How Does Methylation Impact Our Health? How Is It Related to Childhood Trauma and Chronic Stress?

Hi and welcome to How Humans heal. I am Dr. Donnie Wilson and today I want to cover the topic of methylation. The way I think about it is that methylation is what our B vitamins are up to in our bodies. And I want to make sure you understand what it is, why it's important to your health, and how you can find out how your methylation is going and what you may need to do to improve it. So let's dig in. So methylation, which is spelled M E T H Y L A T I O N is again how all our B vitamins come together in our bodies and the biochemical processes that they're involved in. So we a lot of times hear about B vitamins like we hear about B12, for example. There's also B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, even B9, which is methyl folate is called B9. And these B vitamins, a lot of times we know they're important, they're essential. A lot of times they're in a multivitamin. And some people also take a B complex or a prenatal vitamin. These all commonly will include a mixture of the B vitamins because these B vitamins work together. So most times we don't just take one of these B vitamins. We usually are taking them together in a combination. Now, if you might be deficient in one of the particular B vitamins, let's say B12, you might be taking extra of B12. But really it's important to keep in mind that these B vitamins work together. So if you're taking B12, you're really going to want to make sure you're taking all the other B vitamins too, so that there's enough of all of them. It would be like a recipe. If you only include one ingredient in your recipe, it's not going to turn out right. You need all aspects of all the things in the ingredient list for them to come together for the recipe to work out. And what is that recipe that's happening? What is that process that's happening in our bodies called methylation? It's has to do with those B vitamins coming together with other biochemical substances in our bodies. And this, this, this transfer of a methyl group, what's called a methyl group, which is if, if you study chemistry or biochemistry, you would know that it's this, this carbon hydrogen group, that if you, if we looked that closely, we'd see that these chemicals are being transferred from one substance to another. And that's really getting into the Chemistry. But I think the most important thing to understand is that our bodies have these kind of biochemical handoff sequences that occur. And these sequences are occurring in every cell in our body all day long, all night long. Our bodies know how to do it without us thinking about it. But they do require the nutrients in order for it all to work. And so that's part of it is we would have, you know, this is a starting substance and based on an enzyme, it's an enzymatic process that converts it into a different substance, usually by adding or subtracting something like a muscle group. And then it goes to the next step in the process and the next step in the process. And these sequential processes that we call our metabolism or biochemistry or detoxification, these are the enzymes in our body, in our cells that make everything happen. It's pretty amazing actually. These processes with our B vitamins, for example, are essential for being able to make our neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, for example, and also to break down our neurotransmitters, because what we make, we have to also break down in most cases. So we're going to make adrenaline, for example, to respond to stress. We also need to break down adrenaline when the stress is gone. And both of those processes require that methylation is working well and requires that you have adequate access to, to B vitamins. Now, not only we get these B vitamins from our diet and we can get B vitamins from a lot of different foods in our diet, even from grains. A lot of the essential B vitamins like B6, B9 and B12 are highest in animal protein. So someone who is not consuming animal protein, maybe you're following a plant based diet. It's going to be a little bit harder to get B6, B9 and B12. It's not impossible. But I, if you are following a plant based diet, I encourage you to do the research and really identify which foods are you going to consume to make sure that you're getting enough B6, B9 and B12. But if you're not getting enough in your diet, whether you're on a plant based diet or an animal diet, if you're not getting enough of these B vitamins, that's when a supplement may be necessary. Now, it's not all one size fits all with a B vitamin supplement either really. We're all such unique biochemical individuals, including how we detoxify, which is another aspect where methylation comes into play is how we get toxins out of our bodies, specifically in the liver. One of the main detoxification pathways that's helping us metabolize any toxins that we breathe in, or it's in our food or our water or through our skin comes to the liver. And the liver's job is to detoxify. Part of that, including the detoxification of estrogens in your body, involves methylation. So here again, we need adequate B vitamins to make the substances that help these enzymatic processes to detoxify toxins that are coming through our liver. And if we don't have enough, then those toxins might not get adequately detoxified and they continue to circulate through our body and cause trouble. So this is where methylation again is so important. Methylation is also important for protecting our DNA from oxidative stress, which I'm going to cover in another video. And methylation is important for helping our, our body in general to protect all of our cells from stress and oxidative stress. So ultimately, methylation is so important for quality of life, like how you feel on a day to day basis. And quantity of life actually helps your longevity, how long you live. So the more you can be aware of your methylation, make sure you're getting the right amount of B vitamins for your body. It's gonna make a huge difference on your health today and into the future. If a person doesn't have adequate methylation, some of the symptoms might be fatigue, anxiety, depression, headaches, like migraines. It can also be related to sleep issues, even sometimes could be related to digestive issues and skin rashes. And here's the thing, because methylation is so important for detoxifying estrogen and other toxins, sometimes the symptoms have to do with menstrual related symptoms. Pms, menstrual cramps, heavy bleeding, maybe it's even diagnosed as endometriosis or pcos. But underlying the diagnosis is this process of methylation. And so oftentimes you're not going to hear about it in a standard doctor's office. Right? You might get a diagnosis of depression or dysmenorrhea, which is severe menstrual cramps or endometriosis. And you could get a prescription for a medication to help you with those symptoms or the diagnosis, but the medication isn't going to do anything to help with methylation. So I'm pointing this out because you can. Yes, even if you're taking a medication for your symptoms, you can still, and I believe it's really important that you address methylation for your body. So let's go into how to do that and how to understand your individual methylation processes. So here is where it's really important to understand that even if you're taking B vitamins, right, People will say to me, well, I'm taking a good multi, I'm even taking extra methylfolate, and still I don't feel good. Why? Well, it's because, yes, the simple process I described is taking one substance to the next, using these B vitamins to go along a pathway. However, these steps in the process have many other variables that influence them. So even if you are taking B vitamins, if there's something that's causing a traffic jam, essentially in this process, you're not going to get the benefit of the B vitamins. It's a, it's like a traffic jam. So what causes traffic jams? Well, a traffic jam could be because there's a CO factor nutrient that's missing. A lot of these metabolic pathways have additional nutrients that are necessary in order for them to work right. Magnesium, for example, is so often it's one of the most common cofactors of biochemical processes in our bodies, and it's one of the most commonly common nutrients for us to not get enough of. So if you're not actually taking magnesium, and even if you're eating foods that are high in magnesium, you might not be getting enough magnesium, especially if you're exercising and sweating and not replacing your electrolytes. So magnesium might be a place where you need to start first. In fact, in my protocol for helping people to address methylation, I put making sure you have enough magnesium and electrolytes at the top of the list. Sometimes even before we add any B vitamins, I want to make sure you have enough of the CO factor nutrients so that once we add the B vitamins, your body's ready to go, ready to use those B vitamins effectively. And there's other CO factors that are important as well. Then another potential source of a traffic jam is if you have too much stress or toxin exposure. Because stress, and we talk about stress kind of as a general term, but I'm referring to it as any kind of psycho emotional stress that's affecting your cortisol levels and your inflammation levels, meaning you have higher inflammation in your body because of of stresses or certain dietary stresses. If you're having a diet that's high inflamma inflammatory foods, a diet high in sugar, now we have a higher stress and inflammation level in your body, it's going to create A traffic jam in your methylation process. Same thing with toxins in the environment. So if you're having foods that are not organic and you're getting exposed to pesticides, or if you're exposed to mold toxins in your home or building that you're in, even if you were exposed to mold toxins decades ago, those mold toxins can still remain in your body and become a traffic jam for your methylation. So again, if you are having symptoms that are just not going away, even with taking some steps, it could be that there's some underlying traffic jams preventing methylation from working well. And in that situation, sometimes even if you start to take an extra B vitamin or methylfolate, you might even feel worse because it would be like you're turning on the faucet, the water faucet, and putting in more of these B vitamins and methylfolate. But there's a, a clogged drain. The water's not even able to go down the drain. So now the sink is overflowing. And this can cause higher anxiety, can cause headaches, can cause basically you to feel worse when you take B vitamins. So if anyone listening is like, hey, I took B vitamins to help my methylation, I ended up feeling awful. Well, that tells me there's some traffic jams or clogged drain somewhere in the system. And I can help you walk through the steps to figure out how to get rid of all these traffic jams, how to get it so that you can optimally, this is what we want. We want to be able to take the B vitamins if needed, and your body knows what to do with them and it flows right through the process without any traffic jams. That's what we want. And usually actually what I find, because I've been helping patients with methylation for past couple decades, especially the past decade or so, since the MTHFR gene variation become more, became more well known. I did additional training and have specialized in helping patients with MTHFR gene variations. I myself have MTHFR gene variations. What that means is on a, on the genetics that determine how our enzymes work, right? Because every protein in our body is coded by our genes. So these enzymes that I'm talking about in the methylation process, that takes folic acid to methylfolate, for example, and methylfolate together with methylcobalamin to make the next step in the methylation process, right? So these, these are step by step processes. And those step by step processes are driven by enzymes which are proteins that are coded by genes. And if we look at our genes, we can see if you have the most common type gene or if you have a variation of the gene that could influence your ability to make these conversions in the pathway. So an MTHFR gene variation means that a person has less ability to turn folic acid, which is the inactive form of folate, into methylfolate, which is the active form of folate. And there's at least 40% of us who have at least one gene variation of MTHFR and okay, and if you have one gene variation of one of the genes, then that's less of an issue. If you have two gene variations or two gene variations on the more severe form of the gene, then you have less, less and less ability to convert folic acid into methylfolate. Like 80% less ability. Which means doesn't. If you take folic acid, it's less. Your body's 80% less likely to get any benefit from it. Only 20% of it might get converted to methylfolate. Well, what's the solution? The solution is just take methylfolate. Forget about folic acid. Your body is not going to know what to do with it. It's going to be much less effect ineffective way to. I should say that again, it's a less effective way to you for you to get to folate. Right. Why take folic acid when only 20% of it's going to get to methyl folate? Better to take actual methylfolate that your body knows how to use. So that's why if you have an MTHFR gene variation, one or two of them, that it's important for you to take methylfolate instead of folic acid. And this is just one example in the methylation process. That's only the step that goes from folic acid to folate. What about all the other steps in the methylation process? Because ultimately methylation is like, I think of it like a wheel. It's like a constantly turning wheel taking methylfolate and methylcobalamin, which is B12, as well as the help of all the other B vitamins like B1, B2, B3, B5, B6. They're all helping in this pathway where it circles round and round and it spins off the other side making something called SAM S adenosylmethionine. SAM Is the part that's used to do all the good stuff I mentioned everything from making and breaking down neurotransmitters to helping with detoxification and protecting our DNA and our healthy cells. So we Want these B vitamins to be able to turn down around this cycle and spin out some SAM in a healthy way. In order to do that, again, we need to have adequate vitamin B vitamins, but we also need to have adequate cofactor nutrients, and we need to have not too much stress, inflammation, and toxins that would bog down the process and bring it to a halt. Oh, another toxin I didn't mention yet is the toxin that can. The toxins that can come from our digestion. Actually, if. If a person has imbalanced overgrowing bacteria in their digestion, these bacteria make toxins. Sometimes it's called LPS or lipopolysaccharides. Anyway, these toxins produced by gut bacteria can get into our whole system, into our bloodstream, into our bodies, and block the methylation pathway. So if you're having issues where you're like, wow, I'm taking B vitamins, but I feel worse or I'm still having symptoms no matter what I do, then we have to think this through and follow that pathway down to this to find, oh, do you have imbalanced gut bacteria that we need to address? Because we can address them. We can use antimicrobial herbs and we can use a specialized, not just regular probiotics. We're going to use specialized researched bacteria that you can get in an encapsulated form that will help rebalance your gut bacteria. And I can guide you on my protocol how to do that. We rebalance your gut bacteria, we heal the leaky gut, we drop the inflammation, we take the inflammatory foods out of your diet. We help clean up your world and your. Your existence so that you're not getting exposed to so many toxins. We can help you to effectively get the toxins out of your body, including mold toxins and other chemical toxins you might be exposed to in your world. We, I guide you to help get those toxins out, right? So now we're cleaning out your system. We're cleaning out all the stuff that's been jamming up your methylation all of a sudden. Now your body can use these B vitamins and it can move the toxins through effectively. It can get the estrogen out. So you're not getting symptoms of high estrogen. It can help you make and break down neurotransmitters so that your mood is improved and your sleep is improved. You can have healthy adrenaline levels, healthy serotonin levels, healthy dopamine levels simply by getting methylation working again. And this is true not just for someone who has An MTHFR gene variation. This is true for all of us humans. We all have methylation and all of us can have some degree of issues, traffic jams in our methylation process. So I'm hoping this is gonna help you to realize, like, wow, maybe this was what was going on inside all along. And I believe that this is why so many patients who even. Even in the first few weeks of working with me, as I help you to eliminate toxins, drop inflammation, eliminate food sensitivities, and start healing leaky gut and, and, you know, getting the toxins out of your system. Even following my detox program already, people start feeling better because they're taking. They're opening up these traffic jams in methylation. And their body's like, great, that's what I was waiting for. All of a sudden, then your body can use B vitamins. A lot of times we don't even have to add any additional B vitamins. Now some people do need more B vitamins. And so what I do is I encourage you all to monitor something called homocysteine. Homocysteine could be measured in blood. It can be even measured from the regular lab like LabCorp Quest. It could even be covered by insurance. You just have to have the right practitioner order it and the right code be used. But they can do it from a regular lab. There is also a lab that will do it with a finger poke if you need, instead of a blood drop. This is essential information, I believe, for everybody. Everyone should know their homocysteine level, and you should have it tested at least once a year. But if you're not feeling good, if you have any kinds of symptoms of mental, emotional, physical pain, we need to know your homocysteine. And so we need to get the test done. And so you can do. You can. You might as well get it done by your. You can order. Ask your primary doctor to order it, or you can help. Have my office help order it for you. And we need to know your methylation. I mean, your homocysteine, which tells us about your methylation activity. Homocysteine optimally should be at about a seven. That means it could be between six and eight. That would be optimal. Now, if it's higher, this is one of these opposites, right? It's a biochemical substance in this process that I've been describing to you. So the folate and B12 come together, and they come together with homocysteine to make SAM. So if we. It doesn't really help to measure B12 and folate in the blood or folic acid in the blood, because those are just floating through. It doesn't really tell us how well is your methylation working to measure. So so many practitioners or so many patients come in and they have had their B12 level measured, I'm like, it's not helping me any because just by looking at a B12, it doesn't tell me how well your methylation is working. It only tells me how much B12 is floating in your bloodstream. So we have to actually measure homocysteine if we want to know how well is your body using your B vitamins. And I usually like to also measure methylmalonic acid because methylmalonic acid specifically tells me whether you have a deficiency of B12 because homocysteine is more because related to B6, B12 and B9. So if your homocysteine is above a 7 or let's say above 8, if it's 10 or 15 or 24, if it's higher than a 7, that means your methylation process is got traffic jams. And it doesn't, because some people will say, oh, it just means you need more methylfolate. And that's not the right answer. You might need more methylfolate, you might need more B6, B12, or all three, or you might not need any more B vitamins. It might just be that we need to clean out your methylation process, get the traffic jams taken care of. And all of a sudden the homocysteine starts going, it comes right down to a seven, sometimes without adding any extra B vitamins. So I really want to make sure you know, it's not just about taking another supplement. It's about helping your body's metabolism work better. And if your homocysteine comes in less than six, let's say three or four, which I often see in women who are going through pregnancy and postpartum and breastfeeding. The homocysteine gets used up because they, they have more need for homocysteine and so it gets depleted down below 6. In that case, we're going to use different nutrients to help your body catch back up again. We need to catch up on the homocysteine and so we can, I can guide you through that process as well and make sure you have enough methylation because that's also an issue. If we don't have enough homocysteine, then, then even if you, no matter how much B vitamins you take, if there's not enough homocysteine, the recipes Again, the recipe's not going to come out right. You're not gonna get to SAM if you don't have enough B12, folate, homocysteine and all the other cofactor nutrients. You see what I mean? So to me it's like, okay, we have to just take into consideration all aspects of the recipe to get to sam, and we have to take into consideration all the variables that can affect our ability to use these nutrients to make sam. And when we do that in a systematic way, we can make a huge difference in your health. Just like I made a huge difference in my health by figuring this out. And so this is why, to me, it's really important to go from a step by step process. It doesn't just help to throw it all in at once. And I think this is where a lot of people miss and a lot of practitioners miss. They might find, a practitioner might find out you have an MTHFR gene variation and just give you a whole bunch of methylfolate, like 10 milligrams or 15 milligrams. But what if your body can't use it and then you aren't getting the benefit or you might be feeling worse? So I really want to warn you, if you are not feeling good and any of the symptoms that I mentioned or others, and if you definitely, if you found out you have an MTHFR gene variation, but even if you're not sure whether you do or don't, that part is not as important as just knowing what your homocysteine and if your homocysteine is not a 7 or close to a 7, we need to figure out why, we need to start addressing it. And when we do that, when we figure out and address the reasons why your methylation is being not being efficient, then we can actually solve your biochemistry, we can actually solve the underlying cause for your health issues. And what I find is and want to emphasize is it oftentimes missed reason for methylation to be an issue is history of trauma. So if you have experienced trauma in your childhood or your adulthood, very stressful events, betrayal, toxic relationships, just like a toxin in the environment, toxic emotional experiences can also slow down your methylation. So if you're wondering, oh, could what I've experienced emotionally be affecting my methylation, the answer is yes. So I encourage you to also be paying attention to and supporting yourself through emotional healing, spiritual healing, energetic healing and rebalancing so that you can have everything in balance. And as you do the emotional work and as you do your aligning with yourself and taking better care of yourself with a self care routine. And as you start clearing out the other chemical toxins and making sure you have adequate nutrient sources, all of a sudden methylation is going to start working better again. So I really want to emphasize that because I think that gets missed in the conversation about trauma and trauma experience. And I really want to emphasize it is possible to help your body recover from trauma and prevent negative effects of trauma in your health and in your life. So thanks so much for joining me. Please, if you enjoyed this episode, like it and subscribe and definitely subscribe to my newsletter so that you hear about the next episode that comes out of How Humans Heal. Where I've been be sharing more of the science in your body because I believe that the more you understand how your body works, you're going to have more awareness for what you're experiencing and you're going to know what you need to do to help your body feel good and for you to heal. So thanks again for joining me and I'll talk to you soon.

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