I started feeling a million times better again after 3 days of sunbathing in a very hot climate. I made an astonishing brief recovery last time i got lots of sun so it seems that the results are consistent.
Does anyone else feel better when they are getting a few hours of sun daily?
Vitamin D is synthesized in the skin with ample levels of sunlight, and there are several theories going around this board that a low Vitamin D level has something to do with PFS symptoms.
You might want to get checked out for Vitamin D levels and bring them back up with a prescription or over-the-counter supplements. I did and it actually straightened out some liver enzyme issues I was having as well.
I can relate. I have a strong suspicion that warmth and sunlight played part in my turnaround one month after I first crashed. Also, my relapse of 3 months ago coincided with the onset of winter. And finally, my blood tests post-crash showed borderline low levels of Vit D, but I was reassured by the dumbass Doc that it is “normal”.
Of course, this might all be coincidental, but just in case, I started taking Vit D yesterday.
I was going to start a thread about this, funnily enough.
Last year I went on holiday in the blazing heat and sun, and while I certainly didn’t experience a recovery my reliance on meds to help get a full and refreshing sleep ended immediately. It might have just been a coincidence that I stopped taking meds at that point, but I’d tried that before without success. It also seemed to clear up my residual bad fatigue. I generally felt as good as I can these days, although I guess the sun does that to your mood anyway if you don’t get it so often.
I noticed sps recently said he was on holiday and experienced a good improvement as well as bluecloud above. I think ‘chi’ also said he felt nearly recovered on holiday in the sun just after crashing. There have been loads of guys saying being in the sun helps.
It’s difficult to establish what is going on, as although the link with vit d seems obvious if that means it is increasing testosterone then lots of us don’t normally react well or get any benefit from that. Clearly if it was a crucial factor then the board would also be skewed towards guys from northern Europe, Canada etc like MS - yet there are loads of Italians on here for example.
One thing I seem to notice is that a lot of the bad crashes seem to have occurred in the darker months of October to March. I know when the shit hit the fan with me I was going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, mostly staring at a computer for the hours in between.
Ditto for me. Had a month long vacation in the sun. Felt awesome!
Ditto here too. Felt great last summer with loads of sun, averaged 1hr plus a day in shorts. Winter came and sides got worse. Im really looking forward to this spring
One thing to note, I didnt find any improvement with a vitamin d3 supplement
Seems like this place is littered with guys from cold weather climates. I noticed that when I first joined. There are exceptions here, seems like most of the U.S. guys are from the Northeast.
And I crashed in November. Hopefully I can make a recovery in the summer. For once, I’m looking forward to the Vegas summer!
Might be a stretch, but this could be a reason why: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8851047
I have tried supplementing with vitamin D at normal and super doses and it does not have the same effect. Thanks for the feedback guys, it sounds as though this is a commonality amongst us. Shame the benefits are only temporary 
vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/otherendo/vitamind.html
Also the wiki page is informative especially the production in the skin section.
Does anyone have access to a tanning bed?
?
Sorry, I was referring to the difference between ingested Vitamin D and how it’s produced in the skin. Since they provide different effects for you (with a preference to sunlight on the skin) I thought you would find the information interesting.
I know for a fact if I take vit D it gets rid of my brain fog.
Judging by his previous posts about his stool, maybe joe has a absorbtion problem (Crohns, U.C) and the only way he can get his vitamin d is via sunlight.
now that is an extremely interesting theory. depends how he took the vitamin d… i’ve taken it with droplets directly on the tongue so it goes into the bloodstream directly, and i think it actually made me worse i have stopped taking it
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D
Looks like direct absorption may not be enough if your liver and kidneys aren’t doing their job. It’s also converted outside the liver and kidneys for other functions. Or does someone have a source of downstream metabolites of Vitamin D3?
vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/otherendo/vitamind.html
I tried droplets too and they made me feel like shit. It is very common for people to react badly to vitamin D supplements, there was a whole thread about it on Crisler’s forum.
Thanks for the info Martin.
glad to hear i wasn’t the only one… i see people popping up saying it helps them so much. actually when i first took it, i thought it really helped me a lot, i made a small temp recovery actually, then it stopped working. maybe, per martin’s post, our livers are unable to process it correctly?
i wonder if it’s possible when i first took it, maybe my liver could make it temporary, then afterwards it reached its limit or something then stopped converting it correctly? who knows…
That is certainly food for thought, but the stool issues are 100% tied in with PFS in general. If my stool is normal then i feel better and this is consistent. Bryce, it’s not even worth racking your brain over dude, unless you enjoy theorising over this stuff. There are a million things that could have gone wrong.