In every matrix (outer bit) of our powerhouses (mitochondria) that are in our 30 trillion cells. There are lots of reactions (metabolic pathways).
So, the BIG CIRCLE has a name and the black rectangle at the bottom has one too but :-
B1 in blue appears 3 times.
B2 in green appears 5 times.
B3 in pink appears 6 times.
B5 in orange appears 5 times.
B7 in purple appears twice.
B12 in red once.
I could only squeeze POWER in at the bottom but it warrants an A3 sheet to denote its impact.
Reproduced from Professor David O Kennedy’s Figure 1 as featured in his (2016) research paper: B Vitamins and the Brain: Mechanisms, Dose and Efficacy—A Review Nutrients. 8(2): 68. The National Center for Biotechnology Information. National Library of Medicine.
I added a few good splashes of coffee for good measure and did not have a purple colouring pencil so used makeup.
🐳
(The TriCyclic Acid Cycle and Electron Transfer Chain.)
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Narwhal10
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Another cycle which slots in but if a person took a snap shot of the screen and took it to their doctor and asked, Is this why I am tired all the time ? Maybe, it would make them think.
Nobel prize winner, Linus Pauling*, a biochemist, biochemist and chemical engineer, coined a term in the 60’s ‘orthomolecular medicine’. Ortho means ‘correct’ in Greek.
Pauling wished to correct imbalances or deficiencies based on individual biochemistry by using vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids and trace elements.
He didn’t just win one Nobel Prize, he gained 2. The only other person to achieve that was Marie Curie. 😉
jade_s , not in the Krebs Cycle/Citric Acid Cycle/Tricyclic Acid (TCA) Cycle.Folate makes an appearance in figure 2 of the paper which shows the folate and methionine cycles.
My deadline will be 3 weeks as juggling much. I don’t invite people into my home, it looks like a bomb has gone off. I always was a messy 🐄 . Why change a habit of a lifetime.
I get so engrossed in a project, totally oblivious to housework and mealtimes 😄
Omgosh, you are so smart. My eyes are glazed over. 😳 I have no idea what this means but I'm impressed with the use of purple makeup!! I have so much to learn.
3 blue ones, 5 green, 6 pink, 5 orange, 2 purple and 1 red one.
Maybe if you buy a packet of sweets which is colourful. I’m not naming brands but separated and put them into one pile as above, maybe that will help. 🤷♀️
A fine piece of work. I can recommend something to support this, which is from Harold Baum's 'Biochemists Songbook' and when you've been exposed to it enough, then it's imprinted and you can't escape it. 'Once a jolly pyruvate enters the matrix of a mitochondrion, so they say, a decarboxylating complex dehydrogenase turns pyruvate into Acetyl CoA' or something!
Learning about biochemical pathways is both fascinating and turgid, and then when it's realised that they're all inter-connected, it's mind blowing.
I particularly like the Michaelis Anthem, for Michaelis Menten enzyme kinetics. For those who don't know about such stuff, I pity them, but [V x S/Km+S] is V[initial], more or less.
I remember in the very dim and very distant past writing a routine on a programmable calculator [Texas Instruments device] in a tea break, for calculating the Michaelis Constant for a red cell G6PD assay. I was blown away when it worked first time, but that was then, and this is now. I didn't actually need it; it was purely an exercise in logic. But it worked. Happy Days.
A swim? Let me think. If I had more space in my pond, it'd be tempting.
Oh, now you're taking me back! It was an earlier one, that had a magnetic card reader and 5 programmable buttons [well, 10 including the 'shift' function] and it made me more careful writing scripts to avoid filling up the memory. Unlike today's solution of simply throwing more memory at the problem.
G6PD? Oh, the wonders of the Hexose Monophosphate shunt, and if nothing else, it gives us the froth on our beer, but I digress. Well done with the swimming. If it's open water, just watch out upstream for what's being 'dumped' into the water... I don't mind sharing with fish and dogs, but paper, wet wipes and worse I can do without!
It was out of stock in many places. I ended up ordering from a local amazon-type business, who are probably just reshipping things from Amazon 🤣. The lead time was over a month though, so still waiting. You can find older version pdfs online to ....."preview" 😏
But we don't know if we are deficient in those or not. How can we? I'm not remotely scientific so a graph or chart doesn't do it for me. I want to know how the findings shown in the chart can help me to get better?
I read your bio and my goodness you have a lot going on. I know Professor Margaret Ryman, a nutritional expert, is very good with thyroid problems whilst I am completely not.
So, the majority of us are reliant on a number given by a pathology laboratory. For example, 126 mg/L where the range that has been set at 130 mg/L. It does not tell those in the laboratory or the G.P./haematologist/other specialist how the person actually feels. Their symptoms such as neuropathy. For a vitamin B12 test it only tells what is going on in the blood (serum), not at cell level. Hence, my picture.
Now, if a patient ‘walks’ into a doctor’s office and cannot coordinate their body. Yet their vitamin B12 blood result from the pathology laboratory is only mildly below the cut off range then the doctor needs to ignore that blood result. It is clearly evident that person is very deficient. The blood result is not accurate.
All the vitamin Bs I have drawn are water soluble, so a large proportion is excreted out. So, I am talking about toxicity here. They all work together at cell level which I have shown with a circle and arrows.
Many years ago, I would say, ‘I’ve got your blood results, they are just figures to me. Tell me how you feel ?’ And I’d listen and work from there. I never pretended to know everything. I’d ask or people would say they had cravings. I’d ask what for. Somethings I knew like chocolate as an example. The body is asking for magnesium,
Having worked with a dietician and 3 functional nutritionists, I had a particular test. I asked one nutritionist when an extensive report came back, it suggests copper deficiency too. So, with my symptoms and food diary, I introduced copper citrate. Within a week, I did not feel dizzy and breathless in the afternoon. What I had done was ‘experiment’. Looking for ‘cause’ and ‘effect’.
In a clinical setting, ‘Yes, sure you can have something for your headache ? You are ok with paracetamol ?’ An affirmative. I’d write on a drug chart, get medication, check name band, time, date and sign. Then write in their notes. I’d go back and check, ‘How’s your headache ?’ It has settled. I’d then write in their notes, ‘Analgesia effective’. If it had not, I would offer another medication because I wanted that person to feel better that was part of my job.
The more a person tunes in and listens to their body, a person can understand it. You write notes about it and you see patterns emerging. I know me, my biochemistry. You too want to feel better. So, when people know how to do it, it is not just power to the body, it is called empowerment.
So the fact that I have always supplemented a quality B Complex alongside my experiments with B12 tablets and drops etc. and will keep taking it while SI, means I'm covering all these bases in the graph?
Absolutely, it is ‘covering the bases’. I am so pleased that you understood and sorry, it was so long winded.
I have refractory coeliac so it is ‘highly likely’ that I have ‘suboptimal thyroid function’. I too ‘cover the base’ by taking a particular supplement.
I wish I knew more on thyroid problems but I currently do not.
I went into midwifery later in life as I was heavily into mathematics. Over 30 years ago, I studied the image I posted. Last year, I completed a Diploma in Biochemistry. Every day I am learning.
I noted you were asking about magnesium in another post. It is very much needed in the body. The brain needs it, the nerves need it and the muscles need it. That is why I also take it as did the private dietician. Her quote, ‘Everybody has suboptimal magnesium.’
Just so you know, the person who could not coordinate their body who had a vitamin B12 level of 126 mg/L where the cut off was 130 mg/L was me.
I had ‘orthostatic tremors, ataxia, nystagmus and severe vertigo’ for 6 months. Tremors on sitting, standing, struggled to initiate steps, clumsy, wide based walk, eye tremors and walked into the wall in the doctor’s surgery. I knew my own risk of collapse/fall and the appropriate NICE guidelines.
I was ‘allowed’ 2 further weeks of Every Other Day B12 injections. I had to cancel 2 appointments as I could not even ‘walk’ to my front door.
Mathematicians play with numbers, symbols, create algorithms and then for us, it becomes art.
I take magnesium when I can but the capsules I currently have give me indigestion. My digestive system has deteriorated recently. I used to soak my feet in magnesium salts. I should get back to that.
I might not know a lot about B12 and self-treating it. But I can write the chapter and verse on hypothyroidism and it's poor diagnosis and treatment rates.
Oh indigestion is awful. Yes, you know you best so as and when with the magnesium. I also pour myself into a magnesium bath. Then crawl out. It’s the heat. Another wonderful symptom to add.
Please educate me on hypothyroidism. Always happy to learn and I am sorry, FancyPants54 how it effects you and no doubt, the amount of times that your ‘voice must have gone unheard.’
Midwife means ‘with woman’. I have not been able to practice for years because of my own health. However, with new knowledge including from yourself and once capable of shifts, I plan to return.
I can't do hot baths anymore. I used to love them. Now I like tepid baths and still sweat when I'm trying to get dry!
Oh gosh, I can't think where to start about hypothyroidism if you are starting from scratch. But it's a terrible condition. Our thyroid glands are our power packs. They produce T3 and T4 hormones (amongst others). T4 is a storage hormone that has to be converted to T3 to be used, but it's handy to have around in case of sudden extra energy requirements. T3 is the energy in every cell. When the thyroid starts to fail, be that for autoimmune Hashimoto's thyroiditis or for some other reason, it's as if someone pulled your plug out of the socket without warning. Suddenly I went from working all hours in my business and in the theatre and exercising with dance, to not being able to get off the chair and put the hoover round. Putting washing into the machine was an achievement. For years I would wake up on a Saturday morning and lie in bed thinking I felt a bit better and so I would do x, y, z, today and then I'd put my feet to the floor and stand up and know I would do none of those things.
In the past doctors discovered hypothyroidism in the later 1800's. It took them a while to work out what the problem was and how to treat it, but they did. The treatment was a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but it worked. People who would have died lived instead. Middle aged women (there are way more middle aged women diagnosed with hypo than any other category, it tends to come with menopause) who would have been hidden from view, supposedly bedridden or suffering with their nerves could come back to useful life again. Initially they gave them raw pig thyroid gland pieces to chew (yuck!) but later they learned how to synthesise the important hormones out of the gland and could inject it instead. But that was a daily injection and in the times when injections were carried out by what looked like 6" nails and were reused, hopefully after a wash. Eventually they learned how to convert the raw gland into tablets and treatment got a lot easier. This treatment was called Natural Desiccated Thyroid NDT for short and worked well if the doctor knew what they were doing. My nan was on it for years.
Then in the 1960's/70's they discovered that rather than asking the patient to tell them how they felt and list their symptoms to diagnose (they also used cholesterol blood tests to confirm diagnoses because hypo patients will have dis-regulated cholesterol which will return to normal once the thyroid is adequately treated) they could use a blood test to check up on a pituitary hormone called TSH which is released by the pituitary gland when the body needs the thyroid to make more hormone. It's a chemical messenger. As a diagnostic tool it's not bad if the test is taken early in the day. But TSH has a cyclical pattern and is low in the afternoon so many hypo patients are declared "fine" by GPs testing them at the wrong time of day because this cyclical pattern is not taught. Once this test came in, some wise guy decided that not only could it be used to diagnose hypothyroidism in patients, it could be used to monitor the results of medication and to adjust the medication as well. These were not the intention of the inventor of the test (Andrew Midgley who is still active today as an important researcher over on the Thyroid forum on Health Unlocked). At that point doctors stopped asking patients how they felt and certainly stopped listening when patients told them how they felt and just took that blood test as gospel and it's not. Thousands of people are left sick and tired and useless because of the miss-used TSH test.
What doctors should be testing to monitor treatment levels and success is the Free T3 and Free T4 in the blood, in the morning. And they could also use the cholesterol test to help them too and BP. But those last two might just blow their heads off! If you are lucky and push them, they might test FT4. But almost never FT3. And FT3 is the active hormone, the one we really need! Sometimes the GPs ask for the FT3 to be included and the bloody lab decides they know best and won't do it!!! It beggars belief. Many of us have to pay to do our own private tests. The GPs then won't accept them, but we know what's happening and can try to push for what we need. I have been extremely lucky in that my surgery will test TSH, FT4 and FT3 every time I ask and I ring up and arrange the appointments for the blood draw myself, don't involve a GP and they let me!!!
Once you get a diagnosis you then have to try to work your way up to an optimal, not just "in range" dose and that's a whole new kettle of fish! The system is fighting you all the way. If I haven't bored the pants off you yet, I could go into that later. Let me know.
I’ve copied and pasted to my notes. I’ve been naughty, I’m still half in pjs but I’ve done the washing, washing up, and some other chores.
‘Suddenly I went from working all hours in my business and in the theatre and exercising with dance, to not being able to get off the chair and put the hoover round.’ 😞
It sounds ALL too familiar. I was a distance runner, cycled, played squash, swam, yoga, danced and I thought MMA was Mixed Martial Arts. I am a nerd, introverted so either a book in hand or tinkering with things. Fortunately, my parents were out when I nearly blew up the microwave. So, clueless. Aged 11, I did have to confess that I broke a mercury thermometer. It disintegrated in the kettle. Oops.
It really is a case of you really have to watch the quiet ones. We will endure and suffer in silence. We can be extremely unwell and even then people do not notice.
The sensitivity to hot baths is medically called Uhthoff's phenomenon. Generally associated with multiple sclerosis but as you and I both know autoimmune diseases cause a plethora of symptoms.
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