An important lesson I have taken away from my spinal surgeon here in Hong Kong, which, I hasten to add none of my rheumatologists have ever have told me, is the importance of Vitamin D for ankylosing spondylitis. Particularly in my case as I am in the minority of sufferers who are gene- HLA-B27 *negative*. Dr. Yip who had his entire schooling in the UK explained how the latitude of my home country is the same as living in Canada… yeah that snowy cold place far away with much worse winters than western Europe right? No, same-same (as they say here in Asia). It’s chronic in many parts of the world and even though the UK government recommend everyone supplement from October to March, this is far from adequate.
The issue is so endemic, even when my test came up a little lower than ideal earlier this year, the haematologist was quite blasé about it like it wasn’t really an issue. Dr Yip, however, was adamant I take it more seriously to manage my condition and went so far as to hypothesise that it could actually be a leading cause of my degeneration. Now, I take multi vitamins every day and months ago had added in a magnesium with D as a nighttime supplement and found it was really helpful, but even with this, he explained I was only really covering my base levels and so I’m now taking even more to actually raise the levels!
Even here is the “sunny” tropics, there are similar issues. Everyone wears sunscreen all the time and in this part of Asia it is really not fashionable to have a tan. People literally carry UV umbrellas all the time and only venture out in full UV hazmat suits, face covering and all. My wonderful osteopath and boss in clinic has been banging this drum for years and struggling to have people take it seriously, but when doctors so often test your blood, see you teetering around close to the very bottom of the range and call it normal, what are you supposed to do? When I bought this up with my rheumatologist she now agrees and said she has at least one case per week now of vitamin D deficiency contributing to joint problems.
Like all blood tests, I’m now no longer accepting the bottom of the barrel. I want to be in the middle of the “normal range” wherever possible and I won’t take “no action required” as an answer! Most multivitamins contain around 600IU (or 15 micrograms) of vitamin D – that’s the basic daily requirement so it’s far from enough if you have a deficiency. You need take an EXTRA 10,000IU to increase your count by 1 point! When I’m looking to increase my count by at least 20 points, I need to take my multivitamin plus an extra tablet of 1000IU (or 25 mcg) twice a day for at least 3 months to get there. It’s not a quick fix.
If you think this could apply to you, it’s worth taking note for your next medical check up.
