Dear Friends,

I have been reading your comments for some time and today I decided to share my situation and ask you for some help. I am Spanish, so I will try to explain myself as well as I can.

Around three years ago I started with some health issues at the end of my pregnancy. Several things occurred at the same time, that can be summarised as follows:

- Tachycardia
- Digestive problems
- Neurological issues (paresthesias, ..... )
- A bit of anxiety, depression, fear....


Since then I started a long way, with some news (I have positive antinuclear antibodies compatible with those from lupus), low levels of iron, vitamin d, platelets and many other things....

I have been two years on a gluten, dairy, soya and corn free diet and I eat now extremely healthy. Many of my issues have been solved slowly... but the neurological issues have not been solved. I still feel them, specially in my legs and sometimes in my arms and head, and I describe them as if the covering of my nerves would be destroyed and I would feel electricity flowing through them.

I also have some strange feelings that are similar to the sensations when sugar levels go up and down, like being a bit sick. I usually say that they are like electrolite levels going up and down.

I sometimes feel that I have to get used to these neurological strange sensations, but from time to time I follow my "research" to try to "solve" it all.

I have visited many doctors, and also orthomolecular ones, and taken small amounts of supplements. I was prescribed with methyl-B12 and B-50 but I took little amounts since I have strange neurological feelings after taking them and I am very sensitive to supplements.

I have recently had two analysis. One was an urine analysis: urinary organic acids. I have several asterisks there and one of the strange things that we found is a high level of pyridoxate, the catabolite of B6.

I have been reading posts from MrsD regarding this topic and although I have a chemistry background I am not sure if I understand them properly.

At the time all this started to me , three years ago, I had some elevation of the liver enzimes (now they are fine). I understood from your posts that some liver damage leads to some problems to deal correctly with B6, and that this could explain why my pyridoxate level is high (my liver might not be working properly). But, considering this, what should I do? Take some form of B6 that could be more easily assimilated by the liver/body?

Thank you all very much for reading this and for your help. I think that help from someone who suffers similar things is very useful.

A big kiss from sunny Spain.

Women who feel ill after a pregnancy can have several potential problems.

1) their levels of EFA (essential fatty acids can be low because the fetus takes enormous amounts from the mother, to build its brain).
So taking Omega-3's may help with this. Most people don't even eat enough of the right foods anyway, and a pregnancy then really robs the mother.

2). There is a condition where B6 (and zinc) are excreted in large amounts, and this is called pyroluria. It has to do with a genetic error in heme production (which is in red blood cells), where the liver makes high levels of kryptopyrrole which itself is benign but this will bind B6 and zinc and dump them into the urine to be removed. (your posts suggests the urine testing found this elevated pyridoxal form?
http://drkaslow.com/html/pyroluria.html
Only certain labs do this testing properly and are usually found online using Google. Pfeiffer labs I believe still does it.

3) some people are highly sensitive to methyl forms (the active) of certain vitamins. The Pfeiffer Institute calls this "methylation" disorders.
this article describes their theory:
http://alternativementalhealth.com/a...s/pfeiffer.htm

4) The liver is the main site of activating pyridoxine (inactive B6) to pyridoxal.... so if your testing was for pyridoxal then the liver is doing that job properly.
The question of elevated blood serum B6 comes up all the time.
Alot can depend on how the sample was handled by the lab.
Not much research exists about how accurate the existing ranges
are today. (the ranges for B12 and Vit D are still old, calling low values "normal". ) So elevated B6 may be really nothing at all.
The B6 testing is mostly used for looking for deficiency...because a certain drug INH which is commonly used today for TB prevention and treatment depletes B6. So it is often used for that purpose. Very low results would be important, but the higher end is less researched or documented.
I have several posts about this on the B6 thread here if you haven't seen it yet:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread30724.html
Most of the papers on "high B6" came out--and there were not many even then---in the past when very high dosing was more common for PMS in women. (500mg or more a day). This treatment is no longer offered today.
I am not sure what you mean by pyroxidate... if you mean pyridoxine? then yes, you could try activated B6 which is pyridoxal....and see if that is better. But active B6 does occur in several forms, in the body, so the pyroxidate may be one of those.

Since B6 is a cofactor in many biochemical reactions in the body, people can have various genetic differences in handling it.
The Pfeiffer Institute has been one of the only places that has their own ideas about over or under methylation.

Liver functions can go up temporarily with various viral illnesses.
Epstein Barr virus... which causes mononucleosis...is one. Some other viruses can also elevate the testing including the hepatitis ones and some others. Too much Tylenol, or alcohol or some other toxin or drug may also. (Cymbalta is listed as one drug that affects the liver).

Many people can be low in magnesium, too.

But your symptoms are fairly common. Autoimmune diseases do affect the thyroid (can cause tachycardia) or autonomic nerves, and so getting a complete autoimmune workup would be helpful.

Common drugs can cause all kinds of grief... statins, and fluoroquinolones are used commonly now and are culprits in nerve damage in many people.

Our Peripheral Neuropathy forum has discussions on these topics and informational posts in the subforum:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum20.html