Freddd,
I am really not trying to get your goat or personally attack you. I am trying to get you to see just one other point of view here. I know that you are passionate about this area and I fully understand the reason for it. I also know that you are really trying to help people and that you HAVE helped many people. In all honesty, I am actually going to revisit the idea of trying methyl B12 based on a lot of the information you've provided. However, just because you can systematically go through & correlate every issue or outcome that someone may have with a folate or Methyl B12 deficiency doesn't make you a splitter or mean you're systematic about data review in a true sense. It just means you systematically correlate everything back to a few things.
I've noticed that with few exceptions, when its all said and done everything always seems to come back to a few issues for you and yet, you can't prove that hypothesis anymore than I can prove my "detox" hypothesis. You may have done so with yourself somehow and you may have interpreted a few tests this way for someone else, but in the end I sincerely doubt that you truly had all of the necessary tests done that would prove such a hypothesis. It reminds me of this whole "Evidenced based medicine" craze that's taken over in the past decade or so. Is there proof? Well if you don't have double blind placebo controlled studies on a large population than it isn't. Yet we can easily problem solve and recognize many things without quantitative or qualitative evidence. As a thinking person (at least, on some days) I don't need "proof" that sticking my hand on a hot fire will burn it because I have learned this lesson in other ways, through watching others. Sometimes, proof ins't possible but its still true. Also, to use death as a natural consequence, in keeping with with detox, is an unnecessary dramatization. Nevertheless, you talk about using proof or evidence for folate and methyl deficiencies without valuing or utilizing any of the components for doing so, unless they fit your theories such as going only by a list of symptoms that could be cross referenced with other problems as well. Since you have stated more than once that lab testing is basically useless and we'd all be dead if we only relied on tests (much of which I agree with by the way), I'm not sure how you can pontificate about systematizing data, developing hypotheses, and concluding more realistic outcomes somehow since what is your measure?
I'm not talking about abstract measures here because I could easily use those for "detox" also. For example, if my child has diarrhea so severe after day # 2 of Methyl B12 so that her entire bum is inflamed and I get a urine & stool test and her levels of lead and cadmium are off the charts while she has symptoms of Pica, you can almost be certain that she has heavy metal detox. Yet by your criteria, you'd go by a list of symptoms other people have and determine its folate deficiency or potassium deficiency and no testing would be done at all nor would this explain her symptoms of pica, at least, satisfactorily. Is losing heavy metals in your stool a bad thing? Heck no! I want her to lose heavy metals. But I'm one of those irrational people who thinks that detoxification isn't a bad thing either. However, one has to be realistic and know that detox may be a good thing but it can also be powerful. Depending on genetics, toxic exposures, triggers, etc., you just may not be able to soldier through the process, whether its detox or losing vast amounts of electrolytes (despite normal tests?).
If I'm hearing you correctly, you'd like a laundry list of differential diagnoses before one can presume to claim detoxification. Yet since methylation is certainly not isolated to making new RNA & DNA with some cell repair and new immune factors thrown in for good measure, there's also filtering chemicals, bacteria, virus, etc. For most of us, losing these factors is what constitutes detox since it stimulates your immune system to react to these pathogens and toxins. In my book, that's a good thing. But it still hurts and if you can get there another way, maybe that's the right decision. Everyone has to do whats right for their bodies and they might not have less common defects that prevent them from using other forms.
I don't mean to instigate anything or antagonize you here, I'm merely looking to show you that even while many of us have fatigue, lethargy, malaise, headaches, bowel issues, orthostatic hypotension, etc., Rome has many paths. We are not all the same and to treat us as such is lumping in the worst fashion. It ignores those who cannot "soldier" through your process or Rich Vank's process, making them somehow irrelevant. As though these could be the only treatments and these deficiencies, the only causes. I wish it were that simple but if it were, I think that even the ridiculously pompous medical profession might figure it out eventually. If that's the case and there really is only one treatment, one path to Rome, then we can expect to see more PWCs find healing in the future because word should spread like wildfire.
I also look forward to trying your method in early March so Ill be ready with my potassium!
In sincerity & respect,
Angela
Hi Angela,
I am really not trying to get your goat or personally attack you
I never thought you were.
Since you have stated more than once that lab testing is basically useless
That all depends upon the interpretations. The same tests that are useless with one interpretation, ie "all in range" and ignored or looked at by somebody else and they say "alcoholic" pattern, and while they may be wrong about the alcohol that actually is a far more useful interpretation that says that there is a pattern here, and actually that says basically "multiple nutritional deficiencies of b-vitamins" which actually was right on the nose but misunderstood.
If I'm hearing you correctly, you'd like a laundry list of differential diagnoses before one can presume to claim detoxification.
When a person takes glutathione and has severe induced folate deficiency symptoms and calls it "detox" and then quits the glutathione and takes the Metafolin and behold, the symtpoms go away. Now if they have an entire different set of symtoms from the gutathione that doesn't match up to the folate deficiency symptoms, that is another thing entirely. When I read report after report after report of various subsets of the same limited set of symptoms as "detox" from NAC and Glutathione, when 10 people take such, induce the symptoms, then clear them, without exception, when many others with the same symptoms in the same circumstance accidently aquired do the same, chances are there is a duck standing there rather than a chicken. Every now and then we may actually be seeing churkendoose. However, when the symptoms don't match maybe we have a swan instead.
if my child has diarrhea so severe after day # 2 of Methyl B12 so that her entire bum is inflamed
That isn't a pattern and one thing, even if it is a symptom included in any number of patterns, does not a pattern make.
You may or may not have any idea of what I'm doing, why or how. I don't really care if you would consider me a splitter or a clumper or whatever, words I had never heard in this way before.
What I think is going on is constantly being modified by experience, yes "learning" might be one way to describe it, but really only approximates it. And yes, paradoxical folate deficiency is real and exists in some percentage of people. At this point I and we, and by that I mean all other interested parties that are cooperating in figuring this out, are trying to figure out how to identify this paradoxical folate deficiency and a number of other induced folate deficiencies, and determine just who is so afflicted and who isn't. Now if I had a database of 1,000,000 persons with all the needed data that would be easy. The trick is to figure out what the minimum pattern needed to identify the target without too many false positives or false negatives. For the b12 deficiency pattern I took histories of about 1000 people, in person, and observed then for a number of hours after a challange dose of mb12 and questioning after that, with an eye towards developing a screening questionaire and data mining pattern for selecting insureds from their records for offerring an opt-in program. If the person has 200 symptoms, signs, characteristics from the list posted on the basics, it's a slam dunk. If they have 100 symptoms across the categories it's a slam dunk. If they have 20 symptoms, the specific nature of the patterns of those symptoms, and which symptoms, is very important. Five non-specific symptoms are 5 non-specifc symptoms but 100 non-specific patterns can be completely specific in aggragate. Somewhere between those two, depending upon the symptoms and the specific combinations, we can reach a probability that 85% will respond to mb12 within 2 hours. It can be as few as 3 semi-specifc symtpoms in a specifc pattern. The combination of serum cobalamin, uMMA and serum HCY will miss about 95% of those that will show a 2 hour response to a 5 star mb12. Clearly I have a different idea of how sick a person should be before using b12 than the AMA.
Depending on genetics, toxic exposures, triggers, etc., you just may not be able to soldier through the process, whether its detox or losing vast amounts of electrolytes (despite normal tests?).
It's very important to detect the pattern of low potassium. That can be fatal, even with "normal" tests last week, even with geneuinely GOOD results last week. So there some false positives are ok because the people are not going to be harmed by thinking they might have low potassium. False negatives can be deadly. Losing vast amounts of electrolytes despite "normal" or even genuinely good tests can be fatal. Diarrhea is a major killer of children in many countries. That is a pattern that needs quick recognition and corrective actions, even if is "just" electrolyte rehydration therapy. That has to be taken care of before less critical patterns. There is a triage.
On the other hand an induced folate deficiency isn't going to kill a person as quickly as potassium. It can, if severe enough cause neurological damage in weeks and cascading damage in the period following and if corrected incorrectly cause even more damage while attempting correction.
I wouldn't want to see somebody die from "detox" that was actually low potassium or have permanent CNS damage and disability from an induced folate deficiency or incorrect correction of said induced deficiency. It is genuinely important to uncover it if that is what is happening, for the sake of the person's life and health. I came very close to death and had my life destroyed by the ignorance of the research and medical establishment. That is a tradition I don't intend to continue. I was one of those medical writeoffs for decades. Nobody understood what was going on and nobody was willing to make the effort to do so. I don't have to be right every time to save lives and health, especially for the person who's life is saved.
It ignores those who cannot "soldier" through your process or Rich Vank's process, making them somehow irrelevant
That is totally false. I am willing to work through the problems with a person piece by piece, layer by layer, item by item. That is EXACTLY what brought this whole paradoxical folate deficiency, induced folate deficiency and induced low potassium business about, solving the problems of a sizable percentage of people unable to tolerate the simplified methylation and/or the active b12 or is some cases, even just living. Read the various postings by all sorts of people pointing at one study showing how the potassium and folate are connected or watever. A thousand people looking for clues find a lot more than 1 or 2. Having 2 different programs and comparing both their sucessess and their problems have been very informative. Without seeing all these people have all these "detox" symptoms from folic or folinic acid was a real eye opener. Seeing the group having a different "detox" reaction from active b12 startup pointed at something else and then there was the group having another "detox" reaction form glutathione/NAC/whey. It's enough to get a person thinking. It's working through all those various reactions, of which I was unfortunate enough to experience all varieties, for myself and many others that is solving these problems.
