4 Things to Consider Before Taking Folate for MTHFR

Good morning or really good evening to you guys from Mumbai. This is Dr. Donnie and I'm so glad to be here. I'm wondering, I want to make sure that my microphone is good enough for you guys.

Let me see. Maybe I better grab my. I'm hoping you can hear me. Please tell me if you can hear me or if I should grab a different microphone.

It's good. Okay, good. I got a thumbs up. Okay. So.

So, yeah, so I'm here in Mumbai. I'm sitting out on the patio so I can show you a little bit of Mumbai behind me and the Arabian Sea. I'm not sure. It looks a little cloudy out there this morning. And I'm excited today to talk about a couple things, actually. Good morning, Myrna, or good evening. I'm glad you're here. And so I wanted to talk about my recent blog post, which is about MTHFR methylation and four important things to consider before you really start adding a lot more folate to your intake. And I also want to share some travel tips with you. And these are travel tips that I've just tried out myself on traveling here to India, and I've been trying them out over the years as well. So I'm excited to share them with you. So I'll do that after we first talk about a little bit more about MTHFR and methylfolate and why it's so important. Actually, I was really curious when I first landed here because I was just going to visit the orphanage where my sister volunteers. She volunteers in an orphanage not far, just right over here. And there's about 200 children that go to the orphanage. Some of them, about half of them live there full time and all of them go to school there. There's a school for the children. And the difference is that this school will accept children no matter what age. Most of the other schools, they have to start a kindergarten and if they come in late, they are not accepted to the government schools. And this school is also free. So they can come to this school and it's paid for by contributors and sponsors, whereas the other schools, the families have to pay for it. So it's a really special place and it's filled with children who may not otherwise have the opportunity to get education.

What I realized is that a lot of them have anemia partially because their diet here is mainly vegan. And so they don't get a lot of the vitamins like iron and methylfolate and methyl B12 that's needed to prevent anemia. And so when I Went to the medical office at the orphanage, I noticed that they have vitamins for the kids. Vitamins are folic acid and cobalamin. So as those of you who've been learning about methylfolate and MTHFR will know that a lot of those children won't even benefit very much from that type of vitamin. So I was really excited because I actually was able to get donations from a couple supplement companies to bring with me. I had so many bags to bring to the airport. Huge. One huge giant extra bag filled with vitamins for the children of the orphanage. And the vitamins I brought are from a company called Smarty pants that have methylfolate and methylcobalamin in them. And so now I'm excited to go back home and be able to get donations more of the same for these children because I really see how much they need it. And what I. I started thinking, I wonder, how many of these children in India, how common is mthfr? Because we're most. Mostly. I've been researching MTHFR in the United States. So when I looked online, I found that they said that it's about up to 12% people in India, especially people who are more from northern India. Now I'm more at the south end of India at the moment. But really, people could be from any place in India and they might move to a big city like Mumbai with 20 million people. So it does exist here, MTHFR. And in the United States, it's a bit higher percentage of, well, depending on where your family's from, really. So the percentage could be anywhere from about 10 to 15%, all the way up to even 60%. Especially, you know, certain ethnicities have higher percent of MTHFR.

And so it's really interesting and it's important for all, everyone. So mthfr, for those of you who might not be as familiar with it, is a gene and an enzyme that its job is to turn.

Folic acid into folate. So we're just talking about B vitamins here. And so it's right up my alley because, of course, my interest is all in nutrition and vitamins and how we can use nutrition to improve our health. And so what happens is some of us, and I have this MTHFR mutation, so I know about it from personal experience as well. And what happens is if I were to take folic acid, say, in a supplement, my body is much less able to use it. And so then without having that folate, it puts me at risk of certain health issues. I mentioned for these kids, it puts them higher risk of anemia. And maybe for you as well, if you have mthfr, it also has increased risk of miscarriage. And sometimes it can affect. Because MTHFR and folate are especially important for making healthy new cells, if you think of it that way. So anytime your body's making new cells, for example, red blood cells, which is why if you don't have enough, it causes anemia. But it's also important for making healthy new cells when you're growing a baby. And so that's why it's so important for women who are thinking of getting pregnant or who are pregnant to take folate because they're growing lots of new healthy cells. And to do a good job with that, you need folate now forever. We heard you're supposed to take folic acid for pregnancy, but really that was before we knew about mthfr. MTHFR is something that's been researched over the past decade and even more in the past couple years. So we just have figured out that it should have been folate, we were saying all that time instead of folic acid. So those of you who haven't already, be sure you check out your vitamins and make sure they say folate or methylfolate. And let's see. So in the blog post, and I'll put a link to the blog post. Let's see if I can do that while I'm talking to you.

I might have to do it after. So my blog post this week is what are the things you should consider even before adding more folate? Because.

Connection got a little bumpy there. Hopefully I'm back. So before you, it sounds pretty straightforward that we should just take folate. But the thing is, is that for. There's really a few things you need to consider before just jumping into taking folate. And that the best way to think about that is there's these sort of like domino effects in our body. If you start to put in more of one thing, no matter what it is, it's gonna have a domino effect, a ripple effect throughout the rest of your body. So if you just pour in one thing at this end, it's gonna have an influence in some other places down the line. So what I'm always thinking when I see a person and we're thinking about adding folate is I'm thinking, let's take care of where the ripple effect is likely to hit before we start putting in more folate, or else there's a chance we might bump into some issues down the line. So there's four things that I talk about in this blog post that you want to consider before adding much more folate. And especially, especially say you start taking folate and you feel worse. Like you start to feel.

Headaches or anxiety or muscle cramps or in any way worse, then you can figure you probably bumped into one of these four things. So the first one has to do with other pathways that influence. Well, see, actually I'm going to start with a block, something that I call blocks. So it's, it's things that, that block the use of folate. So you could put in the folate as much as you want, but if the drain is clogged, the folate can't get anywhere. It's just because the drain is clogged. So we need to unclog the drain first. So these blocks are, and I've written posts about these. So if you'd like to read more, what are the things that, that block the use of folate, then definitely go to my blog@drdonnie.com and you're going to see them all right there. They have to do with things like inflammation, oxidative stress, leaky gut stress in general, like adrenal stress. And there's a couple others too. But these are things that are just in general in our health. You know, if our diet is more inflammatory, if our digestion is out of balance and the gut bacteria are out of balance, and we've been eating foods that cause leaky gut, or having to take medications that cause leaky gut, or say we have a high toxic level from toxins in our air or our water, or.

Oxidative stress from other causes as well, like metals. These things all block the use of folate. So how would it make sense to put in more folate if your body's not even going to be able to use it yet? We need to take care of these blocks first. The other, the second most important thing to take care of is the, what we call cofactor nutrients. These are nutrients that come along with the folate. If you only put folate, but it doesn't have its friends to help it out, it's not going anywhere. So then the folate is just stuck and then it ends up creating negative symptoms because your body's like, I don't know what to do with the folate. I don't have enough of the other nutrients that go with it. So we need these CO factor nutrients to go with it to help out the use of the folate so things can move forward. The third thing has to do with these, what I call downstream pathways, which are the other genetic pathways that are connected in with mthfr. So this might have to do with one that we call the sulfur pathway, which whenever we put in folate and more B vitamins, our body is actually put using and putting out more sulfur into our system. So if you have an issue with sulfur, like sulfur sensitivity, you might. Then if you put in more folate, you might get some sulfur sensitivity reactions. So we need to handle your sulfur system first and then start putting in more folate. Right. Because if we just push the folate, we're just making you feel worse with the sulfur. Another example is nitric oxide, another genetic. Another pathway and enzymes. If you have a mutation related to nitric oxide and your nitric oxide levels are high, we need to handle that before we put in more folate. And you might. This gets a little bit, you know, detailed. So you might want to work with a naturopathic doctor who can look at your genetics and help guide you through how to address these downstream pathways, Especially if you feel worse when you take folate. And that's what I do, that's what I love to help patients to do, is figure out what are we missing, where are the blocks, where are the downstream pathways, what are the nutrients we need to address so that you can get the most out of your folate. We know we want it, we know your body needs it. We just need to figure out how to help your body use it. The fourth area that we need to address related to before adding in folate is your neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are the messengers in our nervous system, like serotonin. A lot of times people have heard of that one. Dopamine, norepinephrine, glutamate. These neurotransmitters are. They determine our mood, our energy, our sleep, our focus. And if they're out of sync, then again, if you start putting in more folate, it's gonna put them even more out of sync. So it's better to address them first. So we test the neurotransmitter levels, we find out what they are, we start getting them recalibrated, Then your body's ready for more folate. So I hope that that's helpful way to think about it. And please definitely read the blog post and reach out to me if I can help you, because again, I really want you to benefit from the folate and the methylation. And just like I want the kid of the orphanage to benefit from it. And to do that, we gotta address these four things, otherwise you're just still stuck standing still. So let's move on to the travel tips. How does that sound? And for me, it's really travel tips. When you have mthfr, it'll work for everyone, of course, because traveling can be a stress. I always talk about, you know, the more we can be aware of the stresses on our body and support our bodies, the more we're going to benefit in terms of our health. So with mthfr, it just makes it all the more important. You know, if you have mthfr, it means you especially need to pay attention to supporting your body when you're under stress and especially when you're traveling. So I learned from my body that I really need to take care and I need to think it through. If I don't, I'm going to get to where I'm going and not feel good. And that's no fun. You just paid for a trip and you're excited to go travel to somewhere and then if you get there and you don't feel good, you feel tired, you feel groggy, feel just like you want to be in bed all day, you don't want to spend, you don't want to fly somewhere just to be in bed all day, you'd rather fly somewhere to enjoy it. So that's why I really think through every bit of the way, how am I going to have a fun trip? So let's. What I did is I figured out how I could put my travel tips in a way that you could remember it. So I'm using the word travel and I'm going to write this up for you in my next book post. So I'll be sharing that soon. But I wanted to share it with you guys today because I know some of you might be traveling this week or next week and it could be helpful for you. Okay, so let's start with tea and travel. So t has to do with taking care of you. So the whole idea of my travel tips really is thinking about how can you take good care of you before, during and after your travel. So this could be everything from how you, where you choose you're gonna go, which flight you choose, and not even just only taking care of you, but taking care of the people around you as well. So you want to make sure you choose a flight that's gonna make sure you have, you know, I always choose a flight where as much as possible I'm not having to wake up at two in the morning or have to wake someone up on the other end at 2 in the morning. You know, I want to choose a flight where I could leave in the middle of the day and arrive at the time of day where there's less traffic if at all possible. For example, it might mean choosing a flight where you have seats where you know you can be comfortable and thinking ahead to ask for meals or bring meals with you so that you can, that you can be taking care of you on the flight. And it also means when you arrive, planning it out so that you have a chance to get used to the time zone and take care of you in terms of food, you know, what are you going to eat when you land? One thing I do for taking care of me is I found it really helps if I plan a massage at the location where I'm landing and then when I get home. Also because I find that I do so much better when I get to get the kinks in my muscles worked out. Hi Marissa. Speaking of getting the kinks of your muscles worked out, Marisa is one of my favorite people for helping me to do that. If you don't know Marisa, she's a myofascial therapist. So, Marisa, you'll be excited to hear that I had a massage yesterday after I arrived in Mumbai. At first we went to visit the orphanage and then I had said to my sister, please plan a massage for when I arrive. So we actually got to have a sister massage. You know, we went to the spa together and had an Indian massage which was really, really great. They used amazing oils with ginger and ashwagandha and peppermint, which are the ginger and peppermint are so great at relaxing tight muscles and inflammation. And so this massage, I would say was really, really special and really made a big difference. And so that's one thing I've learned about my body. Then I'm not walking around with tight neck muscles and not feeling good. I'm ready to go. So think about. It's all about the whole travel tips is about how to take care of you. What is it going to do? What do you need on this trip that's going to end when you get back to help you stay feeling good? So the R in travel is for rehydrate. So I find this is so essential as well, especially on the airplane because airplanes just dehydrate us in general. And I noticed on the airplane that so many people drink alcohol. I think maybe they drink the alcohol because they want to relax or they want to not think about that. They're on an airplane for 12 hours. But what I find is alcohol already dehydrates us. And then when you're on an airplane, you're more dehydrated. So what happens is you're likely to just feel awful.

For me, I get dehydrated so easily on an airplane anyway. But if I were to drink alcohol, I would feel worse. So I instead, I drink the bottled water, filtered water, and I bring with me electrolytes that I can put in the water. You can bring either, like, liquid electrolytes or a packet of electrolytes. You can put it in your water and drink it throughout the flight. And I would do the same during the. During the travel. Because you're gonna be up and active all day today. After I finish this video with you guys, I'm gonna be. We're gonna be going out for the whole day to go look at. To tour Mumbai and see how they do their laundry and see how they pack up their lunches and have a whole lunch delivery system. Excited to see that. But it means I've got to be thinking of my hydration all day. So I need to make sure I have bottled water. I could even put electrolytes in that bottled water to make sure that I stay hydrated. Right. And that's really important for methylation, by the way, as I was talking about with folate and methylation, you really need to have those cofactor nutrients, which include electrolytes. So you need to make sure you keep yourself hydrated and using electrolytes. So the A in travel has to do with, I would say, awareness, and that's awareness for how you're feeling. It's awareness for your safety. So whichever airport you're in or wherever you're traveling to in the town you're in, you want to be aware of your safety and your. And how you know what's going on around you. But I would also say to be aware of the culture around you. So, you know, being able to have an open mind about different choices and different cultures, to be respectful of those cultures, but also to just be open to learning something new. You know, it's amazing when you have a mindset, I think of being open and aware to different cultures that it can be just so much fun to learn about how they do things in life. And maybe then you might come across something that you want to implement in your life as well. So awareness, I find, is a really important part of travel. For me, the V in travel is for vitamins, so that Means making sure to bring your vitamins with you. Everyone has a different system. Some people have, you know, little vitamin containers where you can put all your vitamins out for your whole trip. I tend to use more like Ziploc bags. I keep always trying to come up with better ways, but for me, for now, I, you know, planned them all out for my trip. In fact, I also planned out my vitamins while I was on the airplane so that I could take them.

During the flight. And then now I take them in the morning and at night while I'm here. And I especially would emphasize taking the antioxidants, which I wrote about in my blog post last week. So if you're interested in antioxidants, be sure to read that one. Oh, by the way, you guys can probably see the henna here on my arm. Speaking of being open to other cultures, we did this is one of the cultural things from India, is to do henna, which is a temporary ink on. On your arm. So isn't that amazing how she. She drew this design on my arm? Now, of course, I tend to be a little bit allergic to things, so I even had a bit of an allergic reaction to the henna, but now it calmed down. You see, it's not red anymore and it's looking beau. So for the vitamins and the antioxidants, what I do. Thank you, Marissa.

One of my favorites now is the two favorites I would say on the airplane and after the airplane. Oh, shoot, now I just added a third one in my mind. Okay. First is vitamin C, and I especially like liposomal vitamin C. I can put a link for you guys later underneath this video so you can find it at my store, Dr. Donny store. But there's the liposomal C, liposomal glutathione again, because when you're on an airplane, there's a lot of toxins. There really are. The studies show it. We know the toxins are there. We can't see them, but we know they're there. So you really need to be thinking about how to protect yourself from the toxins when you're traveling. And so liposomal C and liposomal glutathione are just game changers. It has to be. It makes such a difference to help your body protect it from oxidative stress while you're traveling. And then the third one I thought of is iodine, because iodine protects us from radiation. And so you want to have iodine on a, you know, especially when you're going to be on an airplane and you're exposed to radiation. Those are really important ones. But also take your regular vitamins, including your methylfolate and your methyl B12, because we know that when we're under stress like travel, that your body's going to need more of these B vitamins to detoxify. That's part of what the B vitamins do, is they work in the liver to process toxins. And so. And we. And they also help us manage stress in general. So you really want to be taking your methylfolate and methyl B12 while you're traveling and maybe even have to increase your dose a little bit while you're traveling. Okay, so then E in travel is for expectations. And this has to do with having a mindset that keeps things positive and keeps things moving forward. Sometimes you might catch yourself while you're traveling having a certain expectation about your hotel room or the experience you're gonna have or the people you're gonna be with and how, what they're gonna want to do. There's so many opportunities where you might bump into expectations that end up just making you frustrated and making you not enjoy your trip. So I would encourage you to have a mindset of being clear about your expectations and finding, maybe even setting your expectations a little lower than you might usually so that you're less likely to get disappointed. So you might, you know, you're going to try your best to choose a place to stay that you're going to enjoy and an experience, you know, say, with the food and the people around you that you're going to enjoy. But if you just have a mindset of, you know, being a little bit clear about if there's any expectations that you're really important to you, you want to really, you know, express that to the people around you, and then you want to set yourself up for success for those things that are really important to you. And then if there might be other things that are not as important, then just have that clear in your mind.

So that you can really be adaptive to your travel experience and hopefully not find yourself in a situation where you're just like, oh, my gosh, I'm so bummed about this, because I had high expectations, and now that's not what's happened. So really think about mindset in terms of travel. And then the L in travel is for lots of snacks, which for me has to do with making sure you have protein with you all the time. So I bring my protein shake, the Dr. Zondi pea protein shake, and I use that on the airplane. I use that every morning as soon as I wake up. So I just. The great thing about this pea protein is you can literally stir it in water, filtered water, bottled water. You can stir it with a spoon or you could put it in a bottle, put it in some water and shake it. It doesn't require a blender to be good. So that's one thing I love about it, is that I can use it when I'm traveling very easily. And then I also bring with me that's my birdie alarm going off.

I also bring with me lots of other protein snacks and gluten free, dairy free, sugar free snacks, things that I know I can eat. So on the airplane sometimes I just don't know what's going to be served. So I basically bring a whole 20 inch carry on suitcase full of snacks. So I have everything from like protein bars that might be nuts and seed bars. I bring dark chocolate because that's one of my favorite things to have throughout the day. So again, this taking care of you attitude. What are the things that you love to have that you can bring with you? Some of them, you know, you could even bring things that need to be refrigerated and bring on an ice pack. Here's a bird I see sitting over here listening into our video. Right out here next to this building, there's a bunch of trees and a whole bunch of birds live in those trees. So they. I'm glad they came to visit us. So then I bring snacks also when I'm walking around for the day. So you can bring.

Whether for you that might be protein bars, different kinds of protein bars. It might be for what? Me, I like those wild whey. It's kind of like a nut based cereal that all I have to do is mix it with hot water. So think of things that have protein in them because the protein is going to help balance your blood sugar. If you're just having snacks that have carbohydrate or sugar, your blood sugar is going to fluctuate and you're not going to feel good. So think about the protein, think about healthy fats like you can get in nuts and seeds, seeds and just think of ways that you can bring them in small packets so that you can always have them with you and have them easily acceptable no matter where you are when you're traveling. Okay, so there they are. There's the travel tips. I'm gonna. Like I said I'm gonna share these in a blog soon and otherwise I think we covered it for today. I'm so excited you guys were here. And for those of you who are listening later, I'll watch for your comments and questions and answer them. And the thing that I also wanted to share with you is that I have a MTHFR class coming up January 10th. So those of you who might be listening and learn just learned that you have mthfr. Or now you're realizing, oh my gosh, I can figure out how to address this and benefit from it. So this MTHFR class is great for you. Or if some of you just had your 23andMe test done and you're like, what the heck am I supposed to do with this information now? Okay, so that's exactly what this Entity Bar class is for and it's going to be January 10th. I'll put a link to that as well so you can learn about it and you could sign up for it. My idea is that, you know, hey, we can start off the new year with this information and planning to have a healthier new year. And let's see. So. And I'll put a link as well for how you could sign up for my blog so you can get my feature articles and notices about Facebook Live. And so I look forward to being in touch. I hope you all have been having happy holidays and are going to be having happy holidays over the next couple weeks and I'll be live again soon, so be sure to click on your Facebook to send you a notification when I'm live again so that you can come join me in person if you weren't able to be here in person today. So namaste. Like they say, it's hello and goodbye in India is namaste. And I'm so glad you're here and I look forward to talking to you more soon.