bsic wrote on Jan 5^th, 2012 at 8:41am:


About 2.5 weeks in now-- upped my D3 to from 15,000 to 20,000 UI on Thursday.  Friday was my FIRST PAIN FREE NIGHT since early Dec.    And followed by a second last night!!

I did get VERY weak hits shortly after waking up in the AM (fully rested, i might add!).  But they were aborted in 2-3 min with O2, incredibly fast.

Just thought id share-- if you dont see results in a few days dont get discouraged, keep the regimen up and possibly increase your D3!!

At first the only Magnesium I was taking was in the multi-vitamin at 100 mg. That's not a tiny amount I suppose, but its nearly as likely a key-component.

Since then I've upped my Magnesium 500 mg with separate Magnesium supplements, so now I'm at 600 mg.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll be doing some more experiments, for my own curiosity.

Don't know if its because I changed from Calcium Carbonate to Calcium Citrate or because I upped my D3 dose from  10,000 IU to 15,000 IU or because I met another Cluster head for the first time but I had a real good day/night yesterday. Only 1 five minute k2 last night. Hopefully this is really starting to work for me................ Really enjoyed meeting Las Vegas Gregg and his girlfriend yesterday.

Rick

PlayDoh wrote on Jan 8^th, 2012 at 1:47pm:


That is a very interesting observation you have found.  I've found over the last few days that the vit d regimen has been very effective.  I've been pf for the last three days.  As I mentioned to Batch in a previous post perhaps CH for some of us isn't the disease but a symptom.  In your case it could be low calcium.  I've had a full blood workup from my doctor at the start of January (including 25(OH)D and free testosterone) and the only item to come back low was the Vit D. 
I think it's important to try and look at all aspects of our health and eliminate any issues.  After suffering with CH for 10 years I finally got off my butt a couple of years ago and utilized my health care system to get to the bottom of a couple of issues.  After years of nagging I finally allowed my wife (a nurse) to book me a sleep study and talk to a sleep specialist.  The results from the sleep doctor were crazy.  It turned out that while I slept my O2 levels were dropping into the very low 70's when I slept and I had an upper airway restriction that prevented me from breathing through my nose while I slept.  After surgery to repair the upper airway restriction and CPAP to control the night time airflow I had knocked the CH down to two major episodic hits per year.  Talking with my sleep doctor a couple of weeks ago there is some early studies looking into the link between sleep apnea and CH.  I was told that 1 in 7 people usually need CPAP to prevent OSA and some of those could be triggering CH.  If we are using O2 to hyperventilate to abort perhaps lack of O2 is causing. 
I've looked into the upper airway restriction a little bit and my information shows that mouth breathing can cause a change in the blood gas levels.  As Batch has shown earlier in the thread a small change in the PH of the body can have a dramatic effect on CH. 
I'm not trying to imply that this will work for everyone but the OSA, airway issue and low Vit D level all seemed to be contributing factors for CH for me.  Hopefully with these issues out of the way I may have finally gained an upper hand on the beast. 
I am excited to see the prospects of what the next year will bring.  Hopefully many more pain free days ahead.

RTD wrote on Jan 9^th, 2012 at 8:45am:



RTD,
Good to meet you too brother.  Hopefully this vitamin regimen works for you.
-GTD

Just to add my own 2 cents worth....

I am on the D3 regimen at 30,000 IU/day in order to get my levels up before my Pred taper runs out.  I was having some pretty good shadows and other minor HA's.  I increased my calcium dosage from 500 mg/day to 1000 mg/day and the shadows stopped.

So there may indeed be a connection....

John

PlayDoh
CH.com Junior
**




     




2 a day (500mg of Calcium) is the recommendation. spreading them out is probably a good tactic. And I'm pretty sure he's suggesting 20,000 IU of D3.

Yet check your Calcium Citrate bottle to see how much Vitamin D(3) is in them. then subtract 20,000 from how much is in your Calcium Citrate total, and then take the resulting numbers worth of D3 supplement.

I.E   Calcium Citrate pill contains  250 mg Calcium and 400 IU of Vitamin D(3) then 2 pills are 500 mg Calcium Citrate and 800 IU Vitamin D(3)

20,000 IU recommended intake, minus 800 from Calcium pills = 14,000 IU D(3) you need to supplement with D3 pills.


If it's the Kirkland brand of calcium citrate, two tablets (500 mg. calcium) also contain 800 I.U. vitamin D3.

If I'm correct, you should be able to go completely PF by adding another 5,000 IU/day vitamin D3 to your present intake of this supplement.





Thanks for your imput. Yes it is the Kirkland brand which says 500 mg on the bottle but of course I didn't read the serving size say's 2 pills a day so I'll give that a go. I'm going to wait 1 more day on the D3 because I just upped it too 15000 IU   (3 5000 IU)2 days ago and want to give that one more day. So in actuality I'm on 16600 a day because of the 800 IU in the calcium.

Thanks again
Rick

When I first started this regimen at the very beginning of my cycle 4 weeks ago, it seemed to work almost immediately, however I'm still in cycle getting hit 3-4x/day.  Mainly though the night.  I am also dosing with rc seeds every 5 days.  My vitamin D3 intake is now 15,000 iu, 500 mg calcium citrate and 500 mg magnesium.  I took Batches survey 3 days after the start of the regimen and I should have waited because I am not getting relief up to this point.  I got the usual dandy hits after dosing, but a great nights sleep.  Usually by day 3 the seeds bog down the cycle.  I think I will try increasing the calcium citrate to 1000mg spread out over the day to see what happens.  I got nothing to lose.  This is always an experiment with hope