Day 365+: One Year

Exactly one year ago today (October 26, 2015), I made my first blog post. One year ago, I came down with B6 toxicity.

Since then, I've experienced some recovery. My symptoms are no longer as bad as they were. The slight neuropathy in my arms is intermittent and easy to ignore. The neurological problems have mostly gone away, although I still feel that my balance isn't as good as it used to be. Still, I feel pretty good.

Looking back, I would say that the first month was the hardest. The symptoms were all but debilitating. Even after the neuropathy began to fade, I still struggled with adjusting to a new diet. And there was the anxiety, which was almost as bad as the neuropathy. Some of it was caused by the toxicity, but some of it was just a natural result of being sick. It's not easy wrestling with the thought that you might never be well again.

After that, things got better. In fact, the past six months have been pretty uneventful. I still watch my diet, and I still pay the price when I fall off the wagon, but the consequences are less severe. A few weeks ago, for example, I ate a high-B6 meal and my arms burned all night, but I was surprised to feel no lingering effects the next morning. When I woke up, my arms felt fine. I took that as a sign of healing. It's as though my body is getting better at handling B6 and getting over high dosages when I make the mistake of eating them.

Speaking of food, I've added a few medium-high B6 foods back into my diet, and I no longer worry about over-indulging on tomatoes or broccoli. They don't seem to affect me. However, I won't touch potatoes, bananas, corn, or brown rice. They're just too high in B6. Maybe after the two-year mark, I'll start re-incorporating them. For now, I'm content with what I have to eat.

Anyways, I just wanted to update everyone on my condition. I know some people follow this blog and use it to gauge their own recovery. If I were to sum up my current situation in one sentence, it would be: I've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.

I think I have at least another year of recovery ahead of me. We'll just have to wait and see.

Day 200+: Still At It

Wow, over 3 months since my last update! Sorry about that. But as I said in my last post, B6 toxicity has taken a backseat in my life, so I'm not inclined to write about it every day or every week. Which is good, in my opinion, because it means that I'm back in control of my life.

So what's new?

The answer is: Nothing.  I still have B6 toxicity, my elbows still tingle, and I still can't eat high-B6 foods. I have to closely monitor my diet, which is highly restrictive, and I still have dizzy spells. On the plus side, I've found several good meals that keep me from feeling deprived. For the most part, I'm doing well.

That said, I've had a few "relapses" over the past few months. Most were fairly small, taking the form of gentle reminders from my body that B6 is not too good for me. Once, for example, after eating guacamole several meals in a row, I had neuropathy in my hands. That's fine. I can live with that. But some of the relapses have been bad. The worst was last week, when I finally broke down, threw caution to the wind, and ate at a restaurant. That was a mistake. Within a few hours, all the old symptoms had returned: muscle spasms, pain, tingling, etc. It was bad enough to keep me up at night (with anxiety, if not pain). I didn't know when, or if, I would get better. But I'm glad to say that the symptoms have mostly passed, and I'm starting to get back to "normal."


So what's the take-away? I would say that recovery is slow. I don't expect healing in less than a year, maybe two years. I got B6 toxicity in October 2015, so I can expect a full recovery by October 2016 at the earliest. October 2017 sounds a lot more likely -- assuming I stick to my diet and don't fall off the wagon too many more times. It might be October 2018. That wouldn't surprise me.

Either way, I think I can do it.

I'll leave you with this handy tidbit. It's the website I use to track B6 content in foods: the official USDA website, which I've found it to be very reliable: https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list

Good luck!

Day 100+: No News is Good News

It's over 100 days since my toxicity began, and B6 toxicity has now taken a backseat in my life. That's a good thing, because it means that my symptoms are either fading or becoming more manageable.

For the most part, I don't experience neuropathy these days. If I spend a lot of time reading in bed, I will feel it in my elbows (because the bedsheets seems to irritate them), but other than that, the burning is a thing of the past.

I do still experience minor neurological symptoms, but they come and go. And they might not even be caused by the B6 -- they could be caused by vitamin deficiencies. That's why I've been increasing my intake of potassium (coconut water) and magnesium (pumpkin seeds), among other things.

So... am I fully recovered? No. If the neurological symptoms are caused by B6, then I still have some healing to do. And there's still the occasional neuropathy in my elbows. And I still haven't begun incorporating B6 foods back into my diet (and frankly, I'm afraid to). But for the most part, B6 toxicity isn't a major part of my life anymore.

I will continue to update this blog, but unless there's a major development in my recovery, the posts will be infrequent.

Day 76-99: Everyone's symptoms are different

My symptoms haven't changed much over the past few weeks. I think my previous theory was correct and my ulnar (elbow) nerves are "permanently" damaged. (I put "permanently" in scare-quotes because there's no telling what the future will bring. Maybe with enough healthy living, my body will eventually repair itself. But for the time being, the effects are unremitting.)

One thing I've discovered in researching B6 toxicity is that everyone's symptoms are a little different. Some people experience a lot of fatigue and brain-fog, while others experience a lot of neuropathy (which is probably the most typical symptom). But most people who experience neuropathy experience it in their hands and feet, whereas I experience it in my knees and elbows

Symptoms aren't the only thing to vary, either; remedies do as well. Some people feel better after exercise, while others report feeling worse (possibly because the B6 is being released from the muscles and into the blood stream).

All this just adds up to further difficulties for B6 toxicity sufferers. For the most part, we have to find what works for us.

Preventing Vitamin Deficiencies: Taking B6 out of your diet takes out a lot of other things too

One of the struggles of dealing with B6 toxicity is avoiding vitamin deficiencies. Unfortunately, when you take B6 out of your diet, you inadvertently take out a lot of other things too. Over the past few weeks, I've had to closely monitor my diet and make adjustments in order to cover all the bases.

The biggest trouble-spots for me have been calcium, magnesium, potassium, and niacin. Thankfully, I've found good solutions for most of these. For calcium, I drink soy milk. For potassium, I eat dried apricots. And for niacin, I eat peanut butter (1-4 tablespoons a day).

Yes, these things aren't exactly low in B6, but I make sure to spread them out over the day so my body has time to flush it out.

The best way to prevent a vitamin deficiency is to monitor your nutrient intake. You can do this with several free online tools -- just do a search for diet trackers. You will have to log everything you eat, which is time-consuming, but if you have B6 toxicity, it's worth it. A few times now, I have developed the beginnings of vitamin deficiencies, and if I hadn't been expecting such a possibility, the symptoms might have progressed much further than they did. Since I started tracking my diet, I've felt much more secure and less anxious overall. Knowing I'm not vitamin deficient is one less thing to worry about.

Day 61-75: On the Mend Again

In my last post, I talked about alarming new neurological symptoms. I'm glad to say that two weeks later, those symptoms have all but gone away. I credit my improvement to rigidly following a low-B6 diet. If I don't know what the B6 content of something is, then I won't eat it. In general, I try to keep my daily B6 intake at or under 1.3mg. I also try not to exceed 0.4mg with any one meal.

So, 2-and-a-half months after first developing symptoms and stopping supplementation, how am I doing? I would say fairly well, but not cured. At this point, I'm not sure I ever will be 100% healed. What B6 toxicity does (as far as I understand it) is deteriorate the protective myelin sheath around nerves (a process called demyelination). I seem to have suffered the worst demyelination in my arms (the ulnar nerve), which leads to almost constant tingling around the elbows. Maybe my arms will heal over time (it's still fairly early -- some people take years to heal), but only time will tell.

Other than that, I don't have any noticeable symptoms (unless I fall off the wagon and eat B6, that is). That's why I say I'm doing fairly well. Considering how bad B6 toxicity symptoms CAN be, mine aren't so bad.