• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

methylb12 and hydroxyb12 both give bad reactions

Aerose91

Senior Member
Messages
1,400
I can't even get started here. If I take as low as 125 mcg of mb12 or 2,000 mg hb12 I get insane levels of adrenaline. None of my symproms change- just teeth grinding, anvil on chest, rapid breathing, crazy OCD and insomnia. If I keep at it for too many days, once I stop I will have bad overexertion symptoms. There's got to be something else going on here.

FWIW I can take under 2,000 mg hydroxyb12 for as long as I want and feel nothing. Also adb12 gives me no discernable effect.
 

mgk

Senior Member
Messages
155
I saw @Freddd address this issue in another thread, maybe it'll help you:
When it starts having neurological brightening or an energized feeling and you don't want it to become more intense, chew and swallow the tablet. The absorption stops in minutes and so does the increase in brightening.
 

Aerose91

Senior Member
Messages
1,400
I've seen that too but the reaction doesn't start until many hours after I've taken it. Even so, I don't see any change in any symptoms ever- just the overload of adrenaline.
 

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
I've had similar issues when starting with methyl-B12.
I usually could tolerate 250-500mg a day, not without feeling pretty wired. In your case you might have multiple COMT mutations which seem to cause more susceptibility to methyl supplements.

If methyl-B12 is too strong avoid it for some time. Take the Hydroxy form instead and adjust the dosage so that is not bothering you.

These reactions can change with time. I now can take 10+mg of methyl-B12 without side effects but it took my body many months to adjust.

The trick is to find the right dosage and stick with it for some time, even months if necessary. Then try to raise it a little bit and see if it works. If it doesn't it's better to back off and retry when you feel like it.

As a side note, it's not so much important how much you take as long as it helps. For me the low doses where very effective. They slowly fixed several nervous system issues I had and restarted some clarity of mind, improved energy etc...

This is to say that you don't necessarily need bucketloads of B12 to get some results. :)
 

Aerose91

Senior Member
Messages
1,400
I've had similar issues when starting with methyl-B12.
I usually could tolerate 250-500mg a day, not without feeling pretty wired. In your case you might have multiple COMT mutations which seem to cause more susceptibility to methyl supplements.

If methyl-B12 is too strong avoid it for some time. Take the Hydroxy form instead and adjust the dosage so that is not bothering you.

These reactions can change with time. I now can take 10+mg of methyl-B12 without side effects but it took my body many months to adjust.

The trick is to find the right dosage and stick with it for some time, even months if necessary. Then try to raise it a little bit and see if it works. If it doesn't it's better to back off and retry when you feel like it.

As a side note, it's not so much important how much you take as long as it helps. For me the low doses where very effective. They slowly fixed several nervous system issues I had and restarted some clarity of mind, improved energy etc...

This is to say that you don't necessarily need bucketloads of B12 to get some results. :)

Thanks, Peter

When you had excited reactions, did you also have a change in any of your symptoms? I have zero change in anything, just adrenaline dumps on top of it all.

Also, I'm +/- for every COMT.
 

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
Thanks, Peter

When you had excited reactions, did you also have a change in any of your symptoms? I have zero change in anything, just adrenaline dumps on top of it all.
If the dose was too high (e.g. 1mg of methyl-B12) it mostly bothered me. When I took less, such as 4-500mcg I would still get a little bit of excitement but it wasn't nasty. At the same time I was feeling a little more energy.

The real benefits came after one month or so of patiently taking low doses. I had very high homocysteine (>90!) and the B12 helped, among other things, bringing it down to human levels (as opposed to mammoth levels! :) )

That was 2012. Over time I raised the dosage and I got more benefits, more stable mood, improved sleep, less inflammation, more energy (I had spent most of 2011 and half 2012 in bed) etc... This is to say that improvements don't necessarily come overnight, especially if your methylation is stuck or you need to replenish your B12 levels.

Also, I'm +/- for every COMT.
That might explain it.
I have one COMT +/- mutation and the MAOA +/+ too, which doesn't help anxiety.
 

Aerose91

Senior Member
Messages
1,400
I have one COMT +/- mutation and the MAOA +/+ too, which doesn't help anxiety.

I also have a +/+ MAO A. I never knew what that was responsible for.

A recent test showed my homocysteine being low so I'm not sure exactly what that means but my doctor told me to clear my CBS sulphates so I did but I didn't see any improvement there.
 

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
I also have a +/+ MAO A. I never knew what that was responsible for.
Well, it's usually not just one gene, but a number of them who can determine higher/lower levels of anxiety etc...

A recent test showed my homocysteine being low so I'm not sure exactly what that means but my doctor told me to clear my CBS sulphates so I did but I didn't see any improvement there.
Low homocysteine is not a conclusive marker for optimal methylation, but if it's high it is pretty likely that there is a problem. CBS can help lower homocysteine, for example. So maybe that explains your low value.

A methylation panel is certainly the best way to see what's going on in the cycle.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
I can't even get started here. If I take as low as 125 mcg of mb12 or 2,000 mg hb12 I get insane levels of adrenaline. None of my symproms change- just teeth grinding, anvil on chest, rapid breathing, crazy OCD and insomnia. If I keep at it for too many days, once I stop I will have bad overexertion symptoms. There's got to be something else going on here.

FWIW I can take under 2,000 mg hydroxyb12 for as long as I want and feel nothing. Also adb12 gives me no discernable effect.

Hi Aerose,

I don't think it is anything directly to do with the cobalamin. It takes too long. The thing is, the cobalamin can unblock both the ATP end and the methylation end start up over 600 biochemical reactions hypothetically. "There's got to be something else going on here." sure sounds right. Adrenaline doesn't seem right. What would make it do that?

And if you are talking about 125mcg of MeCbl sublingually that might be 10 or 20mcg actually absorbed. 2000mcg of HyCbl will give the same 10-20mcg of MeCbl in the same couple of hours delivered by HTCII. I'm doing my best to come up with a mechanism of some kind.

That dose is so low that you can never catch up, never reach the level of comfortable sufficiency with a normal biochemistry. As a speculation, perhaps taking 1 mg of Enzymatic Therapy per hour all day will saturate the system and diminish to normal in a few days if continued. A common fear is that response to b12 is going to go up in a linear fashion to dose. It doesn't. What would likely occur is that then you would run into a folate deficiency.

I did things like that and they all worked out well except for glutathione.
 

Aerose91

Senior Member
Messages
1,400
Isn't it known that a COMT mutation will cause an abundance of adrenaline in presence of methylation factors? I don't exactly know how to get around that and haven't found many others with the same issues. If getting such a high dose of mb12 is the only way to get a substantial dose then there are many here who will never be able to heal. There's obviously something else to the puzzle.