31Jan 2012 by Marjorie 28 Comments

Get thee behind me, methyl bromide

nutritional therapy, self-experiment
For anyone out there wondering to what extent the pesticide methyl bromide builds up in our bodies, I offer my recent bromide-detox experience after I switched to organic chocolate. After seven months on iodine I still can't seem to lower the dose below 100 mg a day without losing its benefits -- mostly increased energy and concentration -- which is getting a little tedious and expensive. In theory you shouldn't need more than 15 mgs or so of it once you've corrected a deficiency. I found a few people on various forums who are experiencing the same thing and who suspect it's because they haven't removed all the bromide sources from their diets. The only one I had left was chocolate, so two weeks ago I switched to a brand…
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21Jan 2012 by Marjorie 3 Comments

A few ways to simplify your life if you’re energy-challenged

other therapies
In the years I had to deal with limited mental and physical energy, I made some adjustments to my life that were individually small but added up to make a significant difference in my sense of well-being. Some of them I adapted from the various "lifestyle design" books I've read over the years. Basically they involve exerting a little more control over your environment to remove daily irritations that become mental burrs in your brain. 1. Get over the idea that Money Already Spent trumps your Time and Effort. Learn how to translate expenditures into physical and mental terms. If you spent $250 on a Turkish bathrobe, but it's so heavy it unbalances the washer twice every time you wash it, that physical output requirement plus the mental irritation lower…
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21Jan 2012 by Marjorie No Comments

As a matter of fact, yes I have poisoned myself with supplements

nutritional therapy
I've gone on and on about how many so-called side effects of supplements are actually interactions with other nutrients that are being depleted. After all, it isn't really likely that you're deficient in only one nutrient, and they all work together in ways no one on the planet seems to have catalogued entirely. The "nerve damage" so many experts warn against for vitamin B6, for example, is often just a temporary symptom caused by lowered vitamin B12 levels and easily avoided. However, I have in fact on two occasions taken what turned out to be deleterious doses of a supplement, resulting in one chronic toxicity episode and one acute one. The first self-induced toxicity incident (SITI) was about three years after I started taking supplements. I had been taking one…
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19Jan 2012 by Marjorie 2 Comments

Don’t take folic acid and methylfolate at the same time

self-experiment
Someone on a B12 deficiency discussion group mentioned that he'd found that if he took folic acid (the synthetic version of the naturally-occurring folate) at the same time as methylfolate (a much more bioavailable supplement of folate; AKA Metafolin), he would start to get folate deficiency symptoms, even though he was supplementing it like a crazy person. I experimented myself and found the same thing -- the folic acid cancels out the methylfolate. Folinic acid will do the same. Because nothing can be easy. I swear to you I found a PubMed article confirming that folic acid deactivates methylfolate if taken AT THE SAME TIME, but of course I lost it. But if you Google "folic acid blocks" you'll find all sorts of discussions about it. This is a separate…
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