@Freddd, disappointing to have it confirmed that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
Okay, more specific.
"
Is it sort of a hyper awareness of the body and all its problems?"
Not exactly. It's an "I wish I'd never been born" feeling. So uncomfortable that I don't want to be here - tense, highly irritable, intolerant, unable to focus on anything, and can't conceive of anything that would make me feel better.
No muscle pains, tho I fancy I am putting on muscle at last. (Have gained 3 kg, & my legs feel thicker.)
These (
in bold) are my notes from the crashes.
The first crash was on September 21:
The last 3-4 days have been shitty. The cognition & energy gains have remained (thankfully), but I have felt:
- A bit jittery (potassium doesn't remove it; increasing folate is what appeared to bring it on)
- 'Tightness' or tension in my abdomen.
- Can't be bothered with anything - no incentive to achieve anything, large or small.
- Can't concentrate on anything.
- Anhedonia - no pleasure in life.
- Uncomfortable in my own body - don't want to be here.
- At least a couple of days of cold hands & feet & temps below 36.
- (But not especially depressed or anxious - the above feelings are different, & not ones I've had before.)
- (Some heart palps, but K fixes them.)
I fancy the 'can't be bothered to work' effect has been slowly growing for ~10 days. (I couldn't be bothered to work much, or found it very hard to concentrate when I did.)
All in all my progress has been excellent - better than most people's - up till I overdosed.
Before the above crash I was taking 855mcg of LCF & sometimes double that per day. The above episode took several days to clear. Thereafter I had lower doses of LCF. The crashes were accordingly milder - utterly wretched, but milder. They still happened with zero LCF.
Various experiments brought contradictory results. More/less mB12 & m-folate brought worsening/improvement. In the end I was confused.
I got on-off anxiety after the September episode. (Sometimes caffeine made it worse, sometimes not.) By late October it was every day (unprecedented for me). It only ended a week or so ago, after I quit LCF altogether. I was on a few specks once daily till then.
On October 7 I crashed again:
today I have crashed: can't be bothered with much; bad-tempered; woke with headache which is still there; slept 9 hours, + another hour during the day.
The "can't be bothered" thing is a real hallmark. If someone rings, I can't be bothered talking to them. If there's work to be done, I can't be bothered doing it. If the roof sprang a leak, I wouldn't be bothered to fix it.
October 9:
I took an LCF dose in the morning (no other DQs), and symptoms got a lot worse again. I spent the whole day in bed. Headache turned into a migraine.
Recommenced the folate & B12 last night (no LCF), & continued to improve. This morning woke with some euphoria; took the m-f & mB12, & added just a small pinch of LCF - maybe 70mcg. Felt slightly more anxious thereafter.
But today I basically feel good. The only residual symptom is low body temp. I am freezing at midday when it is sunny outside, & have wrapped myself in a doona. Last time that lasted a week, tho will be less this time I'm guessing because of the smaller LCF doses behind this crash.
I am fairly sure there was no element of paradoxical folate deficiency in this crash. Of all Freddd's 41 paradoxical folate deficiency symptoms, I had only 4: "less sociable", "impaired planning and logic", "low energy", "increased irritability". And virtually none of the body ones like diarrhea & chelitis.
NB that LCF symptoms take several hours to arrive. Nothing much at first.
And on the bright side:
Oct 19:
Summary of changes since beginning the Freddd protocol:
Gut much more stable (no gas; almost no diarrhea - a big change)
Brainfog gone (which automatically means mood is better: tho I wouldn't say mood is great)
Sleep 2 hours less per night
Physical energy better during the day - no more fatigue
Gained 3 kg (good)
Psoriasis faded but it didn't last
Libido much higher
Halved hydrocortisone dose to 10mg/day (then 5)
Better blood-sugar response (less knocked around by carbs)
Improved motor skills, e.g. typing
Better exercise tolerance
Better mental functioning: thinking faster, planning, making decisions, etc
Oily nose (despite lowering hydrocortisone)
Daytime temps (not waking temps) have normalised - 36.9 or 37 consistently
Oct 29:
Another crash - smaller, probably because my LCF doses had been steadily dropping since the big crash. This is when the anxiety began in earnest. I noticed in the weeks after this that even going off LCF for a few days didn't always reduce anxiety a lot.
Started to wonder if I am pyroluric. Took pyroluria supps, and noticed an immediate drop in anxiety. That worked for a month - then it stopped working.
Since then:
Whatever is causing the anxiety - presumably the DQs especially LCF - trumps anything else. For example T3 (thyroid hormone), taurine, GABA, 5HTP, inositol, and now the pyroluria supps all fail to stem it. Only going off LCF completely seem to have done the trick.
Jan 12: Had another meltdown: this time without any LCF, and this time with gluggy head & headache. Slept most of the last 36 hours - the bed was like a giant magnet.
To this point, doses p day had been mB12 1.5mg; m-folate 1200mcg; + half a tab AdbCbl every 7 days. However I doubled those about a week before the Jan 12 crash.
(Have been drinking a bit of whey lately, tho the earlier crashes happened without whey.)
Thankyou Fred. If it's sfx of healing, then I'll push on. I'll also try the TMG, & raising the mB12.
I guess whenever I crash I'll just do what I do now: stop everything till it subsides.
Any comments?
Thanks & all the best...