What I have said is that most people can convert cyanocobalamin to the smaller amount of methylcobalamin to store and use, and that lives have been saved for decades since cyanocobalamin was synthesized.

Not everyone can convert well, and people who do not transport well (usually older people) can do better with larger amounts of usable B12 (methylcobalamin).

Also, methylcobalamin is the form that in very large doses has proven therapeutic in some with MS, ALS, etc.

If one has only cyanocobalamin available, adequate doses of it will almost always refill stores, and usually (but not always) allow at least some improvement. So I have continued to make the point that people should not forego B12 treatment because some have led them to believe that cyanocobalamin is useless. It is not.

Hydroxocobalamin is better than cyanocobalamin, and methylcobalamin does things no other form can do.

Taking notes is great, as I have also recommended for years. However, the notes need to be taken for a long time, as when serious repairs are being made, it is a long and frequently weird process. Noting what happens in the first weeks, and expecting that to continue in a linear fashion is frequently misleading.

In fact, some people have thought that B12 was no longer helping, and so stopped it, only to find months to a couple of years later that their bodies had been continuing to repair on the stores they had build up and the damage was again worsening as stores had been allowed to deplete. This is one example of how dangerous going on the short-term obvious results can be.

I also malabsorb severely. But what I do is not important. What is important is that researchers found over 30 years ago that people who malabsorb severely (have true pernicious anemia---absence of intrinsic factor) can rebuild stores on 1000 mcg B12 orally per day.

If you had read the extensive history I have written (most of it lost in the old braintalk board crash), you would know that I have improved massively, but that I was damaged severely (nearly died) so it has not been a quick or easy ride.

Your neurologist and general practition are wrong if they stated that symptoms cannot get worse after beginning B12 treatment when it is needed. When the nervous system repairs, nerves grow back in ways that are not the same as before, and the central nervous system has to learn how to intrerpret the different signals. Even if you scrape your knee, as the scab forms and time progresses there will be different symptoms--- itching is common, for one. The symptoms one experiences during repairs are not necessarily the same as before, although sometimes they are a temporary exacerbation of previous symptoms, and even those can seem like new symptoms if they were too subtle before to notice.

I write all of this for the benefit of others who will read it.

rose











Karen wrote: