Got MTHFR? Well here are five things that
you need to do.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. And you are
watching Chris Masterjohn Lite where
where the name of the game is
“Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!”
And here are the five things that you need
to do if you have an MTHFR mutation.
If you're not sure if this applies to you
watch the previous video in this series.
So number one you need to get more
choline and I would put the amount of
choline that you need as four to five
egg yolk equivalents. So the simplest way
to get that is four to five egg yolks,
but if you don't like eggs or you're not
eating eggs for some health-related
reason you can replace one or more of
those egg yolks with other foods. You can
replace two of those egg yolks with one
quarter pound serving of liver. You can
replace one of those egg yolks with one
tablespoon of sunflower or soy lecithin. It's really
easy to get one or more tablespoons of
lecithin granules into a smoothie for
example. You can replace a half of an egg
yolk with a hundred grams of cruciferous
vegetables or nuts. Now if you're going to
go that route you require a large volume
of food. For example you'd have to use 10
100 gram servings of cruciferous
vegetables and nuts, and I don't
recommend doing that because ten
servings of cruciferous vegetables is
too much stress on your thyroid gland.
I'd limit it to one or two servings, same
thing with nuts: there's anti-nutrients
in nuts; nuts are great in small
quantities, maybe one or two servings at
most, not ten. Now you can also replace
some of those egg yolks with betaine,
which is found mostly in spinach, beets,
and wheat. So in terms of spinach,
100 grams of spinach can replace
one egg yolk. For beets, 100 grams of
raw beets or 50 grams of canned beets
replaces one egg yolk, and for wheat,
wheat germ is the best source
source and about 25 grams of wheat germ
will replace around one egg yolk. Now you
can mix and match these however you want;
you can sort of copy and paste these
different egg yolk equivalents to just
make sure that you get 4 to 5 per day
and I would not replace all of the
choline with betaine, I would replace
up to 1/2 of the choline with betaine.
Okay, now strategy number two: you need to get
enough methylfolate. You should focus
first on food and not on supplements.
To get enough methylfolate from food try to
get two to three servings of the Three L's -
liver, legumes and leafy greens. That
third L is really just greens.
So broccoli, for example, you're not eating
the leaves, but it's a great source of
folate. Kale is really leafy, it's a great
source of folate, but what they have in
common is that they're green. Now you
should not eat more than a couple of
servings of liver per week so you're not
getting it all from liver, but two to
three servings mostly of legumes and
greens and sometimes replacing one of
those servings with liver. You can
supercharge your methylfolate if you use
sprouted legumes instead of regular
legumes. You can also add to your folate
a lot if you make sure that your eggs
come from pasture-raised chickens so
that the chickens are eating grass, which
is a leafy green, one of the three L's.
It's important also to note that folate
is stable in frozen liver, but not in
frozen vegetables. So liver in the
freezer fine, but don't trust frozen
vegetables even if you use
them quickly as a source of folate;
only trust fresh vegetables.
Number three is you need to get your
Goldilocks amount of protein.
I would not consume less than a half a
gram of protein per pound of body weight.
At the same time if your goal is to
optimize your nutrition around your
MTHFR mutation and you don't have a
specific body composition goal or
athletic performance goal that requires
greater protein intakes I would cap your
protein at one gram per pound of body
weight per day. The reason is the more
meat, protein, and fish, and eggs, and dairy
protein you eat, and to some degree even
plant protein, the more it worsens one of
the principal effects of MTHFR, which is
that you need more glycine. And that
brings us to strategy number four: you
need to get enough glycine. There's
basically three entry ways to
"participate" or "jump on to the glycine
bandwagon." The first is to utilize the skin and
bones of the foods you eat. So instead of
skinless boneless chicken breast, eat
your chicken breast with the skin and
roast the whole chicken and take the
bones to make into stock for soups and
gravies. The next level is to actually
eat the bones. If you eat the edible
bones -- if you gnaw
off the ends of the smaller bones in a
chicken, roast chicken for example, or you
eat the edible bones in canned fish,
that's a way of eating bones and gives
you a lot more glycine. If you want a
supplement, try 3 to 10 grams per day of
a free glycine supplement, or try 1 to 3
servings of hydrolyzed collagen. Brands
that I like are Great Lakes and Vital
Proteins. The fifth thing that you need
to try is creatine. The reason that you
use creatine is because a lot of the
methylfolate you use is actually to make
creatine. If you eat creatine then you
can spare your methylfolate and conserve it.
And you could get creatine from food
in enough amounts if you ate 1 to 2
pounds of meat per day, but that's going
to overshoot your protein, which is a
problem for the reasons I described
before. So what I would do is try
supplementing with 3 to 5 grams
of creatine per day. Just put "creapure"
into Amazon and find the cheapest thing
that you can, or go to
chrismasterjohnphd.com/creatine for
recommendations.
Now some of my clients find that
initially as they get
used to supplementing with creatine it
at first causes some insomnia and I
believe that that is because insomnia is
one of the problems you can get with
methylation and if you're supplementing the
creatine your body has to recalibrate
how much methylation it needs. And so
it's going to take a few weeks for
everything to stabilize, but I believe in
the long-term creatine supplementation
can be very helpful. Just give it four to
six weeks for the full effects to take
root. Now the last thing that I would
throw in is a bonus. And I would say be
very careful with SAMe supplements.
SAMe supplements are pro-methylation
supplements and a lot of people think "I
need more methylation because my MTHFR sucks
so I'll take SAMe." I'm not against
taking SAMe, but SAMe, just like getting
too much protein, can worsen your need
for glycine and so I think you should
not use it unless you've tried all the
strategies that I've just given you and
you still need the benefit. And you
should not continue with it unless you
get noticeable benefits to your energy
or to your mood and your mental health
or cardiovascular markers or anything
else that MTHFR could be related to.
So only use SAMe as a last resort and make
sure it's working for you because it's
also really expensive.
All right I hope you found that useful.
In the next video we'll go into some
blood markers that you can look at.
For now signing off.
This is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com.
You've been watching Chris Masterjohn Lite.
And I will see you in the next video.