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Vitamin D testing in kids


PeterPan
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Have you done this? My ds and I both take D, and my labs came back on the top end though not out of range. My new doc (that I actually like, hurray!) and I decided to drop mine a bit. So now I'm wondering if I should call ds' ped and ask him to run labs. I could just pay through a service online like healthcheckusa.com and get them run, but I kinda want it done at the pediatric lab with the children's hospital instead. I think they'd be more ready to handle him (ASD2). 

Will the ped just do this if I call? Am I crazy? He's taking 4,000 IU a day and his calcium supplement, all told, is adding another 600 IU a day. He doesn't drink much milk or milk substitute. I'm seeing articles saying 4,000 IU daily is safe for age 9+ and we're just over that. I was at 10,000 IU a day and we decided to cut me down to 7,000 and see how that rolls. That's with k2, in case anyone wonders. 

Thing is, the D helps balance/steady his methyl levels, which helps the aggression and emotional stuff, so I don't want to cut without EVIDENCE, oh my. But will the ped think I'm crazy if I call? Correction, he probably already thinks I'm crazy, lol. He's pretty easy-going though.

Every time I don't listen to my gut, I regret it. I think I'll call. All he can do is say no, lol. And if you've done this, how did it go?

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Everything I've read says the high Vit D is not a problem.  Toxicity doesn't start til 2X or 3X the high end of the range so you've got a long way to go before you have to worry about that.  Different labs use different ranges mines uses something like 10-100.  I aim to keep mine between 80-130 because I feel notably better with high vitamin D levels (granted I can't feel the difference between 130 or 150 but I try to be reasonable about it but I can definitely feel the difference between 70 and 80) and my doctor agrees with me.  

My point is that simply being on the high end isn't necessarily cause for concern and personally I wouldn't mess with it if it's working (especially since there are other conditions that might be negatively affected if you start changing things).

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I would. There’s toxicity. But there’s also just individual sensitivity to factor as well. Person A may function great in the low range of normal and Person B might need a low supplement to get similiar benefits. 

We take vitD and I test us every 4 months to be sure the dosage doesn’t need adjusted and to remind us to evaluate how we are doing at that dosage. Though my husband is just under the normal range, if he take a higher dose, he gets a kidney stone.  His sensitivity is obviously higher than mine.  A son in normal range has to take a higher dose than me to maintain that range. And for me, the better my thyroid, the better my Vit D has gotten.

However, we have access to low cost testing. If that was a factor we’d have to rethink our strategy.

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Ooo interesting! My D was 97.5, where the range was 30-100. That was take 10,000 IU a day plus whatever is in my calcium (another 400 iu). So if I drop to 7,000, I would probably drop below that 80 number, yes. 

So I got the nurseline, and the nurse was like WHO PUT HIM ON THAT, WHY IS HE TAKING THAT MUCH, blah blah. I'm like dude, he has autism, it controls his behaviors (begin listing precise behaviors that raise eyebrows). She shut up, but still, sigh. 

Ok, so with ds, if I take him up to 5,000, he doesn't act right. Like he gets kind of, well it's hard to pinpoint but he's not right. At 2,000, he's definitely too low. Like you can't work with him and he's really intense. I don't know that I ever bought 1,000 in gel. I have some 1,000 gummies that don't work as well as the kind in the gel caps. I could buy some 1,000 in gelcaps and see. But that's why I thought hey if you're gonna do that, at least run labs first. He's been at this 4,000 a lot of months. 

To me he's a little sluggish, and I wonder if we're dropping his methyls *too* much. The vitamin D slurps up methyls and other things he takes (niacin, 5HTP) also affect methyls. That's why they improve his behavior. So there's some room. Also he's a bit night owlish right now. If we fine-tuned it based on labs, it could be good. And I'm realizing I could do the same with me. Like the 7,000 is easy to do because it's a 5k + 2+. But I could get to 8k if I found a good 1k. It's a bit of a hassle, but it might be worth it. The D is like uppers for me and actually keeps me awake if it's too high or too late, same with ds. So we definitely don't want to be on TOO much.

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4 minutes ago, Murphy101 said:

I would. There’s toxicity. But there’s also just individual sensitivity to factor as well. Person A may function great in the low range of normal and Person B might need a low supplement to get similiar benefits. 

We take vitD and I test us every 4 months to be sure the dosage doesn’t need adjusted and to remind us to evaluate how we are doing at that dosage. Though my husband is just under the normal range, if he take a higher dose, he gets a kidney stone.  His sensitivity is obviously higher than mine.  A son in normal range has to take a higher dose than me to maintain that range. And for me, the better my thyroid, the better my Vit D has gotten.

However, we have access to low cost testing. If that was a factor we’d have to rethink our strategy.

Ooo that's really interesting! Yeah, the ped had not asked me to test. I think they just don't know anything so they kinda hands-off. We'll see what happens. If he doesn't bite, I can either order the tests privately (which means they won't be at the children's lab, sigh) or switch him from the ped to this family practice doc I'm using. The family practice doc is fine, and I think I'll definitely move ds over to him when he's 18. He's just really easy to work with. I just thought I'd leave ds with his ped, just because the ped is familiar and really set up to handle kids. The family practice is a little mature.

So test every 4 months? That was what I wondered, whether those numbers would change over the winter. Smart. And kidney stones, yeah that's bad, don't want that. And that's what I was concerned about, that if I'm at the top of the range and I go somewhere sunny for a couple weeks, then will I be OVER the range? And no, I didn't know thyroid would improve D. I had heard the other direction, that taking D could bump energy and thyroid. Well I guess we'll see. They kinda didn't get my thyroid scrip sent in the 2nd time yesterday, so I had to wait, tick tock. But I like that idea to retest in a number of months, once we get into the thick of things. 

How soon CAN you retest for D after a dose change and have it be reliable? With thyroid it's 6 weeks, right? How long for D?

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1 minute ago, hippiemamato3 said:

My DS15 was just tested and his D level was at 13 (yikes!) so we are now doing a multi-vitamin plus a 1000iu D supplement. I don't think I'd worry about your son's level, but it never hurts to get things checked. 

Oh dear, that's rough! You're using 1,000 IU or a 10,000 IU? A 1,000 IU probably isn't gonna touch it. Does he have gut issues or food allergies or something affecting absorption? Also, there's a lot of evidence that taking K2 as well can help. Doesn't have to be fancy. NOW Vitamin K-2 100 mcg,100 Veg Capsules  

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Just now, PeterPan said:

Oh dear, that's rough! You're using 1,000 IU or a 10,000 IU? A 1,000 IU probably isn't gonna touch it. Does he have gut issues or food allergies or something affecting absorption? Also, there's a lot of evidence that taking K2 as well can help. Doesn't have to be fancy. NOW Vitamin K-2 100 mcg,100 Veg Capsules  

The Ped told us to do a 1000iu (100% dv) plus a vitamin with 100%. I think she plans to recheck in a month or so? I wondered if that was enough too. I will get some k2. He has ARFID, but hasn't really tested positive for any other issues...

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One of my kids was tested because I wanted them to check for any physical reasons for her behavior issues.  Her D turned out to be severely deficient.  My other kid has not been tested.  I do give her some extra D since she has the genetic indicator that she might be deficient, but she has not been tested as she doesn't have any symptoms that would indicate it.

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4 hours ago, hippiemamato3 said:

The Ped told us to do a 1000iu (100% dv) plus a vitamin with 100%. I think she plans to recheck in a month or so? I wondered if that was enough too. I will get some k2. He has ARFID, but hasn't really tested positive for any other issues...

Our ped apparently says 1k too. They're calling in the labs to cover their butts, lol .

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3 hours ago, SKL said:

One of my kids was tested because I wanted them to check for any physical reasons for her behavior issues.  Her D turned out to be severely deficient.  My other kid has not been tested.  I do give her some extra D since she has the genetic indicator that she might be deficient, but she has not been tested as she doesn't have any symptoms that would indicate it.

Yeah I probably should have baselined, oops

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2 hours ago, BeachGal said:

Rhonda Patrick, researcher who has studied vitamin D and autism, has given her own baby (now a toddler) vitamin D drops, iirc. She might discuss this in depth on one of her Found My Fitness sites.

Monitoring your son's levels is a good idea.

Interesting, I'll check it out! 

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I had my daughter tested recently when she was in for some other stuff. The only reason I mentioned it to her doctor was that I had been tested and mine was crazy low, like 7 or 8 with 30 being on the low end. So I was worried that she might be deficient, too. But her levels were perfectly normal. 

Edited for grammar.

Edited by guilfordlake
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On 9/12/2018 at 8:33 AM, PeterPan said:

Ooo that's really interesting! Yeah, the ped had not asked me to test. I think they just don't know anything so they kinda hands-off. We'll see what happens. If he doesn't bite, I can either order the tests privately (which means they won't be at the children's lab, sigh) or switch him from the ped to this family practice doc I'm using. The family practice doc is fine, and I think I'll definitely move ds over to him when he's 18. He's just really easy to work with. I just thought I'd leave ds with his ped, just because the ped is familiar and really set up to handle kids. The family practice is a little mature.

So test every 4 months? That was what I wondered, whether those numbers would change over the winter. Smart. And kidney stones, yeah that's bad, don't want that. And that's what I was concerned about, that if I'm at the top of the range and I go somewhere sunny for a couple weeks, then will I be OVER the range? And no, I didn't know thyroid would improve D. I had heard the other direction, that taking D could bump energy and thyroid. Well I guess we'll see. They kinda didn't get my thyroid scrip sent in the 2nd time yesterday, so I had to wait, tick tock. But I like that idea to retest in a number of months, once we get into the thick of things. 

How soon CAN you retest for D after a dose change and have it be reliable? With thyroid it's 6 weeks, right? How long for D?

 

Vit D often acts similiar to hormones, so yes it can help other hormones and other hormones help it. 

It really depends how low you are and what the dosage is. I started at 50,000u once every week for twelve weeks. That took my vitD quants from 11 to 20. Then 10,000 for 3 months. I don’t remember the number. And now my quant is 60 and I take 1000 per day. 

I go every 3-4 months because that’s how often I have to test my thyroid. I do not have antibody thyroid issues, so, in theory,  I won’t need thyroid forever if it recovers and things balance out. 

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