every single source of chronic pain listed by Institue of Medicine is associated with low Vitamin D
• Back pain reduced in 95% of people taking vitamin D - this page
• 85 Clinical trials listed for Pain reduction with vitamin D - this page
• Palliative cancer pain reduced by Vitamin D intervention
• Chronic Widespread Pain associated with Vitamin D under 10 ng

WOMEN'S PAIN IS DIFFERENT FROM MEN'S—THE DRUGS COULD BE TOO Wired Mag March 2019

• Nothing about Vitamin D. Virtually all pain research has been on maile animals

Mercola Review of Acupuncture for pain relief Aug 2017 nothing about vitamin D

• 2002 WHO review
• 2004 of 29 studies found 50% reduction in pain levels
• 2015 BBC Video
• Recent acupuncture study discovered Nitric Oxide (NO) at the points

Alternatives to Drugs for Treating Pain NYT Sept 2017

• Pain of headaches, back, sciatica, etc, are sometimes due to muscle tension.
• Reducing the muscle tension thru relaxation (meditation, yoga, etc) often help
• The article references include
  "Noninvasive Treatments for Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Low Back Pain: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American College of Physicians" - April 2017 full text online
  "Evidence-Based Evaluation of Complementary Health Approaches for Pain Management in the United States" May 2016 free PDF on-line
  
  
  Personal note: They do not seem to mention additional ways I have found to eliminate various pains in 10 minutes.
  • Topcial Magnesium in DMSO or Penetrix cream
  • Muscle exercise using Bow Flex exercise machine

---

Factoids from the Body by Bill Bryson, 2019

• Chronic pain has no purpose. It’s just a system gone wrong, in the same way that cancer is a system gone wrong. We now believe that many types of chronic pain are diseases in their own right, something quite separate from acute pain.”
• The International Classification of Headache Disorders recognizes fourteen categories of headaches—migraine, trauma-induced headache, infection-induced headache, disorder of homeostasis, and so on.
• According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, about 40 percent of adult Americans—100 million people—are experiencing chronic pain at any given moment.
• Altogether chronic pain affects more people than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined.
• Andrew Rice, a pain researcher at Imperial College London, told Nature in 2016, “The drugs we have relieve 50 percent of pain in somewhere between one in four and one in seven of the patients we treat. That’s for the best drugs.” In other words, some 75 percent to 85 percent of people get no benefit at all from even the best pain drugs, and those who do get benefit don’t usually get much.

---

Associations of Pain to other VitaminDWiki Categories (>4 associations)

Summary of Associations

Associated category	Associations
Intervention	32
Intervention - non daily	16
Osteoarthritis	8
Loading dose for Vitamin D	7
Back pain	6
Skin - Dark	7
Cancer - after diagnosis	5
Vitamin D and Magnesium	7
Seniors	7
Osteoporosis	5
Top news	9
Sleep	7

Results

32 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Intervention

16 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Intervention - non daily

8 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Osteoarthritis

7 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Loading dose for Vitamin D

6 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Back pain

7 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Skin - Dark

5 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Cancer - after diagnosis

7 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Vitamin D and Magnesium

7 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Seniors

5 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Osteoporosis

9 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Top news

7 pages in both categories: Pain - chronic + Sleep

Short URL for this page = http://is.gd/painvitamind