I see you are COMT ++- I heard that can make one very susceptible to start-up B12 symptoms. That must be very tough!!! Thanks for the support.
But here is the strange thing @
Boo87 : I already went through all of that start-up stuff and finally started leveling off the last 3 weeks or so... even my low K symptoms went away. I was progressing nicely, raising my dose just a little bit every three days with no reaction when all of the sudden THE OPPOSITE started happening. Instead of fast heartbeat it was slow and lethargic. I felt weak and anemic. Extremely low energy! (as opposed to hyper and heart beating out of chest as with start-up).
Is that methyl-trapping? If it is I think I should up my supplements- but yeah given my previous experience a few months ago, I don't want to ramp up too quick. So now I have been off them 4 days and my viral symptoms are coming back, fatigue is not improving and have no energy for school. If I go back on them will energy get worse?
Going to naturopath tomorrow- will post what he says. But I have more faith in what you all have to say! Don't like doctors but hope this one surprises me tomorrow.
Had B12 tested 6 years ago it was well above the lab limits- but that was serum B12 which probably doesn't mean anything. I am definitely deficient in my tissues- my geographic tongue tells the whole story.
Thanks for the explanation about my COMT ++ mutation. Are you the same?
Yes, I had terrible start up symptoms, with crazy low potassium at night. I seem to have been able to curb within the last few days with niacin (B3). Have you ever tried that? I've taken as low as 60mcg, not any more than that yet, and it had a calming effect and took away the anxiety, wiredness and jiteryness that B12 gave me.
It's just that I know I need B12 because I was getting B12 deficiency symptoms such as pain in the nerves of my arms, pain in the nerves of my temples, loss of balance, depression etc. Which are the same symptoms I got when my level was 175. So taking these low doses of B12 only helps me out from day to day, but what I want to do is have a lot of energy like a regular person and heal my body, not just enough B12 to get through each day.
I went to a naturopath when I first started taking B12. The thing is naturopaths aren't doctors, at least my naturopath was hesitant to really comment or give too much direction beyond the foods I should eat. She didn't tell me which supplements to take, but the ones I was already taking, she did tell me when I should take them. So you could see she was very careful in what she did or didn't tell me to do, apart from diet.
The good thing about my naturopath was that she did end up doing a pinprick blood test which showed on a TV screen in realtime my blood cells and she did say they were large, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately, I've misplaced the print out of the results. Large red blood cells is a symptom of low B12 and folate, and suddenly correcting the deficiency, flooding the body with B12, can easily cause hypokalemia, which is exactly what happened to me. There's even a warning about that on my pamphlet that came with my B12 injections.
So I felt that it would have been to expensive to keep seeing my naturopath, seeing as the advice she was giving me wasn't direct enough, probably because she isn't a doctor and didn't want to get into trouble by giving advice that I could harm myself with. She did seem to appreciate low B12 more than the typical doctor, though. But I've been able to treat myself for free with advice from this forum anyhow, and ordering supplements online.
However, maybe you'll get something out of your appointment. See if you can get a pinprick of your blood and your blood cells shown on screen (I forget the name of the test.)
When you say that you went through that start-up stuff, what dosage were you on of B12?
What type of B12?
How much did you increase it by each 3 days and when the fatigue hit you, what dosage were you on then?
Are you taking methylfolate as well?
What can happen when you first start taking B12 is that your body has -some- folate reserves, but once those are gone, it doesn't have folate to heal your body with. I -think- that's methyl trapping? But whether that happened in your case, I'm not sure. But it could be?
Do you take any other supplements like magnesium?
How much potassium were you taking each day when on B12?
Even though the serum B12 test is kind useless, it's still handy to have just so you definitely know B12 is the issue. Do you think you could get other things tested like iron/ferritin and Vitamin D?
At the same time that my serum B12 was 175, my ferritin was as low as 7. Yes, 7. This is when it should ideally be at about 100 or even 150. And my iron saturation was 7%, when it should be between 15 - 45%. No wonder I felt like death warmed up...
So there could be other things going on beside B12, so that's why it's good to get tested, if you can.