Hi Forbius,
So how far out of the woods are you with it all? Do you come back here only to help others, or what is left for improvement in your own health?
I don't have fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue any more, or IBS, or asthma, or allergies, or constant nausea or daily vomiting, if IBS, or neuropathic bladder, or any of a couple of hundred symptoms and not for the past 6 years. I don't have muscle atrophy except for my feet. and in some specific areas of neurological damage in my back I don't have congestive heart failure. What I do have is Sub Acute Combined Degeneration, a type of central nerve damage, brain and cord. I have about 70% regression of that and holding. I have the things I started with as a child, problems maintaining adequate folate and an inability to use a lot of veggie folates, low potassium problems that appear to tie into the cyclical paradoxical folate deficiency. I have the same problems getting cobalamin into my brain and keeping it there as is found in CFS, FMS, MS, Parkinson's, ALS, Supra Nuclear Palsy, Autism, Alzheimer's. I have the same need for carnitine I appear to always have had.
So I have all the root causes in place that would bring back all the symptoms and illnesses if I let myself get deficient in them again but I don't have the diseases these deficiencies cause except SACD as that is difficult to heal. It is similar to MS except it is bi-lateral and has a body b12 deficiency.
I was exposed to lots of mercury as a child. I played with it. My father came home after working with it every day as a dentist. How much it caused is difficult to say. For all I know it is an unknown factor in causing SACD as opposed to other things.
It has taken the last 6 years to at least pragmatically solve the paradoxical folate deficiency varieties many of us have. Then the last 6 months there has been more focus on B1, B2 and B3 and how that drives folate and potassium use/loss. It affects me that way too.
Keep at it. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't extracted something useful from the information you've put out.
In a way, we're doing what man did in medicine for most if his history, as 'folk' medicine, the father of modern medicine--self-experimentation and experimentation on others without all the
red tape. Sometimes to make strides forward we need to be cut loose from all those rules, ethics--and dogmas.
You also seem to be a believer in 'the proof is in the pudding' when you cite your having overcome your chronic fatigue. I myself have seen a 70% remission in not only my chronic fatigue, but my symptoms of autism and dyspraxia as well, and I've done it by following a very different path to the one you've taken.
I wouldn't be surprised as you have some very different disorders. I've also personally observed some very large changes for some with autism when they utilize all for of the deadlock quartet. I've also watched people very painstakingly undo a few of the hundreds of biochemical problems caused by the deadlock quartet by finding other pathways and undoing specific portions of the problems. Then when the underlying problems are changed some of these come undone. At a very basic level I have had to re-titrate all sorts of vitamins and things at different stages of healing because the things they were based on changed under their feet, as it were.
Is 'deadlock quartet' something you've already covered under a different name, or can you explain it?
I like the 're-titratation' concept, as a way of finding a sweet spot. I've done the same with my own efforts without consciously calling it that.
The whole "theory of vitamins" many people are working on is based on folic acid and HyCbl/CyCbl and works differently with MeCbl-AdoCbl and l-methylfolate.
So while I am largely over with what got me started, and the healthiest of my entire life, what remains is far from solved, for me and for others. I like many here found the doctors quite worthless. They wanted to treat symptoms. I wanted to get well. Now I am in need of "the fountain of youth". The last question is asked yet again, "Can entropy be reversed?". Or as the Stones put it "What a drag it is getting old".
Watching the Olympics reminds me of when I used to go blasting off into the air off a mogul on a steep slope. I had a great time.
I have a mixture of disdain and empathy for doctors. I understand the position they're in, and have gotten over readjusting to the fact that being able to trust them is an illusion. They just don't have the training. It's not in the culture of medicine, although you can find the occasional exceptional doctor who is usually an exceptional human being as well, to help you. Not sure if my current one qualifies.
I'm not sure you'll turn back the clock, but I think you have left a legacy already. Probably not what you wanted to hear though.
Aren't we assuming a lot here? For instance where the mercury is, and if the body has control over where it goes. 1mg of mercury in the body doesn't mean 1mg of mercury making contact with 1mg of methlcobalamin.
Keep in mind that we have seen mercury exposure throughout our evolution: I think the body is more equipped to deal with it than we give it credit for.
I make no assumptions about how the body handles mercury versus bismuth or arsenic. I was just comparing two metals that aggressively steal methyl groups to mercury. We have had some very limited exposure to every metal through our evolution and many of them are poisonous.
I think if you trace our evolution to before we left the sea, you'll see (ahem) that the exposure was rather chronic.
Or if that's too far back, we were still a fish-eating apex predator for all the time afterward.
Cobalt is wrapped in a very complex molecular wrapper keeping it from any but very limited contact to our bodies through a very narrowly defined interface. When a person with arsenic in their body is given MeCbl get them out into fresh air as they are exhaling a poison gas, tetramethylarsenate and other poly methyl arsenate gases. It just takes minutes. Bismuth causes damages characteristic of methyltrap and reacts reasonably quickly. Mercury is the one which sits around for years unreacted. As far as other items interacting with it too, sure. Every one of these CSF low cobalamin diseases does somewhat different damage in different parts of the brain and cord and may be dependent up on genes, types of toxins, mix of toxins and multiple deficiency situations in addition to lacking MeCbl and/or AdoCbl.
The gist of what you're saying here seems to be that it's pretty chaotic as there are so many variables to track, rather than having identified some order in the chaos?
B12 deficiency is not a single thing. Instead there are at least 6 compartments, maybe more that have to be considered just for the two types of active b12s. They together cause over 600 biochemical reactions to go wrong. When those first 600 go wrong, how many others go wrong because of those? This lack affects every part of the body in multiple ways.
I think the key to finding order in the chaos is to figure out which are the hubs around which the wheel of metabolism (or metabolic cycles) turn.
Mercury doesn't kill or sterilize fast enough in a primitive environment to affect evolution.
I think you need to use your imagination a bit more. Mercury doesn't have to kill you to remove you from the gene pool--it just has to reduce your mating prospects.
Mercury is rare in primitive environments and even rarer in enough quantity to kill millions before reproducing. I would like to see any evidence of an evolutionary effect of mercury. None of my inborn folate, carnitine, b12 problems made any difference to my reproductive abilities though in earlier times I might have died for lack of antibiotics. 50% of children die before 5 in very primitive conditions. Life expectancy after that went along very much better. It was a tough culling. That affects evolution. At 66 I'm well past any evolutionary OEM warrantee. That expired for me at age 39, after my 3 children were born.
How are your children with all this? Do they exhibit any of your problems? Have you tried helping them with your knowledge? If so, how did they welcome this or not do so?
I should sire a few kids myself sometime. Need to find a woman first, I hear that's how it works...
I wasn't suggesting that b12 would affect folate requirements but rather the opposite. Anyway, our experiences don't align here.
L-methylfolate requires enough b12 or it can cause neurological damage. However, what constitutes enough depends upon what part of the body and whether or not the person in question has a problem getting enough b12 for healing into the CSF. I have to absorb about 30mg a day one way or another to prevent further degeneration of my central neurology. I take 120-150mg a day with mucosal absorption to get enough. I know others that have to do the same. This is based on the Japanese research which turned out to be a pretty good guide with their hypothesis of "upregulation" of CNS neurological healing with high enough doses. Running a series of injection trials with a number of people we verified that there is a threshold of increased CNS healing.
Going from 3mg absorbed a day to 30mg absorbed required no change in l-methylfolate in any of us. Going from 400mcg to 30,000mcg of l-methylfolate did not require any more MeCbl or AdoCbl. SO I am quite unsure of what you are referring to as to requirements. The linkage between quantities of b12 and folate are very loose. If you have something you would like to state explicitly we could certainly discuss it and see what wrinkles can be ironed out.
This is where I close up a bit. I am a sniffer dog on the trail of something crucial, but I want to keep it private for the time being. I am racing very quickly to a full recovery, though, after which I'll be able to say more.
Original post (of the thread).
I've been called "old school". I don't text. I can't thumb type because of neurological damage.
I'm pretty sure abbreviations pre-date texting (certainly a lot of internet-isms, like 'lol' pre-date the kids who are prolific texters). Can old dogs learn new tricks?
Speaking of new tricks--is it possible for you to write shorter paragraphs? I know you don't want to leave any detail out, but it's undigested information that I have to take time to extract the essential point(s) from.
I do have the presence of mind, energy and interest to do it myself though for the time being.
Ok, I thought it was implied when you said 5-mthf is all that is needed. As I said, I read a post on here saying it was a 'dead-end' folate that couldn't be converted back into others. Is that incorrect?
5-MTHR is all that is needed. It can handle 100% of the body's need for folate. No vegetable folates are needed. So yes, that thing you read is incorrect. You put words into my mouth I did not agree with
It's not 'putting words in your mouth' if phrased in the form of a question.
"you're saying that all other forms of folate have no biological use except to become folate? " Obviously many folks can use them in good health. And of course many other forms of life can use them. I'm sure they are of biological use to the plants that formed them. We are not speaking of an exclusive OR situation here.
Ok, so you didn't infer from context that I wanted to know if any of the other sundry forms of folate had a biological role in
humans.
You also seem to be a believer in 'the proof is in the pudding' when you cite your having overcome your chronic fatigue.
I have demonstrated in myself and others have demonstrated things in their selves that many pronouncers of theories have declared impossible or just plain wrong. Clearly their theory - hypothesis - model is just plain wrong. And "proofing the pudding" is an ample demonstration that the recipe used works and was done correctly. I have also succeeded in teaching others the recipe. At least in Yoga and science that is a requirement for claiming something new. That I am alive at all much less healthy and recovered from FMS and CFS is ample demonstration. Anybody who doesn't believe me is welcome to come walk 5 miles a day with 2000 feet of vertical drop (around 7200 ft elevation) in each direction 7 days in a row with me. I wouldn't believe that they have CFS/FMS either I suspect that is an impossible task for somebody with CFS and/or FMS. I don't have any of the symptoms left and certainly couldn't be diagnosed with them. I also don't have the symptoms of Congestive Heart Failure any more either. So anybody sufficiently recovered from CHF is also invited. And I haven't had any prescriptions or bought OTC asthma or allergy medications. I don't take 2400mg ibuprofen for out of control inflammation. I don't take Provigil for sleep disorders any more. I don't take Dilantin any more. There are a whole lot of meds I don't take any more and haven't for 10-11 years. Some things didn't heal. I still have pain from being broken in half sideways when a guy ran a red light and t-boned my car. That has been with me for 42 years so far and is likely to stay. Are you recovered enough to walk with me? I'm sure we could have some interesting discussions.
That seems to be what we're doing.