First succesful self injection, looking for methyl folate to be taken once a week

[Heidiv]

Hi, I finally managed to get myself to self inject (Yay!). I was so fed up with travelling long journeys for this couple of seconds.

I was wondering if there exists a high dose methylfolate (like the 4 mg folic acid) or an injectable form as my GI tract gets upset with practically every supplement I take. So daily 400 mcg of methylfolate are not an option for me unfortunately. TIA!

[fbirder]

You cannot replace a daily 400 mcg dose with a weekly 4000 mcg dose. Methylfolate has an elimination half life of around 3 hours. That means that most of the dose (over 99%) is gone within 24 hours. Folate needs to be taken every day.

If you cannot take supplements then getting your folate from food is probably the best idea - either naturally in food, or in fortified foods.

You can get your 400 mcg a day from -

4 portions of Marmite.

200 g of black-eyed peas

250 g lentils

200 g raw spinach

Three avocados

Eight oranges

180 g of beef liver

Or any combination thereof.

[Heidiv in reply to fbirder]

Thank you, very insightful.

[deniseinmilden]

Congratulations!

Well done!

The best source of nutrients is from your diet but if you need to take a methylfolate supplement nothing beats it.

I have found the Solgar methylfolate actually taste fine (I like them) and slowly dissolve in your mouth so it is possible to absorb what you need by putting them under your tongue or in the side of your cheek and leave them there until they gradually disappear!

The highest dose ones are 1000mcg and you could break them up so you have say half a day.

You might find as you improve you will need less so be aware that it is likely to give you a stonking headache if you overdo it!

[Heidiv in reply to deniseinmilden]

Thank you!

[Hidden]

I am one of what seems a minority who has a really bad reaction to folic acid so have got through a lot of methyl folate over the last couple of years since discovering my B12 deficiency. I currently get lots of my vitamins from PhoenixNutrition as they are the cheapest I’ve found and from blood tests they seem to all work OK. The methyl folate they do is 1mg tablets so I take multiple of those according to how much I need. They are at last half the price of any others I’ve found so worth the inconvenience of having to take multiple tablets.

[Heidiv]

Hi, thank you so much for your reply. As I wasn't making progress anymore I took another dose of 4 mg folic acid, as I thought a deficiency in folate was my problem. Big mistake! It felt like it was almost setting me back to where I was before I started the B12 shots. Before taking the folic acid I was able to walk again, and to carry things around without shoulder/neck/back pain. But ai felt really exhausted still so attributed this to the folic acid. Now I'm barely able to walk 500m and the shoulder/neck pain is back. I had a Methylcobalamin shot 500 mcg yesterday and the walking was much better yesterday with small backpack. Today pain in knees/legs is back. Hopefully it will get better in the course of this week. Haven't found the methyl folate yet that suits me. 1mg sounds good. Where did you get it from? Thanks again!