When to take supplements
 

Hello

I feel I have read some conflicting things-so I want to have some clarifications from the veterans of the forum....

B12 and Folate (both methyl)-do these get taken on empty stomach?

What about R Lipoic Acid and acetyl l-carnitine? Also on an empty stomach?

Thanks!

Folate doesn't matter as far as I know.

B12 however, should be on an empty stomach.

Lipoic acid causes heartburn in some people, so take with
food (avoid acidic drinks with it too) Take with lots of (6oz) water, so it doesn't hover near the top of the stomach, but dissolves lower down.

Acetyl carnitine is recommended by Dr. Weil to take with food.

awesome!

I was doing things completely backwards :rolleyes: haha

Thanks!

If you don't get heartburn from the lipoic you can try on an empty stomach...with plenty of water that is.

There are some studies suggesting loss of absorption with ALA regular form with food (the non-stabilized). But I have not seen anything about the new NaRLA stabilized, which is water soluble and should be more absorbable that way.

see my post on carnatine makes PN worse
 

I was all gung-ho to start taking ALA and Carnatine and then I found a few things that made me think we still don't really know enough about what they are doing.

First off, I never really liked how RLA and ALA, can be used for heavy metal chelation and many providers combine it with B1 because they were finding it depletes B1 .... this just made me skittish that we don't really know whether/how it is affecting minerals/B vitamins that that we need.

Then I came across a recent study showing the Carnatine actually made PN worse for some chemo PNers (do a search of posts under my username).

I had the experience of thinking B6 helped me and then found out I ended up with toxic levels which made my PN worse.

The Hippocratic Oath that all doctors around the world must take is to "Do No Harm" (i.e. do not make the problem worse). There's also the expression DSDA (Do something Do Anything). Sometimes in our compulsion to "Do Something!" we have to be careful to not actually make the problem worse. Body chemistry is so complicated that bumping up one chemical affects other chemicals.

Some people have reported ALA and ALCAR help, some say it does nothing. I just didn't have that feeling in my gut like we really know enough about what it is really doing and if it had a monumentally terrific impact we would have known by now.

A doctor once told me that ailments that have lots of little cures that you could try mean we still don't know how to address that ailment. If there are a few big cures that everyone goes for then that means we know more about what really works.

Natalie