When Your Health Turns On You: #Hypothyroidism --- 8: Vitamin D – The Results!

Vitamin D3 capsule

It’s been a while, 20 April to be precise, since my last post in this series. But it has been worth the wait – on a personal front, and a Covid-19 front. The results are in!

The backstory for those just joining me:

During 2017 I was suffering lots of weird health symptoms, the most concerning being that my brain refused to function properly – hardly a useful trait in a novelist. April 2018 a lump developed on my neck: a swelling on my thyroid. A GP’s blood tests indicated I might develop Hypothyroidism, whereas symptoms and antibodies emphasised that I was suffering Hashimoto’s Hypothyroidism, an autoimmune disorder. There are lots of autoimmune disorders – a common denominator tends to be a low Vitamin D level.

Note: I’m British and live in the UK. We have a National Health Service, free at the point of access, paid for via our taxes. Your mileage may differ, even if you live in the UK.

For the reasoning as to why, in January 2020, I joined a Facebook Vitamin D Support Group, you’ll need to read the back posts listed at the bottom of this page. In February I started on its suggested Protocol: a careful ratio of fairly high level Vitamin D3 and three ancillary balancing co-factors. I added in an Omega-3 capsule, a multi-vitamin & mineral tablet for my age group, which I’d been taking for over a year, this on top of my blood pressure medication. Yes, I rattled.

In March I had to take time off this cocktail when I had a hip replacement operation, but continued as soon as I was free of its medications and their side effects. The intention had been to take the Protocol for four months and then pay for a private finger-prick blood test (currently £39), but Covid-19 made an appearance – thankfully not in my family – and my mind focused on other things.

So it was the very end of July before I realised I was late with my intended test. I believe in stopping for at least a week beforehand any supplements. If I kept up supplementation to the hour of the blood test the result would be distorted.

14th August I had my result: 124nmol/L. I was ecstatic! I knew the supplementation was having an effect as I had been feeling so much better, more me. Back in May 2019 my level had been 48nmol/L. The given “within range” in the UK is 50-175nmol/L whereas the body needs it at 75+ to work at cell level. My level was now optimal. No wonder I was feeling better; no wonder the main swelling on my thyroid (I have one on each lobe) had diminished so much as to be almost unnoticeable. Hurrah!

The decision became: should I stay on the full supplementation level or drop the dosage, and if so, by how much so as to produce a maintenance level? Within days the decision was taken for me. An odd, slightly sore throat became a prominent sore throat, I had an increase in phlegm and the return of a nasal drip (all flags for hypothyroidism), and the swelling on my thyroid started to increase in size. Damnit.

I took advice from the Vitamin D Support Group and immediately the answer came back: Vitamin D has a half-life of approximately three weeks. If it is not constantly topped up, via sunshine on skin and/or supplementation, its potency fades. It was August, the height of the British summer. Damnit.

So I went back on the supplementation, though not quite at the high level I’d been on. I have, however, stayed with the same amount of co-factors, plus the multi-vitamin & mineral tablet and the Omega-3 capsule. Within the week the sore throat had abated, and the phlegm is gradually lessening.  It is my intention to pay for a full Thyroid & main vitamin panel blood test in early November, and depending on that result I’ll increase or maintain the supplementation level over winter.

November is when I usually have my annual “full” [pause for laughter] blood tests done by the GP to monitor my blood pressure medications, so we will be having a discussion about my Vitamin D level. Not that the results from privately bought blood tests will be added to my NHS record – y’know, in case I’m rushed into hospital and the medics want a “full” history of my health – but that’s a whole different argument I’m not going into here.

More important, at the top of this post I mentioned Covid-19 + Vitamin D results. While contemplating this post I watched a YouTube video by Dr John Campbell, who I’ve mentioned in previous posts, a lot in updates to Post 7. His video Covid-19: Vitamin D, First Clinical Trial uploaded on 6th September should be required watching for everyone, whether or not you have underlying health issues.

In the video he talks about a pilot trial run in one hospital in Cordoba, Spain, where a small number of patients admitted with Covid-19 and who had a low level of Vitamin D registered in the previous year were split into two groups. Both were given the hospital’s best available therapy for Covid-19, but one group had an added ‘active’ Vitamin-D. Out of both groups fourteen patients had to be transferred to ICU, but only one of those had been given Vitamin-D; the other 13 hadn't. The video is 27 minutes long, the eye-opener at 15 minutes, so watch until at least that point. It might save your life, or the life of someone you love.

As Dr Campbell asks, why isn't the UK initiating trials? Why isn't the World Health Organisation? I'd like to know why my region's Clinical Commissioning Group refuses to allow GPs to request testing for Vitamin D.

 

UPDATE 15 September:  The East Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group held its AGM online due to Covid-19, so I put that very question. As expected the response was a pat dismissal and buck-passing to Public Health England and NICE.

UPDATE 01 October: Dr John Campbell has a very interesting video "Vitamin D News & Science". Go watch https://youtu.be/B01ZlRfMnmU 

UPDATE 06 November: The result from my privately purchased Vitamin-D test shows 109nmol/L, down from 124nmol/L in early August, despite my being on a high-dose supplementation throughout.
Q: so what has changed? A: lack of sunshine due autumn.
What would have been the drop if I hadn't been taking a high-dose supplementation? It doesn't bear thinking about.

 

Image from PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay

 When Your Health Turns On You #Hypothyroidism series:

1: Symptoms
2: Vitamins & Minerals
3: Blood Tests
4: Vitamin Co-Factors & the Microbiome
5: Functional Medicine & YouTube
6: Covid-19 Coronavirus 

7: Covid-19 & Vitamin D

8: Vitamin D - The Results!

9: Covid-19 & Vitamin D - Jan 2021 Update

Trialling Audio for a Virtual FantastiCon

What a weekend that turned out to be, sitting drink in hand for six hours each day watching FantastiCon unfold on my laptop. Covid-19 has a lot to answer for, but Dan Grubb is a can-do kind of fella, and he will not be beaten by a mere world-wide pandemic. 

He and his wife run Fantastic Books Publishing and their annual FantastiCon is an in-person event held at Cleethorpes, just south of the Humber, with attendees travelling in from far and wide, including Hungary and the USA. This year it was held on a computer screen near you via TwitchTV. This rather curtailed the usual nerf wars and gaming extravaganzas, so it became more of a Litfest with extras. After all, there were six new titles to be launched.

My involvement came about when I was approached to do one of the short readings to be used as fillers. Using your smartphone will be fine. It might have been if I owned one. But if FantastiCon could go Virtual, surely I could use my laptop to video myself reading an excerpt or two. Mmm. Perhaps not. Well, I did, but let's just draw a veil over the result. I attempted to back out but Dan was having none of it. He was also compiling audio recordings. I had a go using software integral to Windows 10. Er... no.

My deadline was looming. It was then that I bit the bullet and downloaded Audacity, the free open source "easy to use cross-platform audio editor and recorder". Yeah, right. But it was! In a single afternoon I found my way round the basics, recorded two tests and a very passable final, then followed instructions to remove the inevitable ums, ers, and fluffed words. I amazed myself. Dan added book covers and it was good to go. 

If you should wish to listen to my rather non-dulcet tones, start at 6hrs 30mins HERE of Day 2. The recording of the event should stay live until mid September.

What this has done for me, of course, is open up a whole new world. I have languishing a YouTube channel carrying a couple of book trailers. All I need to do is learn how to add music and graphics tracks to audio files and I shall be uploading some of my short stories. First, though, I need to take lessons in speaking proper. Isn't there always a problem?

Life of an Anglo-Saxon Warrior at #Bamburgh

Covid-19 may have curtailed travelling and cancelled events, but it has opened a plethora of online talks, lectures, and instructive how-to demonstrations, most available on YouTube.

For the writer and the reader the Society of Authors has run a series of Afternoon Tea With… as well as useful talks on marketing. York Festival of Ideas took its annual festival online with talks on a wide range of subjects. The medieval history of Whitby’s Penny Hedge proved engrossing, but for me the crowning glory goes to Warrior: A Life of War in Anglo-Saxon Britain.

The television programme Time Team, first airing in 1994, brought the fascination of archaeology to ordinary people. It ran for twenty seasons and raised the profile of history programmes. With Warrior: A Life of War... writer Edoardo Albert gets together with York archaeologist Paul Gething to talk about an archaeological dig at what is now Bamburgh Castle, but what in 650AD was the royal residence of the kings of Northumbria.

The hour’s video is introduced by Edoardo Albert who hands over to a rather reluctant Paul Gething. But as with all archaeologists I’ve either seen or spoken to, once on his subject the pure passion of his calling ignites everything it touches. Within thirty minutes I’d ordered their book and I am so very pleased I did.

It is part riveting exploration of the odd breed of self-taught ‘gentleman antiquarians’ – Basil Brown of Sutton Hoo fame being one – who laid the foundations of modern archaeological techniques, also explored in detail, and for context the piecing together of known 7th century history, when Christianity was fighting for minds via the monks of Iona as strongly as royal households were fighting to extend their kingdoms and trade routes. As does Paul Gething in the video, the book brings the period and its people to life in colours worthy of the Book of Kells.

The Dark Ages? More like Arrogant Propaganda.

If you are interested in other aspects of the Anglo-Saxon period, you'd do worse than watch a five minute introduction on the breath-taking craftsmanship of the Staffordshire Hoard.

Native American Plains Decoration Techniques

Today on her Happy Ever After website Sharon Booth is hosting my guest post explaining how I came to research Beneath The Shining Mountains. If you’ve just hopped across from there, Welcome! If you’ve arrived here first, please follow the link above to read the original post – it’s not long and this one will then make more sense (probably).

It seems that I was almost born with an interest in Native American Plains peoples. My mother, who cut my first coup bonnet from newspaper when I was four, doubtless rolled her eyes and thought I’d grow out of it. I didn’t. I ended up making a tipi, haggling with the local tannery for sheepskins (no bison or antelope skins being available), and dragging my own family to weekend pow-wows and week-long summer camps. Yes, in the UK. The British are renown for their eccentricity.

If a writer’s watchword is What if…? then a re-enactor’s must be How did they…? closely followed by Why did they…? Why did the native peoples of the northern plains decorate just about everything they owned? Good question. Some of the colours and designs were tribal, some denoted status, some had religious significance, some encapsulated a bit of all three. Click on the images for a larger view.

Parfleches c1880-85. Left a Brulé Sioux design; right a Cheyenne design.

The two peoples lived in relatively close proximity, sometimes trading, sometimes skirmishing, 

yet the distinctive designs are particular to each.

Earth and vegetable pigments were used most often on items of luggage, which was usually made of rawhide for strength and durability. The pigments were crushed, mixed with animal fat or tallow and applied to the rawhide by brush and/or stick by pressure so the dye impregnated the rawhide. Parfleches were often made in pairs and carried whatever was needed, from clothing to the winter’s dried meat supply. They were tied to a travois platform when moving camp, hence the need for durability.

 Moccasins with porcupine quillwork decoration.

Left Seneca 1808; right Crow (Apsaroke) or Sioux 1882. 

The Seneca are an Iroquoian Great Lakes people whose territory abutted the plains. They favoured the one-piece soft-soled moccasin against the separate, often rawhide-soled moccasin of the plains. The central strip of decoration masks the seam. By the 1880s enforced reservation life was a reality and the bright yellow pigment of the moccasins on the right may have been from a traded dye. The design was for a religious Sun Dance ceremony, the old-style of decoration probably part of the vow rather than using quicker beadwork which would have been the norm by that time.

Before the influx of fur trappers and traders, porcupine quillwork was the most extensive form of decoration for clothing and small bags. It involved a great amount of work. Porcupines were trapped or, if in abundance, sought and a skin thrown over them so their hooked quills came away. The quills were boiled in a natural pigment mixture and dried for future use. Decoration involved holding several in the mouth so they softened, flattening one between the teeth, then folding it between two sinew threads pushed through a fine hole in the skin punched by a thorn or bone awl. Adding further quills constructed a band of decoration as thin as the width of your smallest fingernail. It wasn’t so much hours’ as days’ or even weeks’ of work.

 

Left Yanktonai, Nakota woman’s strap dress, early 19th century.

Right Crow or Nez Perce man’s exploit shirt 1860.

The dress is made from two very soft and whitened deerskins and is unusually tailored; certainly more ceremonial than everyday. It carries both traded early pony and some later, smaller, seed beads alongside the fine quillwork hoops. Pairs of tin cones adorn the lower skirt so the woman would ‘tinkle’ as she walked. Small sheets of tin, or later even food tins, were sought as trade items for this purpose. Pony and seed beads were made of glass and produced in Venice and Bohemia. The man’s shirt was worn to exemplify his worth among his people to visitors and to enemies during conflicts. The ‘strap’ decoration, made separately and sewn as separate pieces to the shirt, are made from quill-wrapped horse-hair edged in both pony and seed beads.

 Two dresses from the Sioux confederacy: left 1875-1900; right c1870 Lakota or Teton

Trade routes between the peoples of North America extended long before Europeans arrived, and shells were a highly-sought exotic: abalone, cowrie, and shown left dentalium. Most women might have aspired to earrings or a necklace; this blue trade-cloth dress was owned by a woman of a powerful family, the dentalium shells probably gathered over generations, re-used and added to. Again, the skin dress shows social standing. Even by the 1870s glass beads imported by traders from Europe were not a cheap item, and to have an entire sleeved yoke decorated in seed beads was a mark of prestige. Sky-blue designs were a feature of the Sioux peoples.

I hope you have enjoyed this small snapshot of the decorative techniques of the northern plains peoples. Read Beneath The Shining Mountains if you’d like to hear how these were used in an everyday setting.

All images are from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum and used under a Creative Commons License.