Just wanted to let people know that I tried NAC out for about a week at 600mg/day. The first two days I noticed much better morning/nocturnal/spontaneous erections but that disappeared and left me worse off than before taking NAC. also, I noticed almost an immediate increase in brainfog that stayed with me pretty much constantly. After not taking NAC for 24+ hours, my brainfog has subsided substantially.
I just received the B12, active folate, and phosphatidyl serine I ordered. We’ll see if these go better than NAC.
Thought this thread showed promise so bought some NAC 500 mg to give it a try. After 2 days the brain fog kicked in and lasted for a couple days. So gave that up and decided to try the B12 and folate. After about 4 days brain fog kicked in again for another couple days. So I gave that up too. I may try again at lower doses but sitting in my cubicle at work all day with brain fog is pure misery. This fin seems to have made my brain really chemically sensitive.
This is interesting. When I started I had immediate exhaustion and muscle craps, and like you it stayed for a couple of days after stopping. It was terrible, like I didn’t have the strength to grip things. It really bothers me that most people have increased energy with B vitamins, but I could take a nap.
This was mostly abated with potassium. I don’t remember if the brain fog increased.
Do you remember ever experiencing this exact reaction in the past to any one thing? For example, do you take other vitamins, and how does that feel?
If you decide trying to continue, I would recommend poking around the phoenixrising.me forums to see if their experiences match yours.
They typically titrate up from very small doses like the phoenixrising.me folks do. Like a crumb of the B12 to begin with. I have a spreadsheet with my doses over time and I show starting with a 10th of a B12 tablet. It took me a month to get to the full doses.
I’ve tried to caution all along, and have jealous of the quick positive reactions some have posted. But again, this protocol is typically talked about as more of a build up.
Thanks for the advise, I will try to crank the dosage way down if I try again. I’ve had issues previously with high potency B vitamins causing brain fog like issues so I probably should have been more careful with the B12. Aspartame and aspirin also are a problem for me. I haven’t had a problem with other vitamins. Vitamin E seems to have the opposite effect, in that it seems to reduce my brain fog. I’ve had so many problems the last 6 years with varying supplements I was sort of paranoid trying the NAC. But there were so many positive things written about it on the Internet I decided to try it.
Sorry to hear about your negative experiences with NAC. For the time being, this is what works for me. I also received the two supplements missing for my regimen, namely Folate (as Metafolin) and Phosphatidylserine.
I will stop NAC to see what will happen and post my results.
Hey mariovitali, let me know how the Phosphatidylserine makes you feel. It is documented to lower cortisol and definitely made me tired so I had to stop.
Yesterday was my first day taking PhosphatidylSerine and Folate. I felt really tired but i am going to continue taking the full regimen (Folate+B12+PhosphatidylSerine+TMG) for boosting my methtylation cycle to see whether my “attacks” will come back or at least wear off. Perhaps the sides from Phosphatidylserine will also wear off if i give it some time.
Plus, i started working out and i am sure that i read somewhere that working out raises cortisol levels so may be i will not be affected too much. Time will tell.
That’s right. The paper I saw that talked about the cortisol lowering properties of PhosphatidylSerine (PS) was research that looked at cortisol before and after workout.
For me, I knew going in I had low saliva cortisol. Since my cortisol is low enough, its too painful to continue with the PS.
PS is in the protocol to help rebuild your membranes. When you are under high oxidative stress your membranes get eaten up and folates drain out. My understanding is that rebooting the methylation cycle will rebuild your membranes but providing something like PS helps take the work of the methylation cycle. I think some take fish oils for this reason.
Before Dr. Van Konynenburg passed, he posted that he was thinking about removing PS from the protocol because people were having the exact problem we are complaining about here and replaced it with something called ‘NTFactor.’ Which is a complete phosphoglycolipid.
One of the significantly low results from my methylation panel was the ‘Folic Acid, active (RBC),’ which is a measure of folic acid inside the red blood cell. If the value is low, it means you can’t hold folate because of leaky membranes. Since my value is so low on both tests, its clear I’m having a hard time healing up my cell membranes.
The version he recommended was very expensive so I brought this version:
If there is anyone testing the methylation cycle (or interesting running tests) that hasn’t been publicly involved in this thread, please send me a PM.
I would like a sense of how much is going on out there.
it seems I’m not allowed to write PMs, so I’m answering here:
I’m doing pretty good on the protocol, sleep and mood have improved so much, that I was able to drop my sleep medicine. Furthermore I finally tolerate coffee and alcohol, which is good improvement in quality of life.
But what bothers me, is that I still can’t gain weight, but maybe that is yet to come.
BTW I would recommend everybody to start with low dose, higher doses of B12 and co make me feel worse and mess up my sleep.
I have tinkered a little with everything and found this works best, in my case:
1mg of 5-MTHF and slowly disolve 2mg B12 mb.
Taking Magnesium citrate about half hour later.
2 bananas and a coconut water throughout the day.
Fish oil at dinner.
I feel really good on this. Erections are solid since I dropped the NAC. Since adding magnesium, definite increase in load size.
I want to test adenosylcobalamin and tmg, just need to figure to the dosing. As well, want to get the enzymatic therapy B12. I order everything from iherb. If anyone has some recommends for the adenosylcobalamin, tmg or another supp that seems to be working… I’ll take em! Thanks.
I sent in my 23andme test kit and will post the results when I get them.
I’m happy to hear you’re doing good. I am also impressed with how you’ve been able to find the program that is right for you. How were you able to determine delayed Magnesium was right?
If you want to take that another step, there are a lot of services that will analyze your 23andMe data and give you a personalized plan. For example they can tell based on your genotype if you’d do better with Methylcobalamin or Hydroxy. Bryce54 had a service like that. Maybe he can talk about his experience. However, you can get a lot from Yasko’s book alone.
How did you determine you needed potassium? For me, I got cramps a few days into starting and read on Phoenixrising.me that low potassium is a typical problem when starting a methylation protocol from a methylation deficit.
Are you taking a multi that is designed to support methylation? Like:
The addition of magnesium and potassium content food/drinks was just something I read here or at phoenixrising… and they both seemed to help so I will continue.
Once I get my results, I’ll look for those places to analyze my data and offer recomendations.
I looked at the first multi from holisticheal and wasn’t a fan. Folic acid and NAC, even though small amounts, not sure about it.
The next 2 from Thorne, the B12 is in capsule form. I keep reading that sublingual is best, so that kinda turns me off.
I’ve briefly looked for a multi without folic acid and couldn’t find one. Zinc and vitamin C are hit and miss with me. I’m not totally against a multi, but, there seems to always be something I don’t like about it.
I’ve seen four 23andMe data sets from people on this forum and everyone so far has mutations in this gene. They are not that rare (there is frequency data in this presentation), so 4 data points does not achieve any statistical significance.
I made the same observation. I’m drinking at least one cup of mint tea a day, in my case it’s nana mint, a mint plant from morocco. If I don’t drink the tea, I sleep worse. What are your benefits from eating mint, Mario?
Much better libido, in case that i do not take NAC. I sleep much better during the past three months, i am even getting up at 10:00 am now, this is nothing less but miraculous for me as i was walking up from 5:30 am for at least a couple of years. I cannot really say that mint leaves help me sleep better as this is an addition to my regimen which happened something like 20 days ago.
I noticed this completely by chance. I would get good morning erections whenever i had Mojitos the night before…then i made the connection.
