MTHFR, How It Affects Us, and What To Do About It with Dr. Doni | How Humans Heal

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donni Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself and in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hey, guys.

This episode is from one of Dr. Donnie's live Facebook streams where she answered listeners questions live on Facebook.

I wanted to talk with you all about MTHFR today.

MTHFR is a gene.

And maybe some of you are familiar with MTHFR gene. Sometimes I say it super fast, so I feel like I should say it a little slower for you. Are you familiar with mthfr? MTHFR is a gene that relates to the metabolism of folate. So it comes down to B vitamins. It's pretty amazing that you know that it's really all about our B vitamins because so much of the time we think of. I'm not sure we think of genes related to all different things, but I pay a lot of attention to the genes related to our vitamins and how our bodies process our vitamins and how that makes us individuals, unique individuals in terms of how many vitamins we need. So I wanted to talk about MTHFR today because it is something that more people are finding out that they have that gene mutation or gene variation. And it's something that I have. I have MTHFR gene variation. So I've learned a lot about it from my own health, but I've also learned a lot about it through patients. I've helped with that gene variation. And I'm wondering if any of you who are here live.

Know that you have the MTHFR gene variation, because I'd love to just know that and maybe you have specific questions related to that. So here's the thing is, whenever we're talking about genes and genetics, it comes back to something we call epigenetics. That's the key when you're thinking about genes, because epigenetics is what tells us that we can do something about our genes, right? For a long time we thought that we couldn't do anything about our genes. And of course, our genes don't change themselves. They don't change. But the ways our genes affect our health can change. It's called our genetic expression. And epigenetics is our ability to change our genetic expression and the way our genes influence our health on a daily basis, so that's huge in itself, is just to realize that we can influence.

Our health based on influencing how our genes play out and play a role in our health on a daily basis. Pretty amazing, right? I think so. And that's one of the reasons why I've just been so much time over the past number of years researching genes and in particular the MTHFR gene. And the thing about epigenetics, which we're going to come back to, is that it has a lot to do with stress recovery and what we can do on a daily basis to support our bodies with the various stresses we're exposed to. Because the more we do that, the more we support our bodies with stress exposure, the better we have a positive influence on our gene expression and we can really harness the power of epigenetics in a positive way when we do stress recovery. So I'm going to come back to that. After I describe to you what is MTHFR and how it affects our health, then we're going to talk about what you can do about it. And that has to do with stress recovery techniques. Okay, so back to just what is mthfr? It has a much longer name. MTHFR is the first letter in each of the words, and it has to do with turning folic acid into folate. Now, a lot of people thought for a long time in science and research, even in lab tests, we considered folic acid and folate to be the same thing. Like even now, most practitioners, if you were to ask, they would think that folic acid and folate are the same thing. Even in your vitamin, like in your multivitamin or your B complex. They might consider folic acid and folate to be the same thing, but actually they're slightly different chemically. If you were to look at the chemistry of the nutrient, it looks a little different. And the difference is in terms of your real life being a human walking around, the difference is that the folate form is the active form that your body can use. All of our bodies can use 100%. We can use folate or what the more chemical name is called methylfolate or 5mthf. Sometimes you'll see it written as 5mthf, which is the long way of saying methylfolate or folate. And that's the active form that our bodies, our cells, know how to use. And we're going to talk about what our body uses folate for. But to start with, to just know that folate is the form you want, and folic acid is the inactive form. It's usually more synthetic. It would be. It's a lot of times used in supplements because.

It'S a.

Cheaper version. It's a lot less expensive to use folic acid in a supplement. And so a lot of companies, that's what they've used. But over the years, over the past couple of years, especially supplement companies, have done a good job, I would say, at transitioning to using active folate instead of folic acid. But still, I find supplements every day that have folic acid. So definitely take out your multi, your prenatal, your B complex, whatever you're taking that might have B vitamins in it, and make sure it says folate or methylfolate and not folic acid. And the reason I encourage that for everyone is because a lot of you may not know whether you have this gene variation. And 50%, about 50% of us do. That means 50% of us are not able to use folic acid effectively. So why would they put it in our vitamins or in our fortified foods, Right? Like, why put it in there if 50% of people we know can't use it very effectively? That's my question. But I really hope that companies start really continuing to shift over to using folate. Now. One clarification is that whenever we have these gene variations that are.

Gene variations that have to do with things like the use of vitamins, it's not that it turns off our ability or our functioning 100%, it's that it decreases the ability to use that nutrient. So Depending on which MTHFR gene variations you have, you might have 30 to 40 to 80% decreased ability to turn folic acid into folate. So it depends on which gene variations, how many gene variations. But the key point is to know that if you took folic acid, you'd probably be able to use it a little bit, maybe 20 to 50% or so. But why take something that you can only use a percentage of when you could instead take folate? And your body is already in the active form, so it doesn't have to be activated in the metabolic process using mthfr. So in some ways, I think of taking methylfolate as kind of like a shortcut, right? Like you're. You just detoured around the roadblock, you know, so if you're like driving down the road and there's a roadblock and you have to take this other way around when you take methylfolate, you're. You've now gone around the detour, you know, gone around the roadblock and you've gone straight to methylfolate, which is where you want to be, what you want to use, what your body can use. And so that's, that's the key with mthfr. And it sounds so simple, right? You're like, okay, that just has to do with B9. Vitamin B9 is folate.

The thing is, is that like all the B vitamins, they're super important to our health. And that's why, you know, we even included in a multivitamin or why we take a B complex is because our body uses these B vitamins in so many ways. The body takes the B9 and it puts it together with the B12 vitamin B12. The two work together very closely. And along with all the rest of The B vitamins, B1, 2, 3, 4, 5, they make something called SAM in our metabolic processes, in our cells. And SAM just SAM some of you may be familiar with SAM E, but that's the same thing as SAM SAM S. Adenosylmethionine. And SAM is used in many ways in the body. It helps protect our DNA. It helps us make healthy new cells. It helps to make and break down our neurotransmitters. It helps with liver detoxification. So many things, right? So our cells really depend on SAM and the way we get SAM is with folate and methyl B12. So usually when I'm talking with patients about MTHFR, I'm also wanting to know if they have a gene variation on the B12 gene, which is called MTRR in which case we need to address and get methyl B12 also. Anyway, I could go on and on. This is such an interesting topic and I find it makes such a big difference for patients for these reasons because we can help the body in so many ways by getting the right B vitamins. Now, I want to just let you know that I have a full training on this. So if you're interested and you're wanting to learn more and you want to dive in deep for your health, then be sure to check out the link that I'll share on how to, you know, where to do my full trainings on MTHFR and how to address it completely. But what I want to mention at the moment is a little more specifically about how having an MTHFR gene variation might influence your health. Because some of you might be thinking, well, should I do this test? How would I even know if this might be an issue for me? So some of the common ones which MTHFR can relate to some of the most common health issues that are around, like.

Diabetes and heart disease and cancer and dementia. They've been studied on all of these major health conditions related to MTHFR and how you process methylfolate. So if you're at all trying to prevent major health issues, then this is important for you. It's also been associated with increased risk for blood clots as well as some. For some people, like me, it was more like easy bruising. It can be related to migraines, and I definitely have a history of migraines, as some of you may know. So MTHFR may have been part of that for me. MTHFR also for women's health in particular, has been associated with increased risk of miscarriages. And so I help a lot of women who've had a lot of miscarriages maybe find out or want to find out if they have MTHFR so we can implement my MTHFR protocol to help prevent another miscarriage, help them conceive success successfully. And we also know that folate is really important in early pregnancy because that's when the baby's nervous system is forming. And that's why we always hear that pregnant women should take a lot of folic acid in early pregnancy. Right. Or that's what's in a prenatal. That's what you're supposed to take before you get pregnant. The thing is, is that they did a lot of that research before we knew about the genes. And so a lot of the research uses the term folic acid. Really, they should be talking about folate or methylfolate because that's what's essential is methylfolate. So again, if you're trying to get pregnant or you're taking a prenatal or make sure it says methylfolate and not folic acid. Please, please. Because that's going to get you way further. Right. It's going to give you a detour around the roadblock. Potential roadblock in your case. And why not? Why not get around the roadblock and get active folate so that you're making sure that your baby has this essential nutrient in order to form the nervous system and prevent what are called neural tube defects and prevent miscarriages. So it's used for there. But I also it use methylfolate for the patients I'm helping with abnormal Pap smears. Because here's the thing. Remember that folate is essential for making healthy new cells. So in a baby, that's what we're doing. We're making healthy new cells in a cervix. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make healthy new cells on the cervix. Yes, that's exactly what we want. If you have an abnormal Pap smear, the cervix has cells that are inflamed and affected by probably the HPV virus. So we need to slough off those abnormal cells and help your body grow back new healthy cells on your cervix. Amazing to think about, right? How do we grow healthy new cel in our body? With methylfolate. So we use methylfolate. Again, a lot of the old research use the term folic acid, but for now, please rewrite that and know that they really are talking about methylfolate, not folic acid, in terms of helping to reverse abnormal Pap smears and get to healthy cells. Right? So. But methylfolate, as I mentioned, is also important for detoxification. MTHFR and MethylFolate has all to do with liver detoxification of estrogens, for example. And so if you have any other menstrual issues, pms, menstrual cramps, pmdd, pcos, endometriosis, anything where you're in pain or heavy bleeding or irregular cycles, then think about, we need to know, do you have MTHFR gene variation? And, and you know, let's make sure you're taking the right methylfolate to help your liver detoxification. Now, this is where usually people start saying to me, well, how much should I take? How do I know how much to take? Because there's a lot of different possible doses. With methylfolate, you can take anywhere from 200 micrograms to probably 10 milligrams. You know, that's a wide range. So it's a good question. How much should you take? And to me, it's not a one size fits all. It's not. I mean, I know that like in a prenatal, those are kind of one size fits all. They say take at least 800 micrograms when you're trying to get pregnant, which is a good, at least minimum, minimum of 800 micrograms. But I, what I do is I encourage you to have a blood test for something called homocysteine. H O M O C Y S T E I N E homocysteine. They can do it at a regular lab, although a lot of times the doctors don't order it, so you have to specifically ask for it. Or if your doctor is not familiar with it, you may need to pay out of pocket, which it may only be, I don't know, $25, $50 test. It doesn't have to be expensive to have your blood drawn and test your homocysteine level because homocysteine is the metabolite. It's in the system of turn taking folate and B12 and turning them into. Sam. Homocysteine is right there and we can. If you folate or folic acid in the blood, it doesn't tell us the right information because again, they've jumbled folic acid and folate together in one test. We don't want to know all of that combined. We want to know what's your folate level, how is your body using methylfolate. We don't care about folic acid. We don't want that jump pulled into the test. So a test for folic acid or even a test for folate is not going to be accurate in the blood. Same thing with B12. It's not going to be accurate. It's going to reflect what you just swallowed and what's in your bloodstream. So we don't want that. We want homocysteine to help us evaluate your B vitamin levels. Not only your B vitamin levels, but how well is your body using these B vitamins. See, it's a process. In fact, I think of it almost like a spinning wheel. Right? A wheel is constantly spinning. Well, as long as it's in motion, right? So it's moving. Think of a clockwise moving wheel. As long as we keep putting on in the B vitamins, that wheel spins and it keeps spinning out. Sam, we talked about, Sam is the thing that does all the good stuff in our bodies. So we need this wheel to keep turning. And that is what the homocysteine tells us is how well is your wheel turning? Do you have enough B vitamins coming in to turn the wheel? Do you have. Is the wheel getting stuck along the way? Now here's the thing, is that wheel, when the wheel gets stuck from turning, it's not from necessarily the genes, it's from stress in your environment. And this is where it comes back to stress, is that when we have stress in the form of emotional psychological stress, inflammation of stress, which can come from certain foods in our diet that are inflammatory gut issues, that are inflammatory gut bacteria that are out of balance, that are throwing out toxins, maybe toxins in your environment you're breathing in or you're putting on your skin, toxins coming in, metals, alcohol.

Basically, I Just think of it in the category of various stresses that we're exposed to, including from our food and our toxins in our environment. That's what bogs down your ability to use B vitamins for all this good stuff. So that's what the homocysteine tells us is how well is, is your body able to use the B vitamins. And you want your homocysteine to be at about a seven. You know, between six and eight is probably optimal. If it's way lower, then we got to figure out why, why that is and help bring it back up to more like between 6 and 8. If it's way higher, we got to figure out why that is and help bring it back down to between six and eight. When you, what happens is it's kind of an opposite. If you need more B vitamins, then the homocysteine will be higher. And if you, you know, if your homocysteine is too low, you're probably not going to want to right away put in more B vitamins. We got to help figure out why it's too low and help it resolve and rebuild and then use your B vitamins. So it's, it's a balancing act. It's a careful process and that's where. But it can make a big difference, especially if you've been struggling with pain. You know, whether it's from my head pain or menstrual pain or pain from, say, from emotional pain from a miscarriage, you know, these are things that we can, we can do something about and we can look at the biochemistry and understanding our genes and understanding how we can help out the gene variation. So if you have this MTHFR gene variation, it's just a matter of taking the right nutrient, the right amount of nutrients so that you're helping your body to still get the benefits it needs. Even if you have that MTHFR gene variation, you see what I mean? It doesn't have to ruin your life or affect, we can do something about it. Right. So I think that's important to know. I want to go into what can you start to do about it.

Before you. And I see some questions there. So I'm going to come back to them, but first I want to share with you that, so if you think about it as this process, as an ongoing process in all of our cells all the time, so we want to just help that process work well. And I think MTHFR and this methylation cycle, they call it a methylation cycle, which is, I call it a B Vitamin cycle, because it's how the B vitamins come together to make SAM and to realize that that's so much affected by various stresses in our environment. So, yes, you can. In my program where I help people with this, we start with things like dietary changes so we can drop in, so we can figure out which foods are inflammatory and help you shift your diet so you can decrease your inflammation that's bogging down the system. We look at your gut health. Is there leaky gut? Is there imbalanced gut bacteria? Let's address that so that again, so the system can work better. Do you have toxin exposure, mold toxins or other environmental toxins? We can measure for that and find out if you have toxins. And then I can help you get them out of your body so that it can again get back to working better.

Let's see. Those are some of the steps. I also look at neurotransmitter levels because the neurotransmitters are affected by MTHFR and folate. So we measure the neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, and we can see are they high or low. And based on that, then we can support them carefully in a systematic process that I've developed so that we can systematically rebalance your neurotransmitters while we rebalance your methylation. And this way you get everything working back in sync again and you can feel good. Because this is the other health issues that are affected by MTHFR that I didn't mention before is anxiety, depression, insomnia, or really any other mental health issue that you, you know, whether they're diagnosing it as bipolar or anything else, I would say MTHFR could be having an influence because it influences Sam, and Sam influences how you metabolize your neurotransmitters. So how your body takes the serotonin and makes it and breaks it down. And same with dopamine and adrenaline. So we need to understand what are your exact neurotransmitter levels right now, which we can measure in urine. And then we can look at your genetics and see what genes. There's other genes that also influence these neurotransmitters. So we look at them, and with all of that information, I can help you rebalance so that you have a nice flow of producing neurotransmitters and breaking down neurotransmitters that allows you to have the mood you're looking for, to not have anxiety following you around all the time and to be able to sleep well and to be able to enjoy your life.

There's a lot of health issues that can be affected by mthfr. That means to me that there's a lot of potential benefit and positive outcomes that patients can experience by addressing this. That's what I see in my practice, by the way. Oh my gosh, it's so rewarding to get to work with patients every day, help them understand their bodies, understand exactly how stress, various forms, is affecting their genetic expression and the steps they can take to shift that. You know, how amazing that we can change our diet, we can do stress reducing activities, we can exercise, we can do these steps, they can actually have a positive influence. I refer to that protocol as my care protocol. Care is C for clean eating, A for adequate sleep, R for stress recovery or stress reducing activities, and E for exercise. So I just want to especially hone in on the stress reducing activities today because I've been researching them a lot for my new book that I'm working on and they're pretty nice and simple things you can do without any expense even. These are things that sometimes it's tricky to remember to ask it into our day. But what I find is when you really start to think about, oh my gosh, I could be, what am I going to do in this next five minutes that could influence my health going forward? And when you think about how profound that can be, you go, wait a minute, okay, for the next five minutes I'm going to do some deep breathing, for example, I'm going to do a meditation, I'm going to take a walk outside in nature. These are all activities that studies have shown to help with our stress recovery. They help with rebalancing cortisol, rebalancing adrenaline, but they also help our cells to process methylfolate better and to our mitochondria to do their job better. So it's like working on a deep, deep cellular level. So I invite you to, if you haven't, you know, even if you haven't tried this before, but you know, just take a deep breath. And there's lots of different ways that we learn about breath work, but I find it sometimes just simple is a nice place to start. And so if you start by just doing a deep breath, like count in your mind for five seconds as you breathe in. 3, 4, 5. And then five seconds as you breathe out. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And just do that a few times here while I'm talking to you. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And out. 1, 2, 3, four, five. And you can even slow it down a little. That's a little fast because I'm all adrenaline talking to you guys. So take it nice and slow, right? A slow five count.

And what you're doing is you're signaling to your brain and your nervous system to turn on your parasympathetic nervous system, which is opposite the sympathetic adrenaline system. We want the parasympathetic, which is the nice calming part of our nervous system. And as soon as we signal with a few deep breaths, it tells our heart, it tells our gut, it tells our brain and all the other parts of our body that we're now in de stress anti stress mode. We can do cellular repair, we can let the B vitamin cycle function, making Sam the body can do all this stuff we need it to do. When we just give it even a few minutes of break, when we're in constantly go, go, go mode, our body doesn't get as much of that chance to really let us rest, recover, repair. So deep breaths and you might even remind yourself like once every hour or at least a couple times a day to stop, take a couple nice deep breaths to just give your body that parasympathetic message.

It also helps with digestion, which when we digest better, we're less likely to create inflammation in our gut, we're more likely to get our nutrients into our body and to have balanced gut bacteria. So all of this, even just a few deep breaths, you're getting this whole ripple effect that's going to have a positive influence on so many things. But in particular mthfr, because that's what we're talking about today. Also mindfulness, which in some ways, by the time you take a few deep breaths, that is mindfulness, that's bringing you into the moment, in presence, with your body, aware of yourself in this moment in time, just breathing. And that's mindfulness. And we can practice mindfulness in so many ways, but that's kind of a nice way to do it, I find, especially if you're just starting with it, starting to become aware of it. I find that most people are probably doing mindfulness and just weren't calling it that. Like maybe it's when you take your dog for a walk or when you're watering your plants or when you're doing the dishes. You know, things where you're in the moment and you're just present with yourself in that moment, doing sometimes something repetitive you don't have to think about in detail. But certainly going out in nature is a great way to de stress Lately What I've been loving to do in the mornings is go down to the beach. I live about a mile from the beach and I can expose my brain to light which in my pineal gland to light, which really sets the circadian rhythm, tells my body it's time to wake up, gives the right hormone signals for morning time.

Then I can take a swim in the ocean, which is a bit cold. Now that cold water is also going to help stimulate this parasympathetic response and help with resetting your system. And you can take, you know, do some deep breaths or meditation or take a walk on the beach or take a walk wherever you, if you don't live near the water, take a walk wherever you are or if you're not able to get out and take a walk, then I would even just say put on a show of pictures of nature. So you're giving your brain signals of pictures of nature. That's why you'll notice that a lot of times for me I surround myself with colors of nature even when I'm inside pictures of nature. So I have, you know, pictures of, you know, flowers, leaves, birds, animals, green colors, you know, colors that remind your brain about nature all the time. Because then you can do that even if you're inside, even if it's winter, even if it, you know, even if you can't go outside for some reason. There's ways to expose yourself to nature wherever you are. And that's hugely stress reducing. And again, the reason I'm mentioning this is because as you give your body more stress reduction, it allows your body to your metabolic processes to use the methylfolate and the methyl B12 to make SAM in a more effective way. And that's going to help your body to make healthier cells, protect your DNA, make healthier neurotransmitters. Break down neurotransmitters like adrenaline. We don't want adrenaline staying around forever, we want to make it and get rid of it. So this is why these care activities, in particular the stress reducing activities are so important, especially when you have MTHFR as a gene variation.

Something a lot of people don't know is that too much stress can actually create an abundance of health problems like high blood pressure, high blood sugar and anxiety, migraines, insomnia, even fertility issues. This is because high stress puts your adrenal glands on overload. They release cortisol and adrenaline which controls your digestion, hormones, immune system, energy, focus and even your emotional response. So how can you beat stress when you don't know where to start. That's why we have a free seven day stress reset program. It's designed to help support weight loss, digestive healing and hormone balancing. It includes support for integrating self care. Daily tips come to you by email and video. Gluten free dairy free meal plans as well as grocery shopping lists, journal pages and more. This free program will help you beat stress and put you on the path to wholeness in your body. Get your plan now for free@drdonnie.com.

Okay, let's see.

So this question is. She wanted me to repeat the answer. When you have homocysteine that's high, do you add folate or not? So this is related to the blood test called homocysteine that helps us understand your folate doses. So if your homocysteine is more than 7, let's say it's 10 or 11, then likely you may need to increase your methylfolate dose a little bit. Now again, the dosing variations, there's everyone's a little different. So I tend to take it slowly. So when I say increase your dose, I don't mean increase from 1 milligram to 5 milligrams. That would be a big jump. I would say increase from 1 milligram to maybe 1.5 milligrams or what would be 1500 micrograms. So maybe increase by small increments because it's also possible if you increase your folate dose too fast or too high, you could feel worse because it gets stuck in the right. If you have a high stress or high inflammation and your body can't use it effectively, but you're putting in a lot of it, it's going to get jammed up in the process. Oh, a good analogy I use for this is I think about a sink that has a clogged drain. Okay. So if you think of turning on the faucet is like increasing your folate dose. And I would really, usually when we're giving folate, you also want to give it with B12 and B6 and probably B2. Also you really don't give folate by itself. But okay, so say one faucet is a folate and the other faucet we're turning is all the other B vitamins that we have with it. Now if we turn on the faucet but the drain is clogged, the drain is clogged with stress and inflammation and imbalanced gut bacteria and toxins. Right now we're going to have an overflowing sink because the nutrients can't get down through the drain, which is where they need to go in order to do all this good stuff for us. So if you tweak your doses and you feel worse, like if you get a headache or if you get anxious, you feel worse in any way that tells us this drain is clogged. It's not that it's not working or you know, something else is wrong, it's that the drain is clogged. So also when you see a high homocysteine, say your homocysteine is 15 or greater, you know, could be 25.

And before turning on the faucets, we need to unclog the drain because the only reason that homocysteine ever goes that high is when the drain is really clogged with toxins and inflammation. Why turn on the faucets? We're just going to make you feel worse. Let's unclog the drains first. And that has to do with, as I was kind of mentioning the stress recovery and identifying what's got it clogged in the first place. And that's where I work with people, one on one because it's a bit of a complicated and very individual process. I wouldn't try it on your own. So if you have very high homocysteine, if you feel worse when you try taking folate, these are all reasons to work with someone like me to help you because I've seen it all and I know how to guide you in a step by step process. But if you're just on your own and you're thinking, okay, let me try this. I see my homocysteine is greater than seven. Yes, you could tweak your dose slightly by a couple hundred micrograms and see if you feel better. And then you're going to want to retest your homocysteine and see how it's doing, giving you, oh my gosh, so much information. So some of you, I'm sure are like, whoa, what did she just say? If that's the case, if you really want to start back at point, you know, the very beginning and do MTHFR101, then I encourage you to check out. I have a training. I'm going to get the link for you guys or just message me and I can get it for you. But I have a training you can do where you really go through the specific details so that you don't have to feel like you're doing. You're trying to gather it all up from this, this conversation. There's a person asking about leucovorin, I think what you're referring to is there are pharmaceutical companies who have made methylfolate basically in a vitamin from a pharmaceutical company. And these pharmaceuticals with methylfolate often have. I find they often have pretty high doses. I don't have it right up in front of me. But maybe some of you are aware that sometimes when they make these pharmaceutical pills, they put in a lot of fillers and you don't really necessarily want all those fillers. If you don't need to, you might as well. But it does mean you want to work with a practitioner can really help you get a good quality product with the right benefit.

So that you're not just, you know, taking a high dose of folate with a bunch of fillers and not knowing whether it's the right dose for you. And I see that all the time. So that's why I think it's so important to go, okay, wait a minute, let me ask my doctor, what's my homocysteine? Let me think about and work with a practitioner who can help me really fine tune this so I get the right amount in the right form.

Okay, let's see.

Is miscarriage. Yes, but how about conception? Getting pregnant? So this is a question about getting pregnant and miscarriage. And yes, it's true, it can influence getting pregnant. Because I find that, I think so many, many women maybe don't even realize, like the pregnancy might not even make it to the time that you do the pregnancy test. Right. So maybe you're, you know, even even in the first couple weeks of pregnancy before you even know you're pregnant, this could be having an influence. So I absolutely, in fact, I, all of my patients who are working on getting pregnant, we. I want to know, do they have MTHFR or what's their homocysteine? And let's make sure you're on the right amount of folate. Because. Because it's important for everyone who's getting pregnant and it's definitely important for those of you who've had any trouble like you're having trouble getting pregnant or you've had miscarriages then. Absolutely it's important. But I think you're bringing up a good point. It's important for every woman who's trying to get pregnant because everyone needs to be making healthy cells for this healthy new baby and preventing neural tube defects. So it's important for everyone and especially for those of you who had any challenges with pregnancy or with miscarriage.

Okay, I see there was a question about how our Body uses folate and we covered that. So I think you're good probably with that answer now.

Can high homocysteine affect the ability to get pregnant? I have unexplained infertility. Oh yeah, definitely it can. So again if you know you have MTHFR or if you don't. Oh, let's answer this question. How can you get tested? You can do a simple blood test like just going to, you know, you can do it at a blood lab to get your blood drawn. The only thing is sometimes insurance doesn't cover in which case it costs a couple hundred dollars. So what I usually have patients do is do a genetic panel like the ancestry panel because France from ancestry you can for $100 you send in your saliva and not only then we can, we can put it through software to process that information and not only will we know about MTHFR but we'll learn about a whole bunch of other genes from that. And there's some new, by the way, as I'm saying this to you, I'm thinking there's some new tests coming out. So depending when you listen to this, definitely reach out to me and find out what's the best way at this point in. But just know that pretty much for like under $200 you should be able to find out if you have MTHFR gene variation and.

And that is, you know, if you're not been able to get pregnant. Absolutely that's something to consider and measure your homocysteine and work with someone. I mean this is the thing is that because I have specialized in this area and I've had to help with my own health in this area, I've figured it out and it's not, unfortunately it's not yet integrated into standard gynecological care or obstetrics care. So you're probably not going to hear about this from your medical doctor unless you're going to a more functional medical doctor and so you're going to want to work with someone like me who can help you. And what I've done is I created a protocol step by step when I'm guiding someone through figuring out, you know, is this gene influencing your health or your ability to conceive or any of causing some of your health issues. Let's do the test in a systematic way and help your body to then get the right amount of the nutrients but also unclog the drain, right? Because, because if the drain is clogged then we're gonna, at some point we're gonna be limited we can only turn the faucet on so much without overflowing the sink, so we need to unclog the drain so that we. Then you have this. You just know that whatever dose you're taking, your body's using right away. It's like a clean system. That's what we want. We want a clean running system. But definitely, if you've been struggling with fertility, and I see this post, and it's unexplained, you know, this would be a potential explanation. And there's other things, too, that I consider then a lot of doctors don't consider when it comes to fertility. So if you've been struggling to get pregnant, then I definitely encourage you to reach out to me because we're gonna. There's a lot of things we were gonna want to consider to see if they've been having an influence and it may not have been noticed by your other practitioners. Okay, So I think I got.

Your questions covered here. I'm so glad you were here and glad you're asking.

And again, and I'm glad you're sharing. Some of you are sharing how you have MTHFR or maybe your children. My daughter also has MTHFR because she got, obviously from me and from her dad. So.

She'S been getting the migraines that I used to get when I was her age. And. And, oh, my gosh, as a mom, it's just terrible. I feel, you know, hearing my daughter, I'm like, oh, I wish she didn't have to get these migraines. But luckily, at a much earlier age, I mean, it took me, you know, till I was much older to figure this out. Luckily now, at her age, she's just about 18. We know she has MTHFR gene variations. We know to check her homocysteine level. We know this thing. We know to check our neurotransmitters and help rebalance. We can check her foods, you know, so we. Luckily, she knows we know what to do. Now, the key is that because she's almost 18 years old, she's also, you know, she has her own responsibility for her health and her body and what she wants to do. So that's. I can talk about that more another day, too, if you're interested in health care with a teenager. But, you know, I'm glad for her to at least know things she can do to help with. And. And she knows now whenever she goes into a doctor's appointment, she tells them I have MTHFR gene variations because sometimes a practitioner may not be Aware of it, But I feel like the only way we're going to increase awareness is by saying it right. So tell your doctors if you know you have MTHFR when you go in for a doctor's appointment, tell them, I have MTHFR gene variations. And the doctor might be like, I don't know what that is or what to do about it, but that's okay, because now they're gonna think about it, and they're eventually gonna start to figure out what to do about it. Because I really feel like it should be fully integrated into medicine, where this should be just like when you walk into the doctor's office and they ask you anything else about your health, it should be right on the form. Do you have an MTHFR gene variation? Because it does have an influence also on how you metabolize medications, including anesthesia. So your doctor should be adapting their prescriptions and what they give you based on knowing that you have mthfr. And so tell your doctors, because I think that will help shift this trend and raise the awareness faster.

Oh, she's asking. Are we talking about hpv? Oh, my gosh. I love to talk about hpv. And I did mention it some because. Because.

Folate and MTHFR is so important for HPV and abnormal Pap smears. What happens is.

Most patients that I see, I'm just thinking in my mind, I wish I had an exact number for you. I should do a calculation. But I would say many of the women I see with abnormal Pap smears and HPV have MTHFR gene variations or have abnormal homocysteine levels. And so we monitor. I monitor their homocysteines while I'm helping them with abnormal Pap smears. And that makes a huge difference. But, you know, I just know that's not the standard of care. So you have to get that. You can. Now that you know, you can be asking your practitioners, you know, say, I need to know my homocysteine. I need to manage my folate level because I want to help my cervix stay healthy and prevent HPV from causing abnormal cells. But also, you know, you can do. I have now my course at hpv Reversing HPV course. So you can learn all about this in the course. Oh, my gosh. We cover all of that in the course. What is your B12 level on a blood test is abnormally high. See, this is why I don't even recommend doing B12 on a blood test, because.

It can be high for many different reasons, including maybe you're taking B12 in a multivitamin, it's going to make your B12 look high, B12 high on a blood test. And to me, I don't even want to measure B12 in the blood. There's so many things that can affect it that it doesn't give me good information. So instead of a B12 on a blood test, what you want them to do is homocysteine and one more called methylmalonic acid. That's a big mouthful. I know. M E T H Y L is methyl malonic. Is M legmary a L, o N I C acid or MMA we call it. If you measure the MMA, this is the metabolite of B12. So then you're getting a sense of how your body's using your B12. Now it's also an opposite, just like homocysteine. So if MMA is low, that's a good thing. If MMA is high, that means you need more B12. So it's way more effective to do an MMA if you want to know if you're getting the right amount of B12. Okay. So that's what you should ask your doctors to run for you is an MMA. And this will tell you whether you need more B12 or not. And the gene for B12 is MTRR. If you have MTRR gene variation, then you're especially going to need to pay attention to getting methylcobalamin or methyl B12. So if you're looking on your B complex, your B vitamin, and we looked first for methylfolate, probably right under it is the methylcobalamin. If it says any other kind of B12 cyano.

It just not worth it. It's just not. It's not gonna do any good for you. So just pass that off and go get a different product that's gonna have the methyl methylcobalamin, methylfolate. Oh, this is a good question. She's asking about MTHFR and sibo. SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which is when the bacteria in the gut get overgrowing, they cause a lot of bloating and gas and burping. And, you know, there are connections with mthfr. It's an interesting.

Like because we could look at it a couple different ways, right? We can look at it as does MTHFR increase your risk of sibo? But also does SIBO increase your risk of issues with mthfr? And I would say both are true. So MTHFR increases risk of sibo. A lot of it comes down to.

Detoxification in the liver and the bile processing, because the bile comes from the liver through the gallbladder to the intestines. And that bile function can really put you at higher risk of sibo. If your MTHFR is not optimized and your liver detoxification is not optimized, that means your bile is not optimized and your gut is more susceptible to sibo. So that would be one possible way to look at that connection. Also, by the time you have bacterial overgrowth, then, of course, these bacteria are producing toxins that go back into your bloodstream that affect your ability to detoxify and affect your ability to use the B vitamins. So it becomes this vicious cycle. Right? So a lot of times, people will find that they're in this vicious cycle that's creating sibo. So it's one thing, too. And I do a lot of helping people with sibo. I love helping with sibo. I use only herbs and natural products, no antibiotics to treat sibo, and is very effective. The thing is that if we were to just go and kill these bacteria, which is very tempting, it's like, let me just kill these bacteria and get them out of there. But the process, the underlying vicious cycle is still present, and so you're still susceptible for sibo. So it's likely to reoccur. In fact, the studies show most people have many, many reoccurrences of sibo because it doesn't help to just wipe out the bacteria. We have to actually shift your body, your environment, your stress, your everything, so that you're creating a different environment for these bacteria. That doesn't. Right now, the only reason they're overgrowing is because it's the right environment for overgrowing. Right. If you think about it like, why are these gut bacteria overgrowing? Because they have the right environment to grow. Of course they're going to overgrow. So when we think about it that way, we can go, oh, my gosh, I need to change the environment inside my body. I need to change the environment so that these bacteria are not happy hanging out here and overgrowing. We want some bacteria, of course, we want our healthy bacteria and a healthy balance. But we don't want to promote overgrowing bacteria because then it's slowing down all our metabolic processes and making us feel awful. So we need to change the environment. And I would say it definitely comes back to those steps I talked about in the care program. Like, we got to get your diet right so that you're getting Your good nutrients that are not inflammatory and not overfeeding the bacteria. We need to get you enough sleep. We need to get the stress reducing activities going and healthy movement in your day. And these start to shift the environment in your body so that it doesn't just perpetually create more bacterial overgrowth or yeast overgrowth or viral overgrowth, which is the case with hpv, right? Like these viruses and bacteria only overgrow and cause trouble because the environment is allowing them. We change the environment in your body, which includes your stress exposure and how you do de stressing. Then you can change the whole thing. You can wipe out hpv, you can get rid of sibo, you can solve these things. That's what makes me so excited to help. You can solve autoimmunity. By the way, I see someone posting from multiple sclerosis and I love that because autoimmunity, if someone were to say to me, how does autoimmunity fit into here? It fits too, right? Because we know that autoimmunity, it comes from the gut. It's the leaky gut, inflammation in the gut, the imbalanced gut bacteria. The immune system shifts, it gets confused. It starts trying to protect us from our own cells. Why? Because it's a stress system and it's confusing to try to protect us from ourselves. So we just need to change the environment so that the immune system can calm down and go, oh, oh yeah, I'm supposed to be protecting you from viruses and bacteria, not from your cells. And we, that's how we reverse autoimmunity, which is so, so cool. Also.

Let'S see, do I check them? How do we check that? How do you check the homocysteine? Okay, so here's the thing. I'm gonna this video, by the way, I'm gonna save it to Instagram tv. So if some of you are on Instagram, go look on Instagram TV in a little bit and they'll be there as long as that whole process works. Also, I recorded it, so it's going in my podcast. My podcast is the How Humans Heal podcast, which you can get wherever you listen to podcasts, Apple and so on Spotify. How Humans Heal, right? That's what we're talking about. How we're humans and we're talking about how we heal and how we can be our healthiest selves. So I call the podcast How Humans Heal. So I'll be posting that on Instagram here soon too, because you can then re listen to this. And I love that you're excited and wanting to learn and oh, my gosh, I can talk more about this.

Oh, hi, Dr. Bryant. He's asking about different kinds of B12. So there's. I was mostly talking about methylcobalamin, right? Because we're talking about methyl. See, methyl. Think of methyl is a chemical group that sticks onto the nutrient, right? That's what we call it methylfolate. It has methyl on there. Methylcobalin has methyl on the B12.

That works in the methylation process. We're using methyl to do this good stuff.

In that situation. We're using methylfolate and methyl B12. Dr. Brian is asking about different kinds of B12, like adenosyl B12, hydroxyl B12. Now, these are also great, useful forms of B12, but they don't work in the methylation process. They work in other processes. And they are definitely part of. When I guide people through addressing their genetic profile. We use adenosyl and hydroxyl B12. Hydroxyl B12 I especially like to use when someone has a nitric oxide gene variation, because hydroxocobalamin, hydroxyl B12, can help clear out your nitric oxide pathway. I know for some of you this might be way over the top, and that's fine. But just know that you have other genes we can look at too, besides mthfr. And if we see gene variations, we can use specific nutrients to find out if that pathway needs more attention. And that's where hydroxyl B12 comes in. Adenosyl B12 comes in. When we're trying to help out your mitochondria. If we. We can do tests that show us if your mitochondria are struggling. If so, we use adenosyl cobalamin because it's very. The mitochondria love it. And it helps with energy production in the mitochondria. So these other forms of cobalamin can be used. Not so much cyanocobalamin. If you see cyano cobalamin, it's not being used in your metabolism and we don't need it. So x the cyanocobalamin. And we use these other cobalamins, which is again, another way to say B12 in different ways. Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad you guys love this conversation. It tells me I should have this conversation. Would you want me to do this some more? I'm happy to. I mean, we're covering so much today. We could. We could definitely cover more of this. I see some questions about sibo, so I'll do it. Maybe I'll do another day where we talk all about Sibo and the herbs I love to use for Sibo and how I help people get rid of Sibo. And we can also spend more time talking about more of our genes and how to address them and how that can help for so many different health issues. Right. But again, this is why you'll see me on my a lot of times in my Instagram, on social media and in my newsletter, in my blog, if some of you haven't already been to My website is drdonnie.com and I have a bunch of blogs there. So if you're curious and want to learn more, look there as well as in my newsletter, which if you go to the link in my bio, you can sign up for my newsletter and I'll send you more information by email.

But, but these are, you know, these are all topics that I love to talk about. And the thing you'll see me always come back to is stress recovery because that's a common denominator. You know, like, I know so many of you struggle with different things, whether it's digestive issues or mood related issues or pain related issues. And I feel you because I've experienced all of those myself or abnormal pap smears or fertility issues. But the common denominator for all of those is stress and how various stresses make us vulnerable to these health issues. Right. The health issues or the symptoms are really our body signaling saying, I need more attention in here. Right? So do a little mindset shift and think about your symptoms or your health issues as your body trying to tell you that it needs attention. Then our job I think as humans is to go, oh, my body is trying to tell me something. What's it trying to tell me? And based on that, then we can do the right test to get the right information so we can actually see what your body's trying to tell you. And then we can address it most times with nutrients, herbs or other natural approaches. So just know that there's these symptoms because I know sometimes these health issues can be overwhelming. Believe me, I've been there. I had severe migraines for over 20 years. It overwhelmed me as an ageratic doctor. So I get it. It's overwhelming to not feel good and to want to feel better. But try to go, okay, this is my body telling me it needs attention. Now can I do some tests, whether it's genetic tests or blood tests or other kinds of tests, to understand your body better? Once we understand your body better, we can help it heal. And that's what I do in my I love getting to share with you here in the podcast, but also that's what I do in my group courses. I love working as a group with people. It's so fun to be able to learn together and encourage all of you together. I also do that in my one on one programs. So if you need more help, please know that it's available and reach out and tell me because the more I know what you need, then the more I can create that for you. All right, well, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to talking to you again. More soon. Thanks for all the waves. I love it. Thanks for being here. I appreciate it. Have a good day.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.