Quote from mosaic on December 5, 2024, 10:26 am

It took me a year to figure out that my pronounced detox bottleneck responds to B12 injections (sublingual didn't work). I wasn’t able to ingest any amount of beans or oats without having extreme intolerable depression.

50 injections later, I can tolerate beans and oats again.

Anyone here who tried B12 injections? I know these detox bottlenecks are highly individual, but I found some information that suggest many people are in need of B12 injections.

I am tempted to speculate that lack of enough B12 could even be the cause of the "detox setback" observed by Grant. This isn't something that can be solved by a b-complex supplement. What I think happened in my case is that once I started on the low vitamin A diet, the remaining B12 in my liver got used up and my chronic vitamin B12 deficiency revealed itself. This could explain why some people see a worsening after the first couple months, as the B12 reserves are used up at one point in a subset of people with low reserves to begin with. In healthy people, the liver has the largest concentration of B12 (in the form of adenosylcobalamin) in the body.

Some clues:

1. A healthy body stores up to 5-10 mg B12, most of it in the liver. Oral/sublingual B12 isn't absorbed well (1-2%), only injections can bring the blood level up quickly (to >40,000 pg/ml, 100 times the normal blood level) to saturate tissue stores and cells. That means those who take a b-complex and think they have B12 covered, are potentially still deficient. Folate even worsens B12 deficiency. Common diagnostic methods do not rule out intracellular and cerebral deficiency. All B12 organizations and groups agree that injections are the only reliable treatment for B12 deficiency.

2. Accutane treatment lowers B12 levels significantly to the point of deficiency within 12 months and the authors compare the neurotoxic effects of accutane to B12 deficiency

3. Mouse embryos are completely protected from the teratogenic effects of accutane when provided with an extremely high dose of B12. Is there any other nutrient that neutralizes retinoic acid in vivo?

4. The symptoms of B12 deficiency and chronic retinol toxicity match surprisingly well (including fatigue, hair loss, dry skin, excessive bleeding, dizziness, tinnitus, neurological impairments, muscle loss, chronic pain, inflammatory bowel disease, headaches, depression, anxiety, vision problems, memory loss, insomnia, hyperpigmentation).

5. Binders like cholestyramine are known to cause B12 deficiency. This means that a low vitamin A diet leads to B12 deficiency via two different mechanisms. First by the increased detoxification of vitamin A and second by binders, which prevent both the dietary as well as the biliary B12 from being taken up into the body in the terminal ileium. This can potentially lead to a loss of around 5 mcg B12 per day, or 150 mcg per month. Without a B12 supplement, this combination will quickly lead to B12 deficiency and neurological issues in individuals with low B12 stores.

One interesting side effect of B12 injections is acne.

There's an inspiring free book by a UK doc called Dr. Chandy, who has pionieered the B12 therapy and has helped thousands of his patients. The book also explains what he had to endure to bring this knowledge to more people and how his Christian faith helped him through the darkest times: https://b12d.org/book/

Dr. Chandy even cured Addison’s (adrenal insufficiency) with B12 injections, within months. This vitamin is more important than commonly acknowledged. The fact that B12 does only work reliably via injections is probably the biggest blind spot in the world of supplements.

He was the man who discovered that there can be B12 deficiency without the involvement of red blood cells (anemia) and subsequently many official organizations had to change their definitions of B12 deficiency.

Most people, once cured with injections, need monthly B12 injections for life to not get their symptoms back, which suggests that the B12 is compensating chronic toxicity. For example, Dr. Chandy had a female patient with massive hair loss, cured by B12. Once she stopped injections, the hair loss immediately came back.

The big difference between B12 and the other b-vitamins is that it’s impossible to get enough B12 via supplements if there is a pronounced intracellular deficiency. With every other b-vitamin you can take megadoses orally and get very high blood-levels. Not with vitamin B12. The absorption is only 1-2% and with increased dose, goes down relative to the intake. No matter what you do, you can’t get the blood level above 2000 pg/ml with supplements. Some people have tried 40-50 mg per day sublingually and noticed similarities to injections, but it’s pretty difficult to do that reliably. Injections bring the blood level up to a peak of 50,000 – 200,000. Given that B12 is actually the most important vitamin for neurological health, we are looking at an disease epidemic of enormous proportions. Dr. Chandy observed in the 90s that 12-20% of his patients were clinically deficient and responded to injections, and the hidden figure is probably higher.

Normal blood values (serum, Holo-TC, MMA in urine, homocysteine) can not rule out a deficiency. Only a trial course of a couple injections will give an idea whether one is deficient. A coin termed by the B12 groups is „wake-up symptoms“, which is the observation that during the first weeks and months during injections, symptoms worsen as the nerves and cells wake up and sensitivity is restored.

Judging by my „wake-up symptoms“ (including Paresthesia), I had a lifelong vitamin B12 deficiency, and I continue to inject daily. Reportedly it takes 1-2 years to resolve the neurological issues and heal the nerves. I think a chronic B12 deficiency is a possible cause of chronic vitamin A toxicity, as due to the nervous system dysfunction, the body shuts down it’s detoxification processes and can’t deal with the influx of excess vitamin A, and thus it slowly builds up in the liver.

Vitamin B12 is non-toxic no matter the dose. You can inject 5 grams (!) in the form of hydroxocobalamin without serious side effects, as is done in acute cyanide poisoning. That’s more than 1 million times the RDA. The only downside is that the skin will turn pink. No other b-vitamin is that safe. Vitamin B12 may be our main toxin antidote.

B12 is essential in energy metabolism, so a lack of it could lead to a chronic buildup of toxic vitamin A metabolites in the tissues.

Anyway, it would be interesting whether other people who struggle on a low vitamin A diet also report improvements from B12 injections.

Since a lot of the symptoms of vitamin A toxicity are part of the symptoms of B12 deficiency, it is possible that the primary way retinol and retinoic acid do damage in the body is by harming B12-dependent enzyme pathways.