People that try to help, that are not out to gain financially, are people that I call caregivers. We all want to be cared for and having someone that cares is what love is all about. Dogs are used as care givers in the therapy programs because they give unconditional love. Being a caregiver does not mean you are perfect or know everything. Knowledge is always gained. Decisions are made at the time, based on the best knowledge that is available. It may even be harmful, but at the time the decision was made, that was the extent of knowledge. So people like Fredd and Rich should be admired and thanked because they care, not because they are perfect or possess all knowledge. As long as we live, and until we can create a human being from dust, we will continue to learn how the human body functions and make mistakes along the way gaining that knowledge.
To those of you that want to complain, argue, insist on answers or references and constantly justify your actions, I say this; you are very nutritionally out of balance people. You need care. Your body has you in a state of fight or flight, trying to get you out there to find the needed nutrients it wants to continue living. I do understand this personality, as my mother was this way her entire life. So you have my caring because Ive come to understand what causes these responses. I never could help my mother, but I hope I can help others. I know that I dont have all the answers, but maybe enough to help people move through life in a way that they can enjoy the good times when they come.
Brenda, Im very happy for you that much is improving. Biotin is needed for healthy skin, hair and nails. Biotin needs certain enzymes to function in the skin that manganese helps to activate. By using the B2 it has allowed your liver to let you use the little manganese that is in the liver.
http://www.biotin.com/skin/biotin-is-necessary-for-healthy-skin. This could be why your skin feels better.
Biotin and manganese or magnesium are needed in an enzyme reaction that uses another enzyme called pyruvate decarboxylase. This enzyme is critical for the energy citric acid cycle.
Pyruvate carboxylase (PC) is an enzyme of the ligase class that catalyzes the (depending on the species) irreversible carboxylation of pyruvate to form oxaloacetate (OAA). It is an important anaplerotic reaction that provides oxaloacetate precursor for the citric acid cycle. The enzyme is a mitochondrial protein containing a biotin prosthetic group, requiring magnesium or manganese and acetyl CoA, and occurs in liver but not in muscle.[1]
1. ^ a b c PDB 2QF7; Jitrapakdee S, St Maurice M, Rayment I, Cleland WW, Wallace JC, Attwood PV (August 2008). "Structure, mechanism and regulation of pyruvate carboxylase". Biochem. J. 413 (3): 36987. doi:10.1042/BJ20080709. PMC 2859305. PMID 18613815.
So when you start adding B2 to run the citric acid cycle, your body now says we need more manganese (Mn) or magnesium (Mg) to run this reaction. Every hair chart shows very low levels of manganese and magnesium. So if you ask this system to go too quickly by taking large amounts of B2, without allowing adequate supply of these minerals from food sources, you can suffer deficiency symptoms of those minerals.
When manganese levels drop, every organ and muscle in the body can malfunction (as well as sugar regulation and cartilage growth). This is because there are structures in each organ called endoplasmic reticulums. They will get swollen and elongated and malfunction without adequate manganese. This can lead to an endless list of adverse symptoms, even death. I have seen this occur when working with the Bedlington Terriers that were so terribly deficient in manganese and overloaded with iron (as shown on their liver biopsies). As iron goes high, manganese goes low; this is how the body works due to the transport mechanisms in the intestines.
So to Rand56 I say this, vitamins and minerals are powerful not something to play with lightly. You can read from the experts that there are no adverse reactions and no known side effects, thus no upper limit has been set by the Food and Nutrition Board for riboflavin. Those studies were done on healthy lab animals not people that have high levels of some minerals and deficiency of others. I will tell you that I undertook trying to correct my high levels of iron using very high levels of B2 supplements every hour all day and half of the night. At first I noticed I could not fall asleep until late at night. I attributed this to removing lots of iron and interrupting my sleep cycle. So I continued. Then I noticed I was becoming very upset over things that normally would not bother me and my skin started to break out again and itch. My hair started to turn dry and white along the edges, a sure sign of stress. Then I was more tired when taking my dogs for their walks up the hills and Id see shiny lights in my vision a sign of low blood sugar. Next, I started to feel hot again when stressed. Finally my right arm biceps hurt so badly I could not bear to use it and my left knee and right sciatic nerve became so painful I could barely walk without hobbling. This was nearly unbelievable to me because high doses of B2 were safe werent they? After that I did lots more reading, searching and trying to understand the interactions between vitamins and minerals.
I did the same thing at the same time with my dogs since they too had been diagnosed with high iron. I gave them B2 and they seemed so much better. So I gave them more B2 and more and more, wanting their high iron to come down. My expert graduate level world renowned nutrition professor told me you never need to supplement manganese so I was not. Poor Nestle and Louie started having trouble breathing when running in the heat. Then Nestle started to become afraid of things again. She started to exhibit schizophrenic tendencies and finally their stools turned completely yellow. This is a sign that they were not putting enough bilirubin into the stools and/or not converting the bilirubin in the intestines to dark brown due to low manganese. It took a couple of days supplementing 200% of their daily requirement for manganese to bring them back to my happy dogs.
So please take it from someone that has been her own guinea pig low doses of B2, say 300-400% of the daily requirement work best all round.
