[E]ight rounds completed now, which is nothing and everything at the same time. Nothing because I might have 150 or 200 rounds to go. Everything because, getting started is the most important step of all and I’d guess the first 10 rounds might be the hardest because I’m learning by trial and error as we all must to some degree. And the errors hurt.
I’m a little clueless because I’ve been lightheaded for a week and it makes it hard to know which way is up and which way’s down. I admit that I’m following too many protocols all at once. Chelation, iodine, methylation and massive diet change is probably too much. But, in spite of the loose grip in my brain, I have this gut feeling it’s going well and I am on my way to a complete recovery. That’s an extremely bold statement, but I’m making it.
I’d be willing to estimate that I’ve spent the last eight weeks reading about chelation, iodine and methylation for an average of five hours a day which amounts to 200 hours of reading. This week 20+ hours was dedicated to methylation and in particular the B 12 – The Hidden Story thread. I really wish I had read that before starting methylation but now that I’ve ‘started up’ I’m not going to quit. I’ve adjusted my doses and will push through to the other side of my lightheadedness and confusion, which according to my reading might last 4 to 8 weeks. In the meantime, I’m working on an index/FAQ to the Hidden Story thread and will post it here when it’s done.
What’s going on in my body after eight weeks?
What I’m most excited about is that my symptoms of hypoglycemia have changed. This is very difficult to describe. Very generally speaking it feels as if hypoglycemia is receding from my body, but not my brain (yet). In the past, about two hours after a meal it would feel as if I were suffocating physically and mentally. In the body, I would feel weak, hungry and tense in the stomach. In the mind, I would get lightheaded, think very slowly and experience some sort of tunnel vision.
Typically to counteract these effects, I would snack nonstop between meals and take one isocort about every hour. Now, I’m eating less in between meals, forgetting to take my cortisol and getting more lightheaded than before probably with less slow thinking and less tunnel vision. The increase in lightheadedness may sometimes be due to eating less between meals. It is difficult to tease out these changes because they happen slowly and subtly and because I’m lightheaded! Bottom line, I’m having moments were my body feels relaxed and energetic while my mind is completely blown out.
What happened in round eight?
- I wanted to continue with another easy round because of the difficulty I experienced with methylation, so I continued without ALA again but did increase the frequency of my 75 mg DMSA doses from four hours to three hours. That did make round eight more difficult than round seven but still relatively smooth with only a few emotional hiccups and short periods of feeling burned out.
- I also added niacin in the form of inositol hexanicotinate with my iodine and discovered I could not take it in the morning because it makes me groggy, so instead of dividing it morning and evening I take it all with my evening dose of iodine.
- My first day off-round was a day of recovery as usual – fatigued and a little down.
- Today I started switching from a dry vitamin E to the NOW gamma complex.
- My wife seems to be responding well to the essential supplements she’s been taking for over a week to lay the groundwork for chelation later this year. She did get very angry one day so I decided to back down on the methylation supplements. So she is taking just the pure encapsulation b complex now and a half tablet of dibencozide.
- My oldest daughter who has some sleep problems, a touch of Ehlers-Danlos and skin problems has also started with the pure encapsulation b complex, C, potassium, magnesium and fish oil.
What’s next?
My lightheadedness may well be purely B12 start-up but I also can’t help thinking that leaving out ALA might have contributed to my feeling that my body is doing better than my mind on chelation… next week I plan to add in 25 mg ALA. I’ve also noted that alpha lipoic acid is recommended by Freddd as a cofactor for methylation.
My notes:
Round 8 (2.5 days) – 75 mg DMSA every 3 hours, total chelation days to date: 21
- Monday, May 6: still lightheaded from methylation supplements which I have decreased down to crumbs and added 3 mg dibencozide. Using niacin to knock down the methylation startup symptoms. Iodine is now up to 12.5 mg.
- Tuesday, May 7: fatigued until after breakfast then feeling unusually balanced. Tired in evening.
- Wednesday, May 8: lightheaded in afternoon and evening.
Sounds like you are very much on the right path!
Regarding how much one should read before starting a new supplement, I find that it is a non trivial issue. You can make the case that “of course one should read everything before starting” but in practice I find that it can be both overwhelming and confusing. And many mercury toxic people have significant procrastination issues (I used to have that). Finally, once you have treid something and noticed a meaningful effect, it makes you far more interested and focused.
On the other hand, I really do think that everbody should read up before they start anything.
As is often the case, no clear answer is available…..
PS. I am very much looking forward to your summary of the Fredd protocol!
Thanks Viking, I started to write about how cautious one should be before starting something new and how easy it is to second-guess with hindsight, and then thought better of it because my thinking got circular. Until you try something, you really don’t have a good hold for understanding what you’re reading – I agree it’s a delicate balance.
In the case of methylation, I think it is greatly complicated by the haphazard way the information is spread around on Phoenix Rising. I think the active basics page is a dangerous place to start because it gives you the impression that everyone should start off with large quantities of everything all together which is strongly contradicted when you read the hidden story thread.
I wish I could spend all day today and tomorrow reading and indexing again but I have to get some stuff done for a change. 😀
“In the case of methylation, I think it is greatly complicated by the haphazard way the information is spread around on Phoenix Rising”
Well, you could say the same about chelation. In general, Cutler’s recommendations in the book are much more agressive than what what often seems to be the consensus on the FDC group. And if you spend a few days reading up on FDC you can also get very confused about many issues. But I do agree that the Phoenix Rising forum is even more confusing.
The only thing we can know for sure is what effects we personally have had from any given supplement. And even this is often difficult, since you may be starting several things at around the same time and also the effects may be delayed.
Anyway, Cutler wrote a long post that I really like and that I think is relevant in this discussion. This was about the size of the starting dose of ALA, but it can also be seen as a general observation that on all these forums, you get a very high proportion of posts from very sensitive and/or sick people. These posts are of course relevant and meaningful, but may create the impression that everybody should use very low doses of everything. This made sense to me and was the reason that I started at 25 mg ALA and went up rapidly from there.
So I guess you can say that I have mainly good experiece with high starting doses. But we really are all very different and everybody has to find out what works for them.
I enjoyed reading Andy’s post about the nature of health forums and felt a little guilty about laughing. On the other hand, had I started chelation five years ago after my nervous breakdown at the depths of my illness, I might have been one of those very sensitive individuals.
The methylation starting dose is complicated by the fact that there is a common pattern of experiencing improvements on steadily increasing dosages of Metafolin/MeCbl until suddenly getting nailed by unpleasant side effects… I don’t think that happens with chelation and I think it deserves more emphasis.
The nature of the Phoenix Rising forum hides important information because lots of it is posted way beyond the number of pages the average reader will probably reach…
On the other hand, FDC takes good care of its readers with the intro documents and files.
“The methylation starting dose is complicated by the fact that there is a common pattern of experiencing improvements on steadily increasing dosages of Metafolin/MeCbl until suddenly getting nailed by unpleasant side effects… I don’t think that happens with chelation and I think it deserves more emphasis.”
Well…maybe….
Regarding chelation, I have read many stories of people that do great, up the doses, do even better and then have a crash (often adrenal). And with methylation, there are also many people that just do great, period. But what percentages fall in to these different categories? I really don’t know…. Also, you have very similar issues with iodine.
“The nature of the Phoenix Rising forum hides important information because lots of it is posted way beyond the number of pages the average reader will probably reach…
On the other hand, FDC takes good care of its readers with the intro documents and files.”
I agree 100%!
come to think of it, I’m sure you’re right about that pattern of increasing improvements followed by a crash with chelation and iodine also. it’s kind of in the nature of any healing process even when you’re talking about something simple like a sprained ankle or foot. we get so excited to be healing and then overdo it. there is always an invisible limit imposed by physiology or biochemistry which each person has to explore on their own!