[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.