Back Pain and Vitamin D By Mrs Vera West

     I suspect that most of our readers have back pain, probably lower back pain. Many writers here have chronic neck pain from endless hours spent on the computer to dig out the news that is important. Now, apart from suffering and soldiering on, it seems that vitamin D3 could help with back pain:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-07-05-supplementing-with-vitamin-d-shown-to-reduce-chronic-lower-back-pain.html

“A study published in Pain Physician suggests that adequate vitamin D supplementation can help reduce and relieve chronic lower back pain. To prove the connection between this nutrient and back pain, researchers invited 68 adults to participate in the study. All of them reported suffering from lower back pain for at least three months, and are not getting any better even with medication and physical therapy. Before the experiment, researchers found that the volunteers’ average level of vitamin D was only at 12.8 ng/mL (nanograms per milliliter). This number was much lower than the 40 ng/mL recommended amount of vitamin D to boost optimal health. So, for the next eight weeks, participants were given 60,000 IU of vitamin D three times a week, increasing their average levels to 36.07 ng/mL. Meanwhile, to measure their level of pain and disability, a pain visual analog scale was used before, during, and at the end of the study. Results showed that after the subjects received higher doses of vitamin D, their pain and disability levels significantly decreased. Dr. Babita Ghai, M.D., D.N.B, lead author of the study, commented, “Our findings provide a reasonable justification for advising dietary supplementation as well as therapeutic medication to achieve normal vitamin D levels in patients with musculoskeletal pain.”

     No doubt this supplementation will help, but I swallow plenty of vitamin D3, and still have so much arthritic pain, that I could easily spread it round the entire city of Melbourne, for anyone foolish enough to want it. Nevertheless, in these painful times, any hope is worth a try, and vitamin D3 has numerous health benefits as well, so nothing is to be lost.