Vitamin D Blues

Apparently, I am deficient in Vitamin D. I don't know that this explains my fatigue and nausea, and the doctor did not say that it does, but I am definitely deficient, so hopefully taking mega-doses of Vitamin D will make me feel better, or at least help prevent all sorts of nasty things like osteoporosis, MS, cancer, depression, etc. So now that I know that I am super super low in Vitamin D (but still on the scale), I am now nervous that I am on the verge of having all of those things, or perhaps past the verge. Cindy printed out something for me that says that 6 days of sun exposure supplies enough Vitamin D for 49 sunless days. So apparently it's easy to get, but I can't get it. Nevermind that the sun has come out here maybe 3 times in the last 49 days, so we should all be deficient in it, and that we probably all are. So I am all raring to go with my Vitamin D supplements, if only the prescription would come in the mail. For some reason, the doctor's office is mailing it to me. I don't know if they are mailing the piece of paper that I take to the pharmacy, or if they are mailing the pills. If it's the piece of paper, I would have preferred that they just handed it to me, since my pharmacy is in downtown Seattle, near the doctor's office, and I could get it filled right away. Whatever it is, they sent it Monday and it has not arrived yet, and I am feeling abandoned and depressed. I am going to go buy some Vitamin D tablets over the counter tomorrow, just in case it doesn't come tomorrow. Even if it does come, I will still need them after the megadose pills run out, since you aren't supposed to take it at that high a dosage for very long. And let's face it, I don't ever get much sun, even when it's out, because I work inside.

This may explain why it takes about 3 years or more for people to really get good and depressed during the winter here - they have to really deplete their Vitamin D stores. And we have higher rates of MS here than elsewhere in the country, as do other northern areas, apparently. That's freaky. And even though I now know a possible cause for my feeling yucky, I still feel yucky. My muscles feel like they have worked really hard, but they haven't. They are kind of twitchy. I felt better on Wednesday, even though I didn't get much sleep on Tuesday night because of choir. However, I ate both salmon and tuna on Wednesday, and they both have Vitamin D. That's the second time I have felt noticeably better the day following a tuna-salmon day. Hmm. So I came home tonight and ate a lot of tuna and milk. Anyway, the upshot is, get sun (but not sun cancer - you figure it out), and drink milk and eat your fatty fish (but not too much because we are depleting the stocks of fatty fish).