Be Careful with Vitamin D

I learned about Vitamin D overdose the hard way.  I took a double dose of D3 (800 units) with the rest of my vitamins for two days in a row.  The next day, about 12 hours after the second dose, I started feeling achy in every muscle in my body.  I Goodsearched “body aches, vitamin D” and found a couple of sites among all the hype that mentioned overdose symptoms.  It turns out that Vitamin D deficiency causes body aches, but so does overdose; and some people are sensitive to vitamin D supplements.   Another symptom is frequent urination, no doubt to flush the excess from the body.

 Within an hour or so it was inflaming my stomach; cold tea went down, but not-too-hot tea burned going down, and came right back up.  I had gone to work with my housemate to help; I soon realized that he would have to work alone.  Not only did every muscle ache, but I could not generate body heat.  The bitter cold went to my bones despite layers of clothing, and every muscle cramped.  I spent the day in my customers’ recliner with my feet in front of their fireplace, trying to stay warm and relatively relaxed; napping was impossible with the body aches.

What’s interesting is that I’d taken higher doses of D in the past: 1000-unit oil capsules that did not cause a reaction.  The new 400-unit tablets did, combined with a multivitamin containing another 400 units one day and Calcium Citrate with 400 units of D the next.

It may be that I set myself up for a reaction with my treatment of a toothache; I was taking 800 mg of ibuprofen every four hours, along with Oil of St. John’s Wort in the ear, a cold mask, twice daily Listerine, and occasionally dropping Oregano Oil on the tooth.  I’d left off the cabbage on the cheek; I wasn’t sure if the real problem was a tooth infection irritating my ear and sinuses, or a slight sinus infection irritating the tooth.  Garlic oil seemed to irritate the ear more; I may have become sensitive to it, as happened to my daughter a few years back.

I left off the ibuprofen for about 12 hours, but resumed as the tooth began to ache.  Through the day and the night, I kept drinking water and urinating, trying to wash the excess D out of my system.  I was eventually free of body aches and not excessively sensitive to cold, but it took all night, getting up to drink and pee about 5 times during the night.

I’d always known that one has to be careful with vitamins D and A, because they are oil-soluble and do not wash out of the body as easily as Vitamins B and C, and overdoses happen.  A few years ago, a friend with many health problems was talked into 2500-unit (or 25,000; I’m not sure) megadoses by a naturopath; she got body aches, and I told her that too much Vitamin D could be dangerous, especially with her particular problems.  It turns out that the healthiest of us can run into trouble with too much vitamin D.