Folic acid and folinic acid can block metafolin inducing deficiency called "ddtox"

[therron]

Freddd,
You have mentioned vegetable food source folate several times as being a factor in your healing. Since many of us try to "eat right" by having plenty of fresh veggies, can you comment on what you have discovered? Does vegetable food folate act differently in the body than the metafolin supplement that you recommend? Keeping in mind that everyone is different, how have you tweaked your diet to optimize healing? For myself, I know that I need plenty of meat protein. I avoid dairy and gluten due to allergy and IBS symptoms. I don't eat much from the fruit and grain categories due to yeast issues. I do eat lots of fresh organic veggies from my garden.........and have for years. While some symtoms can be managed with diet, it is obvious that diet alone isn't healing me. Is vegetable food folate something that I should consider as an aggravating factor?

 

[Freddd]

Freddd,
You have mentioned vegetable food source folate several times as being a factor in your healing. Since many of us try to "eat right" by having plenty of fresh veggies, can you comment on what you have discovered? Does vegetable food folate act differently in the body than the metafolin supplement that you recommend? Keeping in mind that everyone is different, how have you tweaked your diet to optimize healing? For myself, I know that I need plenty of meat protein. I avoid dairy and gluten due to allergy and IBS symptoms. I don't eat much from the fruit and grain categories due to yeast issues. I do eat lots of fresh organic veggies from my garden.........and have for years. While some symtoms can be managed with diet, it is obvious that diet alone isn't healing me. Is vegetable food folate something that I should consider as an aggravating factor?

Hi Therron,

I have to give you a big "I don't know". There is insufficient data. I eat a lot of veggies from my organic garden as well. I can cause a problem by eating a large serving of steamed swiss chard. It cooks down like spinich. As much as I can stuff into a 6 quart pan, a number of pounds, with a steamer basket at the bottom makes 4-5 nice servings. Then I used to drink the broth which would have a lot of folate. I don't do that any more. I limit my chard to 1-2 smaller servings a week. It causes the angular cheilitis in 24 hours following and other symptoms, such as IBS, nausea, headaches and edema, then increased inflammation, allergies, asthma, MCS, acne type lesions, etc etc to follow. I find that if I take Metafolin 1600mcg with the meal and eat only a modest serving of chard that I can avoid an episode. Have you removed all folic acid and folinic acid from your program and increased Metafolin to perhaps 8000mcg (titration) to test for the paradoxical folate deficiency. I take the Metafolin in 5 doses per day to give it maximum chance to be absorbed and take 1600mcg with meals to compete. I'm still getting it down to practice. So far my record avoidance of paradoxical folate deficiency is about 3 weeks. Immediately upon exit from folate I start dumping water and have a low potassium episode.

 

[Rockt]

Freddd, it's just amazing to me how sensitive you are to small changes, (like eating swiss chard), and how quickly you seem to respond to adjusting the supplements. Is it possible you have something else going on, some other unknown malady, other than "typical" CFS? Please don't think I'm questioning your sincerety or anything like that - as far as I'm concerned your motives are beyond reproach. It's just that no one out here seems to repsond so quickly. Most of us seem to get a 10%-20% boost at first, followed by a lot of crashing, plateauing, etc. Unless it takes a long time and healing is going on in a hidden fashion, after 4 months of B12/MF, I'm about 5-10% better, crashing about twice/week, and not feeling as hopeful as I was.

 

[determined]

With the chard, perhaps oxalates are the problem?? I used to be exquisitely sensitive to them, and they would cause all kinds of symptoms.

 

[Rockt]

Apologies Freddd. I was just thinking about my post and I think it came off wrong. Yes, I'm curious about your sensitivity and quick response to these things, but I shouldn't have used the term "typical" CFS. There may not be any such thing as typical CFS. It's different for all of us. It's quite possible I was venting a bit due to my own frustation

 

[Freddd]

Freddd, it's just amazing to me how sensitive you are to small changes, (like eating swiss chard), and how quickly you seem to respond to adjusting the supplements. Is it possible you have something else going on, some other unknown malady, other than "typical" CFS? Please don't think I'm questioning your sincerety or anything like that - as far as I'm concerned your motives are beyond reproach. It's just that no one out here seems to repsond so quickly. Most of us seem to get a 10%-20% boost at first, followed by a lot of crashing, plateauing, etc. Unless it takes a long time and healing is going on in a hidden fashion, after 4 months of B12/MF, I'm about 5-10% better, crashing about twice/week, and not feeling as hopeful as I was.

Hi Rockt,

it's just amazing to me how sensitive you are to small changes, (like eating swiss chard), and how quickly you seem to respond to adjusting the supplements.

I learned to observe carefully early on in order to dodge an abusive psychotic mother. Later, around 1976 I witnessed an auto accident. The insurance investigator called me to ask about the accident. Before she asked her questions I said "I bet you want to know how the top of her skull was fractured." I was correct. So I have always been observant. Further I have been kicked out of more medical practices than probably anybody else here for insisting that I was genuinely ill rather than hypochondriac, psychosomatic. conversion disorder or "It's All In Your Head" in one form or another. I was told "You have too many symptoms to be believable". I was threated with being kicked out of another practice with "If you persist in being hyper-vigilant we will have to stop treating you." I shut up because I needed that doctor. In order to get pain treatment I say the minimum possible. So people are trained to shut up about their symptoms rather than paying attention and describing them in detail. To one doc who said something of the sort, I responded with "Why, so you don't have to be embarrassed about not understanding in the least what is wrong with me"? People are told "These are meaningless symptoms. They are non-specific." Thereafter if brought up again the person is hyper-vigilant and threatened with loss of treatment. So most everybody is trained NOT to describe 200 symptoms to a doctor. They lose patience after the first 5-10. They would make horrible systems analysts. Docs refusing to listen is probably the number one patient complaint I ran across in 20 years of monitoring and reviewing docs and insurance companies.

Before I took Enzymatic Therapy methylb12 I had tried just about everything going. Nothing at all made much of any noticeable difference. Everything was terrible and stayed that way. I had over 200 symptoms and signs from the list. When the mb12 woke up my nervous system everything changed. I got my sense of taste and smelling back to normal, my vision brightened about 2 stops (4x). My hearing brightened as well. My raspy voice smoothed out to my previous smooth tenor in mid word. I became very much aware of EVERY symptoms in the brightening of all the effects. All the stuff I had tried to ignore for decades came flooding in. These are the startup effects that most people would rather die than experience. It isn't the symptoms getting "worse", it's a perceptual thing. Being totally aware of each symptom allowed me to pay atention to changes and I could feel them very quickly. After mb12 almost every supplement made a difference and I could perceive it. This is what most of the people trying to avoid this effect are preventing themselves from doing. I could tell the difference between effective and ineffective brands, effective and ineffective forms.

It's just that no one out here seems to repsond so quickly.

Oh but they do. They reject it as "detox" and other names and run from it and quit. They are fearful of it rather than recognizing the tool they have been handed and using it. They do everything they can to get rid of it instead of maximizing it. It took me a little while to pin down what effects were going which directions, many different patterns. I can recognize the start of paradoxical folate deficiency in 24 hours or less now instead of 4-5 days. It took me 8 years to learn to recognize paradoxical folate deficiency. That was two years after learning for the first time what an acute folate deficiency was like with glutathione. There is nothing quick about that. It took me 9 months after starting mb12 to recognize what needed adb12 to repair. There is the illusion that it was quick because what you see now are the response to patterns that took me years to identify.

some other unknown malady, other than "typical" CFS?

I didn't have typical CFS. I had all the symptoms of ME, CFS, FMS plus another 100 or so symptoms from the more severe forms of CNS adb12 and mb12 deficiencies as well as folate deficiencies. It was all glazed over with severe intractable chronic pain which distracted everybody, including me. Because those symptoms are NOT defined as part of folic acid, cyanocbl or hydroxcbl deficiencies I had lots of man-made mysterious maladies in addition to the despised ones like FMS and CFS which in some docs minds of the period were "yuppy flu" and "Imaginary women's diseases" for which I would be maltreated because I choose to have them.

Most of us seem to get a 10%-20% boost at first, followed by a lot of crashing, plateauing, etc. Unless it takes a long time and healing is going on in a hidden fashion, after 4 months of B12/MF, I'm about 5-10% better, crashing about twice/week, and not feeling as hopeful as I was

Again, you are compressing time and seeing an illusion. My now ex-wife divorced me because a year after I started mb12 she said "You say you are doing so well but you can't do anything more". It was constantly crash and recrash. I learned not to overdo by overdoing 50 times with 50 crashes. I learned to follow the hints and to interpret what the changes in symptoms meant. Each item on the basics and critical cofactor list got there the hard way. I didn't just pull them out of thin air. I kept revising my working hypothesis until it was accurate. I debugged the protocol. Most of the healing isn't visible. I had to be willing to take the chance and discontinue or decrease the Dilantin, compazine suppositories, albuterol, theophylin, provigil, valium and a bunch more meds as some of the symptoms for each had gone but it was impossible to tell if things were just under better control by the meds or actually improved. That was after 9 months. I reassessed everything every month. I got the same 10%-20% and learned to keep increasing it instead of minimizing it. As I have said before, it would have been easier to say "It's too unpleasant" and take the easy route to death.

Apologies Freddd. I was just thinking about my post and I think it came off wrong. Yes, I'm curious about your sensitivity and quick response to these things, but I shouldn't have used the term "typical" CFS. There may not be any such thing as typical CFS. It's different for all of us. It's quite possible I was venting a bit due to my own frustation

I hope that you get my explanation. I'm 8 years down the road. The first 2 years were healing and then the next 6 were rehabilitation and more healing. There was nothing quick and easy about those 3000 days while going through them.

 

[Rockt]

Hi Freddd.

Thanks for your thoughtful explanation. You're very garcious in accepting the fact that I skipped over 8 years of your ordeal and you just patiently explained your process.

So I think you're saying "stay the course". Right now I'm feeling pretty lousy from just about anything I do, whereas at first, with Mb12, Ab12 and MF, I felt much better. Could this be healing/startup effects? I really hope so.

Thanks again for your patience Freddd.

 

[Freddd]

Hi Freddd.

Thanks for your thoughtful explanation. You're very garcious in accepting the fact that I skipped over 8 years of your ordeal and you just patiently explained your process.

So I think you're saying "stay the course". Right now I'm feeling pretty lousy from just about anything I do, whereas at first, with Mb12, Ab12 and MF, I felt much better. Could this be healing/startup effects? I really hope so.

Thanks again for your patience Freddd.

Hi Rockt,

It's important to distinguish what is "startup" and "normal" in the process of healing and what is a problem, usually an uncovered or induced deficiency. As low potassium is the number one induced deficiency when it occurs in the normal course of startup, it also signals the start of healing. B-complex can be important and the various b-vits are water soluable with a short half life. For me the aiming points were more intense neurological awareness and better energy. These things can change in hours when you find the right item(s). Something I haven't made clear for a while in my process. After I add something that makes a beneficial difference, I then would have to run through all the things that didn't make a difference before or did once but stopped etc. When the most limiting factor is taken care of, something else becomes the new most limiting factor. I have stressed combinations are critical. I have also suggested that trying to pinpoint one thing at a time is like hunting a bear, or moose or any large animals, with a BB gun, very slow and difficult. It is why I find fault with a "simplified" protocol. With a limited set of supplements a person may find they have 25 limiting factors with healing stopping each time they run into one. Then when they add it something else, possibly already tried, becomes the new limiting factor and healing stops again. ANY of the vitamins, minerals, misc supplements, critical cofactors etc may be a limiting factor. So, to get "energy" going might require just about everything. TMG may do NOTHING until 12 other items are in place so things need to be tried over and over as other pieces are added. Some things only are relevant after some prerequisite healing has been done and have no noticeable effect until then. That's why this is not simple. Zinc, for instance in my case. I had been taking 15-20mg a day for decades. I tried more occasionally but it never did anything. After all basics were in place, and mb12 and adb12 and Metafolin and b-complex TWICE a day and SAM-e and TMG and l-carnitine fumarate and 6000mg of vit-C and 5000iu of D and 25,000iu of A and omega3 oils and lecithin then 50mg of zinc made a HUGE difference, so intense I had to titrate to it.

Distinguish between actually feeling lousy because something is WRONG and because of intensification and partial healing in progress. So if it missing potassium it can be fixed quickly. Relief can start in 30 minutes. Heart palpitations from some low b-vit can correct in hours after going to b-complex twice a day. Some of the limiting factors stop healing in it's tracks and others have their own symptoms. Look at your skin. Are all your skin problems healed up? If not what is holding it up. Skin is the epithelial tissue you can see. When the skin is healing so are the intestines and stomach and lungs etc for instance.

 

[Rockt]

Look at your skin. Are all your skin problems healed up? If not what is holding it up. Skin is the epithelial tissue you can see. When the skin is healing so are the intestines and stomach and lungs etc for instance.

Skin is only a bit better, (less broken out). Still pretty dry, not exactly smooth, scalp is dry and itchy, (all despite the fact that it's been very hot and humid).

 

[Freddd]

Look at your skin. Are all your skin problems healed up? If not what is holding it up. Skin is the epithelial tissue you can see. When the skin is healing so are the intestines and stomach and lungs etc for instance.

Skin is only a bit better, (less broken out). Still pretty dry, not exactly smooth, scalp is dry and itchy, (all despite the fact that it's been very hot and humid).

Hi Rockt,

Now find what helps or hurts your skin. It might be omega3, vit C, A, D, zinc etc. Skin will usually start showing easily obvious changes in 10 days or less. I found that with angular cheilitis I can see changes in less than 24 hours. Itchy bumps that become acne type lesions start appearing for me within 24 hours of an injection of broken down mb12 or a week of folate deficiency. My skin is now the smoothest it has ever been in my life. It has no rashes, no dry scaly areas (not even my elbows), no infected follicles, no acne type lesions etc. My back was covered in bumps my whole life until the last dew years. And while watching your skin, you might find what makes it worse as well, whether it is some food product or supplement or laundry detergent or shampoo. Being able to make it worse predictably will usually also show you how to make it better.

 

[leela]

Freddd,

Like another poster, I immediately wondered if the oxalic acid in the cooked spinach/chard was causing the problem.Dr. Norman Walker, a pioneer of raw organic juicing, wrote a long passage in one of his books on this.

I personally love raw spinach or chard, but when cooked it makes my teeth instantly and unbearably "chalky"and astringent-feeling, which I suspect is some kind of instant effect of the degraded form of oxalic acid binding with the calcium in my mouth. I therefore never eat these things cooked any more, just raw or wilted into hot food.
Here are some excerpts I found on the web from his book:

"Organic oxalic acid is one of the important elements needed to maintain the tone of, and to stimulate peristalsis. . . If the important organs comprising the alimentary and eliminative departments of our system, or any parts of them, are moribund or dead, the efficiency of their function is impaired, to say the least. This condition can result only from a lack or deficiency of live atoms in the food nourishing the cells and tissues concerned. Live food means that food which contains live organic atoms and enzymes found only in our raw foods.

". . . It is very vital to stress this matter in regard to oxalic acid. When the food is raw, whether whole or in the form of juice, every atom in such food is vital ORGANIC and is replete with enzymes. Therefore, the oxalic acid in our raw vegetables and their juices is organic, and as such is not only beneficial but essential for the physiological functions of the body.

"The oxalic acid in cooked and processed foods, however, is definitely dead, or INORGANIC, and as such is both pernicious and destructive. Oxalic acid readily combines with calcium. If these are both organic, {meaning raw} the result is a beneficial constructive combination, as the former helps the digestive assimilation of the latter, at the same time stimulating the peristaltic functions in the body.

"When the oxalic acid has become INORGANIC by cooking or processing the foods that contain it, then this acid forms an interlocking compound with the calcium even combining with the calcium in other foods eaten during the same meal, destroying the nourishing value of both."

 

[Freddd]

Hi Leela,

Hmmm. Combines with calcium. So that is what coats my pans after cooking spinich or chard. I don't have a calcium problem. And I see no way that it could be causing symptoms identical to paradoxical folate deficeincy. It's good to look at all possibilities so thankyou for noticing it. It was somebody from one of these forums that pointed out to me that it appeared to be a folate deficeincy in the first place.

 

[aprilk1869]

Hi Leela,

Hmmm. Combines with calcium. So that is what coats my pans after cooking spinich or chard. I don't have a calcium problem. And I see no way that it could be causing symptoms identical to paradoxical folate deficeincy. It's good to look at all possibilities so thankyou for noticing it. It was somebody from one of these forums that pointed out to me that it appeared to be a folate deficeincy in the first place.

I have read that the oxalates can interfere with the absorption of iron and that iron deficiency can cause angular chelitis.

Oxalates impair the absorption of nonheme iron. Oxalates are compounds derived from oxalic acid and found in foods such as spinach, kale, beets, nuts, chocolate, tea, wheat bran, rhubarb, strawberries and herbs such as oregano, basil, and parsley. The presence of oxalates in spinach explains why the iron in spinach is not absorbed. In fact, it is reported that the iron from spinach that does get absorbed is probably from the minute particles of sand or dirt clinging to the plant rather than the iron contained in the plant.
http://www.irondisorders.org/diet/

 

[Freddd]

I have read that the oxalates can interfere with the absorption of iron and that iron deficiency can cause angular chelitis.

Hi Aprilk,

I have read that the oxalates can interfere with the absorption of iron and that iron deficiency can cause angular chelitis

That would be worth adding to the watch list when the angular cheilitis is not relieved by Metafolin and methylb12. As I have my blood tested regularly and I have never in my entire life been low on iron, and Metafolin makes a noticable difference in hours and heals it in ten days iron deficiency, wheter caused by oxalates or not, is low on my probability list but may be high on that for some others. So far in 8 years of corresponding with people on these items I have run into a couple of women with low iron in addition to their other nutritional lacks. In those cases I don't know of any identified cause.

Oxalates are compounds derived from oxalic acid and found in foods such as spinach, kale, beets, nuts, chocolate, tea, wheat bran, rhubarb, strawberries and herbs such as oregano, basil, and parsley

As far as what foods contain the oxalates I certainly eat 10 of this list. I eat the chard leaves (beets bred for their greens) but not the beets themselves. I try to eat a balanced diet generally. However, I don't seem to have any problem with them as part of a balanced diet. I have cut my chard down to 3x per week and take 2400mg of Metafolin with each meal containing chard and am not having paradoxical folate deficiency currently. In fact I'm having the best month of my life on that, just 3 days early on in the last 30 days.

 

[Gloria H]

I'm new to Phoenix Rising. I recently started Solgar metafolin. But in searching, I didn't find any mention of Quatrefolic, a folate form made available recently. If anybody has experience with it for CFS, I'd be very interested to hear of it. Here are a couple links:
http://www.gnosis-bio.com/quatrefolic.php
https://www.swansonvitamins.com/SWU533/ItemDetail
Most of my supplements come from Swanson, the 2nd link.

Blessing to you!

 

[rydra_wong]

Funny i was taking 800 mg methylfolate and i was dreaming again. Then i added dibenzocide with 200 mg folate and I stopped dreaming. I increased methylfolate to 1600 but nothing.. I stopped it yesterday and yes; I dreamt again.so I'll now try both with 2400 methylfolate and see if I dream.

This is really interesting. It is magnesium that allows you to dream. What is happening is that different kinds/amounts of folate are causing your BH2->BH4 reaction to run backwards (it is the same reaction as that for folate: DHPR/MTHFR - see http://www.heartfixer.com/AMRI-Nutrigenomics.htm). W/o adequate BH4 you cannot get rid of ammonia from protein via the ornithine cycle and a build up of ammonia depolarizes magnesium which falls off the NMDA receptors (and is lost and must be replaced). When the magnesium falls off the NMDA receptors they are left open to calcium which gets in and damages them causing pain, damage, encephaly -- this is called Chinese Restaurant syndrome, MSG sensitivity, glutamate toxicity, or spongiform encephalitis. This can be caused by genetic limitations in making BH4 (MTHFR 1298 mutation and/or CBS 699 mutation, both of which I have) or simply from not enough magnesium or eating too much protein, too much sugar, or apparently from not the right source/amount of folate. The calcium damages neurons in the brain and causes vacuoles (lesions).

Here's a summary of an article by a British scientist on this matter: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/opinions/11677/

The things I had on my list to help per poking about on the web were: methylfolate, vitamin C, and niacin/niacinamide, to raise BH4, a low protein diet to spare BH4, a glycemic index diet to spare BH4, magnesium to help excrete ammonia from protein breakdown, and magnesium to refill the NMDA channels to protect your brain. Also the ornithine cycle needs methyls to work (inadequate methylation will cause ammonia buildup). Estrogen is an NMDA antagonist - so that would explain why estrogen helps this.

I really like when we can find easy ways to diagnose stuff w/o spending so much money on tests. So I will have to watch for dreaming vs. not. Mostly I do not remember dreams. But I did test my ammonia and it is not building up (at least when I tested) since I eat a low protein diet. I have Chinese restaurant syndrome severely w/o hormone replacement (or priorly during PMS). Panera uses MSG on their salads -- watch out!