Gondwanaland
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What oil do you prefer?
No love of B2 here - a warning about riboflavin
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I remember your posts here on PR telling us about it.@CCC I was also concerned about sublinguals and teeth. I switched to using B12 transdermally and then did the same w/ FMN. I've found that I need 1/2 tab FMN/day transdermally, and 1 tab sublingually. I crush the tab onto a piece of fabric, add oil or lotion, and apply to skin. But, seems like you've gotten another solution.
We tried it with the B12 here - and I mean 'we' this time. We all did, just to see what happened, and to try to get the technique right. You made it sound so easy!
Well, despite my hippy tendencies and a lot of university lab experience and some herbal medicine training and years of being a mum, I couldn't get the B12 to work. Then we discovered the oils and haven't looked back.
We never tried it with FMN. That was messy enough in the mouth, let alone on the skin. And we're dealing with a teenager here, not an adult. I was going to insist on revisiting your way of doing FMN if we went past the end of the year, but in the end we seem to have gotten past it.
One thing, though - straight B2 did not work at first. It took about 6 months of sublingual FMN to get something working enough for the cheap B2 tablets to work at all. So we're still very grateful for your FMN revelation.
I wish I knew enough about biochemistry to understand what was going on here.
Thanks for this @alicec.
When you say the main form of folate in the blood is methylfolate, I'm assuming that's if one's methylation is not blocked and/or running smoothly? I ask because when I had the methylation panel run, I wasn't supping w/folic, yet that was by far the highest of the three forms tested.
???
But the Krebs cycle is in or part of the mitochondria isn't it?
Speaking generally from analysis of blood of normal, healthy people.
Folic acid is not found in nature so it had to come from some industrial source (? in the past), or the test is measuring something else and reporting it as folic acid.
It was 6 years ago, so there's a chance I could've been taking a b12/folic sublingual in the months before. I know I used to take it off and on for years, and always made me feel better, as opposed to methylfolate. I do best on folinic now...
Little Bluestem
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Folic acid is used to 'fortify' a lot of foods, so you could have been getting it that way.
Maybe microscopically and accidentally, but have avoided fortified foods in general for probably10-12 years.
Kathevans
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This is interesting. I've been experimenting with both a bit of B2 in my multi and the FMN for months now and very slowly I've found that I need less folate, that what I thought was a folate need, actually seems to cause weird side effects, tightening of the trapezius muslces, the neck, the face/cheeks. Now I'm focussing primarily on B-12 (the oils and the sublinguals to cover gaps) and B2.
Slowly, slowly. The molybdenum does feel as if it began to shift things. Still keeping close watch!
Has anyone had a metabolic work up with amino acid panels that suggest that they have one of the mitochondrial disorders that respond to riboflavin? My doctor does amino acid panels and some of the levels have been abnormal. But nothing has ever been conclusive.
Also what is the SNP for MAO that suggests slow breakdown of seratonin/amines?
Also what is the SNP for MAO that suggests slow breakdown of seratonin/amines?
There are a number of SNPs which affect activity of the MAOA enzyme. Here is the OMIM entry which summarises the major pathogenic SNPs at the end.
Probably you are thinking of R297R aka rs6323. This SNP was popularised by Yasko and a great deal of nonsense has been written about it on the internet.
Actually it does nothing at all. The SNP is a synonymous variant - ie the DNA change does not result in a change to the protein product. The enzyme produced by the variant is identical to that produced by the ancestral or wildtype gene.
Here is a post about that SNP.
All we did was read the papers (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16737791 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12891154) on the basis of a block in the Krebs cycle at the succinate--fumarate step and worked from there. In other words - trial and error with some information to start with.
I don't know if it was a genetic mitochondria disorder or just a plain old deficiency that had the same result in energy terms.
We've found the same thing - needing less folate (now as folinic) as B2 levels rise.
Are you saying the folate caused the tight face/muscles?
Kathevans
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@CCC The extreme reaction is still a bit unclear to me, but absolutely as I ramped up folate about six weeks ago, I felt initially better, then suddenly worse when I reached about 2mg of folate. Late one night-- when my worst reactions seem to occur-- the back of my neck was uncomfortably knotted and I had quite a headache. It was bad enough that my body's message was clear: not this! (Of course the folate response may change if other underlying deficiencies are satisfied...)
So I titrated back down, looking for a spot where I felt better and ended up stopping completely. Now, it seems that as the B2 does it's thing...possibly with the help of not only the molybdenum, but also selenium...which I've barely begun to supplement (since @Johnmac has shared with us that Greg Russell-Jones has now warned us off Brazil Nuts because they actually have the wrong kind of selenium ((selenomethionine vs selenocysteine, I think it is))) suddenly it seems that when the symptom begins to appear, it's B2 that actually alleviates it. I'm still at pretty low doses of B2--no more than 4 or 5 quarters of the Source Naturals FMN. When I titrated up to about 50mg/day last spring, my B2 levels went sky high (over 400) most likely because, as Greg points out, I wasn't able to utilize it.
I'm hoping this time around it will be different. I'm currently using one squirt of the MeB12 Oils/day, though I may need more to take care of tingling in my leg...
All this said, I may have other deficiencies that contribute to this group of symptoms, though I do believe the B12 and B2 are major players.
So I titrated back down, looking for a spot where I felt better and ended up stopping completely. Now, it seems that as the B2 does it's thing...possibly with the help of not only the molybdenum, but also selenium...which I've barely begun to supplement (since @Johnmac has shared with us that Greg Russell-Jones has now warned us off Brazil Nuts because they actually have the wrong kind of selenium ((selenomethionine vs selenocysteine, I think it is))) suddenly it seems that when the symptom begins to appear, it's B2 that actually alleviates it. I'm still at pretty low doses of B2--no more than 4 or 5 quarters of the Source Naturals FMN. When I titrated up to about 50mg/day last spring, my B2 levels went sky high (over 400) most likely because, as Greg points out, I wasn't able to utilize it.
I'm hoping this time around it will be different. I'm currently using one squirt of the MeB12 Oils/day, though I may need more to take care of tingling in my leg...
All this said, I may have other deficiencies that contribute to this group of symptoms, though I do believe the B12 and B2 are major players.
If he is MAO-A deficient then which enzyme would MFolate make faster?
Jenny TipsforME
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Oh dear b vitamins are so tricky to get right and I'm not well enough to read this whole thread
I'm hoping someone can give me a bit of a summary? Was the general consensus that B2 can reduce serotonin?
It is interesting because I've recently changed to a much higher dose b2 supplement and I've been uncharacteristically low. There are a couple of potential circumstantial reasons for this too, but it is very out of character for me. I'm more prone to unrealistic optimism and high motivation that interferes with pacing.
Previously I've found that B2 helps me (eg https://tipsforme.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/mendus/) so this is a surprise but I know b vitamin levels have to be just so.
I find buying b vitamins a minefield. I was already only taking 1/2 or 1/4 dose of the new multi vitamin.
Can anyone suggest a good B-50 style supplement that has folate not folic acid which you can buy in the UK?
I'm hoping someone can give me a bit of a summary? Was the general consensus that B2 can reduce serotonin?
It is interesting because I've recently changed to a much higher dose b2 supplement and I've been uncharacteristically low. There are a couple of potential circumstantial reasons for this too, but it is very out of character for me. I'm more prone to unrealistic optimism and high motivation that interferes with pacing.
Previously I've found that B2 helps me (eg https://tipsforme.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/mendus/) so this is a surprise but I know b vitamin levels have to be just so.
I find buying b vitamins a minefield. I was already only taking 1/2 or 1/4 dose of the new multi vitamin.
Can anyone suggest a good B-50 style supplement that has folate not folic acid which you can buy in the UK?
I don't think there was a clear conclusion.
Gondwanaland
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It can lower serotonin since it is a co-fator of the MAO-A enzyme (which breaks down serotonin). Too much B2 may speed up the enzyme.
Gondwanaland
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He is not MAO-A deficient. Being -MAO-A means that the enzyme acts faster than for +MAO-A. If he takes Mfolate, his enzyme gets even faster.