Here are five things that everyone
should be doing about methylation.
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!"
There's a lot of information out
there including information that I've put out
that's about specific polymorphisms,
which are genetic variations, related to
the process of methylation, such as MTHFR.
Here I want to put out what everyone, no
matter who you are or what your genes are,
should be doing about methylation.
So these are five rules to follow to make
sure you're getting the baseline minimum
necessary to nourish the process of
methylation, a process that as I've
explained in past episodes, is extremely
important to both your mental and
physical health. If you have MTHFR
polymorphisms or other polymorphisms in
folate metabolism, you may need to
increase this as I've described in the
other episodes. Rule number one to follow
is to eat a good diet in general as the
background, and in the last episode, I
outlined five rules to a healthy diet.
So rule number one for methylation is
follow those five rules. Rule number two
is about getting enough folate.
To get enough folate, you want two to
three servings of the three L's: liver,
legumes, or leafy greens. When possible,
sprout the legumes, or buy them sprouted.
When you're dealing with veggies, they
should always be fresh, never frozen,
preferably from the farmers market so
they're even fresher than in the store,
and refrigerated and used within 3 to 5 days.
When you're dealing with
veggies, always do any of the rinsing or
washing before you do the cutting or
shredding. For serving sizes, in general
as a rule of thumb, 100 grams or
3 to 4 ounces. You can measure that before
cooking for the liver, after cooking for
the plant products. When you are talking
about raw veggies instead of cooked
veggies, double the amount, so a serving
size is 200 grams or 6 to 8 ounces.
When it won't cause digestive distress,
so for example, lentils are a good
example and a lot of veggies, where when
it wouldn't cause digestive distress to
throw out the water—to not throw out the
water, don't throw out the water. In other
words, if you're making, let's say
you're making lentil soup, and you can
cook the vegetables in the soup and
consume the broth, that's better than
cooking the vegetables by steaming them
or boiling them and throwing away the
water and then adding them to the soup.
But there are certain beans, especially
beans, where you might get digestive
distress if you don't soak them, throw
out the water, cook them, throw out the
water, then use them. And in those cases,
you want to prioritize being able to
digest the food well. But when it doesn't
matter, err on the side of using the
cooking water. If most of your folate is
coming from plant products where you
cook them and throw out the water, then
you want to get three to five servings
instead of two to three. Rule number three
is about getting enough vitamin B12.
For vitamin B12, there's a
peculiarity about its digestion that
you can only absorb a day's worth at any
given one time. And there are a lot of
foods that contain a lot more than a
day's worth, like liver or clams. If you
want to rely on these for your B12, you
can't just eat one meal that has a
massive amount and be done with it.
You only harness the full B12 potential when
you eat small amounts frequently. So for
B12, it's important not only to eat B12-rich
foods, but to eat them often enough
to get the B12 on a consistent enough
basis to absorb it.
To do this, you want to eat a full day's
worth of B12 at at least one third of
your meals, or a half a day's worth at
two thirds of your meals, or a third of a
day's worth at all your meals. But you
have to have at least a third of your
meals throughout the year that are rich
in B12, and if it's only a third of your
meals, they need to be so rich in B12
that they contain a whole day's worth in
that one meal. To get a sense of what
that means, one day's worth of vitamin
B12 can be gotten from any of the
following: 4 to 8 grams of liver;
8 grams of oysters or clams; 12 ounces,
that's three quarters of a pound, of meat,
poultry, or fish; three 8-ounce glasses of
milk; or 12 ounces of cheese. There's some
promising research suggesting that
vegans can get their B12 by substituting
purple or green laver, also
called nori, for the oysters and clams, or
black trumpet, chanterelle, or shiitake
mushrooms for the meat and fish.
It's important to note that this research is
in its infancy. Statistically the
likelihood of being B12-deficient if
you're vegan or vegetarian is very high,
so I think it's a better idea to
supplement your diet when you are vegan
or vegetarian to make sure you're
getting enough B12, but if you're careful
about monitoring your status, you can try
using these foods. Anyone over the age of
65, anyone with stomach ulcers or
gastritis, vegans, and vegetarians should
all be very proactive about monitoring
B12 status because the risk of B12
deficiency is high in all these groups.
If you have a problem with
vitamin B12 absorption,
you may need high-dose supplements or
injections of B12 instead of getting it
from diet. Rule number four is about
getting enough choline. You can get choline, or
you can get a closely related nutrient
betaine. You want to get two to three
egg yolk's worth of choline per day.
And you can get up to half of that as the
closely related nutrient betaine. To think
of what it means to get one egg yolk
worth of choline, obviously you can get
that from one egg yolk. You can also get
one egg yolk's worth of choline from 50
grams of liver, and I would use that up
to two to four times per week. You can
also get it from 200 grams of nuts or
cruciferous vegetables. I would not
consume more than 200 grams of either of
those types of foods per day. Or you can
get it from one tablespoon of lecithin,
or 600 milligrams of a supplement called
Alpha-GPC. Up to half of your choline
requirement as an alternative can come
from betaine. To get one egg yolk's worth
of choline as betaine, you can get it from 25
grams of wheat germ, 100 grams of
cooked or canned beets, 200 grams of raw
beets, 100 grams of cooked spinach,
or you can use one 500-milligram capsule
of trimethylglycine, or TMG, to count as
two egg yolk equivalents.
The fifth and last rule is about getting
enough glycine. As a general rule of thumb,
to get enough glycine, I would consume
1 to 2 grams of supplemental collagen or
gelatin for every 10 grams of protein in
your diet. For example, if you consume
150 grams of protein, you want
to balance that with 15 to 30 grams
of gelatin or collagen. Instead of
taking supplemental gelatin or collagen,
you can also use bone broth if you know
the amount of protein in it. For example,
if you know that your bone broth has 10
grams of protein per serving, then you
can count that 10 grams in one serving
as 10 grams of supplemental gelatin or
collagen. As I've covered in other
episodes, you may need to consume more
than this for some of the nutrients if
you have specific genetic variations in
folate metabolism. Some of this may be
hard to remember. There are also blood
tests that can be useful for monitoring
nutritional status. For more detail and
all my methylation resources collected
in one place, go to
All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com, and this has been
Chris Masterjohn Lite,