They found that for every 10-ng/mL increase in 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, subsequent EDSS (Expanded Disability Status Scale) scores were 0.05 points lower, and subsequent normalized gray matter volume was 7 cc higher
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Based on the results and a growing body of literature suggesting a role for vitamin D in MS, lead investigator Dr. Ellen Mowry, an assistant professor of neuroimmunology at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, often supplements her patients to a vitamin D level of 40-60 ng/mL, which usually takes 2,000-4,000 international units a day.
People who live north of Baltimore may require more. In the UK it is likely to take more than 5000iu/daily.
CityAssays Birmingham NHS Path lab will send a postal 25(OH)D test for �25 UK or �30 for International. IMO as MS is an inflammatory condition and the highest anti-inflammatory action of vit d is found at 125nmol/l or 50ng/ml Up to 10,000iu daily is safe (it's the amount your skin would create if you were able to live naked outdoors)
BigVits or Amazon UK now offer 5000 iu drops/capsules around �12 for a years supply, Almost as cheap as Iherb/Vitacost or other US discount supplier.
People who live north of Baltimore may require more. In the UK it is likely to take more than 5000iu/daily.
People, who work indoors, may require more as well. When I was working for a living, I worked in areas (computer rooms) with no windows and only fluorescent lights. I worked before sunrise and after sunset many days, even many weekends. I can imagine what damage I was doing to myself. I can also imagine that I'm not the only one with such requirements. Even office situations where there are windows, but not close to your working environment. Winter was worse.
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- Jim
�Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.� Sir Winston Churchill
For at least 30 years, computer rooms used CFL. Large businesses do not have their computer rooms near any window and typically in the center of buildings. This is for security. There is no combination of CFL and sunlight. Fortunately, modern day computer rooms are not occupied by people, except for hardware maintenance, or backups and restores via tape drives.
Many office crews are subjected to CFL. One is fortunate to have daylight or combination.
I can remember rumors that the 60 cycle frequency of CFL would make you lose your hair. I can believe those articles regarding eye problems. Imagine looking at computer screens all day along with nothing but CFL lighting. It's like the control rooms for space missions. When they show these on TV documentaries, there doesn't seem to be outside light at all. Those people have periods where they never see daylight for weeks. Long hours, and only go home at night.
What have we done to ourselves?
I wish I had known about vitamin D supplementation way back when.
Abstract Background:
Early life events have been suggested to influence multiple sclerosis (MS) susceptibility, and to potentially modulate its clinical course. We assessed vitamin D-related exposures from childhood to disease onset and their associations with MS progression. Methods:
Among veterans in the Multiple Sclerosis Surveillance Registry, 219 reported
having the progressive form and met the inclusion criteria.
Participants reported their past sun exposure, vitamin D-related intake and age at disability milestones using the Patient-Determined Disease Steps (PDDS). The Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine the association between vitamin D-related exposures and time (years) to disability. Results:
Low average sun exposure in the fall/winter before disease onset was associated with an increased risk of progressing to a PDDS score of 8 (hazard ratio, HR: 2.13,95% confidence interval, CI: 1.20–3.78), whereas use of codliver oil during childhood and adolescence was associated with a reduced risk (HR: 0.44, 95% CI: 0.20–0.96). Conclusions:
These results suggest that exposure to vitamin D before MS onset might slow disease-related neurodegeneration and thus delay progression to disability among patients with the progressive subtype.
Abstract
Objective:
We sought to determine if vitamin D status is associated with developing new T2 lesions or contrast-enhancing lesions on brain MRI in relapsing multiple sclerosis (MS).
Methods:
EPIC is a five-year longitudinal MS cohort study at the University of California, San Francisco. Participants had clinical evaluations, brain MRI, and blood draws annually. From the overall cohort, we evaluated patients with clinically isolated syndrome or relapsing-remitting MS at baseline. In univariate and multivariate (adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, smoking, and MS treatments) repeated measures analyses, annual 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels were evaluated for their association with subsequent new T2-weighted and gadolinium-enhancing T1-weighted lesions on brain MRI, clinical relapses, and disability (Expanded Disability Status Scale [EDSS]).
Results:
2,362 3T brain MRI scans were acquired from 469 subjects. In multivariate analyses, each 10 ng/mL higher 25-hydroxyvitamin D was associated with a 15% lower risk of a new T2 lesion (incidence rate ratio [IRR]= 0.85, 95% CI [0.76, 0.95], p=0.004) and a 32% lower risk of a gadolinium-enhancing lesion (IRR=0.68, 95% CI [0.53, 0.87], p=0.002). Each 10 ng/mL higher vitamin D level was associated with lower subsequent disability (-0.047, 95% CI [-0.091, -0.003], p=0.037). Higher vitamin D levels were associated with lower, but not statistically significant, relapse risk. Except for the EDSS model, all associations were stronger when the within-person change in vitamin D level was the predictor.
Interpretation:
Vitamin D levels are inversely associated with MS activity on brain MRI. These results provide further support for a randomized trial of vitamin D supplementation. ANN NEUROL 2010
OBJECTIVE:
There is increasing evidence that vitamin D can be protective against the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), but it may also be beneficial for the clinical course of the disease.
Our objective was to prospectively investigate if 25-hydroxy-vitamin D (25-OH-D) levels are associated with exacerbation risk in MS in a study with frequent serum measurements.
METHODS:
This was a prospective longitudinal study in 73 patients with relapsing-remitting MS.
Blood samples for 25-OH-D measurements were taken every 8 weeks. Associations between 25-OH-D levels and exacerbation rates were assessed using Poisson regression (generalized estimating equations) with the individual serum levels as time-dependent variable.
RESULTS:
During follow-up (mean 1.7 years), 58 patients experienced a total of 139 exacerbations.
Monthly moving averages of 25-OH-D levels were categorized into low (<50 nmol/L), medium (50-100 nmol/L), and high (>100 nmol/L) levels.
(divide those nmol/l numbers by 2.5 for ng/ml)
Exacerbation risk decreased significantly with higher serum vitamin D levels: respective relative exacerbation rates for the medium and high-level category as compared to the low-level category were 0.7 and 0.5 (p value for trend: p = 0.007).
The association between 25-OH-D concentrations and exacerbation rate was log linear without a threshold. With each doubling of the serum 25-OH-D concentration the exacerbation rate decreased by 27% (95% confidence interval 8%-42%, p = 0.008).
CONCLUSIONS:
Our finding that higher vitamin D levels are associated with decreased exacerbation risk in relapsing-remitting MS suggests a beneficial effect of vitamin D on disease course in MS.
However, the possibility of reverse causality cannot be ruled out completely. Randomized intervention studies are therefore needed to investigate the effect of vitamin D supplementation in MS.
]
My take on this is that EVERYONE, with MS or not, needs to keep 25(OH)D ABOVE 100nmol/l 40ng/mlo
The reason is that at 100nmol/l 40ng/ml your body only has vitamin D in circulation. It can manage your daily vitamin D needs but there is no reserve of D3 stored in tissue, or even in circulation. It abit like the situation where your weekly earnings exactly match your weekly expenses. Sure IF NOTHING GOES WRONG, you can manage BUT if there is a crisis you've nothing to fall back on.
If you raise 25(OH)D to 50~60ng/ml 125~150nmol/l then you do have a margin for error (this is the range that living near naked outdoors humans naturally achieve equilibrium. It's also the level at which vit d exerts it's most potent anti inflammatory action, it's the level at which human breast milk is vitamin D replete.
The cost of ensuring you always have sufficient vitamin D to meet any crisis and to offset the potential of MS relapse is roughly �12.50 ~�15 a year. + the �25 to get your blood tested to ensure you stay on target.
I think it's also worth pointing out that many people also don't get sufficient MAGNESIUM in their diets. To change Calcidiol (the circulating form of vitamin D) into CALCITRIOL (the active hormonal form) requires to presence of MAGNESIUM (it operates/enables the switch) so taking a magnesium chelate (Albion Patents mineral chelates have a good reputation) but magnesium citrate powder is cheap and easy to add to drinking water.
There are plenty of magnesium calculators online that allow you to enter your diet and then work out what the total magnesium is. As the RDA for magnesium is set too low for safely it's important you try to get AT LEAST, if not MORE than the RDA. (If you don't consume much dairy it may also be worth doing the same for calcium but don't take more than 600mg/d calcium or it ups your stroke risk.
In this study, we found that IFN-β therapy is associated with greater production of vitamin D from sun exposure, suggesting part of the therapeutic effects of IFN-β on relapse in MS may be through modulation of vitamin D metabolism.
These findings suggest persons being treated with IFN-β should have vitamin D status monitored and maintained in the sufficiency range.
Classification of evidence: This study provided Class III evidence that IFN-β is associated with reduced risk of relapse, and this effect may be modified by a positive effect of IFN-β on serum 25(OH)D levels
Given MS is an inflammatory condition and vitamin D3 is most potent as an anti-inflammatory agent at 125nmol/l = 50ng/ml it makes sense to ensure 25(OH)D remains at or above that level throughout the year.
It may take 10,000iu/daily for several months (depending on latitude, time outdoors, body weight, Total Cholesterol levels and several other factors) to attain and maintain a 25(OH)D at/above 50ng/ml 125nmol/l. checking 25(OH)D twice yearly should be sufficient to ensure it stays at/above that threshold.
I'm sure I don't have to point out that if Interferon-β at an annual cost that makes your eyes water works by increasing 300% the capacity to generate vitamin D it makes a lot more sense to simply increase VITAMIN D3 INTAKE. You can get a years supply of 5000iu from Iherb for $6.99 (less than �5 UK) so even if you doubled up and took 10,000iu/daily the saving is enormous. PM me if you want an Iherb/Vitacost introductory discount code or information on which Vitamin D form is best buy.
You can even get 50,000iu vitD supplements and take them once a week!
KEEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOW!
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While laying on a glass patio or soaking up rays through a window may feel good on your skin, the warmth that comes through is deceiving because vitamin D-producing UVB rays cannot pass through glass. So you�ll get absolutely no boost to your vitamin D levels if the sunlight passes through a window before hitting your skin.
Worse still, the skin-damaging UVA light, which penetrates your skin more deeply than UVB, and may be a much more important factor in photoaging, wrinkles and skin cancers, does pass through glass. This means that getting sun exposure through a window gives you none of the beneficial UVB, and all of the cancer-causing UVA!
Vitamin D Levels Correspond to Disability in MS
Linear Mode
