I’ve been following the Fred protocol for more than a year now at the same time that I pursue frequent dose chelation. I am a strong believer in Fred’s ‘startup reaction’ concept and am still titrating up my methylation supplements. Currently I take 4 mg folate, 4 mg adb12 and just bumped up to 6 mg mb12 per day along with all the other supports.
If you read everything that Fred wrote about startup reactions, you’ll see that he is very opposed to thinking about the side effects of methylation as detox reactions. He makes a good point that the side effects prevent a lot of people from getting what they need to heal. They experience the unpleasant reactions and think ‘this must be bad for me’ or ‘I can’t handle this’ and then stop taking active B12s.
Well, I had a very clear detox symptom a few days ago when I increased from 5 mg to 6 mg of B12. Over the past year I had done my B12 increases much more slowly. This time I just felt like I could handle a big jump. I was right – I did handle it well, but in addition to the usual startup effects, I experienced significantly increased tinnitus which is a very common side effect of chelation.
In fact, I experienced the same increase in tinnitus three weeks prior during a DMPS chelation round. So, as a result of this experience, I am personally very satisfied that ramping up methylation is also firing up my detoxification system and helping to drain my toxic swamp. I have always found it remarkable that the methylation startup symptoms are so similar to chelation side effects in my case and now I’m confident I know the reason why.
It has now been six days since my 1 mg B-12 increase and I’m still feeling it. No more tinnitus but still feeling fatigued, overly warm in the evenings, a little bit emotionally overwhelmed, and not sleeping quite as well as I should. Next time, I will go back to my smaller titrations!
What I like about the methylation protocol and one of the reasons I put a high priority on it is that it’s something I do every single day. So my increase in B12 carries through every day whether I’m chelating or taking a break from chelation. I’m glad for this bright spot because I’m not doing that well with chelation and suspect I will have to decrease my doses substantially and/or increase my hydrocortisone a lot.