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Induced insatiable Hypokalemia and Methylfolate Insufficiency

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
I'm skeptical too. I mainly asked because of what Freddd said, but maybe he'll clarify his theory. I don't want to misstate it. Just because you both used the term "limiting factor" doesn't mean you're talking about the same thing.

Hi Lotus,

Ten years ago on May 21st, 2003 at 6:05 pm MDT I knew my life was changed. Adding MeCbl made a HUGE difference. At the same time it was my first intro to donut hole folate deficiency and an obviously induced hypokalemia. However the hypokalemia was mild and handled by 400mg/day of potassium. What I immediately noticed as I did my first round of balancing titrations I found out that all sorts of vitamins and minerals clearly worked better when I titrated them. After I added AdoCbl another group of items suddenly made a difference, another limiting factor. Then, some years later when I got up to CNS penetrating doses, I had the same experience with adding AdoCbl and AdoCbl at those doses made a few other items work very differently, like SAM-e. I needed LESS SAM-e after getting the CNS MeCbl higher. Metafolin made MORE difference. After AdoCbl, more Zinc made more difference.

Going back into the 50-70s the warning about vitamins, was about the risks of induced deficiencies when not taking all the vitamins and minerals. Until MeCbl my thought on that was "I wish they worked so well as to make any observable difference"., Without the MeCbl and AdoCbl, hundreds of pathways were not working right. They were severely limited by lack of MeCbl and NOTHING I could try made any noticeable difference at all except 100 tablets a day of desiccated liver. That validated my hypothesis that what I needed, "protein mystery factor" (wrongly identified and Nobel Prize for Cyanocobalamin), NOT the CyCbl that I was taking.

Now consider the paradoxical symptoms switches of a slow exit from methyltrap. When MeCbl is low it is distributed on a triage by level effect, same as methylfolate. When b12 is low enough to be in partial methylation block the worsening symptoms are typically b12 deficiency symptoms because it breaks at the lack of sufficient b12. In Methyltrap, after MeCbl gets even lower, the methylfolate has no b12 available and is expelled from the cell which then BREAKS the process at folate. A little bit of MeCbl then returns the person to b12 deficiency symptoms which switch back to folate deficiency in a few days if more isn't taken..

Then as soon as there is some healing taking place something else goes short enough to "break" something and other symptoms become more intense, "unmasked" or "induced" or any number of ways of thinking about it.

So in this situation something broke in a way that something caused a hard drop in potassium and methylfolate and yet I also had rapid failure of at least some immune functions, epithelial problems, neurological deterioration from a previous healing state. So, as Dbkita said before "this isn't healing". But perhaps it can give us a clue as to what broke for some number of us. There are all sorts of limiting factors. However perhaps only one at a time, the FIRST break in a process is the one that gets the symptoms.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
Bit dimwitted tonight.. but seems like both freddd & dbitka ran into problems with hyperkalemia when they added B2 or R5P....Good to know!! What caused the lack of peristalsis? I've experienced this occasionally.

Hi Aquariusgirl,

Hypokalemia is what we ran into. Loss of peristalsis can be fatal in itself. It is a dangerous effect. And at some point following is general failure of muscles including the heart.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
Bit dimwitted tonight.. but seems like both freddd & dbitka ran into problems with hyperkalemia when they added B2 or R5P....Good to know!! What caused the lack of peristalsis? I've experienced this occasionally.
*hypokalemia

In my case 11 grams including food and supplements was not enough. I believe the jump in methylation led in my case to reduced expression of 11 beta hsd2 which in turn led to massive potassium dumping which in my case showed up as exorbitant 24 hour urine potassium excretion.
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
So what happens if we take little to no B2, but continue with high doses of folate? Is there any point to this if B2 is the rate limiting factor?
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
So what happens if we take little to no B2, but continue with high doses of folate? Is there any point to this if B2 is the rate limiting factor?
I have to chew on that one. B2 is probably what explains my high sarcosine in the afternoon as same / sah ratio is high. Remember I take only 800 mcg folapro but I have no mthfr c677t mutation.
 
Messages
20
I'm so glad I read this thread. I have been dropping by occasionally, and learned why I had such a big reaction to folate and B12 before Christmas - classic hypokalemia, which led to chest pains, foot cramps and constipation. Rectified that with 4mg daily of potassium and stopped the folate and B12 for a bit, as the chest pains were scary. Restarted the folate and B12, read the thread about B2 and added that, taking 50mg a day. In the last few days I have had chest pains and left arm pains again - didn't know why - and foot cramps. Was about to go back to my cardiologist but I now realise it was because I was taking B2 and had eased back on the potassium, thinking that it should all be OK now. Obviously I have stopped taking all methylating supplements for a bit.

Does anyone else with POTs get chest pains when taking folate and B12?
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
I have to chew on that one.
Is the following post accurate?

One way to increase BH4 levels is to "overdose" on methylfolate. This is the trick used by Deplin. Basically, very high levels of methylfolate force the MTHFR enzyme to work in reverse, producing BH4 in the process.

In that case, maybe there could be some advantages to high folate, even B2 is kept low.
 

Sam7777

Senior Member
Messages
115
OK this validates the expected relationship of systemic electrolyte mineral levels and the fears of b12 I had.

Freddd, I would suggest that you would benefit greatly from studying the work of 4 different people

Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride (GAPS diet )
Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler (Mercury Amalgam Disease ALA chelation frequent dose)
Dr. Larry Wilson (nutritional balancing)
Dr. Chris Shade (quicksilver)

I don't want this to come across as a scattered broad post about a bunch of random work of other people. With that noted I am Explicitly speaking about the regards of potassium in the works of these 4 people, and more generally the effects of mercury, GI tract inflammation, immune reactions to food allergies, methylation, liver, thyroid, kidney, adrenal function, detox ability via the methylation/transulferation/glutathione pathways Phase I,II,III detox pathways- how all of these issues interact and affect total body levels of potassium and other minerals.

Once again I am emphasizing electrolyte metabolism. Larry Wilson is the best expert at discussing this I have ever encountered of any source. I was able to finally get a hair test and to no surprise I tested with 7 mineral deficiencies.
This pattern was exactly the same as the database of those who have had results suggesting the affects of heavy metal displacement of mineral and electrolyte metabolism/transportation/assimilation/uptake.

I had a systemic deficiency in magnesium, calcium, iron, potassium, manganese, phosphorous, molybdenum. This is quite a dour thing. The databases of online discussion of these types of results suggest pretty dour consequences. Most of these people have methylation/b12/CFS issues.

Larry Wilson incorporates a systems analysis approach to his work, he understands complex systems theory.

My theory on b vitamin interaction with knocked out methylation and chronic mineral deficiencies is the the extent that you are "making pizzas, and running out of tomato sauce at the end of the week two days short of the delivery man bringing more". In this case potassium.

B vitamin biosynthesis pathways cannot function with these systemic mineral deficiencies. Given the discussion of electrolyte behavior by Larry Wilson, I am led to believe it is profoundly difficult to restore systemically low electrolyte levels. I sincerely believe methylation problems, thryoid, and adrenal disease and the CFS results are totally underpinned by chronically low mineral levels, overwhelmingly and particularly potassium. Potassium is the ultimate root denominator.


Glutathione metabolism greatly affects this argument as well. People with electrolyte deficiency have broken glutathione production commonly. There are some videos on Dr. Mercola's site about lectures given by Chris Shade, where Shade described how to address the natural detox pathways of the body. It is pertenant enough to b12 and methylation, so I believe it is something you need to watch.

Andrew Cutler probably explains the behavior of glutathione in the most detail. Sadly I am still struggling to understand Cutler's work. It is indeed difficult. Arguably, I am stuck on your work Freddd and Cutlers. You need to understand that the work you have documented along with his has some degree of profound underpinning explanation of CFS.

The focus is yes, indeed often over mentioned to mercury. However, we all know there is a significant degree of multi-factorial etiologies involved with CFS and methylation dysfunction. It is important to remember though, that glutathione is only one endogenous detox molecule, of one particular route via Phase 1,2,3 of the liver/colon/kidney. The issue with these multiple built in detox systems becomes more evident in cases of hepatitis or multiple chemical sensitivity where you know that the person is suffering from exposure to unknown chemicals. Hence, it cannot be blamed on mercury, but it still heavily involves methylation issues, b12 issues, and glutathione metabolism.

In this regard, if one wants to address potassium deficiency, when it involves b12/CFS, you must look at overall mineral deficiencies in the manner that Wilson discusses and you must focus on how the glutathione system is interacting with transulferation/methylation cycle.

In no small way, at this point, do I believe that the use of supplemental vitamins will not lead to imbalances in minerals, I do believe it will. Potassium metabolism is a big big big deal.

It is very easy to fall into a reductionist logic trap with biochemistry.
Are B2-B3 somehow the accelerators? Balance appears to be somehow the key to this all.

Balance is undeniable, but very very difficult.
 

aquariusgirl

Senior Member
Messages
1,732
Add to this that some of us (myself) have low lithium, which makes it hard to retain potassium and sodium according to what I read. So that's another spanner in the works.

I wonder also.. if we have trouble keeping magenesium in the cell because of the low B2. You need B2 to activate B6. You need B6 to either get or retain magnesiium in the cell. I forget which.

Complicated stuff.

I do think in my case low B2 was a bottleneck in raising glutathione.

Rich said that ppl with CFS eventually went low in
b2, biotin & one other thing..might have been magnesium.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I used to be able to take 2000+ mcg biotin no problem, but a few months ago I switched around my supplements and went a period without taking much. When I tried increasing the dose I think it gave me "start-up". I'm not 100% sure, but I don't feel like doing too many tests now so I've been taking a low dose (around 200 mcg).
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
adreno:

I have read that about the production of BH4 via the SAMe regulatory domain. I think the idea is that the MTHFR enzyme binds to SAMe as an allosteric modulator that alters conformation to slow down methylfolate production when SAMe levels of high. Clearly high levels of methylfolate production bypass this control mechanism when taken exogenously. I assume this negative feedback control alters MTHFR activity to shift to another avenue for production of BH4. But to be fair, I have never myself seen a clear description of the process in any research paper.

That being said, if r5p is augmenting MTHFR activity and the enzyme is recycling methylfolate faster then you would expect higher levels anyways and the regulatory mechanisms should in principle still kick in and shunt to BH4. The exception may be a homozygous MTHFR A1298c mutation.

I think a far more practical reason for low Bh4 is usually not ammonia, not genetics, but inflammation. If you ask why, my answer is simple: Occam's principle.

Edit: To answer your original question. I think it would be foolish to overdrive with exogenous methylfolate without some balance of the cofactor r5p. In the same way I think there has to be some balance with p5p. I think as methylfolate amounts are increased the cofactors balance may have to be readjusted. Otherwise you get a decoupling effect.

For example, recently, I have been having problems since I switched from coenzymated sublingual p5p to regular oral p5p. The oral p5p is promptly getting destroyed in my stomach's acidic environement and turned back into b6 which my liver must suck at converting, because my neurotransmitters have gone poof and my mood and sleep and energy and focus has flown the coop. In my case I have a SHMT1 homozygous mutation. So it is possible that I am hurting my endogenous production of methylfolate because my defective SHMT without enough actual p5p is producing less 5,10 methylene THF, leaving me in the lurch. So my methylation has effectively dropped and suddenly my 800 mcg Folapro is not enough. Today is a bit better since I went back to the coenzymated for a bit until I can figure this out.

Warning to people who take oral p5p btw, from what I have researched unless enteric coated there is probably no way it survives in phosphorlyated form in the stomach at low ph. The means it is turned into b6 and the liver is left to convert it back using ... r5p.

Sam7777:

I will agree electrolyte balance is important and complicated. Mineral transport and absorption is very important.

I won't get into the mercury stuff, since some doctors contend mercury is to blamed for everything and all things in creation. Get's old real fast. I swear mercury has become for some practitioners the biological equivalent of dark matter. Can't see it but we know it is there and if I give you a chelator and you sneeze it means mercury.

However, every time I read some of Dr Lawrence Wilson's stuff, at first it seems interesting but when I dig deeper I run into some real borderline quackery stuff that is simply not correct. Too ying. Too yang. All medications are bad. Minerals alone cure a defective immune system due to autoimmune and infectious diseases (100% pure grade A bs), heal all gut dysbioses, etc. Some of his thoughts on thyroid hormone and how it works are downright laughably wrong. Moreover, his rules about what means what on a hair analysis actually outright contradict themselves. I remember reading section on thyroid and another on mercury where Dr WIlson is well if either a or b or c then this means blah, but you read back above on the same page and see that b was what he used for the opposite condition. There are multiple examples of rules that he constructed that are directly contradictory to one another. Not logical imo.

So yeah at one level I find it at first interesting. I do believe for example Na / K balance is key. But when I go deeper I run into some really jarring inconsistent nonsensical stuff that I can't rectify with biochemistry. So personally that leaves me at best dubious of some of his claims and mildly accepting of others. Not a comfortable position.

Btw how does any of what you have seen in this thread validate fears with electrolytes with b12. Did you mean methylfolate? Because mb12 alone doesn't affect potassium levels to my knowledge.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
Hi Sam,

Let us consider a wider field here. I spent decades working in group healthcare edging onto public health concerns. As a consulting group we were trying to achieve many things being done NOW; enforced hand washing, individualized treatment by history and response, physician selection by outcomes for various conditions and cost controls by getting rid of payment by procedure via capitation and/or payment by diagnosis and hybrid models. We were at the head of the pack on these things. Exposure to mercury has been going down. My children NEVER have had an amalgam. They have never had mercury containing drugs (calomel and teething items up until early 1950s) except for thimersol in injections which is a very few micrograms, limited mercury containing fish and coal power plants getting cleaner and emitting less mercury though once in the soil it is there for the long haul.. Instead they have been exposed to folic acid and Cyanocobalamin as soon as they started eating any prepared foods, which we rarely served. They were almost as sick as children as I was and got FMS fifteen years younger than I did. There is an explosion in neurological diseases, each one having symptoms, essentially 100%, that are subsets of the symptoms list of B12 and Folate deficiencies, when the symptoms are collected internationally and across all national definitions and uses of cobalamins (ie CyCbl countries have a different list than HyCbl countries etc), India, a vegetarian country has a very different list from the USA, a meat eating country. Japan, with the biggest mercury disaster in humans in the 50's uses only MeCbl and sets the highest minimum, 550pg/ml.

There are all sorts of hypotheses as to why there has been such an increase across so many neurological diseases with many of them starting at younger and younger ages. The boomers are considerably sicker than their parents. All this has happened considering all the changes that have occurred. Since b12/folate deficiencies cause hundreds of breakdowns all over the body and very heavily neurologically damaging and can be linked by research to a whole range of neurological diseases, damage the immune system, malfunction in every way, it appears to be a root cause modified by all sorts of genetic factors and additional deficiencies and peculiarities. Further the brainfog is an especially damaging symptom , etc for figuring out an extremely complicated symptom. And of course the answer is hidden by institutional blindness because the answer is INCONCEIVABLE and hence is completely invisible.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
Hi Dbkita,

I was involved in the whole mercury thing in consulting for group dental HMOs/Insurance. There was an awful lot of quackery to put it kindly. There were a lot of very dangerous practices in pursuit of a mercury free ideal and results were virtually non-existent with some actually developing real mercury problems from very poor technique in removal. I was working with high level national experts on this and it was an intense subject of discussion for the Joint Commission for Hospital Accreditation ambulatory care committee on which sat one of my co-consultants. What constituted fraud and malpractice as well as dangerous practices were very intense discussions. And of course money was important. To totally get rid of mercury (no amalgams) composites cost a lot more and were pretty bad in the beginning with all sorts of potentially dangerous untested chemicals leaching into the body and didn't last very long. Changes in materials are difficult. I had two pure ceramic crowns both of which shattered within weeks in the 80s I think. Now my latest is computer carved ceramic (I got to watch it, a "free" show thrown in for the $900 it cost) and incredibly superior to metal crowns and all done in one short appointment that preserves much more of the original tooth leaving fallback positions in case of other problems and never invisible decay under the margins as can happen with metal crowns. The fit to the tooth is essentially perfect. Under the old whole tooth crowns lots of bad workmanship is hidden until the poor workmanship causes decay under the crown.

There are all sorts of considerations that most never consider in this whole amalgam portion of the mercury debate. Prior to quality composites being available one could do porcelain or gold inlays, or the old fashioned pounding of gold leaf into the prepared cavity, all of which are cost prohibitive for most people. Who is going to do it, if taking their candy mouth kid into the dentist if it is going to cost $6,000 to walk out each time. We would see kids at 7 without a tooth. Loss of teeth in adults translate to many more deaths in a given nursing home population and even worse for elderly living alone and nobody sees.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
Hi Freddd,

Are you feeling any better btw?

Yeah I have not had a cavity in my life. Chipped tooth when I was teenager (upper bicuspid) and had some enamel added. Hate fish. Avoid at all costs. No industrial exposure. Yet for a couple years I had two alternative doctors pushing the mercury hypoyhesis despite not a single lab positive even the vaunted (yet imo dubious) dmps urine challenge. Finally I caved in did chelation anyways felt like crud and every time they checked no mercury in what they pulled out. After four visits I pulled out because they we're pulling all sorts of other minerals including iron out. Others would say my negative reaction to nac and ala is evidence of mercury poisoning in my brain. I would say the nac is the cysteine and acute reduction of glutamate. For the ala I switched to the bioactive r-enantiomer only and it makes me feel great. So yeah while mercury toxicity is a real thing, in my book impaired mineral values is hardly definitive proof as per Cutler and Wilson. Heck low atp alone will mess up mineral transporters. GI problems kill absorption. Reaction imbalances will deplete body stores. There are many ways to end up in the abyss ... mercury is just one road and one that I feel is too often invoked.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I've heard from two people who tested high for mercury, but were able to tolerate alpha lipoic acid and NAC just fine so that's not a good way to determine if you have mercury issues. Other people react to ALA either to sulphur issues or hypoglycemia. There are people here with mercury toxicity. I have no doubt. I don't know how prevalent it is and I wouldn't want to hazard a guess since many people haven't been tested. In some instances it might be overdiagnosed, but in other cases I believe it's underdiagnosed. Even if I could afford to get my amalgams removed, I'm not sure I'd do it. Seems risky and I'm not convinced that having amalgams means you have mercury issues. I've heard from people who got worse after getting their amalgams removed.
 

OkRadLakPok

Senior Member
Messages
124
I have been very sick with low potassium as well. This is SO WEIRD. I have been eating about 5 bananas a day. I think I had to stop eating salt.

I was on Hydroxy b12 and Myethylfolate and low dose.

One episode was bad enough to warrant a call to 911. I am not sure what is worse. Being without the Mythfolate and hydroxy12 or the low potassium!

Afraid to take anything else.

PS Reacted TERRIBLE to having amalgams out. Risky indeed. Platelets dropped as well as WBC and neutophils.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
Hi Freddd,

Are you feeling any better btw?

Yeah I have not had a cavity in my life. Chipped tooth when I was teenager (upper bicuspid) and had some enamel added. Hate fish. Avoid at all costs. No industrial exposure. Yet for a couple years I had two alternative doctors pushing the mercury hypoyhesis despite not a single lab positive even the vaunted (yet imo dubious) dmps urine challenge. Finally I caved in did chelation anyways felt like crud and every time they checked no mercury in what they pulled out. After four visits I pulled out because they we're pulling all sorts of other minerals including iron out. Others would say my negative reaction to nac and ala is evidence of mercury poisoning in my brain. I would say the nac is the cysteine and acute reduction of glutamate. For the ala I switched to the bioactive r-enantiomer only and it makes me feel great. So yeah while mercury toxicity is a real thing, in my book impaired mineral values is hardly definitive proof as per Cutler and Wilson. Heck low atp alone will mess up mineral transporters. GI problems kill absorption. Reaction imbalances will deplete body stores. There are many ways to end up in the abyss ... mercury is just one road and one that I feel is too often invoked.

Hi Dbkita,

I'm feeling a lot better but still don't have all my energy back. I've had 3 batches of cavities in my life. The first was with my braces, the second was in the 90s when I had uncontrollable infections in my mouth of multiple types and the third batch this last 6 months in which 7 have popped up all at once following my crash last August. My first molars were all defective in formation and growth from illness when I was young and every one of those cracked in my 30s and is crowned. I am starting to have cracking problems with my second molars as well. Each "set" of these teeth reflect the health conditions when they formed.

Screwed up ATP and methylation completely screws the body's biochemistry in every way. I've had these potassium problems my whole life but nobody knew what it was because it happens with serum potassium as high as 4.2. As a child I used to wake up screaming in pain from the muscle spasms in my legs. I've had IBS since first grade at least.

I think that mercury is over hypothesized by at least 2 orders of magnitude. For true believers in mercury we might as well be talking "man influenced climate change". It is strictly "don't show me the statistics, results, bad outcomes etc because they always have their one patient who had a genuine problem. The problem is always that of selection. One of the main driving forces of the HMO design is that a person is typically at far more risk from over treatment than under treatment. My father, going against what he had lived and breathed for 40 years, had a parathyroid surgery that only benefit was one less pill a day. It was a butcher job, he almost died, had brain damage and had to retire (at 75) as he developed instant Alzheimer's. Cleveland Clinic saved his life after the butcher job at University Hospitals and refusal of proper post op care. Cost of treatment to save his life was over half a million, to save $5/month or whatever that pill cost.. He was in the hospital for more than a month, in a VIP suite. Over treatment is dangerous. The most dangerous procedure is the one with little benefit and all risk. Bringing people to a stable healthy maintenance state saves the most money and produces the most member satisfaction.

In these health plans there was no doubt who we were working for, the plan trustees for the benefit of the plan members. Getting rid of the 1% worst providers, and controlling the contracting with the insurance companies and some other things each year allowed about a 10% incremental savings each of the first 3 years.



After four visits I pulled out because they we're pulling all sorts of other minerals including iron out.

Knowing when to pull the plug on a theory and treatment is important. I applied the same criteria as you, it had to make sense with what I knew and had to have real results.

I have called chasing the hundreds of EFFECTS of broken methylation and broken ATP generation chasing fairies because they change and disappear in front of your eyes. By starting at the bottom of the chains, ie the Deadlock Quartet, changes literally everything and gets rid of most of the non working hypotheses. In a way what we are doing is pruning the hypotheses tree. Trying to force 1000 EFFECTS to be correct based on all these various ideas is an impossible job. One needs to change causes. I went to 10 per year trying to find somebody who already had my problems understood. What I found was that all these providers, mostly well meaning, were 100% wrong in their hypothesis and had total lack of results other than side effects and occasionally. Towards the end I told them during my initial interview (of them, I had changed to a stance that I was hiring a consultant for my healthcare) that I charted everything every day and that I would expect real and positive effects from them verifiable from my data. At that point they started refusing to have anything to do with me. They didn't want to show their stuff to anybody actually evaluating it. I make clear that I work in the business and will be evaluating them and paying attention to all the things we might investigate in an evaluation of the office. I don't want to go to a provider who is afraid of being closely observed or evaluated. I also find it VERY revealing to have a patient advocate come and even record what is going on. I've testified in court as a patient advocate going on appointments with people. I will not go for an IME exam without an advocate with me to observe. I have found crooked IMEs and one most excellent doc; who, as the defense IME, made my partner's case, that she was badly damaged by the dump truck hitting her car.

Now I run the Deadlock Quartet results by any prospective doc and if they say "Nonsense", I leave. If they won't believe what I tell them as my history they can't possibly help because they don't have a theoretical basis that will allow them to understand what is happening. I suffered though over 100 of those kinds, that had not a clue.

At this point I wouldn't go near a "mercury" doc or any of the other wrong theories. They won't believe that mercury is not the problem, just as you found. I haven't seen any new ones besides methylation theory in the past 10 years. And that is the only partly working hypothesis that I have seen in 30 years. It is far more difficult to PROVE fraud than it is to detect it.

About 15 years ago I had gone sailing with a friend and in trying to get launched the sailboat was getting blown into the shore. I jumped overboard into 3 feet of water to stop the boat and onto a broken piece of glass. I ended up at an instant care operation. I had my new canvas carryall bag from a recent conference that said HELP STAMP OUT MEDICAL FRAUD and the name of the antifraud organization. About half the attendees were FBI agents learning the ropes of medical fraud. Anyway, while the doc was sewing me up he said "That was a nasty 11 centimeter laceration". I said looks more like 7 cm to me. He insisted that it was clearly 11 cm and said so 3 times. I told him to bring on the ruler and I would photograph it with my camera. He didn't. The size made $200 difference in cost. When he was filling out the form I put the bag up on the counter aimed so he could see the STAMP OUT MEDICAL FRAUD side of it. He sat in his office for 25 minutes, filled out one form, contemplated the bag and filled out another, tearing up the first. He charged me for the size range that included 7 cm. I am convinced that he was going to commit fraud and charge me for the 11 cm laceration if I hadn't intimidated him into being honest. I did a complete forensic photo workup when I got home just in case anything changed after the fact
 

Victronix

Senior Member
Messages
418
Location
California
I have been very sick with low potassium as well. This is SO WEIRD. I have been eating about 5 bananas a day. I think I had to stop eating salt.

I was on Hydroxy b12 and Myethylfolate and low dose.

One episode was bad enough to warrant a call to 911. I am not sure what is worse. Being without the Mythfolate and hydroxy12 or the low potassium!

Afraid to take anything else.

PS Reacted TERRIBLE to having amalgams out. Risky indeed. Platelets dropped as well as WBC and neutophils.

I sure can sympathize -- low potassium can make me insane, literally (depending on current brain chemistry), and it can happen at even very low doses of b12 and methylfolate.

Only the fact that Fredd had talked about the importance and benign-ness of taking potassium gluconate, as well as his repeating the fact that food potassium sources cannot meet the demand, got me to start taking potassium gluconate directly and kept me out of the ER. I too considered -- could methylfolate be worth this??!! But once you address the potassium adequately, things can stabilize.

The key for people who are afraid and sensitive is the willingness to take enough of potassium to clobber the symptoms. Knowing that others were taking amounts double what I was taking (i.e., 2000-3000 mcg), and were fine, was helpful
 

Sam7777

Senior Member
Messages
115
Ah very good responses. So I need to try my best to clarify and outline what I am really getting at.

First off, I just want to explicitly state that I do take serious the mutation issues that concern folate/MeB12 and methylation. I take in particular seriousness, the role of MCS and other pollutants. What makes Chris Shade a more admirable public health person, as well as Natasha Campbell McBride, is that they do justice to the education of the biochemistry involved with chemicals- all chemicals, not just mercury, but the overlying issues people face when they have significant environmentally induced disease.

I can speak from my own family. I can honestly say I have at least two family members who are sick, my mother and aunt, and I know its mercury. I can say I have 4 who have died, and I know it was not mercury. In my mothers case, and in my case, it is probably mercury and methylation dysfunction.

I am very aware of the impracticality of dentistry in trying to replace amalgams. I have little confidence in it, and have heard little to make me believe it is cost effective or safe. I have an aunt who had restorations and other work done who underwent drilling and removal of at least 6 amalgams, without proper IAOMT safety measures, and she became quite ill from it. This is a clear case of the failure of the dentistry approach, but also a clear case of induced mercury exposure. Before she had symptoms of mild toxicity, but no fatigue or FMS issues. I believe in fair game, if you take a high rpm drill to amalgams, that this changes the argument. It is dangerous as hell, especially with multiple amalgams.

My father and mother in particular are at case. They both have predisposition to ulceritive colitis, but because I believe it is environmentally, epigenitically and lifestyle induced I would argue it is caused for different reasons in each of them. In my fathers case, he passed away, not from his UC, but no doubt the UC played a part in running him down. I can also argue that in his case mercury had little fault. I am aware according to what I was told that he had no amalgams. Most likely what played a case in creating his problem was his drug use in his teens. This would have opened up quite a pandora's box in terms of chemical exposure. I am speaking of hard drugs. He had neurological problems quite severely, so I grew up with him out of the picture. He only developed these issues after his teens, quite rapidly. And he developed the UC and CFS along with it. So I am not big on hereditary genetic theories.

I am not a mercury nut. I am a environmentalist nut.

My mother's case is more of a typical issue. History of eating disorders, so you have a strong introduction of multiple deficiencies. She has a long history with alcohol abuse, which is pretty notorious for causing folate and magnesium deficiencies. She had to get potassium shots just a few months ago, so I do not need hair results to tell me her potassium is systemically deficient. I can only surmise the effect of half a pack to pack a day cigarette habit for 30 years.

My stepmother is a much more textbook case of a MCS FMS. She had a history of working in aircraft mechanics for a number of years, in which her bare hands were exposed to some industrial grade degreasers and other related chemicals. She spent quite a few years with mental illness before she even met and married my father. She had to receive shock treatment. Unfortunately big pharma got a hold of her with the usual psychotropics. This would have put a considerable amount of liver toxicity into the equation. I do not know for sure if she had amalgams, so I cannot say mercury played a part in her overall health issues before her death. What I can say is that she was exposed to enough damage from other chemicals to develop CFS and neurological issues.

dbkita

I do not doubt the issue with oral vs sublingual b5. I believe this issue applies to multiple nutrients, including minerals. I am in particular reliant on a sublingual usage of the supplement "relora" which contains taurine and magnesium and theanine and a couple Chinese herbs. I cannot take this stuff orally or it just doesn't work for me at all. I think quite a few things are better off sublingual or injected because the liver reactions of sick people are quite unreliable. I can vouch for this with countless herbs. Before I got sick 2 years ago I could get very significant effects from certain herbs taken orally, and over time I came to have significant lack of confidence in my digestion.

I just took a multi-vitamin, and now I feel cruddy as I am writing this. Coincidence, maybe not. I had to put more sublingual Relora and Methyl-folate under my tongue to shake it off.

I contribute this to the functioning of P-450 system reactions and interactions and the pharmacology of these various compounds, to the weakened digestion of people with CFS, celiac, serious food allergies, adrenal fatigue, intestinal permeability, and other liver complications.

Arguably in my life, I have never had good digestion. The best digestion I ever had, was with a diet of fish and fruit/veggie. Essentially a pesco-vegetarian, paleo diet. In my particular case I want to outline why I think mercury is such an issue for me.

I ate fish. I ate a lot of fish for 3 years straight. I ate fish 3 times a day for 3 years straight. No bueno. Not at all. I believe I have methyl mercury poisoning and amalgam poisoning. I begun to realize this with Chris Shade's videos.

I have severe food allergies. I do not believe I have Celiac's. I believe I have had far too many food allergies, especially to milk protein and milk fat. Milk Fat. I have read probably 1000 hours about allergies and autoimmune issues. It got old over the last 4.5 years as I have tried to figure out what is responsible for my weight gain and weight loss. The more practical answers I have heard pin the blame on mercury for creating the actual autoimmune reactions to food, and it is just dairy and gluten that have the worst tendency to become a problem. Gluten and dairy are probably alone responsible for tacking on an extra 70 lbs on me in the last 16 months. Very little changed in my overall diet tendencies besides exposure to more processed foods. But I do not rule out fortified vitamins either. It was the removal of all of these foods that allowed me to lose 125 lbs initially 3.5 years ago.

I would speculate I have lead poisoning also. Some showed up on my hair test at the same level of mercury. Both lead and mercury were low. According to Chris Shade, someone with impaired liver function and GI disease will not excrete methylmercury from the hair. Only methylmercury is excreted in hair. Hair cannot determine if you have been exposed to mercury from amalgams in the elemental form. Mercury speciation is a huge issue not covered well at all by Cutler.

Shade has a background in environmental analytical chemistry. I do too. I spent about a year working on waste water treatment processes checking the effect of N P K speciation affecting aquatic environments. It was a combination of the engineering process of the plant and the ecological studies of aquatic environments. My two strong areas in chemistry are in speciation studies of aquatic pollution and in the etiology of environmental diseases.

I agree mercury issues in alternative health are rampant with quackery. Most people won't touch it, if they are reputable. Gary Null and Mercola will barely talk about it, but have more or less come out against it. Andrew Wakefield was black balled for it. I have encountered a disgusting amount of quackery. I pretty much only consider Shade and Cutler and Gary Null reputable on the subject.

I would argue I have lead poisoning as well. R-lipoic acid and rhodiola are the only two substances I know of that can leach lead out of the bones and sling it around in the body, redistributing it back into the brain/organs. I see lead poisoning as being even more prevalent as a poison in the US and West, or frankly the World, than mercury. Lead poisoned the Romans even, historically because of aquaducts and pipes. I have probably never felt better in the last 16 years of my life than the 4 weeks I first started to take rhodiola. But the come down the following 4 months along with the exposure to ALA was the beginning of my CFS. In some ways I blame ALA and rhodiola for my CFS as much as I blame mercury and fish and food allergies.

I see a lot of characteristic behavior in my family, older uncles and aunts, that suggest to me lead poisoning. And regardless, if my conjecture is wrong, their inevitable mental decline and Alzheimer or dementia will not surprise me.
My grandfather was a merchant marine, worked in salt mines, welded, did metal fabrication, ship construction, and other industrial work. He was exposed to asbestosis, and quite surely a number of metals. Undoubtedly, he was exposed to lead at some point. He has Parkinson's and Alzheimer. He is a genuine Mad Hatter. This is not mercury at work, it is a combination of Gallium, industrial Manganese, lead, and probably even more industrial metals.

He is a good example of chronic disease. His diseases cannot be blamed on lifestyle very well. He is 84. He grew up in the great depression. He had a REAL American diet. He was never exposed to processed foods until he was at least in his 40's. He continued to grow most of his vegetables well into his 70's. He still grows some things. He is still "active". He had a long history of violent tendencies, alcoholism, etc. I think partly this was his real nature, but his workplace exposure is still at issue. He had a long history of being very active. I have seen pictures of him in his 30's. He looked like a body builder. He developed heart disease and weight problems in his 60's but then lost the weight after a bypass. Then he got cancer. He has a long list of diseases. Its surprising how tough he is. One this is certain. My generation won't fair as well as he has with all of his Metal induced diseases. He was raised on a real diet, unprocessed. He worked like a mule into his mid 30's. This protects the body from processed foods, chemicals, and metals. It makes the liver work stronger. The one disease he doesn't have? Diabetes. Not a coincidence.



About Wilson. I will admit that he cannot be fully agreed with. But his diet is not too different than the Natasha Campbell McBride GAPS diet. The arguments about food are not too different than many of those in Micheal Pollan's books, who I will also heavily defend. It was Micheal Pollan and Weston A Price writings that got me on this whole thing 4.5 years ago before I had the onset of CFS issues.

I am not going to argue that Wilson is contradictory. But once again this depends on the frame and context.

I for one do not see the world strictly through biochemical terms. But I adhere to biochemistry and western logic as much as I can. I try not to contradict it, but I am very careful not to fall into reductionist thinking. I have personally benefited a great deal from TCM. I believe in TCM. TCM cannot be explained entirely by western biochemistry. But this is as much a result and fault for it being uninvestigated or unchartered water. People are only really now starting to do pharmacological studies over different herbs. I take into consideration anthropology, history, time, experience- it counts for something in TCM. I understand that if you view history, it is full of tropes, superstition, insanity, and fallacies that western scientific thought has rooted out in the process of modern scientific inquiry. But modern APA/AMA/NIH/ADA approaches are perhaps the most "scientism" adhering reductionist in all of western scientific foundations. I see areas of Physics as being far more open minded towards actual scientific inquiry, while the biological sciences are wrought with reductionist materialist Hegelian dialectic approaches. This has made individual care in medicine a slow process. While it is easy to call quackery against many of the alternative health areas that part ways with standard biochemistry, the orthodoxy of the American Health Care system will still make it very difficult for people who even attempt to use things like Methyl-folate and Methyl-cobalamin.


Personally I am at a point where I feel like I need to start doing what Freddd, Cutler, and Shade are talking about as far as hedging my bet goes. But the diet is a big big issue in all of this, and affects how you metabolize supplements as I pointed out above. A heavy plant based unprocessed diet is about the best way to get mineral levels up. The fact that so many of the people who have claimed success with Cutler, have the same trace hair mineral analysis results with highly consistent patterns of deficiencies, often many of them never having read Wilson, does strongly corroborate the ability of heavy metals to displace mineral absorption. Many people who have heavy metal toxicity have intestinal permeability, weak livers, and mutations in methylation. There are multiple reasons why they are not absorbing minerals.

I am not parsing my words when I talk about multi-factorial environmentally induced chronic degenerative diseases. It is a many many headed hydra beast, not easily dealt with. CFS, diabetes, Parkinson's, mineral deficiencies, cancer, food allergies, UC, FMS, MCS, are a package deal.

I am definitely not about to jump in and defend Lucky Charms for adding folic acid to cereals. I don't doubt the involvement.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
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I've heard from two people who tested high for mercury, but were able to tolerate alpha lipoic acid and NAC just fine so that's not a good way to determine if you have mercury issues. Other people react to ALA either to sulphur issues or hypoglycemia. There are people here with mercury toxicity. I have no doubt. I don't know how prevalent it is and I wouldn't want to hazard a guess since many people haven't been tested. In some instances it might be overdiagnosed, but in other cases I believe it's underdiagnosed. Even if I could afford to get my amalgams removed, I'm not sure I'd do it. Seems risky and I'm not convinced that having amalgams means you have mercury issues. I've heard from people who got worse after getting their amalgams removed.
My point was that the conventional wisdom that reaction to nac and ala means mercury tox is not always correct. You the approach this by citing two people who have no reaction but have mercury problens. So? My point was never intended as proof. It was intended simply that there is no firm rule regardless of what people preach. And besides I guess I did not make clear enough how i was laboriously tested otherwise but that is a separate point. I also tried to want people about the racrmic mixture of ala. It is not just that I can tolerate r-ala but that I feel much better taking it. So how do interpret that at least for myself?

You seem to have been wondering if you have mercury issues for a long time. If so then get it tested. Maybe get a hair and urine analysis. If you still have questions try cutler's ala chelation for a few weeks and then do a urine test. If all negative you can move on. If you test positive you can try to attack the problem imo instead of being caught in between.

In my own case maybe mercury is an issue. But I have done everything including actual high priced chelation with testing of the output urine and still negative. So if it is a problem it is undetectable, invisible and ethereal. What the heck do I do with that?