Yes, I do have some ideas, but they probably will not be what you want to hear!!
So, first of all, 200 to 400 mg of magnesium is not very much. If you read my Magnesium Dosage page, you'll see that one of the studies that I've quoted recommends STARTING at a dosage of 600 mg and going up from there, so give that a try.
Next, taking a dosage of 5000 IU's per day is NOT going to fix your vitamin d deficiency- ever!! It's a MAINTENANCE dose for those who already have optimal Vitamin D Levels
If you read my page on Vitamin D Deficiency Treatment page, you'll see that the research recommended treatment is about 50,000 per week- which is about 7000 IU's per day- with the option of using up to 10,000 IU's per day.
I would also suggest that you take a high quality multivitamin supplement such as Beyond Any Multiple because vitamins work in SYNERGY with each other.
Vitamin D requires magnesium to work, magnesium requires B6 to be absorbed into the cells. They both require sufficient calcium, etc, etc and many of these 'Cofactors' or synergies we just don't even know about yet, so I always suggest 'covering your bases' with a good multi.
OK. Now, for the part that you are not going to like. If you read my page on Vitamin D Side Effects, you'll see that fatigue can happen and that it will pass in a week or two.
But it's NOT going to pass if you keep taking the vitamin d once or twice and then stop it or decrease the dosage. In my experience, when people have these Side Effects that will pass, when they take smaller dosages they just keep the side effects going on and on and on forever and they don't want to do Vitamin D Therapy any more.
So...an effective alternative to taking daily vitamin d for vitamin d deficiency treatment is called Stoss Therapy and it is to take 600,000 IU's all at once. This is ROUTINELY given to vitamin d deficient children and was actually done in East Germany as a routine measure to ALL newborns for over a decade without any problems.
So, it's very safe.
If you were to wait until you have 2 or 3 days off in a row, as soon as you get home from work before your time off, then simply take 600,000 IU's all at once then get ready to sleep for the rest of the weekend.
The sleepiness, while it might interfere with activity, is not dangerous and it will pass if you get your levels up. So, that is my recommendation that I told you that you wouldn't like!!
I had similar experience by: Anonymous
I suffered from fatigue following a Vit D course in which I took 500K IU in about 1 and half months. At the time I also had several hundred mgs of magnesium per day through normal diet, I always had fatigue problems, and my nails went from normal to thin and brittle, my bone density was also affected and my ability to concentrate.
I struggled for more than a year to understand what was going on until one day I came across an animal research article that indicated that Magnesium absorption was greatly enhanced when vitamin D was taken at the same time. At that point I realized that I was having symptoms of Hypermagnesemia (too much magnesium in the blood). Vitamin D from the Sun never caused the same effect so I suspected the Vit D supplements I took were to blame.
To test the theory I did a blood test and Magnesium was slightly high 2.3 mg/dL (not enough to cause symptoms). I decided to focus on getting more calcium (which I'm usually not getting enough of), and NEVER took vitamin D or vitamin D containing calcium supplements with food or anything that could contain magnesium.
The results where amazing, Most of the fatigue is now restricted to when I violate the rule above. Now I only rely on the fat in Full cream milk to take with Vit. D before going to sleep and I make sure I eat nothing before for a couple of hours.
It's still early to tell the long term effects, but I do feel better. I take only the amount of vit d that is available with calcium supplement, together with some sunshine exposure (I rarely also get 5000 IU of vit D from Mushroom capsules when not going in the sun for a while).
Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...
Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?
Click on the HTML link code below.
Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment,
your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.
