Creatine, Choline & MTHFR - ORTHOMOLECULAR LIVING

ORTHOMOLECULAR LIVING

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Creatine, Choline & MTHFR

For all of the MTHFR people out there: did you realize that 45% of your body's need for methylation comes from the manufacture of creatine? A person with heterozygous C677t will methylate at 30% less efficiency as compared to someone who doesn't have this SNP. Looking at these two numbers, doesn't seem logical that if you reduce the body's methylation burden by 45%, you can make up for the missing 30% of methylation? Let's talk about some assumptions:
1. We assume creatine is only needed by body builders
2. We assume that we need to focus on methylfolate supplementation when we have MTHFR.
3. We don't think vit C has a role to play in MTHFR support.
4. We don't think glycine matters.
Now let's challenged these assumptions:
1. Supplementing with up to 5 grams of creatine per day will reduce the burden on the methylation system, thus allowing the body to spare the methylfolate that it has, AND spare glycine.
2. We need to focus on sparing methylfolate as many people with MTHFR simply can't take high doses as they also have snips in COMT or CBS that make taking methylfolate problematic. We do this by consuming sources of choline or betaine, which the body ALSO uses to convert homocysteine into methionine, via the BHMT (betaine homocysteine methyltransferase) enzyme.
3. Vit C has a HUGE role in supporting MTHFR by reducing oxidative stress which takes a huge burden off of the cycsteine-homocysteine pathway. It also protects methyfolate which is easily oxdized and prevents it from being destroyed.
4. Glycine is hugely critical to folate metabolism. The body uses glycine to store excess methyl group (its turned in sarcosine when this happens) Glycine metabolism would be worthy of a whole post someday, but for now lets just say that our limited supplies of glycine get wasted in an MTHFR person as the cell is confused by the malfunctioning MTHFR enzyme and it inappropriately converts glycine into sarcosine.
Strategies for rational MTHFR support:
1. Take creatine up to 5 grams per day. Safe for 100% of people, small children take 1-2 grams. 12 oz of animal meat will also have 2-3 grams of creatine.
2. Spare folate by taking choline. In MTHFR the body will use choline instead if it can't make methylfolate, and when choline is depleted, fatty liver is always the result. I prefer to get my choline from soy lecithin. Yes, soy. It's simply too expensive to use sunflower in the proper dose. Lecithin also contains serine, which the body makes in to glycine, in addition to supplying choline. It's an amazing super food. Don't let the soy part bother you, lecithin is pure fat, there is no soy proteins or isoflavones or phytoestrogens to worry about. Choline salts like choline bitartrate or alpha gpc may certainly be tried also, but the latter is really a mental health strategy.
3. Take your vit C to tolerance.
4. Get glycine in your body! I recommend mag glycinate for this added benefit. We need mag anyway, and the glycine only helps. But also drink bone broth and/or consume gelatin/collagen. Consider that for all of human history we ate nose to tail of the animal, that meant 50% of our animal diet was cartilage, skin, bone soups, bone marrow, hoof, tail. We have cut all that out in our modern diets.
5. Eat a high folate diet-Liver, legumes and leafy greens. Also experiment with taking methylfolate and methyl b12, but don't make that the sole focus of your MTHFR treatment.