Hey Cyclist,
I think you need a higher intake of vitamin D3 too. My theory why you need more vitamin D3 stems from your cycling... I'll explain below.
Moreover, given what we've learned during the last two years about our response to the anti-inflammatory regimen, it's obvious to most of us that 2000 IU/day vitamin D3 is too low... even though your PCP doesn't.
You need to understand that he is caught in an ethical bind between his own common sense based on years of clinical experience, and the 400 IU/day RDA or 4000 IU/day UL (Upper Tolerable Limit) for vitamin D3 put out by the four big government bureaucrats on the Nutrition Board at the Institute of Medicine.
You might want to consider this an opportunity to make your vitamin D3 therapy a "Ding-Dong School" teachable moment with your PCP.
Show him the following chart and urge him to read the attached pdf file by Garland et al. It's a very interesting meta-study on vitamin D3 metabolism that concludes: "Universal intake of up to 40,000 IU vitamin D per day is unlikely to result in vitamin D toxicity."
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My theory why you need a higher intake of vitamin D3 than 10,000 IU/day to control your cluster headache should be clear if you follow my logic.
That logic starts with the pharmacokinetics of vitamin D3 (What the body does to process vitamin D3). This occurs in the following sequence:
1. Vitamin D3 absorption in the gut
2. Liver metabolizes absorbed vitamin D3 into 25(OH)D
3. Kidneys metabolize some of the serum level 25(OH)D into 1,25(OH)2D3, the active hormonal form of vitamin D3, to support calcium homeostasis
4. The remaining serum level 25(OH)D is metabolized extrarenal (outside the kidneys) at the cellular level throughout the body to 1,25(OH)2D3 to be consumed as needed, where needed and when needed, one time... and then it's catabolized (broken down) into an inactive metabolite and eliminated by the kidneys in urine. This is called the peripheral or autocrine path of vitamin D3 metabolism.
Here's where things get really interesting... It turns out there are a number of processes along the peripheral path of vitamin D3 metabolism that consume 1,25(OH)2D3. One of the largest consumers of 1,25(OH)2D3 is the immune system.
This is where the 1,25(OH)2D3 activates and clones the immune system's T-cells. This process effectively turns the T-cells into an army of little pack-man cells that gobble up virus and bacterial antigens to fight off infection.
Other T-cells are activated to remember the kind of antigen so if it invades your system again, they can react much faster... i.e., you get chickenpox only once and you become immune to further exposure to the virus that causes it. In short, you've developed an immunity to chickenpox.
Not surprisingly, the two systems in the body with the highest immune response are the digestion and respiratory systems. When you stop to think about it... What two systems are exposed to the highest concentrations of foreign viral and bacterial antigens? If you said the digestive and respiratory tracts... you win.
Assuming you're exposed to the same concentrations of antigens in food as the rest of us... that leaves your respiratory tract as the discriminator.
As a cyclist averaging 100 miles a week, I estimate you spend roughly six to seven hours a week doing so. As your minute volume of inspired air while cycling is likely upwards of 56 liters and where the minute volume of air inspired by the average CH'er at rest is 9 liters, during that 6.5 hours of cycling you inhale 22,500 liters of air where the average CH'er at rest inhales only 3,600 liters.
That means you're inhaling six times the volume of air in that six hours of cycling as the average CH'er sitting at home or work.
You're also exposing your lungs to six times the volume of antigens such as airborne virus, bacteria, spores, pollen and other pollutants.
If you recall the lungs are a major consumer of 1,25(OH)2D3 and that this active metabolite of vitamin D3 is only used once then pumped over the side in urine, it's quite possible your immune system is easily consuming six times or more the amount of 1,25(OH)2D3 as the average CH'er.
When you consider that roughly only a thousandth of the vitamin D3 intake makes it to the periphery as 1,25(OH)2D3 and most of that is being consumed by the immune system. This could easily account for your limited response to the ant-inflammatory regimen and low 25(OH)D serum concentration.
I hope all this makes sense and that it helps explain why you need a higher vitamin D3 intake than 10,000 IU/day.
Take care and please keep us posted.
V/R, Batch
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123 Days PF And I Think I know Why (Read 535667 times)
