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B-12 - The Hidden Story

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
@Learner1 @Freddd When Fred talks about not taking glutathione precursors ... it comes naturally to me to ask then also limit the protein intake since glycine glutamine cysteine are everywhere? do you eliminate milk, yogurt and cheese?
I have no idea why you wouldn't want your body's most powerful antioxidant or protein. ME/CFS patients typically have a great deal of oxidative stress. And they are short of amino acids, according to the metabolomics research.

You are correct that glycine cysteine and glutamine are precursors to glutathione.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
@Learner1 @Freddd When Fred talks about not taking glutathione precursors ... it comes naturally to me to ask then also limit the protein intake since glycine glutamine cysteine are everywhere? do you eliminate milk, yogurt and cheese?

I had stopped all milk, cheese, whey, etc more than 20 years ago. They all make me sick within 24 hours with one small dose of whey as an ingredient in a truffle for instance. The symptoms for one small dose are IBS for a day or so which I would also get with low methylfolate or methyltrap. It could be the glutathione, and lactose made no difference with any of them. The glutathione acts much faster and harder, but same. The catch is, the TCR-Li protects the B12 in theory.. I started IBS by age 6. The lithium has changed the serum half life from 20-50 minutes after injection for instance and that is the 99% answer to an occasional person, not like me, with 24 ho ur serum half life after a 24 hour pause in excretion instead of immediate excretion.

Ten months ago my test results (CBC and PSA and so on) went crazy and I had two Metafolin fail and switch to Quatrefolic worked, back to back twice in 2 weeks, Never before. Need for potassium went up 50% and felt fatigued and lost 15 pounds in 10 months. That was the start of prostate cancer growing fast. I suspect other cancers would do similar things if one is paying attention to metabolic happenings it may be very noticeable.
 
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Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
My plasma amino acids are all in range yet I have suffered severe cachexia

Without the types of B12 you need to make cells and methylfolate you can't grow cells. I had lost 50 pounds of muscle and gained 100 pounds of water and 50 pounds of fat. As I added the right nutrients I grew back the muscle and lost the water. My thigh muscle was no thicker than my thumb at the end of the wasting. I had before and now after, skiers thighs.

https://www.quora.com/Has-someone-u..._filter__=all&__nsrc__=1&__snid3__=1808215186
check out you symptoms compared to the two lists in this link.
 

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
Ten months ago my test results (CBC and PSA and so on) went crazy and I had two Metafolin fail and switch to Quatrefolic worked, back to back twice in 2 weeks, Never before. Need for potassium went up 50% and felt fatigued and lost 15 pounds in 10 months. That was the start of prostate cancer growing fast. I suspect other cancers would do similar things if one is paying attention to metabolic happenings it may be very noticeable.
Very sorry to hear of your cancer.

Unfortunately, deficiency or surplus of folate and other methylation nutrients can drive cancers. This article discusses it, with the red dots in diagram in figure 4 pointing out where cancer can be initiated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23822983/

This is why I'm a fan of testing rather than guessing, although the state of the art is not perfect (as a fellow cancer survivor) with any of this.

Hope things improve.
 

Methyl90

Senior Member
Messages
273
Without the types of B12 you need to make cells and methylfolate you can't grow cells. I had lost 50 pounds of muscle and gained 100 pounds of water and 50 pounds of fat. As I added the right nutrients I grew back the muscle and lost the water. My thigh muscle was no thicker than my thumb at the end of the wasting. I had before and now after, skiers thighs.

https://www.quora.com/Has-someone-u..._filter__=all&__nsrc__=1&__snid3__=1808215186
check out you symptoms compared to the two lists in this link.

I still have to try the lithium again, how do you recommend starting to own it?


I don't think my situation is as recoverable / reversible as I already wrote to you, I have the same symptoms since I was 5 and I have only bones left. I would probably need constant injections but I can't get a prescription because doctors only look at the lab values and consider me "healthy".

Symptoms of group 3 have always been present even without starting the quartet. @Freddd
 
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Sophiedw

Senior Member
Messages
383
@Freddd how, in your opinion, have you never run clean out of those amino precursors or glutathione if it combines with b12 in the cell. Given your extensive b12 supplementation. Also sorry to hear of your cancer, I hope it improves. You have helped me immeasurably.
 
Messages
30
@Freddd, 10 years ago or probably more, your writings about folate, B12 and potassium were the first descriptions of cause and effect that actually fit with my symptoms. It gave a little order to the chaos and methylfolate was one of the first things that ever made me feel any better. Then I felt worse and it was because of low potassium. Giving a little order to the chaos gave me hope and I want to thank you sincerely for that.

I read from one of your recent posts that you have a lot on your hands with your health right now and I am sorry to hear that you are having to deal with that.

If you have a free moment or bit of energy and if you are interested, I was wondering if you had seen the website hormonesmatter.com and Dr. Lonsdale's hypotheses about thiamine deficiency being a hidden cause of strange symptoms. I have read interesting stories on the website about people with weird symptoms like me - fatigue, mast cell problems, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome - improving from high dose thiamine. I have tried it and improved. I don't feel great yet, but I also don't feel like I've been hit over the head with a shovel on a daily basis, which is how I have spent a lot of my recent years. I've been able to reduce my sleeping medication by quite a lot. I went through a paradoxical set of symptoms where I felt worse with the thiamine before feeling better, something that Dr. Lonsdale believes can be quite typical with thiamine deficiency and can indicate an eventual positive response.

High doses of thiamine seem to suppress cancer growth. Thiamine suppresses hypoxia inducible factor-1, which plays a role in cancer. Another term for thiamine deficiency is pseudohypoxia. I thought you might be interested in the weird symptoms/strange metabolic problems aspect of how people are describing their experiences on the website.

Previously, I have had a markedly good response to high dose biotin. I am interested that there is a phenomenon called biotin-thiamine responsive basal ganglia disease in which there is a problem with a thiamine transporter and somehow the biotin deals with a deficient transporter issue and helps the thiamine get absorbed into the brain. People with this condition have problems with the brain stem as well.

One of Dr. Lonsdale's ideas is that thiamine deficiency affects the portions of the brain the most that have the highest need for oxidative metabolism, a type of metabolism that uses oxygen and requires thiamine. These portions of the brain control the autonomic nervous system and thiamine deficiency can cause symptoms that look rather like the autonomic symptoms found in POTS and may relate to the autonomic problems in SIBO, with dismotility causing bacterial overgrowth. Dr. Lonsdale's book mentions that people with mutations in thiamine transporters are especially susceptible to developing POTS from what might be minor immunological insults to most people. The basal ganglia is also involved in sensations of fatigue.

Anyways, I'm off to try MeB12 again. My MCV is 99, as usual. Every time I have tried even small amounts up to now, I have gone really deficient in potassium, but I am going to try about 50mcg and a lot of potassium and take it from there. It seems like going extremely potassium deficient from very small amounts of MeB12 might indicate a deficiency in MeB12.

Curious what you might think about the possibility that some people with ME/CFS might have combined methyl pathway problems and thiamine problems.
 

drmullin30

Senior Member
Messages
217
Hi @LouiseLouise one thing to remember if you're taking high dose thiamine and biotin is potential imbalances and deficiencies to watch for.

High dose thiamine can cause magnesium deficiency and high dose biotin can deplete B6 and vitamin C.

Potassium is also a magnesium antagonist so the combination of thiamine and potassium could tank your magnesium so something to watch for.
 
Messages
30
@drmullin30 , Thank you for the pointers. I am taking magnesium threonate now, particularly to get some magnesium into my brain, and I do believe it is making me feel better. I always take vitamin c, but I will look at the b6 as well. Historically, B6 makes me feel bad, but I am getting a bit in an ultra low dose coenzyme B complex I am taking and doing okay with it.

You seem to know a lot about imbalances. I have a severe intolerance for Vitamin D and MK7. They give me anxiety and make me feel like I have the flu. This has been a longstanding issue. Any clue why? I've often wondered whether they monkey with calcium in a way that I don't tolerate, particularly in my brain, and I wonder if the magnesium threonate might help with this. Any thoughts? I am vitamin D deficient and even getting it from sunlight makes me feel just as bad.
 

drmullin30

Senior Member
Messages
217
I have a severe intolerance for Vitamin D and MK7
This sounds like kidney trouble to me and maybe oxalates issues as well. Vitamin D can upregulate endogenous oxalate production and cause the symptoms you're having. Vitamin k is also implicated in the oxalate cycle but usually it helps but it can also tank magnesium so that may be a clue.

Sorry I don't have more.
 

Busson

Senior Member
Messages
102
Potassium is also a magnesium antagonist

The only references for that I could find are for plants. Is potassium is a magnesium antagonist in humans?

I have heard of patients short of potassium to take magnesium at the same time as potassium supplements because the magnesium assists with the retention of potassium. However I think you are saying potassim reduces magnesium. Do you have any further info on this?
 

drmullin30

Senior Member
Messages
217
Is there a privacy safe way of checking on these particular genes, that you know of?

I use https://livewello.com/ and https://www.nutrahacker.com/ with success to decode and investigate my 23andMe results. They are websites so I don't know if you would consider them private enough.

The only references for that I could find are for plants. Is potassium is a magnesium antagonist in humans?

You can use this website as reference for the relationships between minerals: https://acu-cell.com/index.html

This page https://acu-cell.com/acn2.html lists the magnesium antagonists as:
Magnesium Antagonists / Inhibitors: Sodium, potassium, iron, selenium, copper, lithium, silicon / silica, manganese, Vitamin A, Vitamin B1, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, niacin / niacinamide, PABA, Vitamin K, folate, choline, uric acid, alcohol, w6 (e.g. primrose, pumpkin seed oil), calcium*, Vitamin D*

Potassium Antagonists / Inhibitors: Manganese, magnesium, sodium, chromium, sulfur, phosphorus, cobalt, niacin / niacinamide, folic acid, PABA, Vitamin B12, choline, lecithin, alcohol
 
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Messages
3
Hello All,

I’m a CFS sufferer with a rather unique story. I came down very ill in college over 25 years ago, this just about when I began the college drinking ritual. What came on hit me like a ton of bricks, very instant, much of it neurological and in the spine and head. I thought I had rabies. A spinal tap showed nothing of significance and I partially recuperated by simply “living healthy”. Time goes by, not sure I was ever 100% but found my new normal. Fast forward about 12 years and I’m in the gym during a hard lunchtime workout, after a weekend of cocktails for an event, and it strikes again. I rush to doctors not knowing what this is, have a SPECT run which shows mottled blood flow and hypoperfusion of the brain. I go on some IV abx to cover the “Lyme” angle. I once again recover to a functional level. Fast forward yet again 13 years, and a toxic exposure sets off yet another event. This time more devastating and fully in line with much of what I’ve seen with many on this board and CFS. There were months where I could not peel myself off the floor and I had a cascade of bizarre neuro symptoms which I could only classify as close to hell on earth as it gets. I’m an ex pro athlete so I know pain - this was not human.

This time I’m hellbent on discovering the root cause. I had my arm poked 50x looking for issues with very little turning up.

I’ve been tested for MTHFR, which I am compound heterozygous (50% enzyme downgrade). Have also always tested very low for Vitamin D (around 22, Northern European descent yet dark skinned). I have normal serum B12 levels, yet we know that could be truly insignificant. I have a father who passed young from Parkinson’s.

At this point all aligns with classic CFS/FMS symptomatically - I’d rather not go into the gory details.

I have done prolonged fasting to see if that helps - up to 28 days of distilled water, 9 days of “dry fasting” multiple times. This has some moderate effectiveness at best.

I have effectively jumped on this train of B12/folinic acid/MTHFR as it makes too much sense and the couple of weeks I’ve been supplementing has helped significantly.

I have a question as it comes to B12s and absorption. Apologies if this has been covered.

I know Fredd talked extensively about the varieties of B12 and effectiveness, along with administration.

I have two questions as it comes to administration:

1) Is it possible to inject any of the bio active sublingual liquid forms for better absorption? I’ve come across those that have both bioactive forms with little additives.

2) Is there any benefit to administering rectally for better absorption? It’s clearly less enjoyable on entry but much easier to let sink in as opposed to letting it sit in the mouth for 90 minutes.

I look forward to further brainstorming out of this paradox of health.

Thank you
Michael
 

Kathevans

Senior Member
Messages
689
Location
Boston, Massachusetts

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
1) Is it possible to inject any of the bio active sublingual liquid forms for better absorption? I’ve come across those that have both bioactive forms with little additives.
Yes, there are injectable firms of 5-MTHF, folinic acid, and methylcobalamin.

For methylation to work properly, you may also need B1, B2, B6, and minerals like magnesium, potassium, and zinc. Comprehensive nutrient testing like a Genova Diagnostics Metabolomix+. Their website has a sample test so you can see what it does.
 

GreenMachineX

Senior Member
Messages
362
I still have to try the lithium again, how do you recommend starting to own it?


I don't think my situation is as recoverable / reversible as I already wrote to you, I have the same symptoms since I was 5 and I have only bones left. I would probably need constant injections but I can't get a prescription because doctors only look at the lab values and consider me "healthy".

Symptoms of group 3 have always been present even without starting the quartet. @Freddd
It's been quite a while, but have you found a protocol that worked?