Has anyone else experienced anxiety, flushing, tremors and tachycardia from taking folic acid?
It doesn't seem to matter what form I try and even when I have taken the tiniest sliver of a tablet this still happens. I am on NDT and was still severely fatigued with extremely low BP. I have greatly impaired conversion to T3 (D102 test) but don't tolerate synthetic T3. Every time I get desperate I try the B vitamins and I finally isolated the problems to folic acid. It makes me feel less exhausted and depressed and my brain functions better but just swings me straight into feeling hyperthyroid so it doesn't feel like good energy. No other B vits have any effect. I have had these swings over and over again over the years (admitted to hospital several times but no help or explainations given) and have only recently managed to discover triggers from doing my own research using my own symptoms.
Would be interested to hear other people's experiences. I am trying to discover whether it is causing a temporary overactivity caused by a flare or whether I just need to reduce my dose of NDT. Perhaps it has some action in allowing the thyroid med into the cells, perhaps I was never really hypothyroid, or perhaps it is ramping up my immune system and thus worsening the autoimmune attack, another option is that it is worsening my POTS condition (which is thought to be autoimmune) or that is s ramping up methylation and I do not detox very well. On a related note, I also have problems tolerating vitamin D supplements which make me much more fatigued. I have already been completely gluten free for many years and have had a low dose short synacthen test - negative for addisons. I'm not sure if any doctors could tell me better than patients themselves about interactions between folic acid/folate and hashimoto's. Any experiences would be greatly appreciated, thank you, and if anyone knows how to get homocysteine tested in UK (can you ask your GP?). Stay strong an thyroid awareness day and beyond!
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Hashi_warrior
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Some of us just cannot tolerate supplements, any sorts and all forms. Folate supplements give me horrendous headaches, VitD makes me feel awful as do multi vits. My GP is well aware there are people who can't take any vits so it's not unusual.
I may be leading you up the garden path with this...
If your level of vitamin B12 is okay or good, and your folate level is low, your body may not be getting much benefit from your B12. In order to metabolise B12 the body needs folate.
So, follow the logic...
If you take some folic acid/folate your body will start being able to use your B12.
In people who have a deficiency of B12, either because of low levels of B12 or low levels of folate (or both), and that deficiency is then relieved by taking more B12 or more folate the body goes into a mad orgy of making lots and lots of red blood cells - something it couldn't do when B12/folate were low.
The body needs more than just B12 for making red blood cells though. It needs potassium. No doubt it needs quite a few other things too, but I don't have a list of the ingredients required.
If enough red blood cells are being made then potassium can start to run low. And low potassium can give at least some of the symptoms you mention. The condition of having low potassium is called hypokalemia :
Once the body has "caught up" with its creation of red blood cells the requirement for extra potassium disappears and normal levels are required from then on.
It might be worth trying out a potassium supplement for just a few days if you take a folate supplement. I'll let you look up sources of potassium in food for yourself. But for supplementing, you could buy yourself a tub of cream of tartar from a supermarket baking section. Another name for cream of tartar is potassium bitartrate. You could try taking quarter of a level teaspoon in water, stirring it up, and drinking it, and do that once a day. I'll tell you now, it probably won't taste particularly great.
There are several other sources of supplementary potassium.
On the subject of supplementing potassium, you might find this article of some interest. The comments are worth reading too :
If you have functioning kidneys you would probably benefit from taking magnesium supplements too - there must be many hundreds of posts on this forum mentioning magnesium. If you have good kidneys then any excess magnesium will be excreted via the kidneys. If you have poorly functioning kidneys then magnesium supplements should be avoided, because they might turn out to be dangerous if you can't excrete any excess.
This is interesting, thank you. I think this does make sense, and could be a possibility. During previous flares when I have ended up in hospital with bad tachy, I have noticed that my potassium is low end of normal despite the fact I eat a lot of fruit and veggies. So if these flares are always down to the folic acid/folate then perhaps it is indeed using the B12 and then potassium. Alterntaively the tachy itself (whatever the cause) could have used up the potassium. I usually use magnesium chloride spray to try to calm me down to some degree when i'm in these states as I always find even the gentler types cause stomach gripes and I usually have to be careful with having such low blood pressure anyway, so transdermal seems to have the best effect. I think that is why they never give me potassium in hosp, because they are always trying to bring up the bp with saline. I may try to push for a folate blood test as soon as poss. The last time I had it done a few years ago, it was bang in the middle of normal but my B12 was low, since then I have managed to get my B12 up a lot but never had any positive effect from that and don't know if folate was ever re-checked more recently. Does anyone know if there is a state where folate can look normal in the blood but can be different in the tissues/cells? like with some other things. It would also be really interesting to find out if it plays a direct role in the thyroid gland itself, like with iodine, where a lot of hashi's patients can't tolerate this without worsening the autoimmune attack, myself included. Thanks again, going to look into it more, had to lower my NDT for a few days to calm things down and am now heading a bit drowsy and slowed down again. Oh dear, the never ending seesaw.
I was promoted on a post here to look up Methylation and thought it might be of interest to you. I’ll post some links. I tend to get low in folate but unlike you find it easy enough to take. I do try to take other b vits with it along with magnesium (which I’m also always low in) and d3 and k2.
Anyway quite interesting articles - heaven knows if there’s any sense in them really though!
Aargh can’t put links here! See image and look them up yourself. It’s just about what folate does in the body.
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