Hi Batch and all,

Any help we can get here would be appreciated.  My friend´s headaches only ever last 6 weeks every two years.  We are now into week 10 - although it it less strong than ever in the past.

She has taken the d3 regime and the benadryl for 12 days.  She is on the 10,000 of D3 right now (having followed all the instructions for loading doses etc) She felt the Benadryl helped.  She didn´t take it for a couple of nights now and had a night where she was able to sleep.  Last night, however, a very strong phantom came back again and it seems the cycle is not over.

We are starting to feel some desperation here - any ideas of what to do?  This is extremely out of the ordinary for it to continue this long.

Thanks,
Amanda

Hey Amanda,

Thanks for the update on your friend.  The following chart provides responses by day following start of this regimen.

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This chart indicates 65% of the CHers who respond favorably to this regimen do so by the end of the third week.  As your friend has experienced some improvement in CH symptoms since starting this regimen, I suspect it's going to be a matter of time before her serum concentration of 25(OH)D reaches a therapeutic level sufficient to prevent her CH completely.

What we really need at this point is for your friend to see her primary care physician for a lab test of her 25(OH)D serum concentration.  Lab test of her serum calcium and PTH would be in order as well.  These lab tests would tell us if the vitamin D3 loading schedule was effective in elevating the 25(OH)D serum concentration near 80 ng/mL (200 nmol/L).

Data from another important clinical trial of MS patients taking escalating doses of vitamin D3 as illustrated below, indicates taking vitamin D3 doses as high as 40,000 IU/day for as long as six weeks is very safe. 

You can see that the average 25(OH)D serum concentration for this group of 25 MS patients rose to 410 nmol/L (164 ng/mL) while taking 40,000 IU/day vitamin D3, but their average calcium serum concentration remained within the normal reference range... That tells us there was no vitamin D3 intoxication after six weeks of vitamin D3 doses at 40,000 IU/day.

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What all this means is I would take a 50,000 IU loading dose for another 3 to 5 days along with the antihistamine that worked best to see what happens.

Take care and please keep us posted.

V/R, Batch

Hi Batch,

Thanks for getting back to us.  We´ve done as you suggested with a loading does and the anti-histamine.

Sadly it got worse last night, with 3 very strong shadows.  Is it possible in any way that the loading dose could make it stronger?

Amanda

Amanda,

Anything is possible at this point. There is clearly something cooking away, but I'm not sure just what.

Have your friend stop the vitamin D3 for week but continue the magnesium and Omega-3 fish oil.  Her vitamin D3 serum concentration will drop rapidly as her liver converts it to 25(OH)D.

Try to pick up some curcumin tablets and some vitamin C.  If you can get the curcumin a.k.a., turmeric, I would take 400 mg/day with food.  If you can get the vitamin C.  I would also take a 1000 mg tablet every two hours for a total of six tablets a day.  Make sure your friend is pushing fluids like two liters of water a day.

Both curcumin and vitamin C are very safe.  Curcumin is another potent but natural anti-inflammatory and vitamin C is a natural antibiotic and antiviral agent with antioxidant properties.  Give the curcumin and vitamin C a week then restart the vitamin D3 at 10,000 IU/day

Take care and please keep us posted on your friend's progress.

V/R, Batch

Thanks for replying Batch.

I´m just talking with my friend here and she explained that she had actually stopped last week to take the d3 for one week but continued with the Magnesium and the Benadryl and lots of Vitamin C.  So in some way she just did very close to what you are recommending now.  In that time it was getting better.

Then suddenly she started to get worse again, mainly when she tried a few nights without the Benadryl.  So we followed the loading dose advice you gave, along with the Benadryl and all of a sudden it got worse again. 

Given that she did just do a week close to your recommendations here, does it make sense to do that again?  Of course she wasn´t taking curcumin and the fish oil, but she can do it. 

What about the Benadryl during this time?

Sorry if it´s a little confusing here - as you know with these headaches it´s easy to get desperate.

Peace,
Amanda