My vitamin D treatment miracle
I am 30yo male, and a physician. I have been suffering from Ibs for 5-6 years. I also had knee pain and was diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the knees. I also had acne since my teenage years and was on tretinoin cream on and off but had to discontinue multiple times due to skin flaking severly when using it. I also had hair thinning, fatigue, allergic rhinitis, excessive sweating (in my face, back, armpits), brain fog and migraine headache which was very bothersome for me as i was young . I also had difficulty scaling steep steps and have to weirdly scale up and down which i attributed to my knee osteoarthritis with some proximal muscle weakness in my thigh. I tried different test and all seemed normal except my osteoarthritis. I tried multiple treatments but everything was just temporary with my symptoms returning a few days or weeks after completing my treatment. I had to work extremely hard to study and do my work as an internal medicine resident. I had difficulty remembering what i just studied the day before even though i was an extremely good student in highschool and early med school. But my grades started to become average after that. I tried to understand my condition but couldn't pin it down to what the cause was. The dermatologist treats my acne, the GI- my ibs, neurologist - my migraine etc, which wasn't comprehensive at all when i look back at it now. I was reading a journal on how common vitamin d deficiency is even in Ethiopia with prevalence of more than 50% even with some estimates up to 70% of the population. So, I thought I might be deficient as i spent my days indoor studying. It was a long time of studying as med school was for seven years and then residency for three years. Even my work after my residency is almost always indoors. So I came to the conclusion that my vitamin D levels might be low. I didn't associate all my symptoms to vitamin d but thought at least my ibs could improve a bit if i take the vitamin d. As I am stationed currently in a rural hospital, I have no access to vitamin d level laboratory nearby, so i had to take it empirically and see my response. I took 50000 iu every other day for two weeks with a total dose of 250,000 iu up to now. A week back, i noticed that i no longer have any acne or skin flaking and didn't think much of it. At two week of treatment, i noticed that i have no ibs symptoms at all for a few days and couldn't remember when i had my last symptoms, as i usually suffered daily. I experimented on it by taking local foods that usually trigger my symptoms, and i didn't develop any ibs symptoms at all. This made me extremely happy and started to analyze all my symptoms. So for the past week ( starting after one week of the treatment), i have no migraine, no acne, no skin flaking in my face, no ibs symptoms, no knee pain, no allergic rhinitis even when i smell strong perfumes. My sleep time decreased and i wake up early in the morning. I have no fatigue at all and could work all day with no tiredness at all. I can now remember specific words which i had difficulty saying the word even though i knew the concept and it used to feel like it is on the tip of my tongue but couldn't just remember it. I was thinking maybe i am just feeling a placebo effect. So this morning, I started to research the association of vitamin d deficiency and my symptoms. And I was shocked to see that everything can be explained by vitamin d deficiency. Even my excessive sweating can be due to that, although i haven't noticed improvement in that regard yet. This has been like a miracle for me. I will check my vitamin d levels soon. This has made me question my work as a physician, as we were never thought to focus on such kinds of diseases. We always rely on treating specific symptoms rather than looking at a systematic level. Even most guidelines do not recommend testing for vitamin d unless it is as a last resort. I hope this recommendations will change in the future. Ask me any questions and i will try to answer them.
Edit: The every other day dosing of 50000 iu was a trial on myself to see if it has any effect. I will now be switching to either 7000 daily or 50000 weekly as taking 50,000 daily is not recommend. Vitamin d level in the blood should also be checked.