my d came up slightly to 71, which is still low. i'm actually more concerned about my pth than my d; the mild boost might be a reaction to half a pill every second day, or could be random, but understand that i didn't realize my d had been cut from my soy milk until after the test. i couldn't get the pth done at that lab because i scratched it off the rec (oops). it will come up in early january. i'm still waiting on the rest. for right now, i don't have a valid baseline, so i'm going to stick to the half a pill per day and focus on getting my dietary d back up by replacing the crappy soy milk variety with the better soy milk variety. what the change in fortification does is break the control, and without temporal bounds, so it means i sort of have to start all over again. i can sort of guess that my dietary d crashed at the same time as the sunlight decreased, although i don't know by how much. we'll see what happens in a few weeks.
it makes it harder to interpret the previous results, because i don't know when the control shifted. i still think that i decreased d absorption in the fall due to too much calcium intake (the mechanism for this is in the kidneys), so i don't want to overdo it with the pills. my understanding is that, broadly speaking, the science is that vitamin d pills act as worse than useless placebos for most people - it's actually harmful, unnecessary strain on the kidneys, and the kind of reaction i'm describing (where your body actually ends up pingponging d release) is probably pretty normal, in scenarios where dietary vitamin d intake is actually sufficient. i've made sure to get d pills that are just d, magnesium & fibre. that said, in contrast to the studies. up here in the northern latitudes, it becomes harder to get enough d in the winter. vitamin d deficiency is common in not just canada but also scandinavia and russia. the endocrinologist i spoke to suggested that the baseline used by these labs - 75 - is higher than should be expected by most canadians, due to the lack of sunlight for most of the year. his view was that vitamin d deficiency is widespread in canada and that i should be happy if the number is over 50. my gp, on the other hand, wants to see the number over 100, which i suspect might create a calcium overdose for me if i actually sustained it, due to the very high amounts of calcium in my diet. i've seen studies that suggest that almost a third of canadians have serum d levels less than 25, which is what the canadian government actually defines as critical. that number is clearly far too low. the numbers i've tested for are in the 60-110 range, which the endocrinologist would consider sufficient, and the gp would consider too low. so, the data i have available to me is sort of all over the place - i can put it into a broad framework (i want to get it over 75, if i can. at least.), but i have to experiment on myself to see what's going on. and, that means the pth is of more utility to me than the d.
so, remember: what i wanted to test with the d was whether i think i'm getting enough via fortification in the winter or whether i needed the extra bit to compensate for the decrease in sunlight. it initially seemed like my d probably went down due the decrease in sunlight, but then i realized that my dietary d also went down at the same time, so now i don't know. so, i can't do that experiment this year, because the control broke. i'll have to do it next year, instead. and, i should stick with the half d, for now, to be safe.
i'm still planning on getting through the empire series in one go tonight, but not until i get out of the shower.
