B12 help needed - supplement or not?

[Bonden]

Thriva reported
total B12 129 pmol/l
active B12 40.2 pmol/l
folate 15.4 nmol/l
Ferritin 59 ug/l
serum iron 20.8

My GP has ordered blood tests - first appointment is 27 April

should I take any supplements between now and then? Thriva seemed to think things were urgent, my GP less so. I have awful symptoms and want to Do Something! But reading up, I’m now anxious that taking a b12 supplement may give a “fake” picture at the NHS test and the nhs will then say oh you’re fine …

help!

Absolutely do not take any supplements in the run-up to your nhs blood tests (and I would even wait beyond that, in case they want follow-up tests). You really don’t want to be bounced back because a temporary upwards blip in B12 serum levels from supplements is masking an underlying long-standing deficiency…

Definitely do not take anything containing B12.

if you aren’t absorbing from food (which you aren’t with those results) you cannot absorb from a tablet, that will happen is you’ll get a false high from it floating around in your blood and the dr will say it’s fine. But it won’t work at a cellular level.

that is a desperately low number, you must feel awful. You urgently need B12 injections. If you have ANY neurological symptoms, after the 6 injections over 2 weeks (loading doses) you should remain on every other day injections until no further improvement in symptoms. This took over 2 years for me.

i strongly recommend you ask them to teach you to self inject and prescribe it that way or you’ll spend half your life at the drs!

Thank you both.

I do feel absolutely awful!

Is it a bad idea to do self injections from the start? I see on older threads people talking about how they got B12 from Germany etc, or went to beauticians.

i do feel nigh unto death and the prospect of waiting til 27 April for the test then say week 1 May for the GP appointment re results, then assuming the GP says injections are needed then they start say end May … it all seems so far away when each day I feel like I’m 120 years old and aging fast

I was started on B12 loading doses by GP (6 injections over 2 weeks, then went onto the standard 3 monthly injections (with the GP practice). That was not regular enough for me (I would feel awful again after just 1 month), so I looked into getting it privately, and started doing that. I mentioned it to the GP, who promptly took me off their lists, and it feels like the whole thing has just disappeared off the NHS radar. Which worries me a bit. If I could go back in time, I just wouldn’t disclose to the NHS that I was self-injecting…