CB’s last round of blood work was 6 months ago. Since the last blood work, we have made several changes to CB’s supplements and diet. We stopped well just about everything at one point, except for the probiotics. For the last 3 weeks, we added digestive enzymes and fish oil back into his schedule. For the last two weeks, we added D3 back into his morning routine. Dairy was incorporated about 3-6x a week, mainly through cheese, yogurt, butter, and some ice cream, for about 1.5 months. We wanted to see if the dairy was impacting his vitamin levels.
We got his blood work back this week and his body was showing the beginning stages of declining iron, vitamin D, and zinc levels. I believe all of these are related. On a positive note, his IgA was 1 number below the normal range…wow! I can’t believe that he might actually have normal IgA levels soon. His Vitamin E level was still high but lower than the levels reported over the last year or so. I think the high Vitamin E levels are still related to fat absorption or fat breakdown issues. We will see if the enzymes help the matter. I thought the L-Carnitine should have helped that, but the last test didn’t reflect that. We stopped the L-Carnitine awhile back so I don’t know for sure. His vitamin K, homocysteine and magnesium levels also looked good. So now, we have to figure out why he has declining iron, Vitamin D and zinc levels. Unfortunately, since we stopped the Vitamin D3 for awhile and we added in the dairy, we can’t say for sure whether the removal of D3 or the addition of dairy caused this. We are obviously assuming it is related to one of these things, but it is always hard to know for sure since we always make several changes between the blood work dates. We have decided to test again in 2 months with daily Vitamin D3 supplements and zinc incorporated for a week or so and to keep dairy in his diet. If any of the levels remain low, then we can assume that dairy is the culprit and to cut it out and test again in another 2 months or so. If all levels return to normal, then we are going to assume that CB needs D3 supplements and that dairy plays an insignificant role. For the past tests, we saw the vitamin D, zinc, and iron levels continue to grow while D3 was a regular supplement and dairy was not a part of CB’s diet.
The tests we ran this round are as follows:
- CMP (Comprehensive Metabolic Panel)
- Zinc, serum
- CBC w/autodiff
- Total IgE
- Vitamin E
- Vitamin K1
- Magnesium
- Vitamin D
- Ferritin
- Iron Binding Capacity and Iron and % Saturation
- Total IgA
- Homocysteine
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