In March we profiled how vitamin D can be used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS).  While there are not many papers documenting vitamin D as a treatment protocol, we asked you, our readers, to help us document what you are doing, to let us know how you use vitamin D to treat your condition.

We had three people respond with MS. All take "a lot" of vitamin D compared to the mainstream, but as we learned last month, not very high at all compared to doses specifically targeted to treat MS.

This respondent takes 10,000 IU/day vitamin D, along with supplemental magnesium and K2. She has been on this protocol for 10 years and has raised her vitamin D level from 18 to 96 ng/ml. Her first diagnosis was almost 30 years ago.

 

(In the respondent's own words)

 

I follow your web site daily along with Vitamin D Council.  I am 65 years old and live in Minnesota.  I began taking 5K IU/day in 2010, and have not experienced a respiratory illness since.   In October 2012 I upped my dose to 50K IU/day for a couple of weeks, then 30K IU/day for another couple of weeks, and then 20K day for two years.  I now take 15K IU/day. 

 

December 2012 my hairdresser said the roots of my hair were darkening, and the following month, that hair was growing into my bald spot.  In 1988 I lost most of the sight in my right eye due to idiopathic optic neuritis.  In September 2013 I started to notice pattern and color in an area formerly without sight.  By August 2014 I had recovered nearly all the sight in my right eye, my vitamin D level 104 ng/ml.  My physician says that the optic nerve has remyelinated, and he says he is unaware of any other case where this has occurred 25 years later. 

 

I attribute recovery of sight to high-dose vitamin D, as nothing else has changed.  I took 5k IU/day for nearly two years without any noticeable effects other than no respiratory illness, in contrast to previous years when I had two or three colds per winter. The first evidence of darkening of hair occurred about 8 weeks after I started the 20k IU/day but continued for a couple of years.  I haven't noticed much change in the past year.  I did not notice the changes to vision until about 10 months after taking 20k IU/day - and the vision gradually improved over the next 12 months. As stated earlier, it is now almost completely back to normal. An important point is that all of the more remarkable effects occurred while I was taking doses of at least 20,000 IU per day.  I think this is important because it suggests the dosages necessary for remyelination of nerves and the duration of treatment. It doesn't happen overnight!  And, it is obvious, different effects occurred on different time tables

 

Hence my strong interest in the health effects of Vitamin D, and my fascination with the efficacy of very high dose D on otherwise refractory illnesses and autoimmune diseases.