Low Transferrin/Iron Binding Capacity, fatigue, weirdly high B12, is this ok?

Low Transferrin/Iron Binding Capacity, fatigue, weirdly high B12, is this ok?

47M. There seems to be a trend of RBC going down slowly, B12 is going up, Vitamin D was low but now it's good (25-Hydroxy Vitamin - D got cut off, the low numbers are older and not shown), transferrin is a bit low, some of the other ones are a bit low but not horrible. B12 seems to be high but the lab dropped the high end of the range for some reason. I haven't seen a hematologist, none of my doctors see a problem here, in fact one said that low transferrin was a good thing.. All my liver/kidney tests are good so I don't think that could be a cause of low transferrin.

I had some relative with pernicious anemia, but I have high B12 so it's not that and I have other autoimmune diseases. The fatigue may be unrelated to the blood tests, it could be the other diseases or some new possible neurological diagnosis that I might get confirmation on sometime this decade/century. Symptom wise, I'm tired all the time, I fall asleep sometimes while sitting down, standing, talking, using tools, etc. Usually it's just half a second or so at a time. I also think I get a bit of shortness of breath while running/doing something intense (it's not terrible), but I don't do a lot of running anymore.

Edit: I forgot to add one more symptom. My fingernails/toe nails have gotten thinner and split often, length wise along the vertical ridges and my thumb nails are going somewhat concave. So far I've trimmed them before the split gets too far. Not quite as crazy as some of the photos I've seen online but it didn't used to look like that.

u/Horror-Beaver1979 — 1 day ago

Does anything relieve a chronic cough that’s probably neurological?

I’ve had this cough that never ends that started about 5 years ago. I’ve been tested for asthma, allergies, post nasal drip and taken drugs for all of them. All the drugs did nothing at all. I also had X-rays and whatnot, it’s not anything visible on a scan. Also I don’t smoke or work in a place with fumes and never have.

The reason I think it’s neurological is that other symptoms point to that and I’ve seen a neurologist who identified something and referred me to another neurologist that’s got a long waiting list who I’m waiting for a call from but it will be at least a year from when they call and it’s been six months of waiting for them to call so far.

So this cough happens every day. It’s triggered by bending, particles in the air, cold air, drinking cold liquids, eating stuff, and warm/humid air. Does anyone else have anything similar and know of anything nonprescription that helps?

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u/Horror-Beaver1979 — 1 month ago

Do you get used to neuropathy eventually or does it just feel worse over time?

So sometime in the last year my heel started feeling numb, then in the last couple of months I noticed my toes were going that way too. Walking barefoot is majorly unpleasant, sort of feels like I’m missing the padding in my feet. Now my hands are also going numb.. Sometimes I feel some weird pain but it’s not constant.

My A1Cs are less than 7 and closer to 6 and have always been pretty good. It’s possible that there’s another explanation for the neuropathy but even so the result is the same and there’s no way to know for sure what caused it.

Anyways my question is do you eventually get used to this and it’s not as noticeable anymore or will it always feel bad?

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u/Horror-Beaver1979 — 2 months ago

The phone camera kind of enhanced them so imagine that my hands are a lot more red. I put moisturizer on, tried the steroid enhanced stuff too but nothing seems to help. They split open all the time, sometimes blood spurts out, and it doesn’t matter what time of the year it is, it’s always bad. They look like they belong to an 80 year old and I’m only 47. Has anyone found anything that actually works?

u/Horror-Beaver1979 — 2 months ago

I'm from Ontario, Canada. So my diagnosis consisted of some cortisol testing, AM/PM kind of thing. The results were on the lower end of the range but still in range. The PM part wasn't that late in the day, i.e. 3PM. I normally feel like crap later in the evening. After that I did an ACTH test and was diagnosed with just insufficient aldosterone. I'm on fludrocortisone and I do feel better on it.

I wanted to do an antibody test because it seems most likely that it is something autoimmune because I have type 1 diabetes which makes it 20x more likely. Hyporeninemic hypoaldosteronism isn't likely because my kidney tests are always quite good. My endo said that we don't do antibody testing here. If I wanted that, I'd have to go to the US and pay for it myself. Past experiences with our health care system has lowered my expectations quite a bit but is this really how things are?

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u/Horror-Beaver1979 — 2 months ago