hiya, that's awesome, they are fast communicators!
so yes. jeez, and MY neuro told me my b12 was fine and i don't even think it was as high as yours. i read a study where they concluded ms patients were not typically low in b12. they used 300 (or 400 depending on the units) as the dividing line. the patients tested were scattered around that number so that they could not identify all of them as one side or the other. i bet you, however, that they were probably all under 900, and i would be very interested to see how your neuro arrived at the 900 figure.
i forgot to say, if i were you i'd always take a b-complex along with any b12 supplement. the b's are a team effort
anyway from all my personal reading, i'm still happy with my 500s and 600s, but if you are able to pass along anything from your docs regarding why 900 is better still, i'd love to read that research too - maybe i have some more climbing to accomplish
here is some more info on the d3 pharmacy/doc story, so that you can read about the challenges i got through and hopefully avoid them yourself!
the main points are, take D3 not D2, and when you are having bloodwork done, the lab requisition should say 25(OH)vitaminD3 (or equivalent, i.e. 25-hydroxycholecalciferol. NOT 1,25 dihydroxycholecalciferol).
details:
after i had heard from the drug info desk at the hospital, i told my doc about their recommendation, and she sent me to a compounding pharmacist for a chat because she didn't know what product to prescribe.
so next i walked into the pharmacy and asked about getting 50,000IU per day for 10 days. he said, here are these 50,000IU pills. i said great! but when i read the bottle the pills turned out to be D2 (ergocalciferol) not D3 (cholecalciferol) so we looked further.
in the end we found a liquid D3 product in his catalogue and said he'd order it while i took the info back to my doc. which i did, and then she was able to write out the prescription, that i took back to the pharmacy. so, pretty roundabout but you get what you need in the end!
we did a followup test a couple of weeks after the initial dosing, and i did another one a few months further on, to see the longer term results. the first attempt at D3 bloodwork created this whole schmozzle about which metabolite of vitamin d3 to test.
this is complicated but i am trying to make it simple: once you have d3 in your system, it goes through three stages. one is pretty much just the input form, 2 is a sort of storage form, used as the materials for stage 3. stage 3 contributes to immune system function among other things, and is pretty tightly controlled except in certain medical conditions. interestingly, stage 3 spikes at the end of pregnancy when many people experience a remission from ms symptoms. knowing your stage 3 levels can be useful in some assessments, but it usually fluctuates very little, while stage 2 levels bounce around and tell you a better low or high level of available 'ingredients' for stage 3. stage 2 can be written as 25-hydroxycholecalciferol, alternatively 25(OH)vitamind3).
my doc had just written "d3" on that initial lab requisition, and when i heard the units on the results i knew the lab had tested the wrong serum d3, ie stage 3 not stage 2. i called the lab and they confirmed that they had tested stage 3 because of their computer default setting for when a requisition only says 'vitamin d3'.
i mentioned the issue to my doc, but she was inclined to think that testing stage 3 was the right idea anyway. she phoned my other doc to confirm, and they both initially agreed on the stage 3 test as the right one. so, i went to the other doc and sat down with all my research printouts, and after about half an hour she dug through some of her own notes (sourced from a presentation given by one of the authors of the papers i had brought) and ended up confirming that i was right: stage 2 was the one we wanted to test after all.
in the end, i had to give some more blood and we ran a second test. and now we don't get it mixed up any more!
now i am going to try to post this, for about the 5th time... very weak network here!