One day On, another day off while on B12 injections

[Rat007]

Hi everyone, I desperately need your help here, Please..?

A month ago, one day (8th June 2017- Black day of my life), I woke up with heavy head and dizziness, since then suffering a lot and still having number of symptoms- fainting, unsteadiness, tingling/ needles in my arms, legs and most importantly at centre of head and sometimes face too. I also have heaviness on my left eye, It used to twitch a lot.

I wasted 3 weeks in Uk as I've seen 3 GP and everytime I got prochloropezine, which used to make me feel more and more fatigue. Then I travelled back to India to have further diagnosis. Doctor said it's B12 deficiency (227 was the reading). It appears to be my vegetarian diet it the cause.

I had MRI of brain and screening of spinal chord, all ok.

Since 1st july, I had 4 methylcobalamin injections every other day and then 1 weekly. This helped me with fatigue but headache is still around, it comes everyday with something new- someday worse with head pressure, other day without.

I did mastery by searching all content over google for more than thousands time, and found b12 deficiency will take some time. Can someone please help me, when will I back to normal..?

[clivealive Forum Support]

It is not uncommon for some symptoms to appear to get worse before they get better and a lot will depend on how long you have been deficient and how severe is the damage done to your nervous system. There can be no set time limit on recovery because we are all different.

Has your Folate level been tested? This and B12 helps your iron to make red blood cells among other functions.

I wish you well

[Rat007 in reply to clivealive]

Thanks for your response. Folate level is not tested, I'll get it done shortly.

Before neurological symptoms to appear ( 8th june), I used to have tingling in my legs early in the morning and sometimes I felt extremely fatigued while working in front of laptop, but they all might be from mid may

[Rat007 in reply to clivealive]

I've tested my folate level.. it's 5.1

And Vitamin D (25 Oh) is 15.91

Doctor asked me take another supplements 5mg for folate and given another injection for D deficiency, then after 6000iu tablet every week.

Is this correct..?

[clivealive Forum Support in reply to Rat007]

That looks good Rat007 - your Folate was "bumping along the bottom" and with your Vitamin D deficiency too it's no wonder you've not been feeling too well.

What sort of diet do you have? Can you eat meat, fish, seafood. eggs. poultry and dairy produce for Vitamin B12?

For Folate (Vitamin B9) you need to eat leafy green vegetables, sprouts, broccoli. asparagus, spinach, beans, peas etc

Hopefully you will begin to feel better soon.

[GGourmet]

Rather like my experience, I had the loading doses but still had to take daily oral methyl cobalamin.

In terms if how long before you are better, that's very difficult. For me, it's taken six monthly of daily supplement of methyl cobalamin, loading injections of hydroxycobalamin then injections every 2 months. Liver and kidneys adjust serum B12 and it appears that some symptoms are only alleviated if you boost serum B12 to above the level that the body sets it to.

If this really is down to your diet, you could try fortified breakfast cereal. This is usually fortified with Cyanocobalamin so you need to be sure that your deficiency really is diet and not a form of malabsorption /PA. If malabsorption/PA, Cyanocobalamin is unlikely to help. Also check in your country that fortified cereal is available. I know that B12 deficiency is very common in India because of the diet, so I would hope that cereals are fortified there.

[Rat007 in reply to GGourmet]

Many thanks for your response. Although I feel it's because of my diet, do I need to carry out any other test to confirm this?

[GGourmet in reply to Rat007]

I think that's a question for others.