Five million people in the United States of America alone have fibromyalgia, and if you are one of those people, then you know what it’s like to live with widespread pain, fatigue, and sometimes even depression.
Today, the cause of fibromyalgia is still unknown, but medical professionals and researchers suspect that it could be due to trauma, an abnormal pain response, or a virus. While it will definitely take time to discover what the cause of fibromyalgia is, for now, it is highly likely that a lack of Vitamin D and Fibromyalgia have much in common.
Vitamin D Deficiency and Fibromyalgia
We should probably clear up something to begin with: there is currently no evidence to suggest that having a lack of sunlight exposure is related to developing the symptoms of fibromyalgia. But we do know that some people who have fibromyalgia also have a Vitamin D deficiency. So what exactly is the link between the two?
Numerous studies have been conducted to reveal that nearly half of all people with fibromyalgia also have a lack of Vitamin D. It is very possible that the low levels of Vitamin D are simply due to other factors such as the condition of having fibromyalgia. So the evidence that a lack of Vitamin D is the, or one of the, causes of fibromyalgia is near to nothing.
How Does Vitamin D Help Fibromyalgia?
Studies have also shown that getting enough Vitamin D into your system might at least lower the pain and symptoms of fibromyalgia. The significant part of fibromyalgia that Vitamin D can help is inflammation. In order for that to work, your Vitamin D levels should be help at 40 ng/ml.
Vitamin D has actually been used as a treatment for fibromyalgia multiple times. For example, in the United States, many people who have fibromyalgia also had low levels of Vitamin D, and many of them took various approved drugs and treatments to cope with the pain.
But those who got more Vitamin d into their system showed the greatest improvement; in fact, many people who took approved drugs designed to treat fibromyalgia actually saw little to no improvement.
Those who took plenty of Vitamin D also never saw their symptoms become worse, but the high intake of Vitamin D still proved to not be an all out cure for fibromyalgia, as those who did take the Vitamin D still didn’t see a gradual improvement in their lives of dealing with fibromyalgia. The pain is still there, and so at best, it is probably the most accurate to assume that getting plenty of Vitamin D won’t make your symptoms or pain become any worse. So overall, if you have fibromyalgia, it’s a good idea to get plenty of Vitamin D as at least part of your overall treatment plan.
Vitamin D Supplements
Getting plenty of Vitamin D certainly won’t make your fibromyalgia any worse, and if anything, it should stop your pain and symptoms from increasing in intensity and help your inflammation. One option to get plenty of Vitamin D into you is to take Vitamin D supplements.
There is no official cure for fibromyalgia, and all of the ‘cures’ out there might only make your problems worse. So you can’t think of Vitamin D supplements as a cure for fibromyalgia, but you can think of them as part of your overall treatment plan, and an alternative to heading outside each day to get plenty of sunlight.
There has been research conducted to discover if Vitamin D supplements are a viable alternative to getting Vitamin D from sunshine, using a randomized test with thirty people diagnosed with fibromyalgia (and who also had Vitamin D deficiency). The fibromyalgia patients all took supplements for six months, and then compared their findings to the patients who did not take Vitamin D supplements.
The results showed that those who took the Vitamin d supplements reported a lessening of their pain and fatigue vs. those who did not take the supplements. This supports the theory that Vitamin D is a safe and un-harmful treatment for Fibromyalgia, and while it shouldn’t be your only course of action, it should certainly be part of your overall plan.
Taking Vitamin D supplements would be especially critical in the fall and winter time, as the sun will not be out as often, and even if you do go and spend time outside, you still might not get enough of the necessary sunlight. You’ll want to consult with your doctor or medical professional to see how much Vitamin D supplements you should take, and then whether or not it will need to be monitored so you can tell if you are getting enough of it.
Conclusion
All in all, a lack of Vitamin D probably isn’t one of the causes of fibromyalgia. But getting plenty of Vitamin D is important to improve your pain and symptoms of fibromyalgia, and if you can’t get enough Vitamin D via sunlight, then you’ll want to consider Vitamin D supplements as an alternative option.
If you have fibromyalgia, one of the first things that you’ll want to do is get your Vitamin D levels checked out. If they are low, you need to either get plenty of sunlight or see what Vitamin D supplements would work the best for you. But even if your Vitamin D levels currently are stable, you’ll still want to monitor and watch them closely, and maybe even keep some supplements on hand for if or when you need them.
If you can do that, then you should find your pain and symptoms to be less than what they could have been. But as we have mentioned many times throughout this article, you will want to include Vitamin D as only a part of your overall treatment plan. You can’t expect getting plenty of Vitamin D to be your only course of action for alleviating your pain, so have other treatment plans and maybe other drugs and vitamins to take too.
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