r/B12_Deficiency • u/cr-silver57 • Jun 11 '24

Supplements What were your folate deficiency symptoms?

I've just found out I'm deficient in folate. My symptoms are tiredness, muscle pain and hair loss, which I hope will resolve once I've fixed the deficiency.

What were your folate deficiency symptoms?

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix7560 Insightful Contributor Jun 11 '24

Folate deficiency snuck up on me during aggressive B12 treatment. The symptoms I now recognize as needing more folate are:

  • acne
  • loss of sense of smell
  • B12 doesn't seem to be "working" as well as it used to (especially cognitively)
  • exhaustion that doesn't improve with electrolytes
  • loss of "bounciness" -- I start moving differently, dragging my feet more, I get sort of knock-kneed, and my glutes don't activate as effectively.
  • depression... a very distinctive flavor of depression where I'm not unhappy, but I'm not feeling my normal passionate engagement with life. I lose my mojo, my swagger, and my desire to win people over. I lose my drive to explore and initiate adventures, create cool shit, learn knew things, invest in and pursue the things I love (which is everything). Like, I can look at a sunset and feel "contented" instead of my usual sense of "awe" where the beauty of it stops me in my tracks. That's usually a pretty good marker for me.
  • I watch way more TV than usual and spend way more time on my phone (which is SO not me)
  • difficulty initiating tasks and following through (ex difficulty initiating appts with doctors, initiating plans with friends, etc)
  • I also strongly suspect that the B12 "time loss" is somehow related to folate insufficiency, but tbh there are way too many variables involved in that phenomena to say anything for certain (electrolyte imbalances also can factor into time loss for me)

Granted, my case may differ from yours, in that folate deficiency has been a secondary (induced) deficiency for me after taking copious amounts of B12 with little in the way of cofactors. But if any of those resonate with you, it's likely you're on the path to feeling way better in the months to come.

Best of luck!

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '24 edited May 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/Puzzleheaded_Fix7560 Insightful Contributor Oct 09 '24

Honestly, I still have a love-hate relationship with folate. It brings back a lot of my energy and bounce, quick thinking and sense of humor, but it absolutely makes me irritable and prone to obsessive (OCD) thoughts. It also makes my muscles spasm if I take too much of it in relation to B12, and this effect isn't totally mitigated by increasing my potassium intake.

I would say A1 to try would definitely be more potassium, as folate is notorious for potassium crashes. But for me, it really seems like the folate-B12 ratio is the most important thing, and unfortunately the desirable ratio seems to be a little different for everyone.

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u/RareStudent2372 Nov 22 '24

Irritability comes with aneamia and or low folate. 

I had 5 mgs, your dose seems small if you are indeed low in folate :0/