About This Site

I have suffered from varying degrees of chronic fatigue for almost nine years.  I've maintained this site for six.  The purpose of this site has been to bring together different things that I've found along the way.  This site listed different things that helped the condition, but nothing that might completely cure someone.

Recently, I found some things that has helped me a great deal and in the next few months I hope they will help even more.  I have completely rearranged the site to reflect this new reality.

There is now a section for primary causes of chronic fatigue such as sleep apnea, low vitamin D, and hyperparathyroidism.  Vitamin D is controversial.  Sleep apnea and hyperparathyroidism are recognize by mainstream doctors but often overlooked.

Sleep Apnea

I was recently diagnosed with severe sleep apnea.  I have written a page on this.  This is a condition which is receiving more attention all the time from mainstream doctors.  Major research is being conducted at Stanford and other well-known institutions throughout the country.

I am a strong believer that ALL chronic fatigue patients should be tested for this condition.  Loud snoring is a major symptom, but it is not always present.

Vitamin D

What has helped me is plain old vitamin D and magnesium.  This has cured my very painful sciatica and greatly improved my prostate, brain-fog and other problems.  I had a recent dental appointment and my doctor could not believe how much my gum disease has improved.

There are other symptoms such as mucous in the stools that have not improved.

There are some important warnings and pitfalls.  (You should avoid the most common type of vitamin D supplement.)  So please read my vitamin D pages, the paper by Dr. Vieth and the paper on vitamin D and multiple sclerosis before taking it.

As always, there is nothing for sale on this site.  I am paying for it out of my own pocket.

Warning On Dose

You should NEVER give more than 1,000 units of vitamin D to an infant or more than 2,000 units to a child.

The government limit for adults is 2,000 units per day.  Dr. Reinhold Vieth has written a paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition arguing that up to 10,000 units is safe for adults, but this is controversial.  Excess vitamin D can cause dangerous levels of calcium in the blood.  To be safe, I urge adults that decide to exceed the government limit of 2,000 units to have their blood calcium levels tested by a doctor periodically.  If possible you should have also have your vitamin D blood levels tested, but this test is not always available.

Symptoms of vitamin D toxicity include nausea and vomiting.  See the Merck Manual for more information.  If this occurs, discontinue taking vitamin D immediately.  If it continues, see a doctor right away.

Once vitamin D levels rise, they can take weeks or even months to come back down.  If you feel that it is making you worse, keep this in mind.  I have found that the amount of time it takes to come back down is approximately equal to the amount of time that I was taking it in the first place.

Recent Events

Wow!  I recently posted a few messages to some web-sites about vitamin D and you would have thought that I'd advised people to take strychnine with an arsenic chaser! I have even been told that vitamin D is so dangerous I should take down my pages.

I understand some of this skepticism.  Skepticism is a healthy thing.  Many claims for therapies that cure CFS have turned out to be wrong or outright frauds.  Vitamin D does have some risks that I will address.

All I can tell you is that I am not cured, but I have seen significant improvement from using vitamin D.  I have carefully spelled out what has and what has not improved. 

It has helped me, but that doesn't mean it will help others.  The cause of your chronic fatigue may be different than mine.

If getting better were easy and risk-free, everyone would do it!  Read on and you will see that this has been hard!

Each time I have raised the dose I have felt feverish.  This has lasted from two to eight day, but this eventually subsided and I felt better than before.

Let me caution you that I am the only person I know of that has done what I have done.  I do not know if it will work for anyone else.

I do urge people to read this introduction and both of my vitamin D pages to make an informed choice.  I also urge everyone to read the paper on vitamin D safety by Dr. Reinhold Vieth published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition for a realistic overview of the risks.  There is also a paper on Multiple Sclerosis and vitamin D that should be read.  It contains fascinating information on the benefits of vitamin D.

Let me emphasize that I can only speak from my own experience.  If you have read about my experience and read the papers by Dr. Vieth and the paper on the MS site, you know what I know.  I am not a medical professional of any kind.  I am a CFS sufferer trying to get well, but I believe I have found something that does help.  I have made some changes to my site to make sure there are no misunderstandings.

Why Did I Decide to Take the Risk?

If there are risks, why did I decide to take them?

Over the years I have found things that helped my chronic fatigue such as diet and addressing a severe dust mite allergy.  These made me better but in the years since then I had been slowly getting worse again.

Both my grandfather and his brother died before I was born.  Several years before they died, they came down with what we would today call chronic fatigue.  They both died at age 50.  I am 47 years old and I felt that there was a good chance I was on the same path.

I accidentally discovered that sunlight seemed to help me.  I knew that I had started to go downhill when I started to work in office buildings.  Before that I had worked at home next to a large picture window that faced south.  When I learned about vitamin D, it made sense to me that a lack of sunlight and vitamin D might be what was causing my health problems.

I realized that the risk of not trying this was greater than the risk of doing it.

Where does Vitamin D Come From?

Vitamin D is created when ultraviolet light from the sun strikes the skin.  UV light is usually only present at mid-day.  Just a small change in your schedule could result in a large reduction in vitamin D.  The only food that naturally contains significant vitamin D is fish liver.

Our stone-age ancestors were hunter/gatherers or farmers and spent most of their time in the sun without a lot of clothes!  Today, we get very little sun and use sun-block when we do.  Our ancestors got ten times the amount of vitamin D we do today.

Could Vitamin D be one of the Root Causes of Chronic Fatigue?

Chronic fatigue usually starts in one of three ways.  It can start with a sudden illness.  This is the case of Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand.  In other cases, people slowly go down hill over a period of many months.

In yet other cases, it can be a combination of a gradual and sudden onset.  This is what happened to me.  I had been slowly going downhill for nine months.  I was then given tetracycline for an eye problem and suddenly became much worse.  The tetracycline had caused an infection in my intestinal tract.  Since tetracycline can kill "good" bacteria in the intestinal tract, it can actually leave the patient vulnerable to infections by other bacteria.  I believe I had been going downhill, but this infection greatly sped up the process.

A slow increase in fatigue can be explained by a lack of vitamin D.  Vitamin D has a half-life of about two months in the system.  If a person starts getting less sunlight, the amount of vitamin D in their body will slowly decline over a period of months leaving.  This could leave them vulnerable to infections.

CFS - A Combination of Causes

There are also many secondary causes.  In Section II of my site, you will find pages discussing how food allergies, dust mite allergies and infections like Candida Albicans and helicobacter pylori can contribute to fatigue.  Lack of vitamin D can greatly weaken the immune system which can leave you vulnerable to infections and allergies that cause even more fatigue.

To understand why a weakened immune system can cause allergies, you have to understand what an allergy is.  An allergy is when the immune system attacks something it should ignore.  The immune system should ignore pollen, but instead it attacks it.  Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to tell the difference between a cold and an allergy?  When you get a cold, a virus invades the throat and sinuses.  The body then tries to make these places less hospitable to the virus by flushing out the area with mucous.  When you have a pollen allergy, pollen gets into these areas.  The immune system should leave it alone, but because it is weakened and not functioning properly it attacks the pollen the same way it attacks a virus.

Allergies and infections can both contribute to fatigue, but these are not the root cause of chronic fatigue.  They are caused by an already weakened immune system.

Irritable bowel, fibromyalgia, and other problems

Most of the people I have communicated with who have chronic fatigue also have gastrointestinal problems, especially gas and bloating, though some have constipation or diarrhea.  Most have back and neck problems.  Some, but not all have fibromyalgia, a very painful condition affecting the muscles of the back.  Many have acid reflux disease.

How can these conditions all be related?  Most doctors are baffled by the connection.  The answer I believe is actually rather simple.  Chronic fatigue not only causes fatigue among the voluntary muscles, but in the many muscles of the back and the dozens of muscles connected to the stomach, intestines and colon.  Fatigue in the back muscles cause back and neck problems.

Dr. Paul St. Amand believes that fibromyalgia is caused by a problem with phosphate levels.  Low vitamin D can affect phosphate levels in a major way.  I will explain on my vitamin D page.

Fatigue in the muscles connected to the gastrointestinal tract can cause infections, and digestion problems.  These muscles push the food through the intestines.  If they become fatigued, the food is not pushed through as quickly and it can literally spoil in the intestines.  This can cause symptoms of Candida, a condition I will discuss later.

Keep a Journal of Your Symptoms

I keep a document of my symptoms on my PC.  I write down my vitamin D doses, foods that I eat, and when I try something new I record it.  I really believe this is critical.   Sometimes an improvement will take a week and will be subtle. It may seem like there has been no improvement at all, but looking back a week in the journal will make it clear.

When you get up in the morning, write down how you feel.  Was it hard or easy to get out of bed?  Do you feel foggy?  Does your back hurt?  Do you have sinus pressure?  Or do you feel really good.  As the day goes on and these things change, write it down or better still, enter it into a word processing document.

There were times when I was feeling worse, especially after raising the vitamin D dose and feeling like I would never get better again.  Then I looked at my journal and started seeing a pattern.  The day I raised the dose or the day after I often felt tired and feverish, but the day after that I would often feel good.  That really lifted my spirits and helped me get through it.

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