once a week for 8 weeks? I tried it and it helped a little. It may not be sun screen or lack of sun etc. My Endo says that it has to do with changes in your body's ability to process D effectively. Good luck.

Yeah my doctor said the same thing but the lack of sun doesn't help.

it's just an 8 week thing. I the supplements your taking don't help, ask him about it.

there are going to be exceptions.

Everyone would be wise to get regular check-ups, consult w/ their physician and just generally try to take good care of themselves.

I've had that problem too.

I had a low thyroid. It fell within the low end of normal, but the Air Force doctor started me on a lo dose and boy what a difference! Night and day.

Had to kick it up a couple of years ago.

I do the vitamin D by getting outside. You don't have to be out there very long - 15 minutes or so.

Hope you start feeling better. If they put you on thyroid meds, it will take a few weeks to feel any results. I also lost about 50 lbs. Not just because of meds, I kicked up the exercising also.

And in 15 minutes without protection I will start to burn - I kid you not.

I've been conversing with people who believe that losing weight is a lost cause -lol. Sometimes its not YOU, but your body working against you.

sure you have to modify, but it helps if you know there is more to it than that. I eat what I want and what I can tolerate, but in small quantities.

Let's hope the vitamin D and thyroid meds make a huge difference.

I tested low for Vitamin D a couple of years ago, but stopped taking the supplements last summer because I was always working in the vegetable garden. Last week I saw the doctor for allergy prescriptions and told her I was constantly tired. She asked if I was taking the D, and reminded me to start taking it again. Which reminds me ... (runs to kitchen to pop a Vitamin D capsule)

I wonder if that's part of my problem. Hypothyroidism runs in my family and I know I don't get enough Vt. D (or iron). I don't have trouble with weight as much as I do exhaustion.

I'm still not going out in the sun.

Glad to hear you've got a doctor that stays on top of things! Having this information has got to make you feel better, already.

I also have low energy, am overweight etc. I ALSO have low vit D. I'm also super pale, I don't go out much in the sun (I'm one of those burn/peel people). I used to be very careful about using sunscreen too. Plus, I live far enough up north that I was told the sun doesn't make a difference from September to May anyway. So I had to take supplements.

As for hypo - I'm tested for that regularly. I have all the symptoms but my TSH is always fine (usually closer to hyper than hypo) and I've had all the other thyroid hormones tested too. My brother is severely hypo and on meds, so my doctor makes sure he monitors me closely because of a possible genetic component.

Vitamin D supplements made a slight difference for me but I keep thinking that there's something else going on. Hopefully for you, vitamin D will drastically change things for you. It DOES give me more energy, so much so I can't take it before bed.

Good luck! Hope you feel better soon!

I had a cellular test (Spectracell) done and found that, even though my blood serum levels of D were normal, I had very low levels in my cells. We also found that I have a genetic abnormality where my D receptors do not work properly. We haven't figured out what to do yet to get the D to my cells/bones, but in my case high supplementation of D3 could cause serum toxicity.

I had to take 50,000iu weekly for a looooooong time to get my levels up, but eventually it worked and the effect was tremendous.

I still take 50,000iu monthly. Last visit to the doc, he said my levels were on the high side! He wanted me to cut back but I want to sustain this level (70).

I'm hypothyroid as well and have been on Synthroid for years, same dose but my physical last month showed I was out of range a little. I thought maybe it was because we've been drinking a lot of green smoothies lately and I learned that raw greens and crucifers apparently can suppress thyroid function and the effectiveness of the meds. So now I'm steaming them first and will find out in June when I see my doctor if the cooked veggies reversed the spike.

Now I'm thinking maybe I should take Vitamin D, too, because obviously we don't get a lot of sun up here in the winter.

revved up my immune system.

Winter used to be one long respiratory infection for me. The infection would "commute" between my head, throat, and chest for about half the year.

Then my-brother-the-doctor suggested that I take vitamin D supplements. He said that 2000 units was the equivalent of 10 minutes of summer sunlight, so that should be a safe level for anyone.

I gradually upped it to 4,000 units a day, and the result is that I hardly ever get sick in the winter. If I do, it's mild and quickly goes away. The only exception was my bout of illness in Japan, where I think I got the Asian flu before it hit the U.S. and before I thought it was necessary to receive a flu shot.

A couple of years ago, a bad cold went through my choir like the Black Death, but even though we sit packed together during services and even though everyone else in my section was out sick at one time or another, I stayed healthy.

Some anecdotal evidence:

1. A friend of mine retired to Hawaii and took along his cat, who had chronic eye infections that seemed incurable despite the vet's best efforts. Once my friend moved into his condo, the cat spent all day every day lying out in the sun, coming in only for meals and at sunset. In a couple of days, he noticed that the cat's eyes had cleared up.

2. The winter of 1998 was unusually gray and rainy for an unusually long time in Portland, and I had one of those respiratory infections that was long-lasting and nasty even by my standards. The rains lasted into early May, where they are usually over by April. I'd look at the extended forecast, and it would say, "rain" for five days straight. I coughed so badly that I broke a rib and couldn't really attend public events, because I would disturb people. I kept thinking, without realizing why, "I need sunshine."

I belonged to a Sunday movie group, which attended a matinee and then went out for dinner together. I hadn't attended for a couple of months because of my cough, but finally the sun came out on a Sunday in May, and I told the organizer, "I won't attend the movie, because I'm still coughing, but I need to get out of the house, so I'll join you for dinner."

Instead of going to the movie, I sat out in the sun on Pioneer Courthouse Square for about two hours.

My cough was much less severe by the next day and was completely gone in three days.

3. When the older of my brothers was a baby, born in December, he had eye infections (like my friend's cat). It was a really hard winter, so when my grandparents decided to take a trip South, they invited my mother, me, and my baby brother to come along. Their destination was the thermal baths at Hot Springs, which we used as a base for exploring the area. I was four years old and have vague memories of going to the baths and the attendant giving me a sailboat to play with.

Anyway, after we'd been in Hot Springs for a while, where it was sunny and in the 60s, my grandmother noticed that my brother's eyes were no longer infected.

4. I've heard from a doctor who works at the county medical center that African-Americans and African immigrants in particular living in Minneapolis often have problems with joint and bone pain that are due to lack of sunlight, since their dark skin evolved over thousands of years of living in areas near the equator. Vitamin D helps them, too.

5. If you've read a lot of older fiction, you've undoubtedly heard of children being dosed with cod liver oil. One of my cousins told me that her mother (my grandmother's sister) dosed her with cod liver oil at the first sign of a cold. This is a traditional northern European method of getting vitamin D in the winter.