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Reaction to Magnesium Glycinate, Mirtazapine, and Effexor??

So some back story is I've been dealing with depression and anxiety for years and was stable at one point but for the past two years it's been extremely terrible.

I was on mirtazapine 15mg, rexulti 1mg, and venlafaxine 37.5mg for a about 7 months. I was barely getting through even on all of those medications so my psychiatrist raised rexulti to 2 mg for about a month and I didn't like the way it made me feel. My psych then lowered rexulti back to 1mg and then took me off it completely. She switched me to wellbutrin 100mg which increased suicidal thoughts for me. I felt absolutely terrible. I was on it as well as the others for about two weeks. She took me off of wellbutrin and increased mirtazapine to 30 mg. The next day I took magnesium glycinate 100 mg hoping to get some relief from how bad I was feeling. So at this point I was on 30mg mirtazapine, 37.5mg venlafaxine and had just gotten off of wellbutrin a day or two prior to taking the magnesium glycinate. I'd also been taking fish oil on and off for months.

Shortly after taking magnesium glycinate, I noticed my breathing slowed a bit but wasn't too bad. The next day my chest was feeling tight like it was hard to take a deep breath and I had a weird pain in my throat with a lot of anxiety and some lightheadedness. This continued for a few days to a week. I got sick a couple days after with a cold or possibly my sinuses, (I'm not really sure what it was). It was hard to pin point what was causing what. I got off wellbutrin, then took mag glycinate, then started feeling all these different symptoms a day after then got sick a couple days after that. It was hard to tell if it was the mag glycinate or not especially since I didn't fully feel symptoms until the next day and I only took 1 dose of 100mg. The pains in my chest/throat eventually went away. I still feel lightheaded and have this weird cloudy feeling in my head, I'm very sensitive to noise, have headaches, and everything just feels like a dream. It's really scary. About a week after seeing some improvement in ny symptoms, my psychiatrist wanted me to add folate to my combo of mirt 30mg and venlafaxine 37.5mg, which I did. The cloudiness in my head increased so a week after I stopped the folate. That was a week ago. Since I took the mag glycinate and later the folate, I've been feeling lightheaded, extreme brain fog (which I had to a lesser extent before), bad memory (which was already failing before), headaches, noises seem so loud, bad anxiety, some restlessness, and it seems like I'm in a dream.

I'm worried that I messed up my brain from taking the magnesium glycinate with the mirt and venlafaxine combo and then worsened it by taking folate later. Will these symptoms ever go away? I'm absolutely terrified and even more so depressed over this. I wish I never took the magnesium glycinate 

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Avatar universal
It's highly unlikely such a low dose taken one time would do anything -- magnesium is essential to human life, not something odd the body doesn't know how to deal with.  It's possible, however, that the brand you took has some fillers and binders in the tablet or capsule that you are allergic to.  That can happen, especially when you don't buy from the best sources.  Drug store brands are particularly bad in putting harmful fillers, binders, and coloring agents in them.  On the other hand, all those pharmaceutical products you're taking also have toxic fillers, binders, and coloring agents in them, too (the coloring agents are often the worst), but it is a possibility.  A more likely possibility is that you are suffering withdrawal -- you go off and on meds so quickly and change so often I'm amazed you haven't felt like this before.  So it could be stopping the resulti.  It could be increasing the mirtazapine.  It could be adding wellbutrin to what was already a significant stew.  Folate is also something the body knows how to deal with when it's in food, but in supplement form it's always a synthetic form because you can't get natural folate into a supplement.  All the ways we take it, whether it's folic acid, or methylated folate, is synthetic, not something akin to what's found in food.  But it's a very safe supplement in all but the methylated forms as long as you don't overdo it -- overdoing it can cause you to have B6 and B12 problems, as they're in natural balance in the body and too much of one can reduce the amounts of the others.  One other possible but not proven possibility is that, we know that taking antidepressants adversely affects magnesium absorption, but the why of it is not conclusive.  You probably don't want to take your magnesium at the same time as you take your meds, as it's possible they will affect one another adversely, decreasing the effects of each other.  The last possibility I can see is you took a form of magnesium, glycinate, or a form of folic acid your body didn't like.  There are other forms.  But the symptoms you're describing sound so much like what happens when we get side effects from starting meds or stopping them that to me, at least, given you only took the supplement once, that the med changes are probably to blame.  Don't know for sure, though.  But if it was the magnesium, stopping it would have solved the problem.  Same with the folic acid.  Not so easy with meds.
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Hi, thanks so much for responding. You did mention a reaction to the fillers in the magnesium glycinate I took. It's weird because I didn't feel the tightness in my chest and pain in my throat until the next day. If it was a reaction could that reaction have caused problems to my brain since I didn't go to the doctor to treat it? I'm freaking out about that. Also the folate I took was L-methyl folate. I started at 1mg and worked my way up to 3mg. My psychiatrist wanted me to take 15mg ot deplin which is basically l-methyl folate. I'm just freaking out at how I feel. Im having really bad dissassociation (I dont feel like I'm the same person as myself). Also feeling lightheaded, severe brain fog and memory problems,  as well as being spaced out with headaches. I'm just so scared that things will never go back to normal. These feelings have severely worsened after stopping 3mg l-methyl folate.
Forgot to add I'm also having confusion. I literally feel like a completely different person. Am I going crazy? :(
No, if you were crazy, you wouldn't know this stuff happening to you was off, you'd think it was normal.  Here's the thing with methyl-folate.  Some people are born with certain genetic defects that make it more likely they will have a problem turning their B vitamins into the methyl form.  Most people with this defect don't, in fact, have any problems, however, so it's a small number that will have a problem.  The three vitamins associated with this are folate, B6, and B12, and you can usually tell there's a problem because something called homocysteine, which has been linked to heart problems and is kept low by these three vitamins being in sufficient supply and absorption in your body, is chronically too high.  Did your doc check your homocysteine levels, or is he at the point now where he's just trying whatever?  Because if you don't in fact need methylated B vitamins, they might cause some adverse effects, as the methylation process is something the body does to produce energy.  Too little is bad, too much is also bad.  I'm guessing your doc is trying stuff.  If he's right, taking the methylated form might be your solution.  But again, when you're taking, and stopping, as many drugs as you are, it's going to be harder to see if it's a nutrition problem.  There's just so much going on that can make you feel weird.  You're confused because your situation is confusing.  You'd be crazy if you weren't confused, at least to me.  
Okay, thank you! That made me feel a little better. My doctor didn't check to see if I have the gene mutation which prevents the body from turning B vitamins into the methyl form. She just prescribed the deplin 15mg. I decided to buy l methyl folate on it's own in the 1mg dosage to work my way up, since I am so sensitive to medications and supplements. I'm really hoping I'll feel back to normal soon. Thank you so much for your help.
I'd not leave it there.  For most people, it's not just the folate, it's also the B12.  If your doc didn't check to see if you're having a problem with this, supplementing might make you worse.  You only do this if you need to do this.  I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with my doctor guessing, as this is something you can check.  But that's just me.  I know you've had a really hard time find things that work, but just as one question, why folate and not B12?  You might want to ask.  If a psychiatrist did this, as most of them don't practice medicine anymore, for this thing your general doc or a specialist who deals with this might give you a better idea of whether this is a good avenue to go down.  Whatever you try, good luck with it, and whenever you take a supplement and you feel like you might be having a bad reaction to it, just stop taking it.  If the reaction goes away, you know that supplement, or that company that makes it, isn't the right one for you.  
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I forgot to add I took vistaril 25mg the day after taking the magnesium to calm me and to help if I was having an allergic reaction. I take vistaril sometimes for anxiety.
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