The US Review of Books by Michael Radon

It was in 1990, during my anesthesia residency training when I first realized what it was like to be on the other side to be a patient. It was in August a few months after starting residency training, when I had a bicycle accident. That accident left me paralyzed from the chest down, which was my first experience with suffering from a severe illness.
I was determined to recover quickly; my 3-year old daughter and pregnant wife were counting on me. Four months after this accident I returned to my training. That turned out to be the easy part. 2 months after returning I began suffering from swollen muscles to my hip and thighs, drenching night sweats and frequent bladder infections and hospitalizations.
This was all new to me and could not have happened at a worse time. My residency training program was trying to accommodate me, a wheelchair bound doctor but one who was chronically ill was more than they bargained for. Fortunately, after 5 months of this my general doctor treated me with Diclofenac.
It worked wonders and my symptoms resolved. A bullet dodged. I then despite having a few professors finding issue with my disability, I finished my residency. These events were preparing me for even more challenging times ahead.
After residency I found a tough job market, finally landing a job in Laredo Texas. Things went well for next 8 years until I was visiting Big Bend National Park. On the last day there I woke finding a silver dollar sized wound to my left hip. Apparently from a Brown Recluse spider bite. Upon returning home I immediately sought and received medical care.
This helped but my wound soon progressed to such severity that I had to be life flighted from a local Laredo hospital to a major hospital in Houston. Fast forward ahead, after multiple surgeries and months of hospitalization they stemmed the tide and I was alive. I was discharged home and as I had to support my family I immediately returned to work.
Because of the nature of the infection, I was left with a large open wound. It took years of treatment, before it closed. That wound left me with a time bomb by destroying my left hip joint causing new wounds. The next eight years were tough as new wounds resulted in constant fevers, anemia and fatigue.
My long work hours only made this worse. Traditional medical treatment kept me alive- hospitalizations, oral antibiotics, blood transfusions and failed surgeries to close sores, but it came to the point that I realized I was losing this war and if something didn’t change fast I had 3-5 years to live. My body couldn’t keep this up.
Throughout my life I had, though in much less precarious situations, come to follow my Mom’s example. Since I was a child she had us take vitamins, minerals or supplements to improve our health. I again looked here for my answer. So, when I had read that vitamin D might be helpful I was willing to give it a try. As I had already tried the more common and supposedly safer supplements without improvement.
My concern was it was labeled a fat-soluble vitamin. The alleged dangers of fat-soluble vitamins were, first in medical school and later in the public, drummed into my consciousness. I had to overcome these concerns for vitamin D3 which later turned out to be false. I started using it at the recommended doses, no difference. I then did my usual MO and significantly escalated the dose over next several months, sensing a positive change but not sure.
Concurrently I started checking my patient’s levels. What I found amazed me. I saw how here in South Texas, one of the sunniest places in the world, vitamin D3 whose major source is skin exposure to sun light, yet almost all my patients were deficient.
Then I attended a medical conference where Dr. Gorminak spoke on vitamin D3. Her talk enlightened me and removed my fears. She explained it required doses much higher than recommended by the government and how it effects our metabolism, immune system and sleep. Her talk explained everything I was suffering. I started on the dose she recommended. With this experience and the new information from the talk I also started my patients on her dosing.
The danger and side effect of too much vitamin D is hypercalcemia. My motto is trust but verify so on these higher doses I checked every patient’s blood calcium and vitamin D3 levels. Never once were either an issue despite dosing 25 times the governments recommended daily dosing. What I found was we slept better, lost weight and our infections resolved.
Over the next year I experimented on myself with even higher doses finding a higher dose then hers an Optimal Dose worked best. I then raised all my patients to this Optimal Dose. We thrived. With this new optimal dosing the results were amazing. One lady lost 200 lbs. over the next two years and multiple patients lost 75 pounds in three months. Optimal dosing not only saved and restored my life but that of thousands of others. No one contracted the flu and restored their sleep.
I explain this and more in my book, The Optimal Dose: Restore Your Health With the Power of Vitamin D3. Where I explain how I developed a new way of looking at our health with the unique concepts of Optimal Dosing, Winter Syndrome and Madison-HannaH effects. Also, how at this higher dosing is extremely safe, and essential to maintaining our health