Does methylfolate make you
angry or depressed?
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of chrismasterjohnphd.com,
and this is Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the
name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And today we're going to talk about
unusually negative reactions to methylfolate
supplementation and what that might mean.
Taub Becker says on Facebook,
"Chris Masterjohn, is there any chance a
deficit of glycine can make you feel
awful with folate sources?" Adrian
says in the comments on chrismasterjohnphd.com,
"Hi Chris. My kids reacted badly to methylfolate
supplementation - became "brittle"
emotionally and more depressed. This got
me into the Walsh Approach. They
responded well to "undermethylator"
supplements. Could you explain possible
reasons why they would have reacted
badly to methylfolate supplementation?
As for the Walsh Approach, they have been
eating a low-folate diet since that time (2015)."
Now, I don't know why this might
happen, but I do know that I've seen it
elsewhere. I have a couple clients who
have negative reactions to methylfolate
along the lines of anger or depression.
And my suspicion is that it's caused by
a sudden change in the supply of methyl groups.
So, with methylfolate supplementation, the
actual number of methyl groups on the
folate molecules that you're eating in
that supplement is fairly small.
But if you have a genetic or other kind of
impairment in methylfolate production so
that in your own system inside your cells,
you're not usually methylating folate,
then the amount of methylfolate
that you might have in the hours after
you take the supplement may be
rather high compared to usual. You may
have a sudden spike in the amount of
methyfolate in your methylation system.
And methylfolate is the off switch
for wasting methyl groups by methylating
glycine and peeing it into the urine.
So if you usually have an unusually low
amount of methylfolate, you will have a
deficient supply of methyl groups simply
because you're peeing them all out.
And it's not that you're
missing just the methyl groups from the
methylfolate, it's that the methyl groups coming from
everywhere else are all getting peed
out when they shouldn't be. Now, in this
situation, the many hundreds of different
things that you need to do with those
methyl groups still need their methyl groups.
So my suspicion is that the body
says—just turns up the volume on
those enzymes to try to steal what they
can of the methyl groups. The way that
I think might be helpful to understand
this as an analogy would be to think
about, you're listening to this or
watching this, and I'm talking, and you're
trying to hear me. If I were talking very
quietly, you might turn the volume all
the way up, but then if I suddenly start
speaking loudly, because the volume is
turned up so high, what you want, the good
thing you want to hear is now piercing
through your ears and damaging them, and
your ears are left ringing for hours afterwards.
So, similarly your cells need
these methyl groups, so I'm imagining
that they will turn up the volume on
those enzymes. And perhaps, unlike your
smartphone or your computer, maybe the
max volume setting that they can have is
a lot higher. Right? They might be able to
turn up those enzymes ten times higher
than normal, and then when all of a
sudden the methyl group supply goes from
deficient to normal, then suddenly it's
like that volume is now piercing into
your ears and damaging your ear tissues
and making them ring for hours afterward,
only in this case, it's particular things that
you're methylating that might control
your neurotransmitters or might control
other aspects of how you feel mentally
and physically, that suddenly trying to get
the normal amount is now getting ten
times the normal amount and throwing
everything off balance.
So what would you do in this situation?
Well, there's really two things.
Number one is you can't just supplement
methylfolate, and you should never be supplementing
with high doses of it in almost any case.
What you should be doing is paying
attention to every aspect of the protocol.
And so I recommend going to
my protocol at chrismasterjohnphd.com/methylation.
And make sure you're hitting all the other pieces
around protein, and glycine, and creatine,
and all of that because you want to make
sure that the methylfolate is balanced
into the whole system.
The other aspect of this is time. I suspect
that it would take weeks to adjust to
a particular dose of methylfolate if it's
causing a dramatic difference in
the number of methyl groups you have.
And you could either take the dose that
you're trying to and just power your way
through those symptoms for a few weeks,
or if it's really a negative reaction
that really decreases your quality
of life, then you could start at a very
low dose and work your way up.
The dose—the best way to
get a low dose of methylfolate is to use
the liquid methylfolate supplement that
Seeking Health sells.
They sell a supplement that they recommend
taking 40 drops to get 1,000 micrograms from,
but you can take one drop to get 25
micrograms from, which is a very low dose.
So, I'll link to this supplement in the
description of this episode. That'll be
an affiliate link. If you use that link,
I'll get a small commission at no extra
cost to you, which will help support the
free work that I produce.
You can just google "Seeking Health liquid methylfolate"
if you don't want to use the affiliate link.
Now, this supplement, what
I would recommend doing with it if you
really do have an extreme reaction,
is take one drop for just 25 micrograms
per day with a meal, and let that stabilize
for a few days or for a week, and then
increase it to two drops, which is 50
micrograms. And then let that stabilize
for a week or two, and then increase it,
and keep increasing it until you get up
to about 4 to 600 micrograms
of methylfolate per day.
Once you can tolerate that dose, then you can switch
to a less expensive supplement, or
ideally you can switch to including
folate-rich foods in your diet because
now you have let your body readjust
the volume of those enzymes, so to speak.
I don't know that this will work, but
it's what I would recommend trying based
on how I'm imagining these symptoms
coming about.
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All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn
of chrismasterjohnphd.com.
This has been Chris Masterjohn Lite,
and I will see you in the next episode.