Okay. Jeff Heusby says, "why is methylfolate the off switch for the glycine buffer system?
If methylfolate is providing more methyl groups, shouldn't there be a greater need to
buffer them or at least potentially shouldn't it turn the system on instead of off?" No. So
the reason is that generally in the fed state, you have lots of incoming methionine.
And so you have an excess of SAMe in the fed state. In the fasting state, you have no incoming
methyl groups from diet, and therefore the fasted state is the low-methylation state. So fed state,
high methylation state, fasted state, low methylation state. You basically shut off MTHFR
in the fed state, because in the fed state, which is a high methylation state, the incoming
methionine makes you not need any MTHFR activity. You don't need methylfolate in the fed state,
because you just have this constant flux of methionine from the steak that you ate.
So in the fasting state, MTHFR gets switched on by the low level of SAMe.
And then that methylfolate is a symbol of the low-methylation fasted state.
So the low-methylation fasted state is symbolized by methylfolate, which then
shuts off the glycine buffer system, because you want to shut off the glycine buffer system in
the low-methylation fasted state, and you want it to be on in the high-methylation fed state.
Hope that helps Jeff. Thank you for your question.