Vitamin D and sleep                                              

I haven't had a good night's sleep in more years than I can remember. But it has improved quite a bit recently after I started taking high doses of Vitamin D. And that's what I want to write about today.

My main problems with sleep are/were:

1.  Problems going to sleep before 2:00 am.
2.  Waking up often and needing to go to the bathroom (every 2-3 hours)
3.  Waking up in the morning and feeling unrefreshed and totally exhausted

number 2. has now massively improved

And that's how it happened:

Three months ago I bought a pulse oxymeter. A little gadget that measures blood oxygen levels and pulse rate. It costs around € 80 or $90 to get one which can be programmed to measure it all over night and produce nice printable graphs on the computer.
                                         

 

 

 

 

I measured my oxygen levels for 5 nights and found that I have sleep apnea. Luckily not a very severe form (where oxygene levels dip dangerously low) but my sleep is disrupted 63 to 121 times a night by so called desaturation events. A desaturation event is when oxygen levels drop by at least 4% for a minimum duration of 10 seconds. One doesn't necessarily wake up completely because of such a desaturation event but the brain kicks into gear because of the relative drop in oxygen levels and pulls the sleeper out of deep sleep. So, with an avererage of 90 disruptions a night I don|t seem to be getting much deep sleep at all.

I then looked for solutions. What could reduce or better eradicate these deep sleep disruptions. The first thing I came across were CPAP machines. They seem to be quite costly and irritating but I was still prepared to try it if it helped. But then I came across several blogs and sites talking about the relationship between low Vitamin D levels and disrupted sleep:

http://pandemicsurvivor.com/category/sleep-apnea/

and the series of lectures by Dr.Gominak the blog refers to:

http://drgominak.com/lecture

They say sleep apnea is caused by a Vitamin D deficiency.

And I thought, why not try this first and see if it works. So I started taking 15.000 IU Vitamin D in a peppermint flavoured sublingual spray every day after breakfast.

And yes it worked. For the past four weeks I have been sleeping 6.5 to 7 hours without waking up and having to go to the bathroom. And that's huge for me, since I didn't sleep more than 3 hours in one go for the last 8 or 9 years. And I did not drink more or less than before. It may not be true for everybody, but for me it is certainly true: you don't wake up because you need the bathroom, you go to the bathroom because you wake up.
I am now a little less exhausted upon awakening but I'd say it's only a 10% improvement. But that's already something and may improve over time. I'll post about it again.


(Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I am only searching for solutions and trying out things to improve my quality of life. Do not try anything I did. Always ask a qualified doctor for advice before trying something. All I am writing about are my personal experiences as my very own guinea pig. Everybody is different and I cannot be held responsible for anything anybody tries out.)