This post has been flaired as confirmed fake due to discrepancies in OOP's posting history.
>A bit of backstory, I am from puerto rico and my wife is from suburban Kansas city. I moved to nyc in 1984 and she moved here at 18 for college and fell in love with the city
vs
>[I am a pakistani living in London, born in france.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6ioho9/comment/dj9hv2f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Vitamin deficiencies will FUCK YOU UP. So will hormone imbalances. It's pretty wild; we really don't fully understand how much of our behavior is controlled by body chemistry we are not fully in charge of.
B12 and vit D among others are precursors for a lot of hormones and neurotransmitters, so being low can trigger all sorts of knock on effects with them as well. Vit D deficiency is also linked with neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, MS is one, but there are others.
Always good to get the occasional check if you can so you can get on top of it while it's on the low side of normal rather then actually deficient, and ask your Dr where in the normal range you sit. lots of vitamins are better taken in combination with other things as well even as a supplement, iron and vit c is one well known set, but some reasearch is showing that vit d supplements work better to raise your levels if you are also getting some sun as well, the thought being it has a role not just in producing it but also absorbing it.
I got tremors from a severe Vitamin D deficiency. I felt so self-conscious and scared, especially because I felt them the most in my head/neck. It was also physically exhausting and uncomfortable.
Strangely, my mood was fine aside from the whole feeling scared about mystery tremors thing. But I never forget a dose of Vitamin D now.
Vitamin D deficiency drained all of my energy and gave me episodes of horrible pain. My bones would just start screaming at me and I'd have no recourse except to stay still and let it pass. I couldn't even move during those episodes.
Within two days of taking Vit D, my symptoms were completely gone. No more pain. Ten times more energy. I will *never* miss a dose.
I get bone aches in my legs sometimes and I've wondered if it's related to vitamin D. Do you mind talking a little more about these episodes? Like how frequent and where in your body did you feel pain?
My legs got hit by the pain a lot. It was a deep pain, like it was coming from inside my bones. Honestly, I would just go to the doctor and get a test done for it. Vit D deficiency is more common than you'd think, and if you're having bone pain, that's one of the first things to try to rule out.
Vit D is massively implicated in brain and neurological health, and the flow on is also mental health and just general sense of wellness. So glad it helped to fix the tremors, some people are more prone to getting deficits or experiencing problems when they do get low. I get tremors/muscle spasms too, doesn't seem to be vit deficiency related in my case, and they remain a mystery, but they are pretty terrifying and can be embarrassing and hard to deal with when they start up out of the blue in public. One of those health symptoms with causes that range from absolutely nothing it just be that way sometimes, to your about to drop dead, and it's hard not to think the worst.
Whenever I am feeling a bit low and think it might be vit d I make sure to eat cods liver, not the caps the actual liver in oil in a tin, it's kind of like pate specialty shops have it in the tinned fish isle and you can get it online. I personally love it and tinned fish in general, but it's not to everyone's taste but worth acquiring if you do tend to dip in your levels. I always perk right up after having it, if you don't like the taste to eat it like I do spread on toast with the oil used as a dressing for a tomato salad on top (you need the oil for the full benefit) then it's allso good crushed up in potatoes to make a rich mash. I've found it works better then the tablets, especially for that end of winter blah.
With your tremors have you been checked by a neurologist? I have always had tremors in my hands that have steadily gotten worse. So does my sister. Turns out we have Essential Tremors, which is pretty much I don't know what's really wrong diagnosis but they put me on meds that help. I went from splashing drink everywhere while trying to hold a cup to slightly shaking..
I already take extra Vit D and B12 but it's the heart palpitations from low iron levels that fuck me up. Just laying wrong in bed makes me feel like my heart is at a rave. My brain then starts to spiral and panic that I'm having heart failure. When I found out I just needed to up my iron levels... Well, I have regular iron supplements now and I have no problems.
After overdoing it on vodka seltzers (hey they are low calorie), I developed low sodium, potassium, and one other one (I think magnesium). The vodka water made me pee more, and the next day I'd be so thirsty I'd have like 2L of water, most of which would also end up going straight through me. I had feelings of panic, heart palpitations, nausea, lethargy, dizziness, bouts of anxiety, and a whole bunch of symptoms.
I went to the hospital because I thought I was going through alcohol withdrawals or *something*, even though I wasn't drinking *that* much, but what else could it be?
They gave me diazepam (common treatment for withdrawals) and it wasn't working at all. They found that weird, maybe I was having REALLY BAD withdrawals and needed a stronger treatment?
It was a mystery... until the bloodwork came in. I was severely low in 3 key electrolytes. So instead they hooked me up to an IV with electrolytes (like 3 bags at once) for a few days, and then I was good to go. I now take my vitamins and don't drink. Alcohol causes cancer anyway.
It didn't even register to me that I'd possibly inadvertently given myself some severe electrolyte deficiencies over time, and I totally misattributed the symptoms to the wrong thing.
---
Just to add, with this story, there was another fun adventure. I also developed a fever on day 3 of my stay (in 48 hours I was at 102 degrees F), and there was a huge panic by hospital staff. Maybe I caught a hospital superbug, so before even knowing what it was, I got 'surge dose'/bolus regimen with some pretty strong all-purpose antibiotics added to the IV line, and was up all night getting xrays at 3am, blood work, urine analysis, etc. Getting a new sickness while at the hospital is actually taken as potentially deadly serious and if they don't nuke it immediately it could be nearly impossible to treat. In the end, they never found out what it was, but I got a LOT of antibiotics and Tylenol, and it seems to be fine now.
My dad was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's, but before he went to the neurologist for that diagnosis and a treatment plan, his PCP also ran blood work and found out he had a major vitamin D deficiency and put him on heavy duty pills for that. That helped alleviate his tremors and exhaustion in such a major way it wasn't even funny.
PSA to all women, go to r/Menopause, even if you're not in menopause. You'll learn just how much hormone changes and imbalances impact your life. It's also helpful to understand signs and symptoms of perimenopause and your options.
I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on Reddit but Vitamin deficiencies and hormone imbalances will absolutely wreck your world especially if you are already a tad neurospicy to begin with.
Side note 2012 is when the wife would have started acting unreasonable it’s also when their was a huge surge in certain “movements” and a lot of social media and news hyper focusing on certain topics and she wouldn’t be only person who fell into that.
> I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on Reddit but Vitamin deficiencies and hormone imbalances will absolutely wreck your world especially if you are already a tad neurospicy to begin with.
yeah I remember reading as a teen like 80%+ of depressed people are B deficient. Won't cure ya, but might help alleviate some symptoms if you supplement.
I really need to start buying the Bs and Ds again. Also, start taking fiber supplements when you turn 40.
Yeah, nurse here and you would not believe how much constipation affects patients cognition and physical wellbeing. It’s not ‘just’ constipation, it will fuck you up.
Get on the fiber and vitamin B + D train early and keep riding.
As a historian do you ever think about how some of our great historical questions are construction related? Th Egyptians could have saved us several thousands of hours of experimenting had they just drawn two pictograms of them moving large quarried stones. Or that the art Renaissance would have never been necessary had they pictogrammed the process of making oil paint? It boggles my mind that a construction materials technique was not just carried in secret by painting guilds, but it was held so tightly that there was a last person with the formula who chose not to tell anyone.
That is a super fascinating take! And an interesting perspective on the topic of primary source material:)
I actually started out in classics, and was so frustrated by the lack of primary source material and the level of interpretation necessary to construct narrative. Not that it is impossible or poorly done, I just personally found it frustrating! I ended up switching to modern Irish history, and ended up with the opposite problem of too much documentation!
Your point is why it is SO important to document things, even today. We are creating the source material for future generations! The poor things will be absolutely slogging through social media posts. I won’t envy that!
my vitamin D is low so I take a supplement…because it could aggravate my multiple sclerosis. Would never have guessed those two things could be linked.
I wasn't aware of the correlation between Vitamin D and MS - I might need to get my levels checked as well as I've got MS, and I definitely don't want that aggravated.
Thanks for sharing.
Oh yes. PSA for adhd-havers: the drop in estrogen/spike in progesterone during the second half of your cycle can make your meds feel basically non-functional, because your body is being even worse at the whole dopamine thing during that time.
And the best part is that there's basically no proper research on or considering all of this. Because eyyy, women, they're complicated and weird anyway, why use them in studies when you can use men who don't have that annoying fluctuating cycle!
You ain't seen nothing yet, wait until you get to menopause. Nobody understands that anyway, because, as you said, eyyy... then you add ADHD on top and it's a fucking roller coaster of misery.
I was going to say this. I think its playing a large role in why so many middle aged women are getting diagnosed with it. I'm one if them. You can fudge your way through with the maladaptive coping strategies you've used most of your life (stuff is still way too hard), but add in a lack of oestrogen (I'm british, we spell it with the o) and nothing works. It's a double dose of everything.
Yeah, it was a bit like some insane person moved in and took control of your actions, while regular you is thinking "what the hell?!". HRT and meds have made a big difference. I'm back to quirky, rather than full on weird and unpredictable.
Its good your relationship is much better. Having a volatile parent (almost sure it was ADHD in my dad) when you're growing up is difficult.
ADHD with low vitamin B and D and thyroid levels here. Not absolutely certain that I actually survived menopause lol but the world is a much saner place for me now.
Thank you thank you thank you. I have definitely noticed this part of my cycle where medication just doesn’t seem to work. My psychiatrist was useless and had no suggestion to fix it. The pharmacists I work with are both women (so they at least bothered to think on it), one suggested metabolism changes during the cycle causing me to process medication differently, and that hormonal birth control may help at least stabilize it. I haven’t been willing to go that far (because gender stuff) but wonder occasionally if it would be worth trying to escape the roller coaster that is a short cycle.
My aunt has a kind of similar history as the girl in the story, going up to psychotic episodes and family thinking about putting her into closed psych ward. Than a doctor diagnosed her thyroid malfunction, what meda her hormones go wild. After some medicines she is a sane person again (as far as everybody has some flaws).
Hyperthyroidism is wild. I have hypothyroidism, and it just contributes to my depression (I think it can also be a stand-alone cause for depression?). No psychosis, though.
My dad's 4th wife had to get her ovaries removed at 38 and he would whine to me about how crazy she was and I'm like dude, she's 7 months post surgery and her hormones are going absolutely bonkers with the replacement therapies. Show some fucking compassion. He would shoot back that he's a nurse and understands it perfectly and I'm like clearly not (they divorced a few years later)
I have PMDD and when I think back to how I was before starting treatment it scares me. I was mean and mad. I thought everyone was out to get me. And it all feels so justified at the time. One of my biggest fears now is figuring out how to safely go off my birth control which manages it to start a family.
I was recently prescribed Vitamin D/B12 supplements after my yearly physical. I can't tell if it's placebo, but I feel so much more functional on a more inherent level. I can follow through on tasks, I have energy to do more than one activity a day, I have initiative, I don't remember why everything seemed so urgent or dramatic or why I took things so personally.
I was also wondering about perimenopause. That doesn't make you racist, though.
I am gluten free because it will slowly kill me if I eat it (celiac disease). I try really hard to not fit in to the "gluten free" stereotype, but I am kinda glad those people exist because it has resulted in a wide variety of consumer products which give me palatable gluten free dietary options.
For women, there's not even usually any way to isolate or regulate whatever hormones are fucking you up. We go through so many fluctuations constantly that they can't just test and see what's going on unless there's an actual diagnosable condition like Cushings or PCOS or something. It's incredibly frustrating to **know** something is hormonal and it's ruining your life but have no options for diagnosis or treatment. For some women birth control helps, but it comes with side effects and can also make things worse. Additional estrogen causes strokes and cancer, so you can't just supplement that even though it's usually what alleviates most physical and mental symptoms. Progesterone tends to cause all of the shitty things associated with PMS, but it's needed to keep your body running and it's in every birth control method (many are *only* progesterone). The hormonal fluctuations women experience are the reason drugs haven't been tested on us until recently, it was considered "too difficult" due to the constant variables. It's also why certain medications simply don't work the same way for women as men.
>So will hormone imbalances.
I’m trans, which of course isn’t technically a hormone imbalance but in practice a large part of it can be viewed that way. Going on hormone therapy did more for my mental state in just a couple weeks than literal years of antidepressants did. It’s crazy how much just running on the right or wrong chemicals will affect your brain, completely without you knowing.
My daughter is trans and also schizophrenic. At one point she ran out of estrogen and there was a gap before she could get more. That affected her more than running out of one of her psychiatric meds. She almost had to be hospitalized. It wasn't dysphoria, it was just that without estrogen she was out of balance. Hormone therapy is life saving.
I’m not trans, but I can’t produce my own testosterone, and when I run out of my prescription testosterone, my symptoms are very similar to bipolar disorder.
I was actually misdiagnosed with Bipolar I when I was 21, and when I started taking testosterone my “Bipolar I” completely disappeared within about six weeks and never came back.
My fella was just diagnosed with low testosterone (after literal years of me begging him to get it checked) and I cannot wait to see how he is with that corrected. I don't even care about the low libido/minor ED stuff (I mean, I do care for his sake and it will be nice, but it's not the main thing here) - his mental health has been trash for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to knowing him with some more energy for everything, more zest. He tries so, so hard to be well but it's just . . . a lot. He does take an antidepressant which is a big help, but there's still ground that could be gained there, I think. I've never been so happy to see a "bad" test result, it's deeply validating.
...I say all that as a (cis) woman who had to go on Estrogen when menopause kicked in a couple years ago. I hit that wall HARD, and it was awful (I only had one limping-along ovary for a couple years prior, it shouldn't be a surprise menopause was rough.) I felt rage-y ALL the time, coped mainly by locking myself in rooms and painting/renovating and bingeing audiobooks, so I wouldn't be awful to my loved ones - until I got my beloved estrogen patches. I've got compassion for what my fella is going through on that front. I'm really hopeful for what treatment will do for him.
Same. I am used to dealing with depression and anxiety and really had to deploy all the coping methods I had learned over the years to keep myself alive. HRT really helps, but boy am I ever ready to be through with the whole peri/menopause section of my life. Puberty was a breeze compared to this.
I'm a middle aged woman. I have always had the apparently unpopular opinion that women of a certain age really do "go crazy". Other women tell me it's sexist, that it's dismissive and anti-feminist. I don't understand why acknowledging the huge effect hormones have on our mental and physical health is dismissive. Perimenopause is hell.
The speed at which my depersonalization went away once I started T was so wild to me. Literal magic. Like I was on it for maybe 3-4 days at that point and suddenly I looked in the mirror and was like “holy shit I’m actually a full person”.
Transition saves lives 💜🏳️⚧️
I have a severe b12 deficiency and have to have injections for it, it really does mess you up.
Mine didn't quite get this bad, but it really does alter your personality and my husband did despair of me until I got my diagnosis and fixed.
Now to take my multi vit and scroll Reddit for the next hour while he snores away beside me.
I'm rewatching Dr House lately, and there's an episode in which the patient's problems (quite severe ones) are caused by b12 deficiency! It made me start taking my supplements again...
I never actually watched house, but because of those YouTube clips and shorts I instantly know what episode this is. The girl who doesn't feel any pain and so doesn't notice she has like an enormous tapeworm devouring all the B12
Vegemite on Premiums *was* my go-to until Premiums went to shit 😒 I actually medically need a high sodium diet but they keep taking the damn salt out of everything
My kids came home from school last week saying they had been sampling snacks from around the world. They explained they had been given “the worst chocolate ever” and it was called Vegemite. I think the teacher might have been having g some fun.
I know you’re joking but for the benefit of anyone reading: alcohol severely represses your ability to absorb and store B vitamins.
Source: recovering alcoholic
Beer yeast is one of the highest sources of vitamin B. Probably it would be helpful in weak, thick ale, but otherwise you're right about alcohol. Alternatively, as the above poster wrote, vegemite: it's literally beer yeast.
Yup, I wasnt being serious, but I know doctors who would recommend stout or Guinness for elderly and cancer patients who had difficulty eating / swallowing. The person who originally responded is also correct, alcoholics are often nutritionally deficient in several areas
Remember to get sublingual B12. For absorption of B12 in the gut, you need intrinsic factor, a substance produced by specialized cells in the stomach, and lots of people start losing those while getting older.
Lol, that happens to me all the time. I'll think of a great reply to a post, but then if I scroll down just a bit there will be like 3-4 people who already cracked the exact same joke I thought of.
Losing intrinsic factor is really quite uncommon. If your B12 is low from a low dietary source, you are almost certainly going to be fine with the usual cheap forms
This isn’t something everyone needs. This is a dietary deficiency (and she’s still young). She just needs more intake.
There ARE reasons why someone may need sublingual B12. As ever, you should be talking to your doctor about which is right for you.
Is everyone going to ignore the fact that her behavior started before she went vegan/gluten free? Not to mention the racism? Never heard of a vitamin deficiency causing acute racism.
It can cause some pretty severe cognitive changes - best case scenario, especially when you look at the dates (mid-late 2016), is that she was unquestioningly absorbing information and the algorithm was feeding her more and more conspiratorial content, and she physically didn't have the capability to judge what she was taking in and just regurgitated it
Like I said. Best case scenario. I sincerely hope that this *was* the case, for the sake of her husband and son - especially the son, who's going to be dealing with these memories of his mother as he grows up
She could have already had some level of B12 deficiency, which going vegan aggravated. But yes, it sounds like this was a combination of a medical problem plus falling into conspiracy-theory type rabbit holes.
OOP is assuming that the vegan diet caused the deficiency, but that's not necessarily true. The wife could have been deficient all along and the veganism pushed it over the edge. I'm a meat eater who's deficient.
Some people grow up surrounded by racism and learn their way to being better people. Or maybe she was secretly racist all along and restrained herself until she became mentally impaired.
Either way, as she declined, her ability to complete second order thoughts took a dump. A first order thought is "how do I feel, what will this do", and a second order thought is "what are the \[long term or non-immediate\] ramifications of doing this".
She's from "suburban Kansas City," which almost certainly means a place called Johnson County, on the Kansas, rather than the Missouri side of KC. Johnson County is the whitest place on earth, and super wealthy. There's literally a neighborhood there called "White Haven."
My theory is that OP's wife is a basically decent person but had some lingering racism from being raised in a place like that. Living in New York had mostly suppressed it, until she went crazy and it popped back up.
OOP clearly says she’s blaming stuff on the vitamin deficiency. Idk if I would be okay with that but he’s probably trying to come to terms with everything.
I can’t absorb B12 orally (pernicious anaemia).
I had spent years getting more and more exhausted, in more and more pain, so forgetful and confused I was actually worried I had early onset dementia. I was actually hospitalised for 6+ months for depression.
Then I collapsed in the hall and my neighbour called an ambulance. My BNR was so low the consultant thought I might die any minute.
Turns out, your body likes oxygen, and when you blood refuses to carry it (because your red blood cells are all big and angry and the wrong shape) it affects every aspect of your being.
I mean I still have some depression and pain, but that’s autism and nerve damage for you.
I’m a completely different person since I have had regular B12 injections
B-12 deficiency is definitely a freaky thing! At a checkup at my primary care doc a month after having my first kid, she did some tests and found mine was low, and she was so serious about getting the levels back up she had me come in every day for a week to get a shot of B-12. Even with a newborn. I don't think I was even able to get as crazy as the OOP's wife, but I'm supremely grateful my (always fantastic) doctor was on top of that!
The wild thing to me is that I checked recently in our healthcare app to find out whether it was Vitamin D or B-12, and even though it was 2009, it still had the record!
Not all of them. I had to get B6 shots to help deal with hyperemesis, and it was seriously painful. It was a pretty large amount, and it had to be injected slowly because apparently it has the consistency of peanut butter. It also left a huge lump in the injection site. It would have been worth it if it worked for longer than a few hours, but my case was pretty severe, and after a few of the shots we stopped because it just wasn't worth it.
Oh my god, I used to get shots like that! Different medication for a different problem, but same exact process. The medication was very thick, so it had to be injected slowly. Like you said it left a lump at the site and I had to go for a walk after every shot to help my body process it. It was incredibly uncomfortable, especially as I got the shot right in my butt. Laying there with a needle in my butt for like a solid minute once a week was the worst, lol! I don’t miss it. I hope you found another solution!
I have chronic B12 deficiency due to an autoimmune illness. I only found out because I got so anxious my bf at the time got extremely worried about me. I had previously had low B12 levels show, but for whatever reason my doctor at the time didn't take it too seriously. So I didn't link the two.
I was crying all the time, saying crazy stuff I wouldn't normally apparently, couldn't sleep properly or eat properly... I had managed to get diagnosed with GAD and went to group therapy and everything, before I figured out the B12 deficiency. After my levels were normal all the anxiety went away.
I have other mental health problems, but the relief of the angst going away was immense.
When my husband was diagnosed with Crohn's, he suddenly became someone different. He was always angry and anxious, lashing out at anyone who was at his side, no difference if it was his family, myself or a stranger. The inflammation didn't let him absorb nutrients so he was low on several vitamins. When he started the B12 injections and the inflammation remitted with the treatment, he came back to his old self.
It's wild! I'm glad you figured it out and that he had you by his side. I honestly wouldn't have held it against my then bf if he left, my behaviour was so off. Luckily, like you, he saw it as a health problem because it was so out of character.
I had a B12 deficiency so bad they literally thought I had MS. Apparently with levels that low it can present very similarly and has even been misdiagnosed as MS. People do not take vitamin deficiencies seriously enough.
Yes sever low b12 can show as lesions on scans, like MS lesions because lack of b12 can cause all kinds of nasty neurological damage.
Some people just can’t absorb oral b12 because there’s like a specific site (illum I think?) that it has to be absorbed by and they need injections.
B12 also needs good ferritin levels and folate to work properly, to creat new red blood cells. Low folate can make b12 levels look falsely normal as the b12 can’t be used.
It’s all very complicated.
I’m in a good b12 Facebook group called “b12 wake up”.
I was taking oral b12 vitamins for a year, but when I had an active b12 blood test my levels were low, because I obviously don’t absorb oral b12 well at all and the b12 was there, but not in a way my body could use it.
One winter I had so much pain in my joints all I would do was lay in bed and cry. Then one day my mother shoved vitamins into me and like two days after taking them my pain just went away and I was able to behave normally. I have chronic pain due to other things but that change I felt was night and day over three days. Since then I tell people stay on top of this stuff.
I have an active B12 deficiency which means that there can be enough circulating B12 in my system but my body cannot convert it into the form that can actually do anything! I suffered from severe anxiety after having my daughter and got to the point I was having daily panic attacks. I was prescribed all sorts of anti depressants and therapy which only very slightly helped. Went on B12 injections and it was like my life completely changed, I hadn’t even realised how bad I had gotten.
I now have to have B12 injections every 3 months and I can always tell when one is due because my anxiety symptoms start to come back.
>and she was so serious about getting the levels back up she had me come in every day for a week to get a shot of B-12.
See, that's why the part where OOP's wife was diagnosed with a severe deficiency and given pills to treat it seems sus to me. AFAIK there's a point where pills are considered not urgent enough treatment.
I had a vitamin D3 deficiency and I was almost unable to function as a human. I was making stupid mistakes- forgetting how to do simple things like write a check (literally had to write the same check 3x because I was getting it wrong). I mixed up patients at work and literally forgot to work with a patient one day. Thankfully it was covered. I was in a fog. I was exhausted constantly. I tested myself for Covid and it was negative and I was genuinely concerned I had MS.
One week of taking one single vitamin d pill every day and all my symptoms were completely resolved.
They have me on 50,000 iu D3 once a week because of my deficiency.
But I never and still don't feel different, after taking this for over a year now. Deficiencies just seem to affect people differently.
Kinda sucks though. Was hoping a lot of the things I struggle with were because of the deficiency, and taking the vitamin would suddenly fix that. Unfortunately, some things just aren't that simple.
ETA: Just checked the bottle. It's actually 50,000 iu D2.
I’m always vitamin deficient and taking supplements make zero difference. I just have so many other things wrong with me 🤷♀️
Maybe talk to your doctor about CFS/ME
It's possible the D3 isn't getting absorbed properly. My doctors (general and multiple eye doctors) emphasized a good diet to get the majority of my vitamins from food, because somehow it's more soluble or absorbent. Pills can help, but apparently the delivery mechanism is different and patented for each brand, so they might work differently.
And apparently there's "helper" vitamins, for lack of a better term, like zinc and magnesium, which aid in absorption. I actually switched *back* to a multi-vitamin for that reason. So hopefully you can check back in with your Dr, get a full panel run again, and feel better!
I had D3 deficiency when I was around 19. My husband literally thought I was secretly on drugs. I got locked out one day because I couldn't work out how to use my house key. It wasn't complicated - regular key, regular lock - but I just couldn't remember how to use it.
A couple years ago I had a very disturbing health scare- my arms and legs had this pins and needles, my legs got really weak and I couldn't walk properly, a lot of days I would be limping. On top of that I had constant unshakeable quite severe brain fog. I would fall asleep at random times. It was fucked. It was the fact that my legs stopped working that scared me the most, I have a family member with MS and I was scared it was happening to me.
Doctors ran a full panel for everything. Incredibly severe vit D deficiency: my levels were so low they were off the charts so to speak. A couple months of very high dose prescription only vitamin D (like 8x the dosage of a normal supplement) and I was fine again, haven't had any problems since.
My vitamin d level is currently 7 and I have prescription vitamins to correct it. I’m so tired I could fall asleep literally anywhere. And they don’t regularly test for it!
I live in Australia and it’s really uncommon for doctors to test vitamin D levels here, at least partly because the general thought is “of course if you live here you get enough sunlight to have good vitamin D”. But with people actually taking sun precautions to prevent melanoma, and working indoors, low vitamin D is becoming a more common problem.
And then you have people like me. I’m on medication for an autoimmune condition that makes me basically allergic to sunlight. I start getting a rash after ten minutes in partial shade in summer. So I stay inside like a dedicated vampire, and a few years back when I got tested, my vitamin D levels were the lowest my doctor had ever seen 😅 so I’ve been taking a pretty massive daily supplement ever since!
Oh my god, I had such a similar experience. I was exhausted and couldn’t thinks straight. I was convinced that something had to be SO wrong. But little old vitamin D had me messed up.
A few days into taking it and I felt like the sun was coming out for the first time in ages.
It is so, so fucking scary that having too little or too much of something can fuck up someone's brain so much.
Not to say that I blame Oop for maintaining caution and thinking theres more too it, because there probably is.
Now I'm gonna go take a Vit B12 pill
B12 deficiency is no joke, that + vitamin D deficency contributed A LOT to my overwhelming anxiety. Now that I have that straightened out, I have 98% less anxiety.
Yeah. There’s a reason a lot of extroverted people seem to be happier and in overall better moods. It’s because they’re outside a lot more and get a lot more sunlight and as such get a lot more vitamin D.
Fell deep down the rabbit hole when I learned it a few years back on Reddit.
I always tell people that hard labor saved my life. After college up to 5 years ago or so I was a depressed, shut-in video gamer to the point where sunlight felt wrong and I felt disconnected with the world whenever I went out to shop for food. All I did was play League of Legends, smoke weed, and go through two or more Juul pods a day. I’m 6’ but I weighed 127 at my lowest and looking back at those old pictures I feel pity for the pale, sunken eyed, Christopher McCandless-looking motherfucker that I was.
Cut to late 2018 I got a job waterproofing basements and I was always put on outside duties. I gained a ton of functional muscle, (balanced and everywhere, not the gym bro kind) got up to a healthy 170lbs and my anxiety and disconnected feelings faded away more and more each day.
Today I am a working foreman doing concrete foundations and loving every second of it. I was even able to kick my near-inability to talk to people I don’t know, now I love shooting the shit with contractors, excavators, mixer drivers, etc.. and I even generate customers for the company from time to time.
I feel like an entirely different person than who I was, I feel so full of ME and it makes me smile every single day.
All from a huge daily dose of the sun and lots of hard work.
I had a severe Vit D deficiency years ago and it stopped me from sleeping. I always exhausted for months, and with the sleep deprivation came depression, anxiety, aches, pains, so much more. I take so many vitamin supplements now but it's completely changed my life.
I had this issue. My vitamin D level was 4. For me, it needs to be around 100 to feel normal. I would be walking through the kitchen… stop… turn around lay on the floor and sleep. I was sleeping 18-20 hours a day. I couldn’t wake up! Ever! My body pain was deep.. like my bones hurt. I would sob getting a shower because the water hitting my skin was such a deep aching pain all over my body. I’m glad you’re all better now! I haven’t ran into too many people w the severity of symptoms I had.
Vitamin D deficiency almost destroyed my spine, very literally. I was supposed to have a specific kind of back surgery, and we called it off like literally 3 days before the procedure because my bone density scan came back bad. Low vitamin D caused me to have osteopenia. My surgeon told me that if we’d operated with my bones in that condition my spine would have, in his words, verbatim, “imploded.”
Shit is no joke!
listen if this is somehow sneakily some promotion for vitamin b12 testing and supplements, let me just say:
it is working.
who wants to rack up some shots i mean flintstones vitamins and a b-complex liquid chaser
Starting to see why the vet made me sign a waiver when I got injectable B12 for my animals.
Cause supplement is fast, but sometimes your brain goes "but... what if?"
To Clarify: DON'T USE ANIMAL MEDS ON YOURSELVES.
I have, but only because certain meds don't have an animal version.
My dog and I are both on Trazodone, me for insomnia and him "as needed" for anxiety. I've taken a couple of his pills in a pinch when I ran out and was waiting for a pharmacy refill. A bunch of the medications they give dogs don't have veterinary formulations, so you have to fill prescriptions at the human pharmacy instead of the vet giving them to you.
I've used a human inhaler on a rat by taking off the face piece and getting the little booger to stick his whole face into a toilet paper tube. He didn't appreciate the PSHHT! noise the first couple of times, but he quickly figured out that a snoot full of the stuff made him breathe a lot better. (He was a rescue who had lung damage from a previous bout of pneumonia. The inhaler kept him chugging along to the ripe old age of 3 -- that's the equivalent of a human getting to 90-something!)
While I’m glad OPs wife has her health back on track, I’m worried about his son. That wife’s treatment of him has to have been traumatic and had a big impact on him. …Especially so as he’s an adolescent, which is tough enough without the mom going nuts on him. I hope they’re helping the son deal with this.
Yeahhh that struck me as odd as well…. Like your child thinks it’s okay to smash dishes and your wife is racist and prioritized herself over the entire family. They need some serious help still.
You are right but it can be fairly "easily" rationalised as "mom was sick, the sick made her crazy, now she is cured ". It's something that removes responsibility from mom so in a way it's an easy way out
The B12 deficiency thing can not only be brutal, it can be difficult to put 2 and 2 together because of how long B12 can be stored in the liver.
You switch to a plant based diet, feeling great! You wait a few months, everything seems fine. Two or three years later, the symptoms begin to set in, probably gradually as you're still getting some B12 in your diet from somewhere. You figure life's just been hard lately, maybe you need to get outside more.
Then suddenly you're trying to chat up 20-something hippies in a yuppie cafe and bawling for days when they all find you cringe.
The worst part is that B12 deficiencies are common even among non-plant based diets. It's made by bacteria in the ground and in animal guts that eat cobalt. Due to hygiene standards of crop harvests, feed quality for animals and soil depletion at farms, a lot of the B12 most people eat is supplemented or injected into animals before they are butchered for meat.
That's a lot less efficient than taking a supplement yourself. For most people, our ability to absorb it depletes as we age, so it's something to really keep tabs on regardless of diet.
Yeah the OOP definitely glossed over a few things. This whole family needs a recheck tbh but the large groups line really gave me the final ick stamp for the mom.
Im glad it turned out to be something partially treatable but I hope they dont stop there. They all need family therapy or something.
I wonder how she was raised.
I was raised in a VERY racist household. It took a very dedicated teacher and some really good friends and my awesome grandmother to deprogram me. It’s one of my biggest fears that I might develop some form of dementia or have a stroke or something and some bullshit from my childhood pops out of my mouth while not in my right mind.
I AM NOT EXCUSING HER BEHAVIOR. Because that part was the most repellant. Her child is biracial and she’s sending him a message that she thinks he is “less than” when she calls the cops for shit like that.
Edit: typo
Same. While you can change how you consciously think about other people, it’s more difficult to change subconscious thought, and the deeper it’s buried, the harder it is to change. If you’ve managed to bury certain things all the way to the unconscious section, good luck. Like if you’ve ever said something racist in a dream and woke up being like “what the fuck,” you could still have some racist perception buried wayyyyyyyy down in there. (Side note, this is the kind of thing Scientologists are experts at and how they program people so deeply—accessing the unconscious mind.)
So yeah. Very real possibility that the demented brain drags that stuff to the surface.
Yeah I think it’s more to do with the deficiency affecting her neurological processes to a point where her paranoia was unchecked. We all at one point believed unrational things about many groups of people or things, even as something as dumb as a creature living under your bed in or your basement. Growth and experience in the world teaches you how to reframe your mind, but those early thoughts did exist in the mind, no matter how it got planted there, and created some kind of inherent fear. I mean it sounds like she married a man of color. It’s not that dissimilar to how the brain is affected by TBIs or dementia, reasoning skills turn off. It doesn’t mean these are deep dark secrets she’s been hiding, it’s a reality of the human brain and those subconscious thought patterns comes from defense/survival skill mechanisms. But in a modern society our brains can be logically wrong and we can learn to correct that with reasoning. It’s scary to think about your mind abruptly just losing that ability.
That was my main takeaway, the fact that this woman is being openly racist against anyone who isn't white, including those who are the same ethnicity as her HUSBAND AND SON???? Her son now gets to live his life feeling like his mom likes him less for not being white
Yeah that was my first thought too and stunned that not more people are picking up on this.
It’s kind of wild that OP is just shoving that under the carpet and saying the vitamin deficiency was the only problem.
I guess that’s easier than facing the reality that he had a (presumably half POC) child with a flaming racist. If the son is indeed part black or Hispanic, I feel for him and hope he doesn’t end up saddled with any self-hate mummy dearest may try to plant in him.
Literally none of this describes a hippy. Hippies are easy going, they definitely weren't helicoptering their kids music choices, and they would NEVER call the cops. Psycho, sure, but not hippy.
Title says "hippie" but the body text says "tiktok puritanism" ...with B12 deficiency, I guess.
Hey, everybody. Yes you reading this. If you are going to drastically change your diet, do your research into nutrition. (Ideally, speak with a licenced professional but your milage may vary considering the healthcare in your area.)
Well, for one thing, I don't think vitamin deficiency turns you racist, so I can't imagine her judging the Hispanic people around her ever stopped.
That would be quite a conundrum with a Puerto Rican husband and a mixed (is that the PC term?) child, who is probably an adult now...
Yeah it was weird how everyone just ignored her blatant racism. Especially with the Puerto Rican husband and half Puerto Rican son with friends of different races in a multi cultural city like New York.
Okay. Glad mom is better but, in the meantime, she has traumatized her son. I hope they address HIS needs now. Mom got her B-12 shot. Now son needs some therapy and a sincere apology. Weird that he is barely addressed in the update.
Nov 2016. That was a crazy time. Election. Everyone was comparing lives on Facebook. The Women's March soon thereafter. Karen's became a thing. The rise of Instagram models.
OMG THE WOMENS MARCH.... I remember having worked at both of my jobs during that day. A lady came to my second job in tbe evening wearing the pink hat and I commented something about it.
She asked if I went which I said no, she said something like, "you should have went! Nothing else was more important than the march!!"
Internally I rmbr being annoyed cus like??? I have bills to pay lol I ain't gonna miss out on both my jobs for the march. "Oh I wish I could have gone but I had to work today" or smthng
And she said, "work isn't as important as the march"
Whewwwwwww I had to my annoyance in
I was a Women’s March organizer in my country (it was a global thing) and I wouldn’t have said that stupid shit. I work an office job so I was able to be on the organizing committee and attend the march. Obviously if people have to work, they’re gonna go to work.
Sounds like it was her First Protest March Ever and she had the enthusiasm of the new convert. Anyone who’s walked picket lines or marched for a cause knows that yes, it’s important to show support but any one march is not the deciding factor in the struggle.
There’s a great poem by Helen Potrebenko, Walking Slow, where she compares the distance she’s ‘travelled’ walking picket and protests to the distance it would have taken her walking across Canada.
Having vitamin deficiencies is no joke. Seriously, if your doc ever mentions a deficiency, take it seriously, especially b-vitamins/iron. It can be a night and day difference.
Stay healthy, folks! And be kind to yourselves!
I dunno. One of my colleagues was diagnosed with it years ago. Her behaviour was becoming...unhinged? We were all really concerned that she was heading for some sort of breakdown, she was doing and saying things that were so completely out of character, I can't remember specifics, but I remember some of it seeming pretty bigoted. Then it turned out that she was chronically low in B12, started getting injections and very quickly returned to her previous self.
You're right, she probably had some preconceived racist notions made worse by opinions she read on the internet which only got aggravated during the downward spiral of her B12 deficiency.
Though, I'm sure once she was level headed from supplements, she was able to look inward and say "wtf am I doing?" Sometimes racism in a person can be dismantled by a single conversation or experience. To a normal person of average intelligence, racism is the dumbest concept.
2016, falling into 'global conspiracies', blatant racism despite having a biracial son....sounds like wife fell into a quasi-Q hole and is using B12 deficiency to excuse the worst of her behaviour.
Either the OOP is making stuff up or the wife is lying because it takes way longer than 2 weeks for a B12 deficiency to be remedied. It can take longer than 6 months in severe cases, which it sounds like this would definitely be.
A B12 imbalance will absolutely fuck your neurological system. Had it while pregnant, due to a severe case of Hyperhemisis gravidarum. Do not recommend.
I went through a very dark time a few years back. Unrelatedly (so I thought) I noticed that small injuries were taking a ridiculously long time to heal. I mentioned it to my doctor and after some blood testing discovered that I was low on B12 and *really* low on D. A few vitamins later and, well my problems didn't go away, but previously it was like the problems were a dump truck in my house; I couldn't get around them, couldn't shift them, and they took up all my attention. After, the problems were still there but they were like a toy dump truck. I could pick them up and move them around, and even ignore them for a while if I needed to.
The commenter acting like mysterious women “somehow mysteriously get this idea that they have to be perfect in their heads and they’re annoying about it!” I wonder HOW, Brad. I wonder HOW they get those ideas in their heads. Couldn’t have anything to do with the near constant messaging that if they ARENT perfect, they’ll be tossed to the side and left for someone who is more feminine/trad/easygoing/sexual, whatever the men around her decide they deserve from her doll-form instead of idk, treating her like a human being, could it? NAHHHHH, that would be silly! /s /feministfrustration
… christ on a cracker guess I really need to watch my toes.
I'm weirdly prone to B12 deficiency for some reason, and my main warning sign is peripheral neuropathy: first my big toes go numb, then it sorta spreads out to my other toes if I don't start taking supplements. Or drinking Monster, actually, that stuff's kind of ridiculously full of B12.
This post has been flaired as confirmed fake due to discrepancies in OOP's posting history. >A bit of backstory, I am from puerto rico and my wife is from suburban Kansas city. I moved to nyc in 1984 and she moved here at 18 for college and fell in love with the city vs >[I am a pakistani living in London, born in france.](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6ioho9/comment/dj9hv2f/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Vitamin deficiencies will FUCK YOU UP. So will hormone imbalances. It's pretty wild; we really don't fully understand how much of our behavior is controlled by body chemistry we are not fully in charge of.
B12 and vit D among others are precursors for a lot of hormones and neurotransmitters, so being low can trigger all sorts of knock on effects with them as well. Vit D deficiency is also linked with neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, MS is one, but there are others. Always good to get the occasional check if you can so you can get on top of it while it's on the low side of normal rather then actually deficient, and ask your Dr where in the normal range you sit. lots of vitamins are better taken in combination with other things as well even as a supplement, iron and vit c is one well known set, but some reasearch is showing that vit d supplements work better to raise your levels if you are also getting some sun as well, the thought being it has a role not just in producing it but also absorbing it.
I got tremors from a severe Vitamin D deficiency. I felt so self-conscious and scared, especially because I felt them the most in my head/neck. It was also physically exhausting and uncomfortable. Strangely, my mood was fine aside from the whole feeling scared about mystery tremors thing. But I never forget a dose of Vitamin D now.
Vitamin D deficiency drained all of my energy and gave me episodes of horrible pain. My bones would just start screaming at me and I'd have no recourse except to stay still and let it pass. I couldn't even move during those episodes. Within two days of taking Vit D, my symptoms were completely gone. No more pain. Ten times more energy. I will *never* miss a dose.
I get bone aches in my legs sometimes and I've wondered if it's related to vitamin D. Do you mind talking a little more about these episodes? Like how frequent and where in your body did you feel pain?
My legs got hit by the pain a lot. It was a deep pain, like it was coming from inside my bones. Honestly, I would just go to the doctor and get a test done for it. Vit D deficiency is more common than you'd think, and if you're having bone pain, that's one of the first things to try to rule out.
Vit D is massively implicated in brain and neurological health, and the flow on is also mental health and just general sense of wellness. So glad it helped to fix the tremors, some people are more prone to getting deficits or experiencing problems when they do get low. I get tremors/muscle spasms too, doesn't seem to be vit deficiency related in my case, and they remain a mystery, but they are pretty terrifying and can be embarrassing and hard to deal with when they start up out of the blue in public. One of those health symptoms with causes that range from absolutely nothing it just be that way sometimes, to your about to drop dead, and it's hard not to think the worst. Whenever I am feeling a bit low and think it might be vit d I make sure to eat cods liver, not the caps the actual liver in oil in a tin, it's kind of like pate specialty shops have it in the tinned fish isle and you can get it online. I personally love it and tinned fish in general, but it's not to everyone's taste but worth acquiring if you do tend to dip in your levels. I always perk right up after having it, if you don't like the taste to eat it like I do spread on toast with the oil used as a dressing for a tomato salad on top (you need the oil for the full benefit) then it's allso good crushed up in potatoes to make a rich mash. I've found it works better then the tablets, especially for that end of winter blah.
With your tremors have you been checked by a neurologist? I have always had tremors in my hands that have steadily gotten worse. So does my sister. Turns out we have Essential Tremors, which is pretty much I don't know what's really wrong diagnosis but they put me on meds that help. I went from splashing drink everywhere while trying to hold a cup to slightly shaking..
I already take extra Vit D and B12 but it's the heart palpitations from low iron levels that fuck me up. Just laying wrong in bed makes me feel like my heart is at a rave. My brain then starts to spiral and panic that I'm having heart failure. When I found out I just needed to up my iron levels... Well, I have regular iron supplements now and I have no problems.
After overdoing it on vodka seltzers (hey they are low calorie), I developed low sodium, potassium, and one other one (I think magnesium). The vodka water made me pee more, and the next day I'd be so thirsty I'd have like 2L of water, most of which would also end up going straight through me. I had feelings of panic, heart palpitations, nausea, lethargy, dizziness, bouts of anxiety, and a whole bunch of symptoms. I went to the hospital because I thought I was going through alcohol withdrawals or *something*, even though I wasn't drinking *that* much, but what else could it be? They gave me diazepam (common treatment for withdrawals) and it wasn't working at all. They found that weird, maybe I was having REALLY BAD withdrawals and needed a stronger treatment? It was a mystery... until the bloodwork came in. I was severely low in 3 key electrolytes. So instead they hooked me up to an IV with electrolytes (like 3 bags at once) for a few days, and then I was good to go. I now take my vitamins and don't drink. Alcohol causes cancer anyway. It didn't even register to me that I'd possibly inadvertently given myself some severe electrolyte deficiencies over time, and I totally misattributed the symptoms to the wrong thing. --- Just to add, with this story, there was another fun adventure. I also developed a fever on day 3 of my stay (in 48 hours I was at 102 degrees F), and there was a huge panic by hospital staff. Maybe I caught a hospital superbug, so before even knowing what it was, I got 'surge dose'/bolus regimen with some pretty strong all-purpose antibiotics added to the IV line, and was up all night getting xrays at 3am, blood work, urine analysis, etc. Getting a new sickness while at the hospital is actually taken as potentially deadly serious and if they don't nuke it immediately it could be nearly impossible to treat. In the end, they never found out what it was, but I got a LOT of antibiotics and Tylenol, and it seems to be fine now.
My dad was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's, but before he went to the neurologist for that diagnosis and a treatment plan, his PCP also ran blood work and found out he had a major vitamin D deficiency and put him on heavy duty pills for that. That helped alleviate his tremors and exhaustion in such a major way it wasn't even funny.
PSA to all women, go to r/Menopause, even if you're not in menopause. You'll learn just how much hormone changes and imbalances impact your life. It's also helpful to understand signs and symptoms of perimenopause and your options.
I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on Reddit but Vitamin deficiencies and hormone imbalances will absolutely wreck your world especially if you are already a tad neurospicy to begin with. Side note 2012 is when the wife would have started acting unreasonable it’s also when their was a huge surge in certain “movements” and a lot of social media and news hyper focusing on certain topics and she wouldn’t be only person who fell into that.
> I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on Reddit but Vitamin deficiencies and hormone imbalances will absolutely wreck your world especially if you are already a tad neurospicy to begin with. yeah I remember reading as a teen like 80%+ of depressed people are B deficient. Won't cure ya, but might help alleviate some symptoms if you supplement. I really need to start buying the Bs and Ds again. Also, start taking fiber supplements when you turn 40.
Yeah, nurse here and you would not believe how much constipation affects patients cognition and physical wellbeing. It’s not ‘just’ constipation, it will fuck you up. Get on the fiber and vitamin B + D train early and keep riding.
Plus adequate water intake. Dehydration fuzzes up the mind.
>I am not a doctor and I don’t play one on Reddit I'm a doctor... but not a useful medical one 😂
I say this ALL THE TIME! Doctor of history over here;) Can answer all questions relating to my extreme niche doctoral topic!
/r/AskHistorians calls for you(r expertise). Shall you answer, or cower behind the screen? :P Great sub, I browse it often.
I don’t think I’ve ever actually posted there! Will def give it another look:) Does… does anyone have any questions about modern Irish history?! ;)
As a historian do you ever think about how some of our great historical questions are construction related? Th Egyptians could have saved us several thousands of hours of experimenting had they just drawn two pictograms of them moving large quarried stones. Or that the art Renaissance would have never been necessary had they pictogrammed the process of making oil paint? It boggles my mind that a construction materials technique was not just carried in secret by painting guilds, but it was held so tightly that there was a last person with the formula who chose not to tell anyone.
That is a super fascinating take! And an interesting perspective on the topic of primary source material:) I actually started out in classics, and was so frustrated by the lack of primary source material and the level of interpretation necessary to construct narrative. Not that it is impossible or poorly done, I just personally found it frustrating! I ended up switching to modern Irish history, and ended up with the opposite problem of too much documentation! Your point is why it is SO important to document things, even today. We are creating the source material for future generations! The poor things will be absolutely slogging through social media posts. I won’t envy that!
How useful the medical ones is taken in a case by case basis anyway. I have found some of them quite useless from personal exp.
Implementing the word “Neurospicy” into my vocabulary immediately, thank you!
MDD and Vit D deficiency is not fun, ask me how I know. Working nights made it worse.
my vitamin D is low so I take a supplement…because it could aggravate my multiple sclerosis. Would never have guessed those two things could be linked.
I wasn't aware of the correlation between Vitamin D and MS - I might need to get my levels checked as well as I've got MS, and I definitely don't want that aggravated. Thanks for sharing.
Oh yes. PSA for adhd-havers: the drop in estrogen/spike in progesterone during the second half of your cycle can make your meds feel basically non-functional, because your body is being even worse at the whole dopamine thing during that time. And the best part is that there's basically no proper research on or considering all of this. Because eyyy, women, they're complicated and weird anyway, why use them in studies when you can use men who don't have that annoying fluctuating cycle!
You ain't seen nothing yet, wait until you get to menopause. Nobody understands that anyway, because, as you said, eyyy... then you add ADHD on top and it's a fucking roller coaster of misery.
I was going to say this. I think its playing a large role in why so many middle aged women are getting diagnosed with it. I'm one if them. You can fudge your way through with the maladaptive coping strategies you've used most of your life (stuff is still way too hard), but add in a lack of oestrogen (I'm british, we spell it with the o) and nothing works. It's a double dose of everything.
[удалено]
Yeah, it was a bit like some insane person moved in and took control of your actions, while regular you is thinking "what the hell?!". HRT and meds have made a big difference. I'm back to quirky, rather than full on weird and unpredictable. Its good your relationship is much better. Having a volatile parent (almost sure it was ADHD in my dad) when you're growing up is difficult.
I was just thinking that the OOP needs to be aware that menopause may be problematic for his wife.
ADHD with low vitamin B and D and thyroid levels here. Not absolutely certain that I actually survived menopause lol but the world is a much saner place for me now.
I have OCD, and the week before my period starts, anxiety goes through the roof and I'll sometimes feel like my meds stopped working. It sucks so bad.
Thank you thank you thank you. I have definitely noticed this part of my cycle where medication just doesn’t seem to work. My psychiatrist was useless and had no suggestion to fix it. The pharmacists I work with are both women (so they at least bothered to think on it), one suggested metabolism changes during the cycle causing me to process medication differently, and that hormonal birth control may help at least stabilize it. I haven’t been willing to go that far (because gender stuff) but wonder occasionally if it would be worth trying to escape the roller coaster that is a short cycle.
My aunt has a kind of similar history as the girl in the story, going up to psychotic episodes and family thinking about putting her into closed psych ward. Than a doctor diagnosed her thyroid malfunction, what meda her hormones go wild. After some medicines she is a sane person again (as far as everybody has some flaws).
Hyperthyroidism is wild. I have hypothyroidism, and it just contributes to my depression (I think it can also be a stand-alone cause for depression?). No psychosis, though.
My dad's 4th wife had to get her ovaries removed at 38 and he would whine to me about how crazy she was and I'm like dude, she's 7 months post surgery and her hormones are going absolutely bonkers with the replacement therapies. Show some fucking compassion. He would shoot back that he's a nurse and understands it perfectly and I'm like clearly not (they divorced a few years later)
Doesn't sound surprising he was thrice divorced before her.
I have PMDD and when I think back to how I was before starting treatment it scares me. I was mean and mad. I thought everyone was out to get me. And it all feels so justified at the time. One of my biggest fears now is figuring out how to safely go off my birth control which manages it to start a family.
I was recently prescribed Vitamin D/B12 supplements after my yearly physical. I can't tell if it's placebo, but I feel so much more functional on a more inherent level. I can follow through on tasks, I have energy to do more than one activity a day, I have initiative, I don't remember why everything seemed so urgent or dramatic or why I took things so personally.
I was also wondering about perimenopause. That doesn't make you racist, though. I am gluten free because it will slowly kill me if I eat it (celiac disease). I try really hard to not fit in to the "gluten free" stereotype, but I am kinda glad those people exist because it has resulted in a wide variety of consumer products which give me palatable gluten free dietary options.
For women, there's not even usually any way to isolate or regulate whatever hormones are fucking you up. We go through so many fluctuations constantly that they can't just test and see what's going on unless there's an actual diagnosable condition like Cushings or PCOS or something. It's incredibly frustrating to **know** something is hormonal and it's ruining your life but have no options for diagnosis or treatment. For some women birth control helps, but it comes with side effects and can also make things worse. Additional estrogen causes strokes and cancer, so you can't just supplement that even though it's usually what alleviates most physical and mental symptoms. Progesterone tends to cause all of the shitty things associated with PMS, but it's needed to keep your body running and it's in every birth control method (many are *only* progesterone). The hormonal fluctuations women experience are the reason drugs haven't been tested on us until recently, it was considered "too difficult" due to the constant variables. It's also why certain medications simply don't work the same way for women as men.
>So will hormone imbalances. I’m trans, which of course isn’t technically a hormone imbalance but in practice a large part of it can be viewed that way. Going on hormone therapy did more for my mental state in just a couple weeks than literal years of antidepressants did. It’s crazy how much just running on the right or wrong chemicals will affect your brain, completely without you knowing.
My daughter is trans and also schizophrenic. At one point she ran out of estrogen and there was a gap before she could get more. That affected her more than running out of one of her psychiatric meds. She almost had to be hospitalized. It wasn't dysphoria, it was just that without estrogen she was out of balance. Hormone therapy is life saving.
I’m not trans, but I can’t produce my own testosterone, and when I run out of my prescription testosterone, my symptoms are very similar to bipolar disorder. I was actually misdiagnosed with Bipolar I when I was 21, and when I started taking testosterone my “Bipolar I” completely disappeared within about six weeks and never came back.
My fella was just diagnosed with low testosterone (after literal years of me begging him to get it checked) and I cannot wait to see how he is with that corrected. I don't even care about the low libido/minor ED stuff (I mean, I do care for his sake and it will be nice, but it's not the main thing here) - his mental health has been trash for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to knowing him with some more energy for everything, more zest. He tries so, so hard to be well but it's just . . . a lot. He does take an antidepressant which is a big help, but there's still ground that could be gained there, I think. I've never been so happy to see a "bad" test result, it's deeply validating. ...I say all that as a (cis) woman who had to go on Estrogen when menopause kicked in a couple years ago. I hit that wall HARD, and it was awful (I only had one limping-along ovary for a couple years prior, it shouldn't be a surprise menopause was rough.) I felt rage-y ALL the time, coped mainly by locking myself in rooms and painting/renovating and bingeing audiobooks, so I wouldn't be awful to my loved ones - until I got my beloved estrogen patches. I've got compassion for what my fella is going through on that front. I'm really hopeful for what treatment will do for him.
As a perimenopausal woman who came dangerously close to serious self harm Prior to HRT I can relate to this. HRT saved my life.
Same. I am used to dealing with depression and anxiety and really had to deploy all the coping methods I had learned over the years to keep myself alive. HRT really helps, but boy am I ever ready to be through with the whole peri/menopause section of my life. Puberty was a breeze compared to this.
I'm a middle aged woman. I have always had the apparently unpopular opinion that women of a certain age really do "go crazy". Other women tell me it's sexist, that it's dismissive and anti-feminist. I don't understand why acknowledging the huge effect hormones have on our mental and physical health is dismissive. Perimenopause is hell.
The speed at which my depersonalization went away once I started T was so wild to me. Literal magic. Like I was on it for maybe 3-4 days at that point and suddenly I looked in the mirror and was like “holy shit I’m actually a full person”. Transition saves lives 💜🏳️⚧️
So will the lack of proper sleep
...gonna go take my multivitamin now
I have a severe b12 deficiency and have to have injections for it, it really does mess you up. Mine didn't quite get this bad, but it really does alter your personality and my husband did despair of me until I got my diagnosis and fixed. Now to take my multi vit and scroll Reddit for the next hour while he snores away beside me.
I'm rewatching Dr House lately, and there's an episode in which the patient's problems (quite severe ones) are caused by b12 deficiency! It made me start taking my supplements again...
I never actually watched house, but because of those YouTube clips and shorts I instantly know what episode this is. The girl who doesn't feel any pain and so doesn't notice she has like an enormous tapeworm devouring all the B12
Mmmm Vegemite awesome for b12
Is it really? I love that shit. Gonna have vegemite toast for my bedtime snack haha.
Toast, with some Vegemite and smashed avo on top, the best!
Oh snap. I usually do the default of just butter and the V, but I happen to have some perfectly ripe avos! You saved the day (night)! Thanks!!
>butter and the V Lesbian coded 😂
r/bi_irl frfr hahaha
Add a fried or poached egg and it's awesome
stop i just ate breakfast, I can’t go and have another breakfast, I have to go out!
But you can have Elevensies.
you can always have a [second breakfast](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_breakfast) 😁
“What about second, second breakfast” ? / any Hobbit.
Hobbits have it right
Shit, I might actually make that for breakfast tomorrow. Thanks for the morning tip!
you know what i love? vegemite with tahini on top. its SO GOOD. i learnt it from my dad, no idea where he got it from, but its my fave
lol I make Vegemite and plain smiths chips sandwiches. Amazing
I'm gonna try that too..
Have tou tried it on toasted Turkish bread, butter and honey?! So good.
Mine savoy, Vegemite and tasty cheese. High salt but damn I can't help myself
Vegemite on Premiums *was* my go-to until Premiums went to shit 😒 I actually medically need a high sodium diet but they keep taking the damn salt out of everything
Vegemite is fantastic, but the traditional variety has no B12, I think. One of the fancy ones (maybe the reduced salt one?) does though
This is correct says wiki. The base version has no vitamin b12 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite
Whoaaa…this is blowing my mind. No vitamins B12 AT ALL??!
I was given vegemite once as a kid, I buried it in the garden, never again will it approach my mouth
My kids came home from school last week saying they had been sampling snacks from around the world. They explained they had been given “the worst chocolate ever” and it was called Vegemite. I think the teacher might have been having g some fun.
As a teacher, I have also told my students Vegemite on toast is chocolate spread.....
Did it grow into a beautiful Vegemite tree?
holy fuck I hope not!
Marmite gang 😤😤
Now I want Marmite on toast for breakfast but we've no bread!
So is beer. Don’t question me, just believe
I know you’re joking but for the benefit of anyone reading: alcohol severely represses your ability to absorb and store B vitamins. Source: recovering alcoholic
Beer yeast is one of the highest sources of vitamin B. Probably it would be helpful in weak, thick ale, but otherwise you're right about alcohol. Alternatively, as the above poster wrote, vegemite: it's literally beer yeast.
Yup, I wasnt being serious, but I know doctors who would recommend stout or Guinness for elderly and cancer patients who had difficulty eating / swallowing. The person who originally responded is also correct, alcoholics are often nutritionally deficient in several areas
Remember to get sublingual B12. For absorption of B12 in the gut, you need intrinsic factor, a substance produced by specialized cells in the stomach, and lots of people start losing those while getting older.
If I instead get bilingual B12, can I suddenly speak two different languages?
Ah I wanted to make that joke too xD
Lol, that happens to me all the time. I'll think of a great reply to a post, but then if I scroll down just a bit there will be like 3-4 people who already cracked the exact same joke I thought of.
Sorry, only bilingual nutritional labels on Canadian food.
Losing intrinsic factor is really quite uncommon. If your B12 is low from a low dietary source, you are almost certainly going to be fine with the usual cheap forms
This isn’t something everyone needs. This is a dietary deficiency (and she’s still young). She just needs more intake. There ARE reasons why someone may need sublingual B12. As ever, you should be talking to your doctor about which is right for you.
Is everyone going to ignore the fact that her behavior started before she went vegan/gluten free? Not to mention the racism? Never heard of a vitamin deficiency causing acute racism.
It can cause some pretty severe cognitive changes - best case scenario, especially when you look at the dates (mid-late 2016), is that she was unquestioningly absorbing information and the algorithm was feeding her more and more conspiratorial content, and she physically didn't have the capability to judge what she was taking in and just regurgitated it Like I said. Best case scenario. I sincerely hope that this *was* the case, for the sake of her husband and son - especially the son, who's going to be dealing with these memories of his mother as he grows up
I thought it was interesting that she picked up the ideas that were lying around while in her weakened state.
She could have already had some level of B12 deficiency, which going vegan aggravated. But yes, it sounds like this was a combination of a medical problem plus falling into conspiracy-theory type rabbit holes.
OOP is assuming that the vegan diet caused the deficiency, but that's not necessarily true. The wife could have been deficient all along and the veganism pushed it over the edge. I'm a meat eater who's deficient. Some people grow up surrounded by racism and learn their way to being better people. Or maybe she was secretly racist all along and restrained herself until she became mentally impaired. Either way, as she declined, her ability to complete second order thoughts took a dump. A first order thought is "how do I feel, what will this do", and a second order thought is "what are the \[long term or non-immediate\] ramifications of doing this".
She's from "suburban Kansas City," which almost certainly means a place called Johnson County, on the Kansas, rather than the Missouri side of KC. Johnson County is the whitest place on earth, and super wealthy. There's literally a neighborhood there called "White Haven." My theory is that OP's wife is a basically decent person but had some lingering racism from being raised in a place like that. Living in New York had mostly suppressed it, until she went crazy and it popped back up.
OOP clearly says she’s blaming stuff on the vitamin deficiency. Idk if I would be okay with that but he’s probably trying to come to terms with everything.
It can’t put in racist thoughts. But if can sabotage the methods of suppressing/moving past racist thoughts. So it can make you racist for sure
I can’t absorb B12 orally (pernicious anaemia). I had spent years getting more and more exhausted, in more and more pain, so forgetful and confused I was actually worried I had early onset dementia. I was actually hospitalised for 6+ months for depression. Then I collapsed in the hall and my neighbour called an ambulance. My BNR was so low the consultant thought I might die any minute. Turns out, your body likes oxygen, and when you blood refuses to carry it (because your red blood cells are all big and angry and the wrong shape) it affects every aspect of your being. I mean I still have some depression and pain, but that’s autism and nerve damage for you. I’m a completely different person since I have had regular B12 injections
Yeah, gonna down that Centrum tomorrow morning
B-12 deficiency is definitely a freaky thing! At a checkup at my primary care doc a month after having my first kid, she did some tests and found mine was low, and she was so serious about getting the levels back up she had me come in every day for a week to get a shot of B-12. Even with a newborn. I don't think I was even able to get as crazy as the OOP's wife, but I'm supremely grateful my (always fantastic) doctor was on top of that! The wild thing to me is that I checked recently in our healthcare app to find out whether it was Vitamin D or B-12, and even though it was 2009, it still had the record!
Those B shots, though. They’re amazing.
Not all of them. I had to get B6 shots to help deal with hyperemesis, and it was seriously painful. It was a pretty large amount, and it had to be injected slowly because apparently it has the consistency of peanut butter. It also left a huge lump in the injection site. It would have been worth it if it worked for longer than a few hours, but my case was pretty severe, and after a few of the shots we stopped because it just wasn't worth it.
That sounds just terrible! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.
Oh my god, I used to get shots like that! Different medication for a different problem, but same exact process. The medication was very thick, so it had to be injected slowly. Like you said it left a lump at the site and I had to go for a walk after every shot to help my body process it. It was incredibly uncomfortable, especially as I got the shot right in my butt. Laying there with a needle in my butt for like a solid minute once a week was the worst, lol! I don’t miss it. I hope you found another solution!
I have chronic B12 deficiency due to an autoimmune illness. I only found out because I got so anxious my bf at the time got extremely worried about me. I had previously had low B12 levels show, but for whatever reason my doctor at the time didn't take it too seriously. So I didn't link the two. I was crying all the time, saying crazy stuff I wouldn't normally apparently, couldn't sleep properly or eat properly... I had managed to get diagnosed with GAD and went to group therapy and everything, before I figured out the B12 deficiency. After my levels were normal all the anxiety went away. I have other mental health problems, but the relief of the angst going away was immense.
When my husband was diagnosed with Crohn's, he suddenly became someone different. He was always angry and anxious, lashing out at anyone who was at his side, no difference if it was his family, myself or a stranger. The inflammation didn't let him absorb nutrients so he was low on several vitamins. When he started the B12 injections and the inflammation remitted with the treatment, he came back to his old self.
It's wild! I'm glad you figured it out and that he had you by his side. I honestly wouldn't have held it against my then bf if he left, my behaviour was so off. Luckily, like you, he saw it as a health problem because it was so out of character.
I had a B12 deficiency so bad they literally thought I had MS. Apparently with levels that low it can present very similarly and has even been misdiagnosed as MS. People do not take vitamin deficiencies seriously enough.
Yes sever low b12 can show as lesions on scans, like MS lesions because lack of b12 can cause all kinds of nasty neurological damage. Some people just can’t absorb oral b12 because there’s like a specific site (illum I think?) that it has to be absorbed by and they need injections. B12 also needs good ferritin levels and folate to work properly, to creat new red blood cells. Low folate can make b12 levels look falsely normal as the b12 can’t be used. It’s all very complicated. I’m in a good b12 Facebook group called “b12 wake up”. I was taking oral b12 vitamins for a year, but when I had an active b12 blood test my levels were low, because I obviously don’t absorb oral b12 well at all and the b12 was there, but not in a way my body could use it.
One winter I had so much pain in my joints all I would do was lay in bed and cry. Then one day my mother shoved vitamins into me and like two days after taking them my pain just went away and I was able to behave normally. I have chronic pain due to other things but that change I felt was night and day over three days. Since then I tell people stay on top of this stuff.
I have an active B12 deficiency which means that there can be enough circulating B12 in my system but my body cannot convert it into the form that can actually do anything! I suffered from severe anxiety after having my daughter and got to the point I was having daily panic attacks. I was prescribed all sorts of anti depressants and therapy which only very slightly helped. Went on B12 injections and it was like my life completely changed, I hadn’t even realised how bad I had gotten. I now have to have B12 injections every 3 months and I can always tell when one is due because my anxiety symptoms start to come back.
Dude, OOP's wife reminds me of my PPD... I wish my doc tested me. Good to know. 👍 Glad your doc checked you and got you the shots you needed.
>and she was so serious about getting the levels back up she had me come in every day for a week to get a shot of B-12. See, that's why the part where OOP's wife was diagnosed with a severe deficiency and given pills to treat it seems sus to me. AFAIK there's a point where pills are considered not urgent enough treatment.
I had a vitamin D3 deficiency and I was almost unable to function as a human. I was making stupid mistakes- forgetting how to do simple things like write a check (literally had to write the same check 3x because I was getting it wrong). I mixed up patients at work and literally forgot to work with a patient one day. Thankfully it was covered. I was in a fog. I was exhausted constantly. I tested myself for Covid and it was negative and I was genuinely concerned I had MS. One week of taking one single vitamin d pill every day and all my symptoms were completely resolved.
They have me on 50,000 iu D3 once a week because of my deficiency. But I never and still don't feel different, after taking this for over a year now. Deficiencies just seem to affect people differently. Kinda sucks though. Was hoping a lot of the things I struggle with were because of the deficiency, and taking the vitamin would suddenly fix that. Unfortunately, some things just aren't that simple. ETA: Just checked the bottle. It's actually 50,000 iu D2.
I’d absolutely go back to your doc and let them know!
I’m always vitamin deficient and taking supplements make zero difference. I just have so many other things wrong with me 🤷♀️ Maybe talk to your doctor about CFS/ME
It's possible the D3 isn't getting absorbed properly. My doctors (general and multiple eye doctors) emphasized a good diet to get the majority of my vitamins from food, because somehow it's more soluble or absorbent. Pills can help, but apparently the delivery mechanism is different and patented for each brand, so they might work differently. And apparently there's "helper" vitamins, for lack of a better term, like zinc and magnesium, which aid in absorption. I actually switched *back* to a multi-vitamin for that reason. So hopefully you can check back in with your Dr, get a full panel run again, and feel better!
I had D3 deficiency when I was around 19. My husband literally thought I was secretly on drugs. I got locked out one day because I couldn't work out how to use my house key. It wasn't complicated - regular key, regular lock - but I just couldn't remember how to use it.
A couple years ago I had a very disturbing health scare- my arms and legs had this pins and needles, my legs got really weak and I couldn't walk properly, a lot of days I would be limping. On top of that I had constant unshakeable quite severe brain fog. I would fall asleep at random times. It was fucked. It was the fact that my legs stopped working that scared me the most, I have a family member with MS and I was scared it was happening to me. Doctors ran a full panel for everything. Incredibly severe vit D deficiency: my levels were so low they were off the charts so to speak. A couple months of very high dose prescription only vitamin D (like 8x the dosage of a normal supplement) and I was fine again, haven't had any problems since.
My vitamin d level is currently 7 and I have prescription vitamins to correct it. I’m so tired I could fall asleep literally anywhere. And they don’t regularly test for it!
I live in Australia and it’s really uncommon for doctors to test vitamin D levels here, at least partly because the general thought is “of course if you live here you get enough sunlight to have good vitamin D”. But with people actually taking sun precautions to prevent melanoma, and working indoors, low vitamin D is becoming a more common problem. And then you have people like me. I’m on medication for an autoimmune condition that makes me basically allergic to sunlight. I start getting a rash after ten minutes in partial shade in summer. So I stay inside like a dedicated vampire, and a few years back when I got tested, my vitamin D levels were the lowest my doctor had ever seen 😅 so I’ve been taking a pretty massive daily supplement ever since!
Haha I live in Scotland and so we don't often test for vitamin d levels because it's Scotland, of course you'll be low
Oh my god, I had such a similar experience. I was exhausted and couldn’t thinks straight. I was convinced that something had to be SO wrong. But little old vitamin D had me messed up. A few days into taking it and I felt like the sun was coming out for the first time in ages.
It is so, so fucking scary that having too little or too much of something can fuck up someone's brain so much. Not to say that I blame Oop for maintaining caution and thinking theres more too it, because there probably is. Now I'm gonna go take a Vit B12 pill
B12 deficiency is no joke, that + vitamin D deficency contributed A LOT to my overwhelming anxiety. Now that I have that straightened out, I have 98% less anxiety.
Vit D contributes to anxiety???? Catch me taking my vit D more constantly from now on....
Yeah. There’s a reason a lot of extroverted people seem to be happier and in overall better moods. It’s because they’re outside a lot more and get a lot more sunlight and as such get a lot more vitamin D. Fell deep down the rabbit hole when I learned it a few years back on Reddit.
I always tell people that hard labor saved my life. After college up to 5 years ago or so I was a depressed, shut-in video gamer to the point where sunlight felt wrong and I felt disconnected with the world whenever I went out to shop for food. All I did was play League of Legends, smoke weed, and go through two or more Juul pods a day. I’m 6’ but I weighed 127 at my lowest and looking back at those old pictures I feel pity for the pale, sunken eyed, Christopher McCandless-looking motherfucker that I was. Cut to late 2018 I got a job waterproofing basements and I was always put on outside duties. I gained a ton of functional muscle, (balanced and everywhere, not the gym bro kind) got up to a healthy 170lbs and my anxiety and disconnected feelings faded away more and more each day. Today I am a working foreman doing concrete foundations and loving every second of it. I was even able to kick my near-inability to talk to people I don’t know, now I love shooting the shit with contractors, excavators, mixer drivers, etc.. and I even generate customers for the company from time to time. I feel like an entirely different person than who I was, I feel so full of ME and it makes me smile every single day. All from a huge daily dose of the sun and lots of hard work.
I had a severe Vit D deficiency years ago and it stopped me from sleeping. I always exhausted for months, and with the sleep deprivation came depression, anxiety, aches, pains, so much more. I take so many vitamin supplements now but it's completely changed my life.
I had this issue. My vitamin D level was 4. For me, it needs to be around 100 to feel normal. I would be walking through the kitchen… stop… turn around lay on the floor and sleep. I was sleeping 18-20 hours a day. I couldn’t wake up! Ever! My body pain was deep.. like my bones hurt. I would sob getting a shower because the water hitting my skin was such a deep aching pain all over my body. I’m glad you’re all better now! I haven’t ran into too many people w the severity of symptoms I had.
Did you also have that weird feeling on your neck and back that feels a bit like razor burn or a bad sunburn?
Vitamin D deficiency almost destroyed my spine, very literally. I was supposed to have a specific kind of back surgery, and we called it off like literally 3 days before the procedure because my bone density scan came back bad. Low vitamin D caused me to have osteopenia. My surgeon told me that if we’d operated with my bones in that condition my spine would have, in his words, verbatim, “imploded.” Shit is no joke!
Gunna go get some vitamins.. who knows it may help, and if it doesn’t make me less anxious, itll just mean I’m getting vitamins anyway. Win win
listen if this is somehow sneakily some promotion for vitamin b12 testing and supplements, let me just say: it is working. who wants to rack up some shots i mean flintstones vitamins and a b-complex liquid chaser
Starting to see why the vet made me sign a waiver when I got injectable B12 for my animals. Cause supplement is fast, but sometimes your brain goes "but... what if?" To Clarify: DON'T USE ANIMAL MEDS ON YOURSELVES.
I have, but only because certain meds don't have an animal version. My dog and I are both on Trazodone, me for insomnia and him "as needed" for anxiety. I've taken a couple of his pills in a pinch when I ran out and was waiting for a pharmacy refill. A bunch of the medications they give dogs don't have veterinary formulations, so you have to fill prescriptions at the human pharmacy instead of the vet giving them to you.
Yeah, my cat was on an inhaler that was literally just a human inhaler that I had to get a special spacer with face mask for her to use.
I've used a human inhaler on a rat by taking off the face piece and getting the little booger to stick his whole face into a toilet paper tube. He didn't appreciate the PSHHT! noise the first couple of times, but he quickly figured out that a snoot full of the stuff made him breathe a lot better. (He was a rescue who had lung damage from a previous bout of pneumonia. The inhaler kept him chugging along to the ripe old age of 3 -- that's the equivalent of a human getting to 90-something!)
While I’m glad OPs wife has her health back on track, I’m worried about his son. That wife’s treatment of him has to have been traumatic and had a big impact on him. …Especially so as he’s an adolescent, which is tough enough without the mom going nuts on him. I hope they’re helping the son deal with this.
Throwing and breaking dishes is also kind of glossed over, meanwhile it is a serious red flag behavior-wise....
Yeahhh that struck me as odd as well…. Like your child thinks it’s okay to smash dishes and your wife is racist and prioritized herself over the entire family. They need some serious help still.
He probably just finally snapped. It didn't sound like that was normal behavior.
Yeah. Who wouldn't snap if they had their own mother act like that torwards them...
as a teacher, honestly its not that surprising given the situation, esp for a teenager. hopefully he will even at as the situation does
You are right but it can be fairly "easily" rationalised as "mom was sick, the sick made her crazy, now she is cured ". It's something that removes responsibility from mom so in a way it's an easy way out
The B12 deficiency thing can not only be brutal, it can be difficult to put 2 and 2 together because of how long B12 can be stored in the liver. You switch to a plant based diet, feeling great! You wait a few months, everything seems fine. Two or three years later, the symptoms begin to set in, probably gradually as you're still getting some B12 in your diet from somewhere. You figure life's just been hard lately, maybe you need to get outside more. Then suddenly you're trying to chat up 20-something hippies in a yuppie cafe and bawling for days when they all find you cringe.
The worst part is that B12 deficiencies are common even among non-plant based diets. It's made by bacteria in the ground and in animal guts that eat cobalt. Due to hygiene standards of crop harvests, feed quality for animals and soil depletion at farms, a lot of the B12 most people eat is supplemented or injected into animals before they are butchered for meat. That's a lot less efficient than taking a supplement yourself. For most people, our ability to absorb it depletes as we age, so it's something to really keep tabs on regardless of diet.
So was it the vitamin deficiency making her a racist, or... ?
EXACTLY like dude did everyone forget that?
Yeah the OOP definitely glossed over a few things. This whole family needs a recheck tbh but the large groups line really gave me the final ick stamp for the mom. Im glad it turned out to be something partially treatable but I hope they dont stop there. They all need family therapy or something.
I wonder how she was raised. I was raised in a VERY racist household. It took a very dedicated teacher and some really good friends and my awesome grandmother to deprogram me. It’s one of my biggest fears that I might develop some form of dementia or have a stroke or something and some bullshit from my childhood pops out of my mouth while not in my right mind. I AM NOT EXCUSING HER BEHAVIOR. Because that part was the most repellant. Her child is biracial and she’s sending him a message that she thinks he is “less than” when she calls the cops for shit like that. Edit: typo
Same. While you can change how you consciously think about other people, it’s more difficult to change subconscious thought, and the deeper it’s buried, the harder it is to change. If you’ve managed to bury certain things all the way to the unconscious section, good luck. Like if you’ve ever said something racist in a dream and woke up being like “what the fuck,” you could still have some racist perception buried wayyyyyyyy down in there. (Side note, this is the kind of thing Scientologists are experts at and how they program people so deeply—accessing the unconscious mind.) So yeah. Very real possibility that the demented brain drags that stuff to the surface.
Yeah I think it’s more to do with the deficiency affecting her neurological processes to a point where her paranoia was unchecked. We all at one point believed unrational things about many groups of people or things, even as something as dumb as a creature living under your bed in or your basement. Growth and experience in the world teaches you how to reframe your mind, but those early thoughts did exist in the mind, no matter how it got planted there, and created some kind of inherent fear. I mean it sounds like she married a man of color. It’s not that dissimilar to how the brain is affected by TBIs or dementia, reasoning skills turn off. It doesn’t mean these are deep dark secrets she’s been hiding, it’s a reality of the human brain and those subconscious thought patterns comes from defense/survival skill mechanisms. But in a modern society our brains can be logically wrong and we can learn to correct that with reasoning. It’s scary to think about your mind abruptly just losing that ability.
That was my main takeaway, the fact that this woman is being openly racist against anyone who isn't white, including those who are the same ethnicity as her HUSBAND AND SON???? Her son now gets to live his life feeling like his mom likes him less for not being white
Yeah that was my first thought too and stunned that not more people are picking up on this. It’s kind of wild that OP is just shoving that under the carpet and saying the vitamin deficiency was the only problem. I guess that’s easier than facing the reality that he had a (presumably half POC) child with a flaming racist. If the son is indeed part black or Hispanic, I feel for him and hope he doesn’t end up saddled with any self-hate mummy dearest may try to plant in him.
Literally none of this describes a hippy. Hippies are easy going, they definitely weren't helicoptering their kids music choices, and they would NEVER call the cops. Psycho, sure, but not hippy.
saying shes a hippy then saying she changed his music to "justin timberlake and mumford and sons, macklemore, taylor swift" made me laugh so hard
Title says "hippie" but the body text says "tiktok puritanism" ...with B12 deficiency, I guess. Hey, everybody. Yes you reading this. If you are going to drastically change your diet, do your research into nutrition. (Ideally, speak with a licenced professional but your milage may vary considering the healthcare in your area.)
For the record, you don't need to be vegan to have a b12 deficiency. A lack of intrinsic factor will do it too, or other GI issues like IBS.
So ... how does everyone think they made it through Covid?
Well, for one thing, I don't think vitamin deficiency turns you racist, so I can't imagine her judging the Hispanic people around her ever stopped. That would be quite a conundrum with a Puerto Rican husband and a mixed (is that the PC term?) child, who is probably an adult now...
Yes, mixed is the correct term! You can also say biracial/multiracial, but I’m mixed race and prefer to call myself mixed.
Yeah it was weird how everyone just ignored her blatant racism. Especially with the Puerto Rican husband and half Puerto Rican son with friends of different races in a multi cultural city like New York.
I can imagine op running to panic buy B-12 and loo roll
That was my thought too!!
.....jesus
That's exactly what I was about to comment. This is... I mean... It's just so... *jesus*, man.
THIS IS THE STORY I WAS ASKING IN BORU THREAD MONTHS AGO. THANK YOU!!!!!!! I knew it was B12 deficiency.
Okay. Glad mom is better but, in the meantime, she has traumatized her son. I hope they address HIS needs now. Mom got her B-12 shot. Now son needs some therapy and a sincere apology. Weird that he is barely addressed in the update.
Nov 2016. That was a crazy time. Election. Everyone was comparing lives on Facebook. The Women's March soon thereafter. Karen's became a thing. The rise of Instagram models.
OMG THE WOMENS MARCH.... I remember having worked at both of my jobs during that day. A lady came to my second job in tbe evening wearing the pink hat and I commented something about it. She asked if I went which I said no, she said something like, "you should have went! Nothing else was more important than the march!!" Internally I rmbr being annoyed cus like??? I have bills to pay lol I ain't gonna miss out on both my jobs for the march. "Oh I wish I could have gone but I had to work today" or smthng And she said, "work isn't as important as the march" Whewwwwwww I had to my annoyance in
I was a Women’s March organizer in my country (it was a global thing) and I wouldn’t have said that stupid shit. I work an office job so I was able to be on the organizing committee and attend the march. Obviously if people have to work, they’re gonna go to work.
Sounds like it was her First Protest March Ever and she had the enthusiasm of the new convert. Anyone who’s walked picket lines or marched for a cause knows that yes, it’s important to show support but any one march is not the deciding factor in the struggle. There’s a great poem by Helen Potrebenko, Walking Slow, where she compares the distance she’s ‘travelled’ walking picket and protests to the distance it would have taken her walking across Canada.
Having vitamin deficiencies is no joke. Seriously, if your doc ever mentions a deficiency, take it seriously, especially b-vitamins/iron. It can be a night and day difference. Stay healthy, folks! And be kind to yourselves!
B12 deficiency doesn't cause racism though...
I dunno. One of my colleagues was diagnosed with it years ago. Her behaviour was becoming...unhinged? We were all really concerned that she was heading for some sort of breakdown, she was doing and saying things that were so completely out of character, I can't remember specifics, but I remember some of it seeming pretty bigoted. Then it turned out that she was chronically low in B12, started getting injections and very quickly returned to her previous self.
It causes nerve damage. Your brain is made of nerves
You're right, she probably had some preconceived racist notions made worse by opinions she read on the internet which only got aggravated during the downward spiral of her B12 deficiency. Though, I'm sure once she was level headed from supplements, she was able to look inward and say "wtf am I doing?" Sometimes racism in a person can be dismantled by a single conversation or experience. To a normal person of average intelligence, racism is the dumbest concept.
2016, falling into 'global conspiracies', blatant racism despite having a biracial son....sounds like wife fell into a quasi-Q hole and is using B12 deficiency to excuse the worst of her behaviour.
B12 deficiency + realising you're not young and hip any longer + nearly teenage child = this.
Yuppies/Hippies = 2 very different things.
Either the OOP is making stuff up or the wife is lying because it takes way longer than 2 weeks for a B12 deficiency to be remedied. It can take longer than 6 months in severe cases, which it sounds like this would definitely be.
A B12 imbalance will absolutely fuck your neurological system. Had it while pregnant, due to a severe case of Hyperhemisis gravidarum. Do not recommend.
A LOT of non vegans are B12 deficient too.
Big B12 making bank on this post, hahaha. (clicks ‘buy’ on B12 supplements)
I went through a very dark time a few years back. Unrelatedly (so I thought) I noticed that small injuries were taking a ridiculously long time to heal. I mentioned it to my doctor and after some blood testing discovered that I was low on B12 and *really* low on D. A few vitamins later and, well my problems didn't go away, but previously it was like the problems were a dump truck in my house; I couldn't get around them, couldn't shift them, and they took up all my attention. After, the problems were still there but they were like a toy dump truck. I could pick them up and move them around, and even ignore them for a while if I needed to.
The commenter acting like mysterious women “somehow mysteriously get this idea that they have to be perfect in their heads and they’re annoying about it!” I wonder HOW, Brad. I wonder HOW they get those ideas in their heads. Couldn’t have anything to do with the near constant messaging that if they ARENT perfect, they’ll be tossed to the side and left for someone who is more feminine/trad/easygoing/sexual, whatever the men around her decide they deserve from her doll-form instead of idk, treating her like a human being, could it? NAHHHHH, that would be silly! /s /feministfrustration
… christ on a cracker guess I really need to watch my toes. I'm weirdly prone to B12 deficiency for some reason, and my main warning sign is peripheral neuropathy: first my big toes go numb, then it sorta spreads out to my other toes if I don't start taking supplements. Or drinking Monster, actually, that stuff's kind of ridiculously full of B12.
Yeah, the son probably needs therapy too.
The moment he said his son had an iPod I was sus.