Re: Folic acid dosage..

[Guest guest]

Hello there

Not sure if it was dd who asked this question about folic acid?? Hope this

helps.

The over the counter dose of folic acid  in the multivits are intended to

just  supplement a perhaps deficient diet in the healthy population and comes

at a dose very roughly 10 times weaker than the 'medicine' tablet  prescribed

by the doc to counteract the unwanted side-effects of methorexate on other body

cells which are trying to divide, like the lining of mouth and gut,

while allowing the methotrexate to do its job suppressing the actively

dividing immune cells involved in the inflammatory arthritis process.  The

dose prescribed in this situation is usually folic acid 5mg.

 

 NB 1000 micrograms  or mcg make 1milligram or mg!

The overall dose usually reccomended  with methotrexate over the week varies

from folic acid 5mg once only the day after, to 5mg daily except day of MTX

treatment usually. You can 'google' this to find more but the precise dose

apparently is not crucial. The main thing is there is good evidence for the

folic acid reducingseverity of some but not all MTXside effects.

It is confusing isn't it.

So your small dose in the vits will l not make an 'overdose' effect at all, its

just like eating a folate rich diet.

Well hope that helps,Good luck from

in UK

Retired oncology doc and friend of an RA sufferer .

Re: [ ] Re:I'll try again

In a message dated 5/12/2008 7:31:49 P.M. Central Daylight Time,

stephdenicola writes:

Are you taking Folic Acid? You should take it on the days when you aren't

taking MTX. It helps with the side effects. I take my MTX on Saturday so I can

recover from the fatigue by the time I go back to work on Monday.

I had chest problems & rapid heart beat with my first few MTX doses but my

rheumy increased my Folic Acid.

He told me to continue to take my multi-vitamin, which has 500 mcg of Folic

Acid. I notice that the instructions say to take 1 mg. I was at a store and

was going to check the amount of Folic Acid if I was taking a pill that just

has that Folic Acid -- bad sentence. (anyway I couldn't find it)

How much is there in a pill of just Folic Acid?

Do you know if you can take too much of it?

dd

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