[M]y 14th round was very long, a record for me at 12 days. Based on the prior round I expected to feel better than I did. After the first day of side effects, I settled into a state of mild apathy and slowness or confusion. Also did not experience any of the euphoria that I have glimpsed from time to time in previous rounds.
Still able to work but not very productively in the afternoons. For the last three days of the round, I slept very lightly and with difficulty. On the last day of the round I took my last ALA at 2 PM and by evening I was feeling more relaxed than I had for days, so I attribute the light sleep to an accumulation of ALA. It is a support factor for methylation, so that’s one possible explanation.
Overall, I feel like I’m getting more results from my methylation support (and exercise) that I am from chelation but it’s early in the game and I’ve always seen methylation as a quicker hit and chelation a very long-term project. My improving toleration of chelation gives me confidence that I’m going in the right direction.
My body temperature reached normal levels during this round. I’ll keep taking the iodine, however. I did more reading about iodine and still feel comfortable with my 50 mg dosing. My wife seems very stable on her 25 mg also.
On the methylation front, I introduced TMG and had an immediate reaction — 500 mg was a little too uncomfortable but split between breakfast and lunch is tolerable. I’m expecting it to take about a week to 10 days for this reaction to fade. It’s hard to describe the reaction but it’s something like having a mild headache with confusion, and feeling wired and tired at the same time.
As for the B6, I think I’ve broken through cleanly and no longer have side effects from it.
Next round, I’m going to try to increase the frequency again because I always start feeling fatigue in the last half-hour of each dose interval. Because it didn’t go well last time I tried this, I’m going to try to reach a compromise with a little bit longer interval, less DMSA and a little more ALA. looking back at my notes, I might’ve had too much going on the last time I tried as I started using Iodoral iodine the same day that I got maytagged.
My round notes are below:
Round 14 (12 days) – 50 mg DMSA, 50 mg ALA every 3 hours, total chelation days to date: 49
- Sunday, July 14: started at 8 PM, frontal headache and a little emotional by 10 PM
- Monday, July 15: not very productive day work wise, not feeling the confusion but some apathy, probably from not sleeping well. A little bit of head pressure. temperature down a bit. less hunger than normal, not snacking much.
- Tuesday, July 16: sprints at 9 AM, about an hour earlier than normal and was very tight, difficult to complete because of pain in feet. Slow thinking. Less hunger than normal, snacking very little. Barefoot walk before dinner. A little difficulty falling asleep, but then slept well.
- Wednesday, July 17: started taking CoQ10 with 10 mg at breakfast and lunch. A little fatigued this morning and still tight during sprints. Almost didn’t feel like napping after lunch (unusual, CoQ10?) but did anyway and dozed lightly.
- Thursday, July 18: added 10 mg CoQ10, mild confusion and apathy
- Friday, July 19: mild confusion and apathy
- Saturday, July 20: increased B12 by 250 µg to 1 mg, used 10 g D-Ribose horseback riding (twice as much as normal) to good effect, mild confusion and apathy
- Sunday, July 21: increased vitamin C from 4 g to 5 g, increased fish oil by 77 mg to 569 mg omega-3, fatigued from Saturday, mild confusion and apathy, headache from 8 PM until bedtime (vit D?), a little trouble falling asleep but slept well.
- Monday, July 22:increased B12 by 250 µg to 1.25 mg, mild confusion and apathy
- Tuesday, July 23 – Friday, July 26: mild confusion and apathy, pretty minimal side effects with the exception that I slept very lightly and had trouble falling asleep several nights. Considered that it might have been due to a stressful week at work, or from the aspartate in my lithium which I was taking near bedtime, or from the increase in vitamin C. However, on Friday I took my last ALA at 2 PM and after dinner I was feeling much more relaxed than I had for a week. So maybe the ALA was involved also. Don’t really have a way to know because I also rearranged my supplement schedule with the lithium in the morning and no vitamin C after 4 PM… Anyhow, I’m sure I’m ready for a chelator dose increase or frequency increase.
- Saturday, July 27 (off-round): slept deeply at midday nap – first time in many many days which leads me to believe that the trouble I had sleeping last week was mostly related to doing an extended round (chelators) and not related to support supplements. Added 500 mg TMG. Slight headache a few hours later…