hypercalcemia
 

Hi, I have been under investigation due to brain lesions. My neurologist put me on steroids and suggested I take vitamin d and calcuim tablets, which I have been doing for 6 months now, i was weaned off the steroids 3 months ago. I now have too much calcium in my blood. My question is, I have read somewhere and I was just wondering if its true. that you should not advise anyone to take calcuim without checking their magnesium level first?


Thanks
Kelly :)

I think that it would be a good idea to ask your GP to arrange for measurements of all of your main blood cation (Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+ and K+) levels - this is easy to do.

If those numbers are outside normal ranges there are many possibilities - your GP, maybe with help from a specialist, should be able to advise you.

If you were taking high dose Vit D... over 2000IU daily, the
recommendations are to not take much calcium with that therapy.

This is because Vit D increases absorption of calcium from the GI tract.

If you only used small D doses, the hypercalcemia might be due to secondary hyperparathyroidism. This occurs when the body senses calcium levels are too low, and the parathyroid glands signal more calcium to be released from bones. This is not a very precise solution, and typically too much is released and floats around for a while. If you have testing at this point it will reflect this temporary high. It can be confusing therefore to know exactly what is going on.

Did I understand correctly that you are still taking the calcium after weaning from the steroid? You may not need a supplement if you are not on steroids, they deplete minerals in general.