Judy, I stumbled across information on vitamin D a month or two after I was dxed and in the past year, there's been tons of information about it in the media.

It's specifically D3 (aka Cholecalciferol). I read everything I could and it really made sense to me. I started taking just over 3,000 IUs a day -- I added up what I had in my calcium and multi and then supplemented from there. The MDR has been raised to 600 (although this info. seems hard to find) with an upper limit of 1,000. This is for normal people though.

My endocrinologist was the first person I told I was supplementing and he was a little alarmed at the dose. He's well aware of D3 because it actually functions in the body as a hormone, just like the way sunlight (also D3) synthesizes in the body. He explained to me that vitamin D can build up in the body and become toxic so he tested my levels and liver function. (This was almost a year after I'd been supplementing.) Liver funcion was fine and even with supplementing with D3 all that time, my levels were within normal range. Really made me wonder what they were before! It really does seem that a lot of people with MS are low in vitamin D.

Most people who are on the vitamin D3 kick recommend not supplementing more than 4,000 IUs daily and in the summer or if you live in a sunny climate year round, the dose should be decreased. You will also read about some people whose doctors have prescribe a dose of 50,000 IUs once a week. I asked my endocrinologist about that and he said that taking a high dose once a week does not seem to present the same problems as building up daily in the body. It's important for anyone supplementing with D to get their levels and liver function tested periodically. I go back to my endo in the next month or two and we'll be checking again.

BTW, there's been a lot on the news lately about vitamin D3's suspected helpfulness in regard to breast cancer.