MTHFR: What is that?

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Mark Bennett 0:21

Well, hello, I want to welcome you to the inaugural ID Life Healthy Simplified Podcast. This is Mark Bennett. You know, we were thinking about what could possibly be the best first topic to kick things off. And the reality was it really came down to something very simple. mthfr. What is it? You know, the reason why we want to do this is a couple of fold. One, that it is something that people are starting to become more and more familiar with, but more importantly, it kind of touches near and dear to my personal heart in the sense that I am what they call compound heterozygous. And as we go through today, you're actually going to learn what that term means. It basically means that I have one of the variants on both of my mthfr genes. But when we talk about MTHFR, there's some background that I want to make sure people understand where they understand actually what it is, how it affects the body, more importantly, what it's doing to them, maybe unbeknownst to them, and the culprit behind a lot of the issues and problems they may be dealing with. But I also wanted to explain this podcast because we've kind of decided that we're going to do it kind of in a series format, you know, the first podcast in a series is going to be educational. It's going to be Hey, what is this? Why are we talking about it? And then the second one is going to be story oriented. You know, we're going to do some interviews with some folks that have been affected by that particular topic. And gotten certain results or have learned something through the process and changed their lifestyle as a result and are starting to see benefits or changes that are beneficial to them and their families. And then the last segment in the series is going to be professional oriented, whether or not it's a doctor or a scientist or a professional in the area that has expertise, we're going to talk to those folks and what they're seeing in their communities with regard to that particular topic and, and how it's affecting lives and how they are actually using the information provided to them by ID life and other resources that we provide to help improve their situation and the situation of the folks that they help. Okay. All right, so MTHFR. Methyl methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. Yeah, that's a mouthful, isn't it? You know, so when someone says they are positive for MTHFR, what that means is they have a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP is what we refer to it, S N P, at either their C67T or A1298C gene marker. Now, what that means is it's adversely affecting the MTHFR enzyme. The enzyme is what actually goes out and causes things to activate in the body. It plays a critical role in the process of methylation. Okay, methylation is a biochemical process involved in over 200 bodily functions, including DNA synthesis and repair detoxification of the body, and the metabolism of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Simply put, it's your body's master switch for epigenetic function. It turns genes on and off, processes chemicals and toxins, builds neurotransmitters, processes and metabolizes hormones, builds immune cells, synthesizes and repairs DNA and RNA, produces energy, and produces protective coating on our nerves, amongst a host of other things. The NTHFR enzyme is particularly important for converting homocysteine, an amino acid that can be harmful at high levels, into methanine. Another amino acid that's primary function is growth and metabolism. Something, you know, we're all constantly fighting to improve is our metabolism. The process also involves a conversion of inactive folic acid to active folate. Which is the primary form of folate used in the body as a methyl donor is important for the production and repair of DNA and RNA. The big term there is the fact that it actually helps repair. The DNA because what ends up happening is our DNA gets damaged on a regular basis. You may or may not have known that and as a result of that damage, it is actually this MTHFR gene or the methylation process itself that actually helps go in and actually repair that DNA. Now you may be thinking, you know, how big of an issue is this? Does it affect the large majority of the population or not? And the answer is yes, it actually does. In fact, it's thought that more than 50 percent of the people in the United States have this marker. That's over 150 million people. But when you think about a family average size of four, there's a high probability that this affects every family because there's a high statistical probability that at least a person within that family of four is going to have an M. T. H. F. R. Marker. So this information is important. But when you're actually breaking it down and what you're looking for, I mean, I'm going to get a little technical before I get super simplistic. What is actually happening here is you're looking for two specific gene markers. One of them is what we call the C677T. Again, that's C677T. And that's a variant that refers to a specific SNP on, on the, on the code. We're Cytosine is replaced with thymine at that position, that 6 7 7 position. The other one that we're referring to is A 12 98 C. Again, A 12 98 C. That is, you know, that variant on the 12 98 gene, where adenine is replaced by cytosine at that position. That's hence why you get the T at the top, you know, because thymine is, is the replacement. And C, cytosine is the replacement. So that's where you get those two variants. And the impact of these variants is significantly impacted by diet and lifestyle. So if you happen to have MTHFR and your diet and your lifestyle do not align with that variant, it can have catastrophic effects. It's compounding over time. It's like anything else, you know, you can be perfectly fine and then all of a sudden one day, snap, something happens and boom, you know, something goes wrong. So, for instance, someone with this mutation who consumes large amounts of folic acid could experience early onset cognitive decline, mental fog, neurological disorders, including anxiety, depression, dementia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, certain cancers, not to mention that the unmetabolized folic acid in the body can mask a B 12 deficiency. How is that possible? See, B12 it can actually cause all kinds of neurological issues, especially in your neurotransmitters, hormone disruption, things of that nature. And that buildup of folic acid in the bloodstream, because your body can't metabolize it, can actually mask or show in a blood test that your B12 is still fine, thus basically giving doctors the unknowing Concept that this issue that you're dealing with or the problems that you're dealing with are unassociated with a B 12 deficiency when in fact people with MTHFR are regularly B 12 deficient. In fact, you're going to see some recommendations that I'm going to talk about if you happen to have one of these markers and how you should also be supplementing with a B 12 supplement, a very specific form called methylcobalamin, but we'll get into that in a second. So what I wanted to do today, though, is I wanted to oversimplify MTHFR. I wanted to give you the ability to be able to talk about it, to be able to discuss it, to be able to give the basic elements of it. Most importantly, for you to understand it. Because there's a lot of misconceptions and a lot of misinformation out there. First, you know, a polymorphism causes a defect in the MTHFR enzyme. Okay, I've said that again. Remember, we're talking about genes, because we're looking at specific genes, that's 677 and 1298 gene. Those are the two genes that we're looking at. But the enzyme, the MTHFR enzyme is what we're really talking about because those markers and those variants that we call them the polymorphisms actually cause a defect in the enzyme. So what that is, is there's something called 510 methylenotetrahydrofolate. That's the inactive form of the B9 vitamin folic acid. Okay. It stops the conversion of that, the inactive form, into the active form of the B9, what we call folate, or 5 methyltetrahydrofolate. So when the body can't So accurately convert it, now we have a problem because if we only have the inactive form in our bloodstream, or we have too much of the inactive form, we've already kind of talked about what can happen there. But if we don't have enough of the folate or the active form, then it doesn't perform all of the bodily functions that it needs to. And what happens when you have one of these markers is it can be inhibited anywhere from, you know, 30 to 70%. So, simply put, it prevents the full conversion of folic acid to methylfolate. So if we want to oversimplify it, that's what happens. When you have MTHFR, your body can't take folic acid and convert it into methylfolate, which is the active, from inactive to active. In addition, it adversely affects the body's ability to properly metabolize vitamins B6, B9, which is the folate, the folic acid what we're talking about, and B12. So think about that for a second. If we have MTHFR, this isn't just a folic acid issue. It's not just a folate issue. It's also a B6 and B12 issue. I want to make sure everyone understands that, because not a lot of people actually talk about that when they talk about MTHFR. Really, all they're really talking about is folic acid. And we're really going to understand the difference between folic acid and folate as we go through this, because folic acid is the synthetic form, something that should be avoided. If you have MTHFR folate, the active form, that's actually what we're looking for. So depending on whether you are heterozygous, okay, for a marker, that means you have a single mutation on one of the genes or homozygous, that means you have both. Because remember you get, you know, markers from both parents, you know, we get. Mom and dad genes. Okay, so you have two different things. So you have two possibilities of having a variant So if you're heterozygous single mutation or homozygous double mutation You got it from both your folate conversion or methylation process can be inhibited from anywhere from 30 to 70 percent So yeah that that can have an amazing Causal relationship or what we call a chain reaction in the cells. So, what kind of cause react what kind of causal reaction, what actually happens to us? Well, if you have MTHFR, the first thing that you should really be concerned about is homocysteine levels in the blood can be extremely high. And they will continue to get higher the more that your diet and lifestyle don't align with the fact that you have this marker. So, why should you be concerned about homocysteine? Well, let's go through the list. If you have high homocysteine in your blood, you have increased chances of coronary artery disease, stroke, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, atherosclerosis, that's the buildup of fats and plaque in the arterial walls of the heart, thrombosis, that's blood clots in the blood vessels, venous thrombosis, that's blood clots in the veins, improper thyroid function, anemia, yeah. Infertility, birth defects, and miscarriage. I should stop here and say, by the way, MTHFR has been linked to the number one cause of miscarriage in this country. So if you're of childbearing age or know somebody who's about to be, especially a young daughter like myself, you know, this can become extremely important for them. It's also a culprit for migraines, especially chronic migraines, early onset dementia, Alzheimer's, and all different types of forms of cancer. So if high homocysteine wasn't enough because, Hey, you know, the hits keep on rolling. You also are predisposed to high inflammation in the body. Now, what does that mean? So if I have high inflammation, that means I have an increased risk of autoimmune diseases. Probably the fastest growing diagnoses that we have in the United States right now is autoimmune related diseases. That's the body attacking itself. Even though it doesn't necessarily need to. In other words, there's a noncombatant in our body and our body just turns on itself. Another increase in the chances of developing something called fibromyalgia. Another form of that is what we call phantom pain. In other words, there's no test to actually be able to determine where the pain is originating from. But the Pain is absolutely real to the person. It's what we call psychosomatic pain. The brain is telling the body that this hurts, but we can't figure out where it's coming from. Again, it's uncontrollable inflammation that could be derived from that MTHFR marker. Achy joints, arthritis of all types, and of course, chronic fatigue, chronically feeling exhausted because your body's in a constant state of fight or flight because of all the inflammation. The other thing that can happen as part of having an MTHFR variant is a reduced liver function. Now remember, the liver is your primary filtration system. I say primary because you have a secondary filtration system. That's your colon and your kidneys. But the primary is the liver, and you have reduced liver function when you have MTHFR. So what does that mean? Well, that means you can have increased risk of Basically storing heavy metals, especially iron and mercury, toxins and pollutants. So your body is not detoxifying. Part of the methylation process is helping the body detoxify, get rid of this stuff. And if you have MTHFR, then there's a high probability that you have increased amounts of these things in your body that are being stored, that can't get rid of. Gut issues and irritable bowel. You know, leaky gut being another one of those things that people are starting to get diagnosed with at a rapid rate. But those can be directly related to your MTH of our variants something called non alcoholic fatty liver disease. If you haven't heard about this, this is when the liver gets so overwhelmed with toxins, pollutants, and heavy metals, that it wraps these things in fat to protect itself. Stores it for later so that it can take care of it and eventually it gets so overwhelmed with the amount of fat tissue around the liver. You get diagnosed with something called non alcoholic fatty liver disease. And then of course the other is the accumulation of unwanted toxins and oxidative stress throughout the body. That's the other thing that happens with that reduced liver function. And of course, if that wasn't enough, then the other thing that can happen to you is a reduced neurotransmitter function. Now, you're probably saying, okay, what's the neurotransmitter? Why do I care about this? Well, this is the hormone function in your body. So this is how your hormones actually are affected by your MTHFR status. So you have a reduced serotonin function. Okay, so what does serotonin do? Well, serotonin controls your mood, your irritability, your anxiety, your depression, your bipolar disorder, your schizophrenia. So if serotonin is reduced as a result of MTHFR and a misaligned diet and lifestyle, then all of these things are adversely affected. The other thing that is reduced is dopamine. Now, what happens if I'm not getting enough dopamine in my body? You know, why do I care about this? You know, dopamine is that, you know, happy hormone. It's the thing that makes you feel good. Well, you have an increased risk of addictions. I want to make sure you heard that. So, MTHFR can reduce dopamine function in the body, which increases your likelihood of having addictions. That can be to drugs, it can be to food, it can be to any number of things. And the reason why is because if you have what we call an addictive personality disorder, and they call it a disorder, it's really not. It's a genetic marker in the body. Basically predisposes you to addictive tendencies and you have a blunted dopamine response as a result of your MTHFR status. You're going to continuously continue to try and get that dopamine response that your body is looking for and it's not getting it because as a result of this MTHFR status, which actually creates the addictions. So if you know someone who struggles with addictions, then MTHFR could be the culprit. And by aligning those things, it can help them with the support of those addictions. The other thing is it reduces the production of melatonin in the body. So if you're a poor sleeper and you just can't figure out why, you know, you've tried everything, sleep aids, et cetera, nothing's working for you. It could be this MTHFR variant. It also increases norepinephrine in the body. So in case all of these reductions, what happens if norepinephrine goes up? Well, norepinephrine is your stress hormone. So guess what? You feel more stressed all the time. You're anxious. You're worried about things coming in the future. This is, you know, one of those other little side effects. You also have an increase in epinephrine in the body. So that's your fear and anger hormone. So yeah, you're stressed out. You're angry. You're afraid. All of these things are out of control because your hormones are out of whack as a result of diet and lifestyle not aligning with your MTHFR status. So, that's an over, over simplistic explanation of the downside of having MTHFR. But what if we want to do something about it? What if we want to help, you know, try to alleviate these MTHFR symptoms? Well, there's some simple things we can do at least to start. This is a lot more complex than obviously I'm laying on right now for you, but I want to at least give you kind of a highlight of what it is and all the different areas that it affects. So that as we continue to talk about it in this series, you are going to actually kind of see how people take some of these remedies that we're going to talk about, put them into action and get the results that they're looking for. But I also want you to talk to some of the industry experts so that you can actually hear from them on what they're seeing and how they're handling these things and what they're doing with their patients. So the first remedy that you'd want to consider if you have MTHFR is avoid folic acid, especially in rich foods like grains. See, a lot of times in this country we're taught that we are allergic to something or we're not allergic to something. And there's a difference between having a food sensitivity and having a food allergy. Allergy is reactive. We know we break out. We have anaphylaxis. We, you know, we react to something. That's a food allergy. A food sensitivity means, you know, we can eat it. We don't necessarily feel anything, but a lot of things could be happening inside our body, especially inflammation and other things that we don't want. See, when you're talking about grains, and I'm now talking about breads, cereals, pastas, things like that. In the 1950s, there was a lot of scientific studies that came out that showed that we were one of the world's leaders in miscarriage and birth defect in the United States. And one of the number one culprits was the lack of folic acid in the standard American diet. So, the federal government decided, hey, we are going to enrich. These grains with folic acid literally try to do something to help offset all of this birth defect and miscarriage issues that we had in the U. S. What resulted though, unbeknownst to all of the scientists in the 1950s, As we developed, we learned that, hey, MTHFR means we don't process regular folic acid or the synthetic form of that nutrient. We need folate. Well, all of our grains based products, including the breads, the cereals, the pastas, et cetera, still contain all that fortified enriched folic acid, which for somebody with MTHFR can just become You know, like a toxin. We've talked about it. It can stay in the bloodstream because our body can't metabolize it, resulting in, you know, a masked B12 deficiency and a lot of other related issues. It's basically just a toxin in our blood. You need to avoid folic acid where possible, or at least limit it if you can. The other thing that you need to do is you need to consume a supplement called methylfolate. Now, there's a lot of different terms for it. I'm going to oversimplify it. Just call it methylfolate for you. Yes, ID. Life has an amazing something called Methylation Plus. That is a methylfolate form of that nutrient. We have it in our ID. Nutrition platform. And yeah, we do have as part of our ID nutrition platform, all the different requests, all the different questions about MTHFR status, both genetically as well as a condition, and that can be taken care of there. But worst case scenario, if you're listening to this, you want to look for and use a methylfolate supplement because it is extremely critical for you to actually start feeling a little bit better. The other thing you want to make sure you're doing is you want to consume a Active B 12 supplement as well. Active B 12 is called methylcobalamin. What you want to avoid is cyanocobalamin. Cyanocobalamin is the synthetic form and it is not beneficial to you. In fact, it's just not, not good for you at all. And if you ever happen to be diagnosed with something called B 12 deficiency, If your doctor recommends a B12 shot, please, if you have MTHFR, make sure that that shot is methylcobalamin and not cyanocobalamin. Because cyanocobalamin acts almost like folic acid. It just sticks in your bloodstream. We don't metabolize it, and it's just a toxin to you. So again, you want to supplement with something called methylfolate and methylcobalamin. That is your B9 and your B12 vitamins. The other thing you want to do is you want to limit gluten, wheat, and sugar where possible. Okay, so we're back to all of these wonderful things that contain folic acid. So let's make sure that we can limit those whenever we can. We want to limit as much gluten, wheat, and sugar where possible if you have emptied so far. You also want to do something that a very small majority of the population in the U. S. actually does, which is you want to consume a large quantity of dark green leafy vegetables, beans, peas, lentils, seeds, and nuts. Now why? Well, one They all contain, the active form of folate that we're looking for for the body. They also help with detoxification. Remember, somebody with MTHFR does not detoxify well. You know, yes, Idealife has a detox box for, you know, mainly this particular reason to help people offset the ill effects of detoxification or the lack of detoxification. But we also want to make sure that people understand the foods. Again, diet, lifestyle need to match your genetic status for it to work in alignment. And this is one of those things where if you can consume these foods, again, dark green leafy vegetables, beans, peas, lentils, seeds, and nuts, it's going to help not only the fiber contained in them, which also a lot of Americans are deficient in, but also the detoxification effect. The other thing that you need to do in your diet is consume organic, non GMO foods and natural meats where you can. Now, what do I mean by natural meats? I could probably do an entire podcast on the fact that there are more antibiotics consumed by animals in the United States to make them bigger, larger, so that we get a bigger yield out of them. This is thus resulting in resistant strain bacteria and things that are starting to affect us negatively. We could talk about that for days, but when I talk about natural meats, I'm talking about not grain finished or grain fed. I'm talking about grass fed meats, things of that nature. Antibiotic free Additive free. I mean, there's all kinds of things out there. Just in organic, remember organic does not mean non GMO. You want organic and non GMO. Those, those two things. Remember, GMO means I've genetically modified something. I've synthesized it. I've put a chemical in it. Remember, we have 80, 000 chemicals that we're exposed to on a regular basis in the United States, of which we've only done about 200 studies on. So, yeah, there's a lot of chemicals out there that we have no idea what the long term effect is. And if you're MTHFR, your body doesn't get rid of toxins and chemicals that efficiently. So limit that where possible. So, again, consume organic non GMO foods and natural meats. The last one is also a supplement that if you have MTHFR can really help you. And it's something called N Acetyl L Cysteine or NAC, okay, something else to look for again in all of our ID nutrition platforms. This is there, but it's a supplement to help. The liver detoxify. So it's a liver support supplement. It's something extremely important for people with MTHFR. So those are your seven starter blocks, if you will. These, and again, I say simple, they're not really easy. Remember just because something simple doesn't mean that it's easy because a lot of the standard American diet does not take any of this into consideration. In fact, it's just the opposite. It's fortified with all the wrong things and it doesn't contain any of the things that we actually need for those of us that are MTHFR positive. There's also obviously lifestyle changes with regard to an active lifestyle, red light therapy, red light saunas infrared saunas. There's all kinds of different things that you can do as you start MTHFR more. That we'll probably talk about with others or another time when we're talking about specifics with regard to other things that we can do, especially when you're talking about fitness side of life and how to treat your body. But hopefully this podcast was helpful in getting you at least a basic understanding of when an MTHFR is giving you the basics so that you could actually explain the basic elements of it. And remember, we're talking about the MTHFR enzyme and what that's doing through the methylation process of the body. And then of course, the, the things to look for the telltale signs of the body saying, Hey, I'm not feeling great. Here's some of the things I'm dealing with. And if you don't know if you're MTHFR positive or not, how do I get that information? And then of course the remedies associated with it. Now the question on how do I find out if I'm MTHFR positive, there's a couple of different ways. You could go to your doctor and have a blood test done. There are blood tests that can be done. Some doctors do this. Some doctors don't. You could do a simple genetic test. Idealife has an amazing genetic test. The difference between our genetic test and most is that ours, your information, is never going to be sold. Unlike some of the other, what I'm going to call commercial genetic tests, where the whole reason why they're offering you a genetic test at a reduced rate is so that they can actually use and sell your information, your personal information. Your information is never sold with Idealife. Or we have a stand alone MTHFR test. If you're just interested in just MTHFR, then you can find out, what your markers are on 677 and 1298. Those are the two, again, genes that we're looking for to see if there's variance there. But the good news is your genes don't change. So once you know, you know how to deal with it. But when you're talking about the gene or genes, if you will, that basically epigenetically turn your system on and off, these are the things that go around and turn your DNA switches on and off on a regular basis, it's extremely important to understand what your status is, because if you are MTHFR positive, there's something you can do about it if you're MTHFR. If you're unknowing about whether or not you are or you aren't, then you may be dealing with some effects and you may wait until it's too late to actually do something about it. But the best part, again, about genes and gene therapy and things of that nature and gene lifestyle modification is once you've had your genes tested, you never have to have them tested again. It's a one and done. They don't change. Now, epigenetically, they will turn on and turn off. That's another discussion for another day. But I hope this podcast has been helpful to you, and I really look forward to talking to you again real soon.