The Sleep Nomad

A Sleep, Sleep Apnea & Insomia blog

Vitamin D And Sleep - Month 2

2018-08-5 The Sleep NomadVitamin D

unsplash.com

Vitamin D and Sleep - Month 2

In my last post Vitamin D and Sleep - Month 1, I said I would tell you what my vitamin D level was after one month. It had been 26 days since I started the vitamin D. I was shooting for an average of 5,000 vitamin D a day. That is what I ended up with. I went to my doctor and did my best to explain what I was doing taking all of this vitamin D. My doctor was very open minded. My doctor was fine with letting me give it a try.

The result comes back and my vitamin D level was 61. I was quite surprised it had reached that level so fast. I had expected that it might be in the 40s. I think it really proves the point that vitamin D dosing is very personal. It also points out that you can’t do this kind of protocol without doing the testing. Otherwise you will have no idea if you are in a safe range or in a range to be beneficial. This blood test was covered by my insurance as I had gone to the doctor.

I know many people are probably interested in trying vitamin D but testing is an issue. Maybe you don’t have insurance. Maybe you don’t have a doctor. Who knows what the reason might be. I also had to figure out how to continue getting my level tested. In my next post, I will tell you what I figured out to cover my testing needs.

Month 2

Since my level was already in the 60 to 80 range, I started to get cautious about how much to take going forward. I am an experimenter by nature but I really didn’t want to go over 80. Additionally, spring and summer months were coming and I knew I would be out in the sun a lot. What to do? I decide I am going to cut back and shoot for 1k to 2k of vitamin D a day. On days that I get a lot of sun, I will skip vitamin D altogether.

I forgot to mention one thing that happened during the first month. Actually it was two weeks after starting. I woke up with what I think Dr. Gominak calls pain. I was achy all over my body. It felt like I had worked out every muscle in my entire body. It wasn’t too bad but it was noticeable. Nothing that would have stopped me from every day activities.

Vitamin B-50 Complex

So part of the program, as I mentioned, is taking B-50. The basic explanation as to why you are taking them has to do with your gut bacteria and body repairs when sleeping. I think listening to her youtube videos is critical for understanding the B vitamins. Actually I think how the body makes B vitamins and their impact on our sleep is really interesting. A week into month two of my B-50, I stopped taking them. So I took them for a month and a half total. For some reason, they were making me really hungry. I am not sure why. In hind sight, I should have done a coaching session with Dr. Gominak and asked her why she thinks this was happening. According to her website, you can set up a coaching session with her so that you can ask questions. In fact, I do plan to do that in the future so I can understand B vitamins better. Shortly after stopping, the hunger issue went away. The take away for me was that B vitamins are pretty important and I need to understand them more.

My sleep was still going pretty good. I was still notching some good nights of sleep. This is kind of how I figured it would go. Slowly my nights of good to great sleep would increase. I should note thought that not every night is great sleep. Some were good, some were great and few bad nights were sprinkled in there too. Lots of things can wreck your sleep that no vitamins will help. Like when your dog decides 2 am is a good time to go outside.

unsplash-logoJeremy Bishop