What to do after fluorides give you chronic fatigue?

The main "perceptible" manifestation of bone fluorosis for me is fatigue, which I get by the end of each day, as well as after an intense physical workout.

It is, of course, all relative! At the time of this writing I am over 50, many people would probably attribute it to "old age".

But my fatigue goes away as soon as I take calcium supplements.
This condition seems to support the main "manifestation" of skeletal fluorosis, which is a compromised calcium exchange due to the loss of the ability of the bone to respond to the calcium-regulating hormones (calcitonin and parathyroid hormone).

As a result of it, the excess calcium cannot get deposited into bones, while deficit of ionized calcium in blood cannot be made up from bones either, at least not fast enough to make you keep up with healthy people.

Deficit of ionized calcium in blood plasma causes fatigue, which can be called "chronic fatigue", since it persists pretty much all the time.

I found that regular calcium supplementation is an efficient method of combatting this type of fatigue.

I take 300 to 400 mg in the morning, a couple hours after breakfast.
Depending on the amount of calcium in one pill or caplet, I can take one or two at a time, or I may have to break a pill in half.

On weekends, when I do not have to go to work, I take some calcium right after I get up and I delay the main part of my breakfast for about an hour.
The second installment of some 300 - 400 mg goes a couple hours after lunch.

I take the last installment an hour before or a couple hours after supper.

I used to take calcium also at night, with the intent of spreading out the intake evenly throughout the day, but after having to struggle with insomnia several times, I discontinued the practice.

Normally I never get insomnia, since I am in a never-ending sleep deprivation mode.
I rarely have more than 5.5 hours of sleep on an average weekday. Often it is just 5 hours!
But I had nevertheless a few sleepless nights when I was taking calcium supplements after 3 am!

Normally I go to bed six hours before I have to get up, but since I usually get up at night 2-3-4 times, I am left with some 5.5 hours of actual sleep.
As a matter of fact, I set the alarm clock on every two hours, but often I do not need it.

This practice may look odd to some, but I had to adopt it in order to sustain a demanding running routine.
An intense endurance workout results in substantial redistribution of fluids in the body.
This can produce a severe dehydration, with all the associated discomforts and dangers.

There were quite a few cases of top endurance athletes dying in their sleep!

From what I understand about this, it could have been caused by severe dehydration, when the volume of blood plasma dropped to dangerously low levels as a result of fluids being transferred from vascular into the interstitial "compartment".

You can read more about this at my other site:
http://www.noHypertension.info

When I get up at night I take some supplements and vitamins, except calcium. I try to spread out their intake, because some of them adversely affect absorption of some others.
Absorption is also better if a daily amount of a particular mineral supplement or vitamin is split into several small parts.

I also heard that vitamin C should not be taken together with copper and calcium supplements.

That is why I take copper together with calcium and make sure that I do not take any vitamin C an hour before and a couple hours after.
Taking copper and calcium supplements together allows me a larger safe "window" to take all the vitamin C I need.

Information about importance of copper is available on my other site www.notSmoking.info/minerals.htm

I had oxalate kidney stones once, I have a feeling "my" doctor "helped" me get them.

He advised me to increase my intake of vitamin C during winter to 2000 mg a day, "to boost my immune system", as he put it.

I read somewhere that vitamin C should not be taken in large quantities at one time and I questioned the safety of his recommendation.
But he emphatically rejected my concerns!

And so I was taking those two grams in two installments every day till I ended up with a bad case of kidney stones.

Luckily, operation was not required, but I had to endure the most agonizing pain in my life.
I also lost several days of work, recuperating and going for various tests in a hospital.

I have a feeling that the reason for those kidney stones were those large doses of vitamin C.
I never had kidney stones before!
And so I reduced my intake of vitamin C to about 500 mg a day and started taking it in small amounts, some 20 to 50 mg at a time.

That doctor then said that I should avoid all foods containing calcium in order to prevent further occurrence of kidney stones.

I found that very suspicious. Calcium is an essential mineral and is absolutely vital for health.
Daily requirement is about 1 gram, twice as much for pregnant or lactating women.

After that I became more careful about blindly following doctor's advice. I also started educating myself on the subject of medicine.
And, of course, I did not follow his advice regarding calcium.

Later I realized that calcium is quite literally a life saver for me when it comes to dealing with fatigue.

Here is an example to illustrate it:
When I was terminated in nursing school, with just 4 months to go, I had to get a job, while at the same time working on my legal case, preparing a website and doing many other things.
Then, some two years later, I decided to get another college diploma. At that time I was 49.
For a whole year, while in college, I had to work till 11:30 pm, even though not every day.

In winter I was going to work on a bus, in warm weather it was faster for me to get around on a bicycle.
Since I was able to use a shorter route on a bicycle, plus I did not have to wait for a bus, it allowed me to save some fifteen to twenty minutes.

But even then I would only be able to get home at about quarter to one at night!

After a shift in a warehouse I had to take a shower, then I would pack my lunch for the next day, and only after 2 am I would be able to go to bed.

At 6:30 I had to get up, go to college, after that go to work for the entire afternoon shift.

I pulled through, but I am sure I would not be able to manage without calcium supplementation!

Once I forgot to take my calcium pills with me and I was barely able to stand upright by 10 pm.
After that I put a whole jar of it into my locker.

It is a normal practice for people who work night shifts to drink lots of coffee.
From my experience this is not the best way to keep awake.
A calcium pill, with an equal amount of magnesium would produce a much better result for me.

I find the effects of calcium supplements on reducing fatigue so profound that I have overdone it and ended up with a perforated ulcer in the year 2000.

The problem was that I was taking calcium cabonate and taking far too much.
My daily average was probably 5 to 10 gram, that is five to ten time more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA)!

At that time I was also maintaining a rather intense running schedule. I needed that as a means of coping with stress.
Fast running is the best way I know to burn out stress hormones.

Naturally, I was feeling fatigued after an intense running workout, but I still had to put in a few hours at the computer after it.
Taking a few grams of calcium made fatigue go away very fast and that's what I have been doing for a couple years.

But the problem is that regular intake of carbonates produces "acid rebound", as stomach is trying to produce more acid, which have been neutralized by carbonates.
The end result of it is a higher stomach acidity, which can burn the stomach wall and produce an ulcer.

I knew about it from the days when I was attending a nursing school, but I did not realize the effects of it could be so pronounced.

But after undergoing emergency surgery and spending five days in a hospital, I certainly learned my lesson!

My stay in a hospital was also a practical lesson in survival.
The nursing care was so poor that if not for my knowledge of nursing procedures and thus my ability to correct all those mistakes made by the staff, I doubt I would have come out of there alive.

Those five days in a hospital are described in detail on my site surviveHospital

It so happened that I was consuming eggshells, after keeping them in vinegar for a few days.
That was my calcium supplementation.

I, of course, was also drinking the liquid, but it did not seem enough.
But eating a teaspoon of those eggshells would eliminate fatigue very fast!
Eggshells, which were kept in vinegar, is an old folk remedy for pregnant women to help them save their teeth.

During pregnancy organism has to supply baby's calcium needs.
If mother does not consume enough dietary calcium, she can lose some bone mass, as a result.
And even though bones can remineralize after parturition, the process is far from certain for teeth.

When those had lost some bone mass, this can make them more susceptible to caries.
Reduction in bone mass can also make gums recede.
Once this happened, it is pretty much impossible to reverse it!

And so I decided to try it.
I, of course, could use the commercially produced calcium supplements, but most supplements I saw on storeshelves were a mixture of carbonate and citrate.

With regards to carbonate, I heard it is often produced from dolomite deposits, which contain lead.

That is why I was reluctant to use them on a regular basis.

Chelated calcium was quite expensive in those days, on top of that, my financial planning had to include repaying the student loan from a previous stint in college; that, obviously, affected my choices.

Plus I was not measuring how much calcium I consume, I was going strictly by the degree of relief it was bringing and that's how I ended up overdoing it.

During those five days in hospital I was not getting any food, not to mention vitamins or mineral supplements, I was only getting glucose with intravenous infusion.

After a couple days in that hospital I began having a rather profound feeling of numbness in my muscles.
Apparently the level of ionized calcium in blood plasma fell too low.
I also had a feeling of "pins and needles" in my legs.

When I told the doctor about it, he dismissed it, he said it is impossible for a plasma level of ionized calcium to drop, as there is an adequate supply in the bone mass.
He even emphasized the fact that there is enough calcium in bones to supply the physiological needs of the organism for 3 years.

That was a very misleading statement! On one hand, after a certain point bones would get so weak, that they would not be able to support the weight of the body. On the other hand, he was, obviously, assuming that bones are healthy to respond to hormonal stimulation. But when some part of the bone mass has been made physiologically dead by prolonged ingestion of fluorides, then calcium exchange becomes severely compromised.

Only by the end of my hospital stay, after the stomach suction (NG suction) was out, the medical staff gave in to my demands and I did get some supplements and vitamins prescribed.

It would have been no problem to have oral medications even with NG suction, it is routinely done in hospitals, you just have to disconnect the suction for some half-hour, but the doctor did not allow it.

I also managed to find two small paper containers with milk on food trays that were going back to the kitchen, but it wasn't nearly enough.

Now I do not buy any calcium supplements in the form of carbonate.
Even though it is the cheapest form of supplements, I do not think it is worth the money, not even when it is made from sea corals.

It is also important to take vitamin D with calcium.
Most calcium supplements nowadays are prepared as a combination of calcium, magnesium and vitamin D. However, it normally has only a part of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin D.

That is why, if your exposure to sun is not sufficient to produce enough vitamin D naturally, you may not have enough vitamin D in your system to metabolize all the calcium you consume.

Many calcium supplements contain other minerals, as well, but the most important mineral that should be taken together with calcium is magnesium.

According to many authorities, the optimal ratio is 1:1.
The average intake, however, is such that many people end up with magnesium deficiency.

When the diet lacks adequate amounts of magnesium, calcium would still be maintained at its normal levels, since it can be washed out from bones by parathyroid hormone, albeit this process is compromised to various degrees in people afflicted by skeletal fluorosis.

Since magnesium is absolutely essential for maintenance of the proper levels of calcium in blood, as well as many other functions, its deficiency would produce a range of various pathological processes.

When magnesium is deficient, too much calcium can enter the muscle cells and cause sustained muscle contractions, spasms, even convulsions.

Insufficient levels of magnesium affect smooth muscles in a similar fashion, producing constriction of arterioles, elevated blood pressure, arterial spasms, angina, possibly even a heart attack of various degrees of severity.

Constriction of the muscular layer of some smaller arteries in the head can produce headache.

Lack of magnesium can result in constriction of smooth muscles surrounding the small airways, thus causing asthmatic symptoms of various degrees of severity.

There are more than 300 magnesium metalloenzymes in the body!

Enzymes are special proteins which stimulate biochemical reactions in the body.
As one can well imagine, lack of dietary magnesium can result in disruption of a very wide range of biochemical processes.

Insufficient intake of magnesium can cause many other pathological developments, you may want to read about it from other sources, which explore this subject in greater detail.

With regards to fatigue that is caused by a compromised calcium exchange, magnesium is very important because it is a crucial element in activating adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is the energy storage molecule and the main source of cellular energy.

Magnesium is essential for proper transmission of nerve impulses.
It facilitates entry of calcium molecules into a nerve cell to initiate the process of electrical transmission along the nerves.

To sum it up - calcium would not work properly without sufficient levels of magnesium.

People, who neglect their diets often end up with various degrees of magnesium deficiency.
Nowadays pretty much everybody is aware about importance of calcium, but apparently not that many people also know about importance of magnesium, and thus end up neglecting adequate dietary intake of this important element.

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