As Sammy Davis Jr. used to say on Laugh-In...  "Here come da Judge..."

With the good stuff and good reason too... You're very correct.  There's a growing level of awareness among medical professionals who really understand vitamin D3 metabolism, that the "normal" reference range for 25(OH)D was derived as a gaussian distribution or "bell shaped" curve of lab test results collected from a population of people who are largely vitamin D3 deficient... 

That means the "normal" reference range used for many years as a standard, is actually shifted to the left at a concentration range much lower than the actual biologically and physiologically "normal" mean...

I have lab data on nearly a dozen CH'ers who tested between 200 and 259 ng/mL.  Their total calcium serum concentrations were all "normal" with no other indications or symptoms of vitamin D3 intoxication... 

Take care and thanks for the lab data...

V/R, Batch

Hey Zillygoat,

Thanks for the headzup you're starting the anti-inflammatory regimen... 

A 25(OH)D serum concentration of 16 ng/mL is clearly deficient... I'm surprised you're not having other health problems...

I think you're a bit conservative with your vitamin D3 dosing schedule...  but that's ok...  Your plan will work... it will just take longer than necessary... like a month to 45 days given your starting 25(OH)D serum concentration.

Taking vitamin D3 at doses of 10,000 to 15,000 IU/day and higher is very safe

I say this because vitamin D3 is the only free vitamin... actually a pre-hormone.  Your skin can make 15,000 IU vitamin D3 in as little as 15 minutes if exposed to the UVB in summer sunlight... between 10am and 2pm... and you're clad in a bathing suit without any sunblock. 

Let me guess... you don't do that do you?  Neither do I...

You need to get your 25(OH)D up to a target serum concentration of 85 ng/mL as shown in the chart below.

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The only question now is how long do you want to wait while building your serum concentration of this vitamin D3 metabolite up to 85 ng/mL?

The two fastest and safest ways to do this reported by CH'ers, are a vitamin D3 dosing schedule of 20,000 IU/day plus an additional 50,000 IU loading dose once a week for a month then get your 25(OH)D tested.  The other dosing schedule is 50,000 IU/day for two weeks then 20,000 IU/day for another two weeks then get tested.

Once you reach your target concentration of 25(OH)D you can drop back to a maintenance dose of 10,000 IU/day as shown in the chart above.

Both of these dosing schedules should elevate your 25(OH)D into the green zone with a favorable CH response as fast as possible.

Talk to you GP about this.

In regards to ONSI...  Given the present level of efficacy of this invasive surgical procedure...  50% at best... I would consider it as the very last thing to try and option of last resort...  only after all other methods of controlling your CH have failed... 

You're not there yet...

ONSI is expensive even with insurance... it takes months to recover from the implantation process and longer after that to develop a set of stimulation patters.

The biggest weakness of ONSI is it will not work when sleeping because you need to be awake to sense an approaching cluster headache then select one of the preset stimulation patterns.

If you're sleeping when the cluster headache hits... by the time you wake up and reach for the ONSI remote controller... (looks like a small TV remote) the cluster headache pain will likely have climbed beyond what the ONSI is capable of aborting...

Michael is a disciplined engineer...  He indicated he achieved a maximum of 85% effectiveness with his ONSI while awake but still needed imitrex and oxygen therapy...

For a complete first-hand account of his ONSI experience complete with photos from the surgery, read the following link posted by Wildhaus...  Read all 4 pages...

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That was in 2008...  Michael had the entire ONSI implant surgically removed last year...  It failed to provide an acceptable level of control over his cluster headaches. 

He now uses the anti-inflammatory regimen and claims an 80% reduction in the frequency of is cluster headaches.

Take care and please keep us posted

V/R, Batch

Hey Kev,

Thanks for the update.  Yes your 25(OH)D is a little high... and even though you're still getting hit, don't worry just yet. We've seen this condition reported before and your 25(OH)D serum concentration is nowhere near the record for this regimen.

The good news is your liver is working just  fine metabolizing vitamin D3 into 25(OH)D. 

Although your 25(OH)D is a little high, it's still well below the lowest threshold listed for vitamin D3 intoxication with elevated total calcium serum concentrations so no big thing...  You can bring it down easily by cutting your present vitamin D3 dose in half for a month then retest.

What you need to do now is "tune" the regimen.  Start by cutting out the calcium supplements for a few weeks.  If you're taking the calcium citrate tablets with most of the vitamin D3 cofactors, stop taking them and instead, start taking some Centrum Silver or the Safeway brand, Century Senior 50+ Formula.  These two formulations contain all the vitamin D3 cofactors plus vitamin K and vitamin A.

The vitamin A is essential for the metabolism of 25(OH)D into 1,25(OH)2D3, calcitriol, the active hormonal vitamin D3 metabolite, at the cellular level throughout the body. 

This is called the peripheral or autocrine path of vitamin D3 metabolism we think is responsible for the CH preventative effect of vitamin D3.

Stopping the intake of supplemental calcium will help increase the rate of metabolilsm of 25(OH)D into 1,25(OH)2D3, calcitriol in the kidneys.

As  far as busting goes... If you feel it's necessary, go ahead.  We've seen no problems mixing busting with the anti-inflammatory regimen.

Take care and please keep us posted.

V/R, Batch