B Vitamins
My adventures in biohacking began with giving some B vitamins and magnesium to my oldest son when he was nine. As I noted elsewhere a few months ago, I had found information on the internet that this was medically recommended for children with autism.
After a few months, he saw gains in both handwriting and social skills. To this day, when he gets B deficient, he gets to be difficult to deal with. Rather than fight with him, I typically say "I'm not talking with you about this until we get some steak into you."
We now manage our issues with diet and steak is a good source of B vitamins which reliably works for him when he's being socially difficult. We no longer use supplements, but did for years because supplements are easier to work with when you are figuring things out because it lets you isolate specific nutrients in a way that dietary changes do not.
If you have reason to believe you have a B vitamin deficiency, B vitamin supplements are fairly safe to take in high doses for some weeks or months. Because they are water soluble, they do not build up in your system and so you cannot poison yourself with them the way you can with oil-soluble vitamins or with minerals.
That doesn't mean there will be no negative side effects. Excessive intake of B vitamins over a long period of time may lead to kidney stones (which can potentially be treated with a roller coaster ride), but compared to other supplements, these are easy and safe to work with as an early thing to learn from and make mistakes on.
I am also not aware of any other provisos commonly required for other supplements. I am not aware of B vitamins having a serious bioavailability problem, restrictions on what you can take with them or recommendations for what you should take with them to properly absorb them.
Assuming the supplement has no ingredients that are a problem for you, you should be able to take pretty much any B vitamin supplement (NOT a "multi-vitamin" -- multivitamins are usually garbage and should generally be avoided).
In addition to giving my son B5, B6 and B12 for his social issues, when I was having crying jags while really sick, someone I knew who was working at the CDC told me a Biotin deficiency can cause crying jags. Supplementing Biotin put a stop to my crying jags.
Biotin is not usually found in a "B vitamins" supplement. If you need Biotin, you probably need to look for it separately from and in addition to a "B vitamins" supplement.
When I had Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) really badly, I read an article that said this could be due to B vitamin deficiency and/or iron deficiency. When I couldn't sleep from my terrible RLS, I would take B vitamins and wait about 20 or 30 minutes to see if that fixed it.
If that didn't fix it, I then took iron. I did it in that order because B vitamins cannot be overdosed on but iron can be overdosed on. You can get iron poisoning.
If you are biohacking, you should always keep a Food and Symptom Journal. Symptoms include both physical symptoms and behavioral or mood issues.
Treat symptomatically. In other words, when you have more symptoms, take more of the nutrient that helps.
Especially with B vitamins, this is useful because you can sweat them out so you can rapidly become deficient in hot weather or when being more active than usual. So taking X amount daily is not a reliable means to actually resolve a serious B vitamin deficiency but taking them to treat symptoms, as I did with my RLS, will eventually fix your problem.
Treating my RLS symptomatically eventually resolved my deficiencies and I rarely get RLS anymore. When I do these days, it's usually for other reasons and I have come to believe RLS is more generally an indication of circulatory or blood issues. For me these days, RLS is usually just an indication that I'm dehydrated.
After a few months, he saw gains in both handwriting and social skills. To this day, when he gets B deficient, he gets to be difficult to deal with. Rather than fight with him, I typically say "I'm not talking with you about this until we get some steak into you."
We now manage our issues with diet and steak is a good source of B vitamins which reliably works for him when he's being socially difficult. We no longer use supplements, but did for years because supplements are easier to work with when you are figuring things out because it lets you isolate specific nutrients in a way that dietary changes do not.
If you have reason to believe you have a B vitamin deficiency, B vitamin supplements are fairly safe to take in high doses for some weeks or months. Because they are water soluble, they do not build up in your system and so you cannot poison yourself with them the way you can with oil-soluble vitamins or with minerals.
That doesn't mean there will be no negative side effects. Excessive intake of B vitamins over a long period of time may lead to kidney stones (which can potentially be treated with a roller coaster ride), but compared to other supplements, these are easy and safe to work with as an early thing to learn from and make mistakes on.
I am also not aware of any other provisos commonly required for other supplements. I am not aware of B vitamins having a serious bioavailability problem, restrictions on what you can take with them or recommendations for what you should take with them to properly absorb them.
Assuming the supplement has no ingredients that are a problem for you, you should be able to take pretty much any B vitamin supplement (NOT a "multi-vitamin" -- multivitamins are usually garbage and should generally be avoided).
In addition to giving my son B5, B6 and B12 for his social issues, when I was having crying jags while really sick, someone I knew who was working at the CDC told me a Biotin deficiency can cause crying jags. Supplementing Biotin put a stop to my crying jags.
Biotin is not usually found in a "B vitamins" supplement. If you need Biotin, you probably need to look for it separately from and in addition to a "B vitamins" supplement.
When I had Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) really badly, I read an article that said this could be due to B vitamin deficiency and/or iron deficiency. When I couldn't sleep from my terrible RLS, I would take B vitamins and wait about 20 or 30 minutes to see if that fixed it.
If that didn't fix it, I then took iron. I did it in that order because B vitamins cannot be overdosed on but iron can be overdosed on. You can get iron poisoning.
If you are biohacking, you should always keep a Food and Symptom Journal. Symptoms include both physical symptoms and behavioral or mood issues.
Treat symptomatically. In other words, when you have more symptoms, take more of the nutrient that helps.
Especially with B vitamins, this is useful because you can sweat them out so you can rapidly become deficient in hot weather or when being more active than usual. So taking X amount daily is not a reliable means to actually resolve a serious B vitamin deficiency but taking them to treat symptoms, as I did with my RLS, will eventually fix your problem.
Treating my RLS symptomatically eventually resolved my deficiencies and I rarely get RLS anymore. When I do these days, it's usually for other reasons and I have come to believe RLS is more generally an indication of circulatory or blood issues. For me these days, RLS is usually just an indication that I'm dehydrated.
