The Sleep Nomad

A Sleep, Sleep Apnea & Insomia blog

Vitamin D and Sleep Apnea - Does it help?

2018-07-16 The Sleep NomadVitamin D

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The inspiration for this blog. Vitamin D and Sleep Apnea.

If you read the about page on this blog, you have seen this exchange between me and my sleep doctor. I asked him when I was first diagnosed with sleep apnea if he had anyone who had been cured of sleep apnea. He promptly said “No, we would have to cut out your tongue”. In the back of my mind I was dismayed yet somehow felt challenged to prove him wrong one day. Well eight years in, he is still right but I have not given up. I constantly search for things that will improve or potentially eliminate sleep apnea. On this quest, I recently ran across the site and podcasts of Dr Gominak. She is a neurologist who says she has experienced improvement in both sleep and sleep apnea by increasing the vitamin D level of her patients along with B vitamins.

Dr. Gominak

After watching the youtube posts and podcast listed below, it sounded like this could really be something that could help. I searched all over for someone who had tried her vitamin d regimen and written about their experience but I couldn’t find one. If you have tried it and have website I can link to, please send me a message via my contact page. I decided I was going to give the vitamin d strategy a shot. I couldn’t find any real downside to trying it so long as you kept your vitamin D level below 80. I will be writing more about my experience with it in upcoming posts. I am currently 4 months into the regimen. A few of the upcoming posts will update my progress up to this point.

It is hard to grasp how vitamin D might help with sleep and even more so with sleep apnea. Here is a study that supports the idea. See this study.

CONCLUSION: This study shows that the use of vitamin D supplement improves sleep quality, reduces sleep latency, raises sleep duration and improves subjective sleep quality in people of 20-50 year-old with sleep disorder.

I think the best way to explain it is to watch her videos. She goes pretty deep into her theory and medical reasons for vitamin D being such an integral part of sleeping well and potentially improving or fixing sleep apnea. I have always wondered how we could have so many people with sleep apnea when they only invented the CPAP machine in the early 80s?! What happened to everyone that had it before then? What about people in places where you can’t get a cpap machine or sleep study due to cost?? I can’t go a night without my cpap machine and yet it has only been around for the last 30+ years.

The Quest Begins

So there you have the foundation of this blog. Vitamin D is not the only thing I have tried. In fact there is a long list of things I have tried and will write about. Everything from playing a didgeridoo to neurofeedback. Some things have worked well and others not so much. But they may work for you! Along the way, I have tried various sleep products and have found a few tricks to sleeping better. I would love to hear your best tips or products that you have tried. Please send me a message until I get a comment system going. In my next post, I will write about starting vitamin D and the first month.

Dr. Gominak’s website

YouTube - Dr. Gominak - High Intensity Health

YouTube - Dr. Gominak - StrengthChat

YouTube - Dr. Gominak - How to fix your sleep

Podcast - Dr. Steven Park - Interview with Dr. Gominak

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