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Potential remedy for CFS/Fibromyalgia (Biotin)

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,300
Location
Ashland, Oregon
A new poster over on the ProHealth board just started an interesting thread entitled:

Potential remedy for CFS/Fibromyalgia

After 30 years, I have finally regained my energy. I have tried many things and everything helped somewhat but this was dramatic and almost immediate and a godsend. My office had moved last summer after 20 years; I work for FDA and now have a much longer commute and work in a huge complex where I have a to walk a 1/4 mile to my office and another to the cafeteria. I was having trouble and was looking to transfer even though I really liked my job.

My 85 yr. old mother called to say she could play tennis again. We played and the next day she told me it was the biotin which she had started taking for thining hair. She used to be breathless but now no longer had this problem. I googled biotin and found it was necessary for transfer of CO2 and production of ATP.

I figured it was cheap and non-toxic so I would give it a try. I had pretty immediate and dramatic results. All of a sudden I had tremendous energy, my chemical and food allergies improved dramatically and my hypglycemia was gone among other things. I had taken St Johns Wort for the past 20 years but no longer needed it. This releif has continued at 5 months and counting. I am very knowledgable in supplements, ayurveda, homeopathy, acupuncture which I do on myself, herbs, etc,, but had never heard of this.

My 2 friends with fibromyalgia for the past 30 years both had dramatic results with their energy after 4-6 month of treatment. All my other friends who have tried it have had significant increases in energy. I review clinical trial protocols and analyze the results for a living and understand the placebo effect and this is definitely not such an effect and don't care if it is. An added benefit: it is dirt cheap. Take 5000 mcg biotin a day (can be purchased anywhere but Vitacost sells a year supply for $12.)

Also I recommend that you make sure your Vit. D levels are adequate. Get them checked out by a doctor, but you could take about 2000 IU a day until you have them checked out. Most of the population is deficient in Vit. D and 1/4 of the pop is severely deficient. I was in the latter category. I was able to get my levels up before I started the Biotin and the increase in Vit. D did help my allergies somewhat. You should also probably take an adequate B complex (prbably B50 or B100).

It may take as much as 4-6 weeks to see effects.

I have been told that one practioner uses 20mg to treat candida and supposed to be effective against protozoan infections.

Caution: if you are on insulin you need to be careful because it lower blood sugar. Also supposedly effective for pre-diabetics.

From my googling, I only found 1 side effects: headaches. If this s a problem just try lowering the dose.

Good luck and hope everyone else has similar results.
 
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anne_likes_red

Senior Member
Messages
1,103
Thanks Wayne, that's very interesting.

Biotin is one of the big players in the KPU protocol. Apparently people with high levels of metal toxicity can excrete any Biotin they produce...and they often don't produce enough in the first place if they have gut problems. So it sounds like for many of us it may be well worth a trial :)

Thanks again for posting!
 
S

Suzy

Guest
Very interesting. I have high propionic acid in my blood which apparently can be caused by low biotin according to rich V.
 

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,300
Location
Ashland, Oregon
Biotin for Agitated Exhaustion ?

Does anybody ever have the experience where you read about something that might be helpful for your health, and it just sort of "lights up" for you. That's what happened when I saw this thread on biotin, and so I went out and bought some yesterday (high potency of 5mg). I paid a little over $5 for it.

Well, I got home and took one right away, and shortly after went down for my afternoon nap. I noticed I slept differently (better) than normal, and into the evening noticed more of a calmness in my system.

Now this morning, I'm continuing to notice the same thing. It is a pleasant relief! I've long had "agitated exhaustion" with great difficulty settling down. Microcurrent therapy (alpha-stim) has been very helpful, but I am feeling optmistic about what biotin might be able to do for me as I continue using it.

I would recommend this to Cort (who has mentioned his inablity to relax), but I don't want to interfere with his prodigious writing, which I so much appreciate. So please everybody, don't tell Cort about this post! :D

Wayne
 

andreamarie

Senior Member
Messages
195
I have been taking a vitamin compound that has 3,000 mg of biotin in it. I started it over a yr ago for my hair and nails. It's been amazing for my hair (except it grows faster and I have to color roots more often. My nails are the best they've been. But I haven't noticed anything else. I'm going to increase it for a wk and see what happens.
 

dannybex

Senior Member
Messages
3,561
Location
Seattle
Does anybody ever have the experience where you read about something that might be helpful for your health, and it just sort of "lights up" for you. That's what happened when I saw this thread on biotin, and so I went out and bought some yesterday (high potency of 5mg). I paid a little over $5 for it.

Well, I got home and took one right away, and shortly after went down for my afternoon nap. I noticed I slept differently (better) than normal, and into the evening noticed more of a calmness in my system.

Now this morning, I'm continuing to notice the same thing. It is a pleasant relief! I've long had "agitated exhaustion" with great difficulty settling down. Microcurrent therapy (alpha-stim) has been very helpful, but I am feeling optmistic about what biotin might be able to do for me as I continue using it.

I would recommend this to Cort (who has mentioned his inablity to relax), but I don't want to interfere with his prodigious writing, which I so much appreciate. So please everybody, don't tell Cort about this post! :D

Wayne

Very interesting Wayne. I was prescribed 5mg biotin 2x a day...months and months ago, but you know how it goes...a cupboard full of supplements, one tends to not know what is helping, what is helping, plus one gets REALLY sick of taking all these things.

Having said that...biotin is one of the things I've not taken very often in the past 2 months...and this past month has been HELL...just extremely agitated and restless, yet can hardly stand up.

So...even though this is a year old, and not everyone might benefit, I'm glad I found the thread, and will try and get some more biotin today. I wasn't anywhere near this bad even 2-3 months ago.

Thanks!
 

jeffrez

Senior Member
Messages
1,112
Location
NY
If you have low cortisol, low cortisol precursors, low androgens, etc. biotin can drive the wrong end of the pathway and make you worse. People should find out what's wrong with themselves first if possible and address what they find there before just taking random supplements because it supposedly cured someone else's CFS. Imo.
 

Rand56

Senior Member
Messages
675
Location
Myrtle Beach, SC
If you have low cortisol, low cortisol precursors, low androgens, etc. biotin can drive the wrong end of the pathway and make you worse. People should find out what's wrong with themselves first if possible and address what they find there before just taking random supplements because it supposedly cured someone else's CFS. Imo.

hi Mr.Kite

Do you have any references you can point me to in stating that additonal biotin lowers cortisol? I can't seem to find any when searching for it. To the contrary, I've heard other people say it can help in raising cortisol..but there again..they did not cite references to those claims.
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
I tried biotin at that dosage for a goodly number of months with no discernible difference whatsoever, I'm afraid.
 

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,300
Location
Ashland, Oregon
After reading an Article by Mercola on the benefits of eating raw eggs, I think I'm going to start introducing them into my smoothies. Mercola eats four raw eggs a day! I think I'll start with one. :rolleyes: The article says that egg whites inhibit the uptake of biotin, so many people don't eat them. But Mercola believes there is so much biotin in the egg yolks (nature's balance) that you can eat the whole egg raw and not be affected. For anybody who might be interested in upping their biotin intake using foods, eating just the egg yolk would probably do that very well.
 

jeffrez

Senior Member
Messages
1,112
Location
NY
hi Mr.Kite

Do you have any references you can point me to in stating that additonal biotin lowers cortisol? I can't seem to find any when searching for it. To the contrary, I've heard other people say it can help in raising cortisol..but there again..they did not cite references to those claims.

Hey. I never said that biotin lowers cortisol, only that biotin can drive the metabolic pathways in ways that the cell might not be ready or able to handle, much like exercising can drive the aerobic pathways and make you worse, even though exercising might even increase cortisol. Depends on the person and their mitochondrial and energy metabolic profile, what energy blockages exist in the cell, electron transport chain, etc. Sorry for the delay, I just saw the reply now when the thread was re-activated.
 

Radio

Senior Member
Messages
453
I tried biotin at that dosage for a goodly number of months with no discernible difference whatsoever, I'm afraid.

We need to repair the mitochondria before supplementation will have the most dramatic effect. Biotin needs Lysine in the Biotin cycle. :hug:

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http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/how-i-recovered-from-cfs.27280/
 
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