Skip to main content

Vitamin D & Acid Reflux Redux

Long-time readers may recall my sinus infection that just wouldn't die. Over six months, I took antibiotics, long naps, a decongestant that gave me an allergic reaction so bad I stopped to wonder if I'd wake up the next morning. It finally ended when I came up with SWAMP and took megadoses of vitamin D, Mucinex and salt.

It's February and once again, I've been fighting off a cold for a few weeks. While SWAMP consists of taking 50,000 IU of vitamin D for two days, I've had to take 40,000 IU for the past several days to keep my cough from getting worse. I'm not the only one who's taken large doses like this long term. Jeff T. Bowles, a layman, wrote and self-published a book called THE MIRACULOUS RESULTS OF EXTREMELY HIGH DOSES OF THE SUNSHINE HORMONE VITAMIN D3 MY EXPERIMENT WITH HUGE DOSES OF D3 FROM 25,000 to 50,000 to 100,000 IU A Day OVER A 1 YEAR PERIOD (caps in original) about his research and experiences. Bowles is a little crazy, and his problems (mostly bone and joint pain) are much different from mine. The book badly needs an editor. But it has some of the freshest thinking I've seen in a long time and Bowles has clearly done a lot of reading on the subject. He suggests (based on reading Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox and an article on vitamin D toxicity by Chris Masterjohn, he recommends taking vitamin K2 if you're going to take large doses of D3. With that in mind, I think that SWAMP can be done, if necessary, for longer than two days when necessary.

The other part of SWAMP is taking Mucinex and salt. Several days ago, the convenience store in my building was out of Mucinex, so I bought Su-Phedrine PE (phenylephrine HCl). I had to double the dose to get decongested (I used to take two regular Sudafeds, often, before going low-carb and wheat-free). I finally realized today that this was causing my acid reflux to return, since nothing I was eating or drinking should have caused it. The drug is a methylxanine, and according to drugs.com,

Methylxanthines increase gastric acidity and may also relax lower esophageal sphincter, which can lead to gastric reflux into the esophagus. Therapy with products containing methylxanthines should be administered cautiously in patients with significant gastroesophageal reflux.

Drugs.com also lists nervousness, bleeding, loss of appetite, headache and confusion as side effects (I've had them all), among others, including raised blood glucose concentrations. It would be nice if this were mentioned on the box. I've also noticed the side effects are worse when I'm under more stress.

I'm going back to Mucinex (guaifenesin), which doesn't cause any reactions in me.

Comments

tess said…
in anybody else, i'd be concerned about them balancing vitamin A with their Ds, but i'm confident you have it covered! :-)

i ended up conquering my frequent sinus infections with echinacea and goldenseal in combination. have you gone the herbal route?
Lori Miller said…
Good point about the vitamin A. I eat liver once a week and my daily vitamin pill has A in it, so I think I good.

I'd had sinus problems most of my life, and I've tried herbal remedies. Maybe I didn't take enough or didn't take the right thing, but they didn't have any effect on me.

SWAMP requires an antibiotic, antiinflammatory and mucus thinner to kill the bio, open (uninflame) the sinus passages and let them drain. (Imagine your sinuses as a stream that's been blocked and become a swamp.) It looks like echinacea and goldenseal have all that covered. Just add salt!

What doses do you take, and for how long?
tess said…
when it was bad, i'd take a whole dropper-full of the combined tincture in water three times a day. tastes NASTY, but using kahlua as a chaser gave me a reward for doing it. ;-) about a week of that, and then lay off a week -- repeat if needed. i did this even before the days i began using a neti-pot, and i have to get really run down to get another infection.

Popular posts from this blog

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

YouTube invites creators back; says Biden pushed censorship on COVID and politics

Google, which owns YouTube, is inviting back creators it kicked off the platform for content about politics, elections, and COVID. Google says the Biden administration pressured them to censor this content, and now Europe is trying to force them to censor lawful content. Jim Jordan, Representative from Ohio, explains on X. Thread here .  Created with AI on ImageFX.  YouTube creators banned or suspended for COVID content (source: Grok). Click to enlarge. Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan 2h • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X 🚨BREAKING: Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. Thread: YouTube also: -Admits the Biden Admin censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong” -Confirms that the Biden Admin wanted Americans censored for speech that did not violate YouTube’s policies -Details when YouTube began rolling back its censorship policies on p...

Infrared Light: How much is too much?

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it.  I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,  My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...