another thing about b12 that i learned from my therapist today: apparently if you have anxiety you need even MORE of it because your body just barrels through it at full racecar speeds. which, as someone with the motherfucker gene mutation (as MTHFR has been so lovingly dubbed by my family) and as someone who just got diagnosed with anxiety out the wazoo, was both incredibly annoying to learn and also incredibly validating. like, YEAH, this is why i'm so tired all the time! also fucking hell!
It’s the same with ADHD. I’m unable to medicate my ADHD due to my MCAS, but I’m able to somewhat get around that by upping my dosage of b12. On normal days I usually take 2000ui, but if I’m having a really bad brain fog slump day I’ll go up to 4000ui and it’s like my brain suddenly has enough energy to focus. I keep wishing I knew about this all through college when I was really struggling.
Wait wait wait…
So, having ADHD makes you burn through B12 faster?
And being low on B12 makes you tireder than normal?
I should maybe start taking a B12 supplement because guess who has ADHD and is tired. (It me)
Wild, right? I’m going through the notes my therapist gave me, and it looks like it’s B vitamins in general get burned up quicker, so B6, B9 and B12 are the likely culprits, so for some folk a B complex might be better. I can’t take a b complex cause I react badly to biotin, but that’s cause I’m my own brand of genetic fuckuppery. (As ever, talk to your doctors and maybe get some basic blood tests as part of an annual physical to see if you’re actively deficient in anything, cause that might help more.)
so is this something that shows up in regular blood tests? cause I’ve got ADHD and anxiety and I’m exhausted, but I just had a physical and they said they didn’t pick up anything except regular anemia.
Sometimes you have to specifically ask for a b12 blood serum test. It got missed in me for over 20 years cause no one looked for it till I asked them to.
