Folate vs. Folic Acid: Dispelling the Myths and Confusion Around Vitamin B9

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson and in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about the vitamin known as folate or vitamin B9. And the reason I want to cover this vitamin in particular is because I find that there's so much confusion. So many of you ask questions about it, and so many of you are trying to figure out whether you need more or less folate and how to know how to navigate the gene variations related to folate to make sure that you can prevent the health issues that are associated with those gene variations. So let's get started. So first of all, one of the first confusions is about the difference between folic acid and folate. And the issue is that for a long time the two have been used interchangeably.

So in research and in lab work and also clinically with practitioners, a lot of times you'll find that the word folic acid and folate are used as if they're the same thing, when really they're not the same thing.

So the difference is that folic acid, so when we, when it's folic and then acid as two separate words, actually that's the, what's called a man made or synthetic nutrient. So it's not found in nature naturally occurring. Whereas folate, which is also in biochemistry referred to as methyl folate, M E T H Y L is methyl folate.

That is the form that's found in nature and that our bodies naturally know how to use folate, you see. So that's the main difference is to just understand that it's either the synthetic form called folic acid or the natural form called folate.

And the thing is that.

We have as humans a certain degree of ability to turn folic acid into folate within our bodies. But it's our gene variations that determine how well we can do that. So depending on your genetics, your individual genetics, you may have a 10 to 80% decreased ability to turn folic acid into folate. So the difference in terms of where we get these in our diet is folic acid is used to fortify different foods. So it's a synthetic substance that's added to man made foods. Like if you think of bread and cereal, if you look on the ingredient list on the back, it might say folic acid because they're using the synthetic form or sometimes in multivitamins and B complex or prenatal vitamins, or even in protein shakes or other products that were created and processed and packaged and they have an ingredient list. It might say Folic acid in, which means they're using the synthetic form. Oftentimes because it's. The synthetic form is less expensive than the natural form. So you want to be watchful of, okay, am I actually getting folic acid, the synthetic form, or am I getting then form from nature called folate or methylfolate? Folate is found in, think of, first of all, green vegetables. So basically anything green, like spinach, broccoli, asparagus, even Brussels sprouts have folate in them. So does meat products. So like liver and other forms of meat and also sunflower seeds and some other forms of beans have. And peanuts have folate, naturally occurring folate in them. So you get a sense already of how much in your diet are you getting the folic acid form and how much in your diet are you getting the folate form. And then you want to start to think about and do you want to know whether you have gene variations that may be influencing your ability to turn folic acid into folate? But remember, because in the blood work, if you have blood work, and it might say folate on your blood work, but it's actually measuring both the folic acid and the folate, and they put it all under one name in your blood work called folate. So don't let that fool you. It's not giving you only the folate. It's giving you all of the derivatives of in between folic acid and folate. And so that blood test is not very helpful if we really want to know how much active folate you have in your body. If we want to know, we need to either do a specialty test. There are labs that do specialty blood work to identify your actual folate, active folate levels. So that's one option. Usually you have to pay out of pocket for that. Or another way that we can do it that gives us an indirect measure of your folate level is to do to test for something called homocysteine, because homocysteine is a metabolite in our biochemistry that uses folate. And so if we measure the homocysteine, we can get a sense of do you have enough folate or do you have not enough or too much folate based on the homocysteine level. So if you're going to be doing blood work, I recommend asking for homocysteine instead of folate. And I would also check your methylmalonic acid, because methylmalonic acid also tells us your B12 metabolism and B12 levels instead of a B12 test, which is not very helpful. We want to know your methylmalonic because that tells us how well your body is using the B12. And that helps us understand how well your body's using actually Both folate and B12 together by using looking at both a homocysteine and methylmalonic acid. So just know that there's people like me who have a lot of additional training to understand all this biochemistry and nutrients and can help guide you to optimize your homocysteine, your methylmalonic acid and your folate and use of folate levels. So I don't want you to feel like you're on your own with all of this. And I know that it's difficult because most practitioners don't have this level of training. And so it can get very confusing, especially if you might find out that you have an MTH of our gene variation. And then you're like, now what? Because what happens is.

There'S actually many different MTHFR gene variations, but there's two main gene variations that we that have been researched. And so those are the ones we pay the most attention to. Who knows, in the future we might find out about others and then we'll integrate that information in. But at this point in time, we know mostly about the C677T and the A1298. So those are the two main gene variations on MTHFR that we have research and information about. And it's the 677. I kind of give them the short name because it's easier to say and remember. The 677 is the one that has the most significant influence on your ability to turn folic acid into folate. So and each gene variation, There's a possible two variations on on each one. So you could have one or two variations on the 677. You could have one or two variations on THE 1298. And the quantity of variations determines how much could influence your ability to turn folic acid into folate. So if you have only one variation, your decreased ability to turn folic acid into folate might be between 10 and 40%. Whereas if you have two variations, whether on the same or on one on each, you could have more like 40 to 60% decreased ability to convert to folate. And if you have two variations on the 677, it can decrease your ability even up to 80%.

Notice that it's not going to decrease your ability 100%. So it's not a 100% shut off of this conversion. It's a percentage and the other thing to notice is that to me, I can never say definitely because it's all based on what I refer to as your stress recovery. Depending on how well you're taking care of your body and helping your body recover from various stress exposures determines the influence of your genes on your health and your folate metabolism. So this is really important because a lot of times there's a confusion about, well, I have a gene MTHFR gene variation or one or two of them, and I'm worried that it's, you know, people assume that that's a definite influence on your folate metabolism when actually it's not. Definitely. It depends again on how, on several factors that I'm going to be talking about here today. So let's go into that next.

Actually, before I dive into that, I want to just review why it is that folate is so important. How is it that our bodies are using folate? Well, one of the first things I think of is that we use folate to make new healthy cells. So one of the cells we make a lot of all the time is red blood cells. So that means that if we don't have enough folate, we're not going to be able to make enough red blood cells or the right size and the optimal size of red blood cells. In fact, what tends to happen is our red blood cells will be a little bit too big if we don't have enough folate. And so that's one really good example of why it's important to have an affolate. Because of course, our red blood cells carry our oxygen all over our bodies. And so we need to have healthy red blood cells for that, for just delivering oxygen. The other time that it's really important to make new cells is with pregnancy, right? Pregnancy. We're making a whole bunch of new cells when we're growing a baby. And that's why there's a lot of research and information about the importance of folate and during pregnancy. Now here, again, here's where a lot of the confusion comes in, because most times you'll hear, you'll see or hear folic acid. But again, I want you to start to, whenever you hear folic acid, I want you to think about it as folate is really what you want, that hopefully in the near future that language will have shifted over. But I still see a lot of times people referring to folic acid when I really think they should be referring to folate. Because folate is the active form our bodies can use and folate is the form that those of us with gene variations really need. And it turns out that more than 40% of us have these gene variations on MTHFR, and that's a large percentage of the population. So that's why I think we should really shift our nomenclature and discussion about this to talk about it as folate and including with pregnancy, because it's so important for miscarriage prevention and neural tube defect prevention and just for healthy pregnancy in general for the baby and for the mom. Also, folate is important for making and breaking down our neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters are the messengers in the nervous system. Things like serotonin and dopamine that affect our mood, our sleep, our focus, our energy levels. And so our bodies, our nervous system makes our neurotransmitters are then fact most serotonin and GABA is produced in the digestion and then goes to the nervous system. So these substances are made within our bodies and they require folate to make them and break them down. Also, folate is really important for detoxification in the liver, for all different substances that come through the liver require some folate to be processed and get out of our bodies. So we need folate for detoxification as well, and generally for protecting our DNA. So if you think about the DNA in every one of our cells, how do we protect them? Because if we. It's when the DNA gets damaged that we get more predisposed to health issues, whether to cancer or other heart disease, you name it, dementia. So we want to protect our DNA. And the best way to do that is with adequate amounts of folate. Now, notice I'm saying adequate amounts. I don't. I'm not saying that you need more than enough. We don't want too much or too little of anything. It's about finding what's the right amount for you. And each of us is individual. We each require differing amounts of folate. So we can't assume that everybody needs the same because there's so many things that influence our ability to absorb it, to utilize it, and to. And all the other steps in between. So let's go into that. Let's understand better what affects your ability to use folate, and that then can help you get closer and closer to understanding your folate needs. Okay. And this is whether you have an MTH of our gene variation or not. And maybe you don't know if you have one still. It's still important, right? Okay. So here's how I think about the things that Affect our ability to use folate besides your genetics, right? And part of the way that these things affect our ability to use folate is because they also influence our genetic expression. Genetic expression is, you know, so you could have a gene variation, but if it's not expressing, then it's not affecting your health. But there's factors from our environment, what I refer to as stress, right? Because it could be psycho emotional stress of various types, from daily chronic stress to major trauma, they all affect our ability to metabolize fully. So any kind of emotional, psycho emotional stress in the present moment or even in the past, and accumulated stress over time. And what I would say is the effect of that stress on your stress hormones. So if you've been under stress, which we all have, and then it affects our cortisol levels, our adrenaline levels, because these are our stress responders, of course it's going to affect the levels when our cortisol and adrenaline are responding and trying to protect us. Those levels get out of balance. We might have too much or too little cortisol and adrenaline on a daily basis. And that influences your ability to activate folate and utilize folate.

Also, any kind of physical stress, whether you have injury, an infection.

Nutrient, dietary change, nutrient depletion, any factor that even help affects you on a physical level can affect your ability to use folate effectively and it also affects your genetic expression. Right? So whether those MTHFR gene variations even turn on is influenced by your emotional and physical stress exposure. And those same stresses affect the enzymatic function of the enzymes that work with folate, if that makes sense. So it's affecting us. Stress in various forms is affecting us in a couple major ways. Gene expression. So whether your MTHFR gene is actually active and causing issues and also separate from the gene, just in terms of these enzymes that are turn not only turning folic acid into folate, but also the genes that happen after, after you have folate, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Now that folate has to get together with B12 and all the, all the other B vitamins and they do what's called the methylation cycle. I have other videos on that so I can put a link for you to learn more. But these B vitamins get together to do all the good stuff that B vitamins do for us and that methylation and ability to use our B vitamins is affected by emotional and physical stress. Okay, so that's why I say that it's your stress recovery, your ability to recover from stress that really determines your ability to optimally use folate. So because your stress recovery can, you can turn off your genetic expression and with stress recovery, you can optimize your cortisol and adrenaline and you can optimize other functions in your body so that you can really get the most out of your folate from your diet. So I'll, I'll mention more about that in a second. So here we go. Number one is stress exposure has a huge influence. But also what has an influence is your nutrient levels and nutrient intake and nutrient deficiencies. So if you might have nutrient deficiencies either from your diet, so if you have a limited diet, or let's say you have a diet that's low in the foods I mentioned that are natural sources of folate. So if your diet is low, if you're following a plant based diet, for example, and you're not getting folate from animal sources, there's also folate in eggs by the way. So if you are avoiding eggs, if you are not getting green vegetables, then you could have a deficiency in folate for that reason. Also, there's a bunch of medications that can cause a deficiency of folate. Even if you're eating enough folate, if you're taking certain medications, it would deplete your folate levels. For example, birth control pills. So if you're on birth control pills especially. But actually anything, anything that contains estrogen increases your use of folate or it increases the deficiency of folate is another way to say it. So if you're on a birth control pill or other estrogen, then that's a reason to be checking on your folate levels. But again, the blood test for folate is not the way to do it. You need to do the other test that I mentioned. I'm really excited to open enrollment in my new 14 day detox program. It's based on my experience spending 16 days in the Amazon. And I realized I really want to be able to support all of you to safely and effectively detox from home. The 14 day detox includes a kit with protein powder, including antioxidants to support liver detox detoxification, as well as an anti inflammatory diet plan, daily videos and tips from me, as well as my self care notebook and lots of encouragement to spend time in nature to reset your circadian rhythm. I want you to be able to detox your mind, body and spirit so you can get back to balance and move forward in your life with resilience. I can't wait for you to join me in this transformational process. Also there's other medications that either cause a deficiency of folate, like methotrexate, or they actually block the metabolism of folate. So again, the body, in the body, we need to get our folate to this active form called. It's really called tetrahydrous folate. So if you look on your bottle, your supplement bottle, and it says mthf, that's methyl tetrahydrofolate, that's the active form. But there's a dihydrofolate that's a precursor form. And so medications like methotrexate, which is a medication used to treat autoimmunity, such as rheumatoid arthritis, it blocks that ability to turn the dihydro into the tetrahydrous. And so that's why people who take methotrexate are often prescribed. Well, really, they should be prescribed folate. But a lot of times still practitioners are prescribing folic acid. But remember, as I've taught you, that's going to be the inactive form. That's not really going to help them in that situation. They need to be taking methyl folate in order to get the active form beyond what the methotrexate is blocking.

Also sulfur drugs, which are usually like an antibiotic, those sulfa drugs also block that conversion to active folate. Other medications can actually decrease the absorption of folate from the digestive tract, for example, metformin. And many, many people are taking metformin for blood sugar issues, pcos, diabetes.

Even. Sometimes it's used for cancer prevention. But metformin decreases the absorption of folate. So you need to be monitoring and making sure you're getting enough folate if you're taking metformin. Also anticonvulsant drugs, they affect the liver metabolism of folate, they increase the use of it, and therefore cause a deficiency. There's also certain drugs that actually directly affect DNA methylation. So again, this is affecting the way our bodies use folate in terms of the, the DNA functioning of methylation. So those are some big examples, some really more common medications that can affect use of folate, amount of folate, and are benefits. You know, it decreases the ability to benefit from folate. So it's important if you're taking any of these medications, that you talk to your practitioner and that you're getting the right tests and that you're getting the right form of folate so that you can prevent these, these negative effects of, of taking these medications. Okay? So that's an important piece of understanding, even if you're say you're taking enough folate, but you're taking a medication that's depleting it, then it's working against you. So you need to then rethink, how do I adjust and address this. Also, your ability to use folate is affected by inflammation in the body, which is the main determinant of inflammation in the body, I would say, is from your diet. If you're consuming foods that are more inflammatory from either sugar, dairy, gluten are known to be highly inflammatory foods. Also, if you do a food sensitivity panel and then you can learn.

Which foods are inflammatory for you, then you know which foods to eliminate and how to heal your digestion. Because if the digestion is inflamed, if leaky gut is present, also if there's imbalanced gut bacteria, this influences your ability to use folate. So you might be thinking, oh, well, how come I'm taking folate but my homo system is too high? It could be because of your digestion, it could be because of your diet. And so we need to be eliminating inflammatory foods, healing leaky gut. And if you have imbalanced gut bacteria, we need to address them as well, because those imbalanced or overgrowing gut bacteria can make toxins, and those toxins from the gut can actually decrease your ability to use folate. So it's important for that reason to address your gut bacteria, let alone many other reasons. Because if the gut bacteria are out of balance, they're causing a bunch of other trouble too. We need to address them, and there's a way to get them back on track. I can guide you. I know this is not something that's commonly understood. Most times you just hear about taking a probiotic. Now, it's not harmful, necessarily. Take a probiotic unless you have way too much already. But what I find is it's usually not a lack of a probiotic. It's that we need to really help stabilize the environment so that the bacteria can be optimized. I'll talk about that in another podcast. So the other thing to consider is other toxin exposure Besides toxins from your gut bacteria, we could also be exposed to toxins in our environment, so, such as mold toxins, heavy metals like mercury. If you're have. If you're consuming too much tuna and getting too much mercury, that mercury could be inhibiting your ability to use folate. So that's important to test for. And all of these, you can test for mold toxicity, we can test for metals, we can test for other environmental toxins. Also alcohol, if you're consuming what I would say is too much alcohol, Right. So for women, it's usually two drinks a week is considered.

Okay and not associated with health issues at this point in time. And for men, it's a little higher than that. I think it's three or four servings per week. But if you're having alcohol every day, for example, then that's going to be too much and it can have an influence on your use of folate. So that's another factor to consider if you're. If you're consuming alcohol more often and or more quantity of alcohol. What's happening in the liver is converting to acetyl aldehyde, which then blocks your ability to use folate as well as other. It affects other B vitamins as well. So these are all things to consider, especially because again, the common confusion is people will find out that maybe they have high homocysteine levels, and then they're thinking, oh, I just need to take more folate. Or your practitioner might say, oh, you have high homocysteine, or you have an mth of our gene variation. You just need to take more folate. And then very often people will contact me and say, but I felt worse when I took folate. Why? Well, it's for one of these reasons. It's. We have to dig in and we have to figure out what's blocking your ability to use folate effectively. It's not that your body doesn't need it, your body needs it, but we need to figure out what's blocking it. Why is your body giving you if you don't feel good, if you get a headache or you feel anxious, or you feel worse in any way when you take folate, it tells me there's a traffic jam in your stress recovery, in your inflammation, in your digestive health, your toxin levels, your nutrient levels. We got to go through systematically to figure that out and address whatever we see. And as we address those factors, then your body will start using folate again. I can't tell you how many times I see this. And then we actually don't even need more. It's just we needed to break up the traffic jams that were preventing your ability to use it effectively. And this can make a big difference in that. Some of the cases I see are anxiety because if we're not making or breaking down our neurotransmitters effectively, including adrenaline, then we might have high adrenaline or we might have depleted serotonin, and then we're more likely to feel Anxious. So it's to me, the anxiety is a symptom of traffic jams in your metabolism related to neurotransmitters and methylation.

And also common symptom would be fatigue or headaches. Migraines, that's a lot for me. I had to figure this out in order to help solve my migraines. Also, it could be if you have abnormal Pap smears, if you're finding that you have, if you're getting a Pap smear done and they're finding abnormal cells on the cervix, part of that can be from not having adequate folate or not adequately using your folate levels, your folate in your body, also recurrent miscarriages. Again, folate is really important for healthy pregnancy and prevention of miscarriages. So to me, it's not just a matter of yes. I mean, everyone needs a certain amount. You know, the standard dietetic Recommendation is, is 600 to 800 IUs of folic acid. I convert that to methylfolate, and that's the bare minimum. That's not taking into account your individuality, your individual genes, your individual stress exposure and your individual imbalances that might exist in your body. So we need to figure out what is the right amount for you. And so when I help women who are with fertility, maybe they're trying to get pregnant on their own, or even with ivf, we're going to go through a process of figuring out how well is your body using folate, are you getting enough for you, and is all your methylation mechanisms working smoothly? And this makes a huge difference in terms of preventing miscarriages and also healing the cervix from hpv. And also all the other things we mentioned, including not only prevention, not only helping your energy and your mood, but prevention of things like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. So, so this is why I would say it's such a high priority to understand folate, understand your potential gene variations, and understand where to get the right information so you can figure out what's the right amount of folate for you. Now, keep in mind, the right amount of folate for you could change from year to year. If your hormones change, if your environment change, if your job changes, if so many changes, then your, your what your quantity of folate that your body requires can also change. So that's why I think that everyone should have their homocysteine levels checked in their blood work at least once a year, if not more often, if you're trying to optimize it or if you're going through a lot of changes and healing processes in your body.

The other question I get is whether to do a gene test to begin with, right? Because as I've mentioned that some people you may or may not know if you have a MTHFR gene variation, and you're like, well, should I get tested? Well, what I would say is you can address a potential MTHFR gene variation whether you know you have it or not. Right? Because now you know whether you have that gene variation or not. You can still get your blood work for homocysteine and mezelmalonic acid, and you can work on identifying the factors that might be decreasing your ability to use folate efficiently. So you don't have to do an MTH of our gene test, but if you do an MTH of our gene test, what I think is important to know is that really just one piece of information, very likely, then you're going to want to know your other genes because the folate starts with the MTHFR process, but then folate goes into the methylation, and then you need to. You're going to want to know your B12 genes, which is called MTRR, and you're going to want to know your CBS, which has to do with B6 and homocysteine. And you're going to want to know MAO and COMT, which are the enzymes and genes related to neurotransmitter processing. And it goes on from there. So you see, once we know about MTHFR gene, we then want to know more about all the other gene variations that we can have an influence on. We can. To me, the reason to do the testing is because then you get more information about your body. It can be very validating for people if you go, oh, my gosh, of course I've had migraines, or of course I've felt anxious because now I see I have these gene variations that were affecting the way I felt. So it can be very validating to get your genes tested and to have that information, but at the same time, it can be overwhelming. So many people come to me and say, I had my genes tested. Now what do I do? Because it's like learning a whole other language. You have all these different genes and the processes and how they interact with each other. And so for some people, that can become very overwhelming to say, now what do I do? And a lot of practitioners don't know how to guide you with that. So if you are interested, if you're curious, if you're like, hey, I really do want to understand my genes, then I welcome you to contact my office and we can guide you on what's the best way to not just test mthfr, but to test the other gene variation so that I can really see how they're interacting and how to not just fix the folate metabolism, but we want to help all of the metabolism. Right? Then you're going to get the most benefit from that information. And so we want to be able to do a panel that shows us your gene variations and a format that we can really see how they influence each other. And so that's the one that I recommend at this point in time. I also prefer to do gene testing where you get to keep your genetic data. Some of the genetic tests out there, you, you pay for it, you give your saliva, but then you don't get to keep your genetic data. And of course your genetic data stays the same because you're the same human. So once you run your genetic data, I always like to have that because then I can, I can use my genetic data and put it into various software programs to get additional information. And so I like to do a test that gives me my genetic data and then use different software that gives me the information I need to interpret how that could be influencing my health or your health, depending on whose genes I'm looking at. And so what's also important to understand when we're looking at our genes is that it's not predetermined by our genes. Right. As I mentioned before. So even if we do a genetic panel and we see here's your gene variations and keep in mind that we all have some. So a lot of people will say to me, oh my gosh, is this a lot or a little? And compared to other people, the thing is, we're, we're all unique humans, we're all going to have some genetic variations. And these genetic variations that I'm looking at are not life threatening gene variations. What I'm looking at is gene variations that actually have the potential to benefit your health. Because once we see where the genetic variations are, we can address them using nutrients, diet, stress recovery, hormone balancing. We can use our tools to help address that gene variation and to even potentially influence genetic expression. So to understand that it's not just about doing a gene test, you can, you can do the gene test, but then we're still going to want to know, do you have food sensitivities? Do you have leaky gut, do you have imbalanced gut bacteria, do you have toxins? In your body, do you have nutrient deficiencies? How's your cortisol level? How's your neurotransmitter levels? So you want to know that it's about doing the gene testing, but it's also to look at how are those genes influencing your health at this point in time to just based on the genesis is probably not going to get you anywhere because you might be taking nutrients you don't really need. We need to know where the. Look at it as the gene test tells us your susceptibilities, your potential susceptibilities, and then the other tests tell us actually how those genes are influencing your health and what we can do to rebalance in order to have a positive influence on your health. And that rebalancing process is what I refer to as stress recovery. Because ultimately, again, the thing that throws our genes and our metabolism off track is our emotional and physical stress exposure. And if we can do stress recovery, we can be reversing and preventing health issues. Exactly for this reason. So I hope I clarified a lot of confusion for you and hopefully now you know where to begin. I would say first things first is think to yourself, you know, first of all, do you know if you have an MTH of our gene variation? If so, go look it up and see which one you have. If you want to learn more about that, you can listen to. I have a free masterclass on mthfr. I'll put a link for you so you could go learn more specifically about MTHFR in your specific MTHFR gene variations. So then you take think. Well, if I don't know whether I have MTHFR or not, you could decide whether you want to test for it. But again, you want to think to yourself, not just do I want to test for mthfr, but do I want to test for all my genes, in which case I can guide you on which test to do for that. And then I would suggest to meet with me to help guide you through that information. What does it mean and which other tests do you need to do in order to understand the influence of your genes on your health and what you can do to prevent your genes from negatively affecting your health? And if you're, if you don't know you have MTHFR and you're thinking, maybe I don't even want to test it. At the very least, I encourage all of you to check your, what you're swallowing, whether your food, your vitamins, your protein shakes. If it says folic acid on there, I would replace it. Because to me, whether you have an MTHFR gene variation or not, folic acid is a synthetic substance that you're probably not getting 100% of the effectiveness from it, whether you have the gene variation or not. And so to me, I think that the only way we're going to show the the world that we don't want folic acid anymore, we want folate is to stop buying those products, to buy products that contain mesofolate, because then you're actually getting the active substance. So check your products. And if you're looking for products that contain mesofolate, you can look in my website on the online store because I have a multivitamins and B complexes and prenatals and protein shakes that contain mesofolate. So you can be sure you're getting a form, a product that has the right form of folate in it. One other question that sometimes people ask me about is something called folinic acid. And folinic acid is an in between metabolite between folic and folate. We find folinic and folinic is important, but you don't always need to take it separately. It's sometimes called folinate in a supplement. And the reason you. I would start to think that maybe someone needs more folate or folinic or folate is if they have hair loss or difficulty growing hair or if they're having platelet issues, low platelet levels. Those are two areas where the folinic is involved in hair growth and platelet production. So if those are issues for you, then you might need more folinic acid, which you can get separately. You can also find that in my online store. But there's not a. There is a. You'd have to go to a specialty lab if you want to measure it, which you can do if you're concerned about your folinic levels, but there's not. In a standard lab, you can't measure folinic right at this point in time. So you could just try taking it and see if you feel better. That would be one option. But I find that it's a small percentage of people that need more folinic acid. It's more often that we just need to look at our adequate dosing of folate and the metabolism will take care of the rest. Okay. So I hope that's all very helpful for you. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have more questions. I'd be happy to guide you on your specific case. Listen to the free masterclass for more information and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of How Humans Heal. You can subscribe, you can join my newsletter, and this way you'll hear from me when the next episode comes out. Have a good day. Talk to you soon.

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