Vitamin D Deficiency Could Mean A Magnesium Deficiency

[looneymom]

Tyler is having some more testing. If you have a vitamin D deficincy, you may have a magnesium deficiency. Tyler's sleep issues have gotten much worse. He tosses and turns constantly at night. His muscles jerk and twitch. He might fall asleep only to wake up hour later. So I began doing some research on vitamin D and came up with some interesting articles. I shared them with our doctor and he ordered the Red Blood Cell Essential Minerals test this last week for Tyler. Tyler is also getting ready to go down to 2 treatments of PEX this coming week. BTW long term pex can also cause mineral defiencies and restless leg syndrome. Our doctor was not aware of this and this is the reason why he chose to run this test. Tyler was having sleep issues before he ever started the PEX treament. The PEX may have just zapped more of his minerals. Tyler can be retested for the bad antibodies after the PEX has been stopped for 6 months. He will start doing 2 a week treatments this next week for 8 weeks and then go down to one treatment a week for 8 weeks, Eventually he will continue to wean off and then we can retest after 3-6 months off pex. So he has a long treatment plan to continue but this is the safest way to get these bad antibodies out of his body. If he does have minerial deficiencies then these will have to be corrected with supplements. His POTS is a complicated case but I am so thankful to have a doctor that will think out of the box and will look at research articles. The last 2 are abstracts but if you have a condition that is going to require one term pex treatment, you might want to bring this to your doctors attention. PEX is not used to treat a POTS condition but in Tyler's case it's being used because the autoimmune antibodies cause heart damage and heart failure. Our cardiologist is also having to be my son's immunologist and neurologist. Hope everyone is staying warm and maybe this information will help someone else.

http://www.functionalmedicineuniversity.com/public/882.cfm

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/10/magnesium-impacts-vitamin-d-status/

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1741-7015-11-187.pdf

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1741-7015-11-229.pdf

http://omicsonline.org/magnesium-influence-on-stress-and-immune-function-in-exercise-2161-0673.1000111.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20438534

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15372599

[Chaos]

Thanks for all the reference articles. As usual you find lots of interesting info.

It has been consistently documented that people with ME/CFS and several other versions of neuro-immune-endocrine disease have low intracellular magnesium levels. Even if the blood levels are normal it doesn't seem to be getting into the cells. I've heard many of these specialists describe how difficult it is to get magnesium levels up because it's not always well absorbed from the GI tract.

Some docs recommend epsom salt baths (or footbaths) as the magnesium can be absorbed thru the skin. Some recommend injections to help. I personally have done ok with oral magnesium and it definitely has helped several of my symptoms.

Sure hope Tyler can get a break from some of his symptoms sometime soon. He sure has been given a rough hand to play.

[xRobin]

This interesting! Thanks. Last year a few months before POTS, I started having very scary atypical migraines. I learned that they are associated with Mg deficiency and have been supplementing that. But, I also had low Vit D, on the border between insufficiency and deficiency. I had no idea they're connected! Later that year I turned up with iron deficiency anemia, too. I might be worthwhile to monitor Tyler's ferritin.

You have a heck of a doctor!

[looneymom]

When all this started in the beginning Tyler had an iron and vitamin D deficiency according to MAYO. Tyler started taking supplements then but when he had the virues and infections it seemed to set him back even further.This seems to be a cycle with him because at the time Tyler was able to walk and stand for those 3 short months, the doctor had these levels checked and they were in a veryhigh range. He was also taking 1000mg of magnesium. The doctor did the blood serum test and levels were high, so he told us to cut the magneisum in half. Just wish I had know about the Red Blood Cell Count magnesium test.

I as wish I had thought about having the doctor check these levels after Tyler had the flu last year. Our doctor suspects now that Tyler was building up the stores for iron and D but when he got the double round of flu, his body used it all up again. We are dealing with a faulty immune system and possible mineral deficiencies that are making his POTS condition worse. Running this new test should help answer these questions. Tyler's last D count was 16 in November. Will be sure to post when I get the test results.

BTW anyone can get a Red Blood Cell Count magnesium test done without a doctor's order. Here is the information in case anyone is interested. From looking at this test site, it looks as if you can order other testing without a doctor's order.

http://gotmag.org/how-to-restore-magnesium/

[corina]

As always, thanks for all the info Rachel!