Active B12 Protocol Basics

[tooth]

Hi dear @Freddd
Thank you for all your information here. After two years of farting around I can finally tolerate folate of any sort. The tiniest crumb of methylfolate or teaspoon of chickpeas/liver etc would spin me out and leave me bedridden for weeks. Had to cut out all folate/folic/folinic supps and dietary folates (veggies and meat) and address CBS mutation for several months which I believe has helped me now tolerate this.

Anyway, I'm a few weeks in to your protocol and already at a staggering (to and for me) 800mg Solgar Mfolate.
I am in Group 4 with my symptoms now

Group 4 - HyCbl onset, degraded MeCbl onset, MeCbl after photolytic breakdown onset.

Itchy bumps generally on scalp or face that develops to acne like lesions in a few days from start.
"

I have noticed this in the past with supplements. I'm unsure what "HyCbl onset, degraded MeCbl onset, MeCbl after photolytic breakdown onset." means - does this mean more MB12 or more of everything else? I don't take Hydroxycobalamin.

PS: @CCC - I read a post elsewhere you are treating your son for Bart and that he feels even better w/ B2 and folinic. I suspect I certainly have Bart and have also tried folinic acid recently and noticed an extra bump. I taken FMN version of B2 for the past year when I get that "over-methylated" feeling or get the Bart rage coming on. I have that MAO-A SNP that slows down the degradation of neurotransmitters and I think B2 is a co-factor in that. I tend use the size of my pupils as a guide - when they start to go huge I pop a B2 and come back to earth a bit. I've just got all the Buhner herbs and will be starting Bart treatment. I wish you all the best.

 

[renski]

Is there a general consensus of which co-factors that people needed to supplement with before B12 helped/was tolerated? I know potassium is often mentioned and the other B's, but what about Vit E, D? My Vit E, D, C, magnesium, B2, B3, B6 (p5p is high in the blood but low on OAT) are all low, zinc, manganese, lithium, coq10, carnitine, and potassium isn't low on most of my tests except hair analysis. My methylation pathway is stuck converting methionine -> SAMe so b12 might not do anything but increase methionine.

thanks

 

[DeGenesis]

I bought some AOR Methylcobalamin of the shelf of a local health food store. It has a lot# which indicates June 2017 (Expiry in 2020, but we know methylcobalin is not so stable). Do you think it has been degraded by now?

 

[stridor]

Good question and one that I do not have a definitive answer to. As a liquid and in a vial, if exposed to light, mB12 will degrade to hydroxocobalamin, which can still be utilized. I think that storage variables would come into play as well. Depending on how dependent you are on it. a dose or two would provide your answer. Personally, I would trial it with an open mind and being prepared to increase dose in response to perceived decreased in efficacy.

 

[CCC]

Hi dear @Freddd
Thank you for all your information here. After two years of farting around I can finally tolerate folate of any sort. The tiniest crumb of methylfolate or teaspoon of chickpeas/liver etc would spin me out and leave me bedridden for weeks. Had to cut out all folate/folic/folinic supps and dietary folates (veggies and meat) and address CBS mutation for several months which I believe has helped me now tolerate this.

Anyway, I'm a few weeks in to your protocol and already at a staggering (to and for me) 800mg Solgar Mfolate.
I am in Group 4 with my symptoms now



I have noticed this in the past with supplements. I'm unsure what "HyCbl onset, degraded MeCbl onset, MeCbl after photolytic breakdown onset." means - does this mean more MB12 or more of everything else? I don't take Hydroxycobalamin.

PS: @CCC - I read a post elsewhere you are treating your son for Bart and that he feels even better w/ B2 and folinic. I suspect I certainly have Bart and have also tried folinic acid recently and noticed an extra bump. I taken FMN version of B2 for the past year when I get that "over-methylated" feeling or get the Bart rage coming on. I have that MAO-A SNP that slows down the degradation of neurotransmitters and I think B2 is a co-factor in that. I tend use the size of my pupils as a guide - when they start to go huge I pop a B2 and come back to earth a bit. I've just got all the Buhner herbs and will be starting Bart treatment. I wish you all the best.

How are you going with the herbs?

We've managed to move away from the FMN and now take cheap plain B2 (usually pop it in with a folinic tablet). Scientists tell you that FMN converts to B2 in the gut anyway, so they consider it a waste of money. But experience of people on this forum says that sublingual FMN makes a huge difference. In our case, it did initially. My son thought it tasted disgusting, so he was happy to go to cheap B2 ASAP.

By the way, our version of Bart rage = irritability and antisocialising. Liberal amounts of potassium and some strong methylfolate generally fix that within about 30 minutes.

 

[Freddd]

I bought some AOR Methylcobalamin of the shelf of a local health food store. It has a lot# which indicates June 2017 (Expiry in 2020, but we know methylcobalamin is not so stable). Do you think it has been degraded by now?

@DeGenesis ,

Maybe. It depends on storage conditions. It isn't terribly heat sensitive.It is light sensitive, especially in solution, and it does slowly get oxidized. This forms a percentage of broken down MeCbl (MeCbl). Now this affects some people and not others. When HyCbl gets directly into the blood serum it appears to enter the cell as HyCbl. In any case it isn't MeCbl and it causes methyltrap in which methylfolate is removed from the cell when no MeCbl is available in the cell.This causes a failed cell (small compartment) by the cell,and it causes an epithelial tissue lesion,from one to many many visible on the skin and looking like an infected follicle. It can be sores at the corners of the lips (angular cheilitis), cracks in the skin on the fingers,especially at the corners of the nails. These are high turnover tissues and can cause burning within 24 hours, open lesions in 48 hours and the burn can be stopped in part of a day and healed in 2 days.

When I try a "spoiled" MeCbl I get the lesions within 1 to 2 days.


AdoCbl,CyCbl and HyCbl can all cause methyltrap lesions if they are directly absorbed (through skin or injection or 1% inactive absorption in intestines. This is genetic and enzymes and possibly other ways. However, my AdoCbl is absolutely necessary in that form for me and some others. I take it routinely as 10mg once a week for 2 hours under lip an hour or two after my MeCbl injection and never have any methylation failure. Once every month or two I have a CNS level 50mg 5 hours sublingual to make sure my neurons get restocked which the weekly does not. do as well..

Folic acid does not work for most people one way or another. 50% can use folic acid to a 800 mcg level or so,30%less than that and 20% not at all. Excess unconverted accumulated folic acid blocks methylfolate and cause folate deficiency symptoms which also include epithelial tissue.lesions. Some folks,like me can ONLY use Methylfolate. Even methylfolate can cause paradoxical folate deficiency as it starts healing in some compartments and intensifies deficiency symptoms at the same kind.The low Potassium (signal of cell making) AND folate deficiency is very common until one reaches doses like 15 to 45 mg per day. And then one has other things to look for like copper or MeCbl which depends on what is already corrected.

So to get around now to the answer of maybe. Try it and if it causes former symptoms to come back that are not folate deficiencies, like the things that started being helped the first time you tried MeCbl, then you know. If you take it for a week and then you try it compared to the best brand you know of that always improves over other brands, then you know. The link below has two lists of symptoms linked to nutrients. Those of intial state symptoms and those symptoms caused by cell making (refeeding syndrome).

https://www.quora.com/Has-someone-u..._filter__=all&__nsrc__=1&__snid3__=1808215186

 

[CCC]

50% can use folic acid to a 800 mcg level or so,30% less than that and 20% not at all.

If it's not too much trouble for you, I'd be grateful for a reference for that (for a daughter's nutrition assignment, no less!)

 

[Kathevans]

@CCC I was thinking of something you said about the Life Extension Methyl Folate and how you were using many tablets and found it wasn't as effective as the Solgar (or perhaps you mentioned another, I don't recall what you found preferable). Well, I've been running low on the Solgar and have an order about to arrive and find that even though I use 5mg Life Extension tabs, I have a runny nose in about 2 or 2 1/2 hours. When I get the Solgar tomorrow, I'm going to test with 100% solgar and will report back. It may be that I need more folate, of course--I take about 15-20mg. I've recently titrated up on Boron and it has changed/shifted everything under my feet.

I'm looking for good brands that are 2-5mg and don't cost a fortune! Anyone?

 

[stridor]

@Kathevans Have you tried mfolate in the buccal pouch or under tongue? I was off work for a while and out of money and when 9 caps a day had no discernible effect, I started doing this and significantly decreased the amount of money I was spending.

 

[Kathevans]

@stridor I haven't tried this approach to Folate, but it's a good suggestion. I take 15+mg/day, though for a while recently I dropped it to about 5mg/day because it seemed that with Boron I didn't need as much. Actually, it was sort of the other way around, at least insofar as it seems the boron doesn't work as well without the higher dose of folate. I had to work my way into much higher pain levels in my joints and muscles before I began to realize what was going on. This took about three months. I was attributing my worsening symptoms to the 'dump' phase following amalgam removal, which I completed last April. Totally confusing, really.

I'm thinking to increase my B2 once again, from 200mg to 300, with the hope of better absorption. How much did you find you could reduce the folate by if you used it sub-lingually?

Meanwhile I have begun to chelate--not every weekend, but about 6 of them recently--with a fairly low dose of 3mg ALA x8 each day on round. I'm hoping that as I get the toxic metals out of my system, and the gut improves, my absorption will improve also, and my need for high doses will drop. This seems to be the course your body has taken. But I'm also going to be tested again for SIBO. As you say, getting rid of the co-infections is part of the journey as well.

 

[stridor]

@Kathevans If your urine is Vit B yellow that is the riboflavin and it is at doses where it is spilling into the urine. There are those who say that the gut is only able to absorb 25 mg at a time. If this is true then I was taking 300 mg in order to get 25 mg on board.

However, my sister takes 400 mg as recommended in studies for migraine. How did they arrive at this dose if only 25 mg is absorbed.....unless, high doses in someway affects the gut biome and this in turn does something else. Man, this stuff is interesting sometimes.

In terms of folate, I was taking 9 capsules x 1000 mcg and had no discernible benefit. I suspect that orally I would have been in your dose range.....which I was unable to afford. At my sickest, I was taking around 4 mg daily ¨sublingually¨ and was dosing multiple times a day. I would get a drop in brain fog 5 min or so after dosing. I still take most of my folate this way but only about 400-800 mcg daily.

 

[Freddd]

@CCC I was thinking of something you said about the Life Extension Methyl Folate and how you were using many tablets and found it wasn't as effective as the Solgar (or perhaps you mentioned another, I don't recall what you found preferable). Well, I've been running low on the Solgar and have an order about to arrive and find that even though I use 5mg Life Extension tabs, I have a runny nose in about 2 or 2 1/2 hours. When I get the Solgar tomorrow, I'm going to test with 100% solgar and will report back. It may be that I need more folate, of course--I take about 15-20mg. I've recently titrated up on Boron and it has changed/shifted everything under my feet.

I'm looking for good brands that are 2-5mg and don't cost a fortune! Anyone?

@Kathevans

This company has a decent selection of sizes and quantities at reasonable prices.

https://www.methylpro.com/about.html

Something I would like to say. Many people find that a brand they use for months or longer suddenly stops working .I find changing finding I change to a different brand or methylfolate form (like Quatrefolic).One or two days of the other brand or type and the effectiveness of the other is restored. I also have the effective carnitine changes depending upon what has or hasn't healed or what deficiencies I have active at the moment. I keep 3 types of carnitine and 3 types of methylfolate on hand so I can change when I first notice the problem,usually 1 day.

https://www.methylpro.com/Store/
Has list of products and sizes.

I would also like to mention that I take 45mg/day of this brand. I have reached that "last folate deficiency symptom" at that dose.

 

[Kathevans]

Thank you both @stridor and @Freddd. These help. I have upped my B2 to 300mg/day and will see where that goes. At 100mg/day, the levels on my August NutrEval were still "High Need" and ditto for Folic acid. The levels for Folic Acid (taken as Methyl folate, of course) were "Borderline" back in March when I was taking the 15+mg/day of folate along with 2-3 sprays of the Methyl and Adenosyl/Methyl B-12 Oils (I use the Ado/Methyl at least 1-2x/day and seem to need it)

It was only when I started to take boron and head symptoms of whooshing, tinnitus and heartbeat in my head got much more exaggerated that I decided to fall back, that perhaps with boron I didn't need as much folate. It took me a couple of months of fatigue, worsening insomnia and totally non-recuperative muscle and tendon soreness, not to mention oxygen hunger and weak raspy voice to realized I needed to up it again. I thought this was the amalgam/mercury 'dump' and I just needed to weather it. As soon as I was back up to 10mg/day (now around 15 again, though still experimenting) that I realized not only that I needed the folate for sleep and pain and voice, but also, that the boron works much more effectively in my body with the folate--far less belching -- what I assume is the boron healing my gut of some sort of bacterial/fungal issues I've had for 25 years... Currently I'm taking about 6+mg of boron/day. I know folks rarely need this, but I have had all the classic refeeding symptoms with boron that I've had with B-12, Folate, B1--I'm sure that's what's going on. (Meanwhile I have ordered my very first Doctor's Date Hair Elements Test--just to see what all the levels of minerals and toxicities are over the past few months. This will help me as I move forward...)

Honestly! We're so used to feeling bad that we're willing to continue and/or to feel worse if we think it's in service to healing. I feel a little stupid. But I'm sure this is not that uncommon. I can only reiterate that as Freddd says, as we move forward it's really about recognizing SOONER which symptoms are related to which supplements, and moving beyond whatever sort of methyl-block or trap or whatever we find ourselves in at any given moment.

I will cut myself some slack. It's only been 3 years I've been doing this...!

And @Freddd I'm going to save the supplement source material. This is invaluable. Thanks.

 

[Freddd]

If it's not too much trouble for you, I'd be grateful for a reference for that (for a daughter's nutrition assignment, no less!)

@CCC,

I read it in many studies going back even to the 50s. The numbers were always approximately 50-30-20 or 45-35-20 and so forth. I haven't seen it in recent research as they are trying to tie it to the polymorphisms of MTHFR genetic as you can get from the genetic businesses like 23 and me.

Using google scholar searching for the right combination of search terms it ought to be findable.
Pteroylglutamic acid may be the needed search term becasue that is what is not converted and accumulates.. The actual amounts of active folate (methylfolate) have never been tested to maximum effect. I found my last folate deficiency symptom to be taken care of at 45 mg.day after years of careful titration.

The Deplin study (phase 4) showed that the same dose of folic acid and l-methylfolate resulted in 7x (average many people) as much methylfolate in serum as with same dose of folic acid. Good luck. I don't have time to find the right references.

 

[Freddd]

Thank you both @stridor and @Freddd. These help. I have upped my B2 to 300mg/day and will see where that goes. At 100mg/day, the levels on my August NutrEval were still "High Need" and ditto for Folic acid. The levels for Folic Acid (taken as Methyl folate, of course) were "Borderline" back in March when I was taking the 15+mg/day of folate along with 2-3 sprays of the Methyl and Adenosyl/Methyl B-12 Oils (I use the Ado/Methyl at least 1-2x/day and seem to need it)

It was only when I started to take boron and head symptoms of whooshing, tinnitus and heartbeat in my head got much more exaggerated that I decided to fall back, that perhaps with boron I didn't need as much folate. It took me a couple of months of fatigue, worsening insomnia and totally non-recuperative muscle and tendon soreness, not to mention oxygen hunger and weak raspy voice to realized I needed to up it again. I thought this was the amalgam/mercury 'dump' and I just needed to weather it. As soon as I was back up to 10mg/day (now around 15 again, though still experimenting) that I realized not only that I needed the folate for sleep and pain and voice, but also, that the boron works much more effectively in my body with the folate--far less belching -- what I assume is the boron healing my gut of some sort of bacterial/fungal issues I've had for 25 years... Currently I'm taking about 6+mg of boron/day. I know folks rarely need this, but I have had all the classic refeeding symptoms with boron that I've had with B-12, Folate, B1--I'm sure that's what's going on. (Meanwhile I have ordered my very first Doctor's Date Hair Elements Test--just to see what all the levels of minerals and toxicities are over the past few months. This will help me as I move forward...)

Honestly! We're so used to feeling bad that we're willing to continue and/or to feel worse if we think it's in service to healing. I feel a little stupid. But I'm sure this is not that uncommon. I can only reiterate that as Freddd says, as we move forward it's really about recognizing SOONER which symptoms are related to which supplements, and moving beyond whatever sort of methyl-block or trap or whatever we find ourselves in at any given moment.

I will cut myself some slack. It's only been 3 years I've been doing this...!

And @Freddd I'm going to save the supplement source material. This is invaluable. Thanks.

@Kathevans,
You are welcome. The process is very much learning to correct the deficiency after recognition. When I started with methylfolate, it took me 10 days to recognize onset of folate deficiency for whatever cause. Now it takes 2 hours to 1 day to recognize it. I have had it twice in the past year when I've had to switch types of methylfolate twice. Lack of boron can cause run away unstoppable tooth decay and who knows what other infections. Good health.

 

[Freddd]

@Kathevans,
You are welcome. The process is very much learning to correct the deficiency after recognition. When I started with methylfolate, it took me 10 days to recognize onset of folate deficiency for whatever cause. Now it takes 2 hours to 1 day to recognize it. I have had it twice in the past year when I've had to switch types of methylfolate twice. Lack of boron can cause run away unstoppable tooth decay and who knows what other infections. Good health.

After the boron is working right next round of symptoms are likely trace minerals. I found I had a response within 4 hours with copper, 10 minutes after boron in a sublingual AdoCbl. And all the others except the ones I've been taking for decades like selenium and GTF chromium.

 

[Kathevans]

Lack of boron can cause run away unstoppable tooth decay and who knows what other infections.

After taking zantac for nearly a decade for reflux when I probably needed more acid rather than less, I ended up on antibiotics for an infection on my foot. Within 6 months I'd developed the beginnings of fibromyalgia pain, non-recovery of muscles after exertion, and a strange infection on my tongue that no doctor has ever been able to diagnose and that has only grown worse over the years. The boron is clearly having an effect on this, hence the belching and a worsening of my tongue. I know it is also an anti-fungal and anti-bacterial.

Of course, it has also greatly helped the stiffness of my hands and fingers and has kept a second trigger finger from developing even as it has lessened the effects of the first. My hands are more functional than they might otherwise be, I have no doubt.

I've been working on a lot of trace minerals and am about to do my first Doctor's Data Hair Elements Test--for a look at general levels of minerals. The NutrEval gives some results, too. I've been taking copper myself, at about 2mg a day and have kept my zinc to no higher than about 35mg. My alternative doctor recommended the copper saying that the copper:zinc ratio had something to do with a-fib, which I have had from time to time--though it is largely under control at this point except when I am in the throws of refeeding something. Before I found this site a cardiologist was advising that I have an ablation. There's no question of that now. B-12 was the biggest remedy to my heart issues.

Thank you, Fred. If I didn't understand things such as refeeding, what would I do? Now I just recognize it for what it is and I just take more of the supplement...

 

[bjl218]

@Kathevans , are you taking any digestive supplements (e.g. HCL, enzymes, probiotics) to help address potential malabsorption issues?

 

[Kathevans]

are you taking any digestive supplements (e.g. HCL, enzymes, probiotics) to help address potential malabsorption issues?

Yes, indeed. Enzymes and probiotics, and HCL on and off. The HCL has always been problematic for me, causing gastritis and tender colon over time. So I go on and off it.

 

[Kathevans]

This company has a decent selection of sizes and quantities at reasonable prices.

https://www.methylpro.com/about.html

Here's a question: do you stick to using only one form of Folate at a time? I was thinking to take the 5mg of Methylpro and topping up at night as I often do with a couple of Solgar 800mcg? OR: if, as you say, the body needs to switch every now and then, is it better to limit use at any given time to only one source?

Thanks...