Hi I'm manny,
I'm half Indian and half English and have beta-thalassemia minor and live in the UK. For the past 4 or 5 years I've been really struggling with hypomania, pressured speech, and sometimes crazy suicidal lows. It seemed to be rapid cycling bipolar, where I can become suicidal, and then an hour later be fine within the same day. But I mostly suffer from hypomania and pressured speech. I use to suffer a lot from OCD, but that seems to have abated lately. These past 4 years I've been really trying every supplement under the sun, trying to cure my increasing hypomania and pressured speech that's been plaguing me, but nothing has worked.
This past week I've been very hypomanic/pressured speech, but also for the first time I started taking B9 and B12 in their methyl forms. Yesterday my symptoms seems significantly less, and today they seem non existent. Also I've started to see pink in the palms of my hands, whereas before they've always been yellowy (which I had always attributed to the mild anaemia beta thalassemia trait causes).
So I wanted to share my story, especially since my bipolar symptoms have worsened significantly the last 4 years, and I've tried everything under the sun when it came to supplements to fix it, and nothing worked. I regularly took a multi vitamin so I didn't think I'd be deficient in either b9 or b12, but it seems I might be one of those people who require different forms. I am also a meat eater.
While it's only been a couple of days since my symptoms have abated, I feel it could be a very real possibility that b9/b12 deficiencies could have co-existed with my blood disorder all of these decades which may have been causing my bipolar symptoms all along. Currently the only side effect has been insomnia since taking the methyl forms of B9 & B12, which I'm seeing if I can counteract by trying different things.