@aquariusgirl ,
It has been a while. "You bet your bippy" in the language of my teens, whatever a bippy is. I've gotten to bedrock. I've had intermittent hypokalemia symptoms all my life in a cycle with periodic folate deficiency.
It about blows me away that lithium reinstates homeostasis I needed to use brute force method of getting B12, in the forms of MeCbl and AdoCbl, into my CNS to keep it from falling apart. From about 2007 to some time last year, I needed 3x10mg (or 4 x 7.5 mg) of MeCbl each day and the healing and better feeling lasted about 8 hours. THe threshold for MeCbl showing up in urine at 2.4 mg sc injection with folic acid at a bit more than 1 hour, 4,2 mg SC injection at 4.2 mg between 1 and 2 hours. I have been tapering the MeCbl. Right now I 'm down to 5 mg once a week and it shows up in the urine at about 12 hours. COB[II] which is what is left after the Lithium strips off ligand is very reactive and is protected and apparently stored such that it is available to the CNS all the time from the TCR-Li. I am hypothesizing here but it's the best I can put together with all the things it does. Also it requires either COB[II] or MeCbl and AdoCbl for the CNS. In the absence of COB[II} both active forms are needed plus the l-methylfolate and the L-carnitine in a body can't make with the body's current deficiencies,.
I tried for 4 or 5 years to get my copper up to a functional level. It started to be absorbed and retained bring my level up over the past almost 2 years, the total time I've been starting and titrating the lithium orotate 5 mg (240 mcg of Li) to 20 mg of Lithium orotate. My liver healed. My hyper responses to all sorts of things have gone away. I'm below 1500 mg of potassium after years of 3-5 grams of potassium. My main deficiency has been lithium needed to make the TCR-Li so I was functionally lacking the TCR-Li and almost couldn't get B12 into my nervous system and making the cobalamin into it's catalyst form. In it's micronutrient forms and amounts it doesn't do the damage the 200-300 mg does of lithium used in the psychiatric and kidney damaging amounts. Instead the kidneys grow a lot of TCR and reclaims and retains the B12 from ending up in the urine before the absorption cycle is finished. All this fits in every bit of journal articles I've read on the subject and all my responses and others with responses. I've never known of anybody going from needing 210 mg a week to 5 mg of MeCbl (and still decreasing) a week and one sublingual dose of AdoCbl that absorbs more now than it ever did before, enough to see it excreted in urine. Also the AdoCbl still has an obvious body effect but not a noticeable CNS effect.
P:art of the problem appears to be that COB[II} isn't self booting. If there isn't any it can't make any more TCR-Li. It turns out to be part of the deadlock quintet rather than quartet. However, brute force gets enough MeCbl/AdoCbl to absorb and gradually grow the TCRE-Li convert other varieties to COB[II] that then can sustain the growth and refresh cycles for the TCR-Li.. No wonder nobody has found this. Everybody was trying to describe B12 in terms that to those of us with certaIn problems appears to be a myth.
I have blood tests each 3 months. After many months shifting all over, they are reaching a desirable balance. My minerals had never been able to all be in balance before. Right now my testosterone went higher than ever before as copper and other things increased and balanced and with my doc we determine what dose changes I need. The changing hormones with genetic problems can be a problem, male or female, and need to be watched and managed.
I still need the same amount of l-methylfolate but it seems to have stopped having to alternate to between Metafolin and Quatrefolic every few months to remain effective. The carnitines don't switch around either any more. They are all the same, no best one. I can't tell the difference between a 5 star MeCbl or a zero star MeCbl. My first shout in my face response was hypokalemia from hell at 6 months of 240 mcg of lithium, when red cell maturing started up hard when I got up to 7000 feet driving over the continental divide. It can happen in hours compared to all other cell forming causes of hypokalemia becasue the young red cells are already there and just need to mature.
Be well.
FFP
