96. The MTHFR Gene: Why Your Vitamins Might Be Useless (And What to Do)

The most important process that human beings go through 300 billion times a day is a process called methylation. One of my most passionate topics, and that is the most common gene mutation in the world. It's called the MTHFR gene. And what this gene does is it takes folate and synthetic folic acid, these two forms of vitamin B9, and it converts them into the active form. Both go through the same process of being broke down and converted into the usable version called 5Methylfolate. 5Methylfolate has the fast pass ticket to your cellular biology so that that micronutrient goes directly into the cell at a tenfold increase and allows your cellular biology to function normally. You remember when you're at Disney World and you're in the FastPass line and some bozo comes blasting by your family and just gets right in the ride in front of you? That's what 5 methylfolate does to cellular biology. I want the humanity to understand we are not as diseased and pathological as we think we could be. Nutrient deficient. We should stop supplementing for the sake of supplementing and we should start supplementing for deficiency. And by supplementing for deficiency, what I mean is ultimate human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. Today is a podcast short on one of my most passionate topics, and that is supplementing for deficiency and not just the sake of supplementation. Please. If you are considering becoming pregnant, if you're a young woman and you are considering having a child, if you have a child that has ADD or ADHD, or you're somebody that's affected by ADD or ADHD or OCD, or you or a family member is suffering from hypertension, I have a clinical study that is a must share. I hope that you forward this podcast short to every one of your pediatricians and every one of your OB GYNs, because we are finally going to end the debate on whether or not supplementing with methylated nutrients, and to be specific, these are the forms of nutrients that are already broken down for your body. And whether or not this supplementation can have a massive impact on your health, directly impacting things like attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, infertility, repeated miscarriages or multiple miscarriages or trouble getting pregnant, and something called postpartum depression, which, yes, can begin during pregnancy. And so many women are affected by this. So many men are actually affected by this gene mutation that causes behavioral changes, that causes mental changes, that causes severe gut disruption. Remember the pace of our gut, the pace at which our gut is Moving is just as important as the contents. So if you're one of those people or you know somebody who's been suffering from gut issues and they've been down the road of testing their gut biome, they've been down the road of food allergy testing, they've been down the road of food sensitivity testing, and nothing seems to work. They're still suffering from gas bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability, cramping, all of these myriad of symptoms that are under the definition of irritable bowel syndrome. Please listen to this podcast and those young women that have an OB gyn, please forward this to your OB gyn because this could make a material difference in the health of your pregnancy and the health of your baby once it's bor. So I have often argued that we should stop supplementing for the sake of supplementing, and we should start supplementing for deficiency. And by supplementing for deficiency, what I mean is that very often we are nutrient deficient. We're not as diseased or as pathological as we think we are. We are missing vital nutrients that is causing the body to behave abnormally and leading to the expression of disease. In other words, if you have attention deficit disorder, you're not deficient in Adderall, you're not deficient in Ritalin, you're not missing a chemical or a synthetic or a pharmaceutical, you may very well be nutrient deficient. The most important process that human beings go through 300 billion times a day is a process called methylation. Methylation is the process where we take the majority of all nutrients that enter our bodies. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, nutrients of any kind, and we convert them into the usable form. I always use the analogy that we pull crude oil out of the ground. But you cannot put crude oil into your gas tank because the car doesn't understand that fuel source. You see, crude oil has to be converted, it has to be refined into gasoline for the car to use that fuel source. Human beings are no different. Put all kinds of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, fats of all kinds into the body, and then we assume that the body can take those and turn them into the. The usable form. And if it can't, then what happens is it leads to a deficiency. It is this deficiency that very often leads to the expression of some of the most common ailments that we are suffering from in mankind. You know, my message is a message of hope. It's a message that if we put the right raw materials back into the human body, we can see and thrive in ways we never thought possible. Most of you watching this podcast are walking around in my estimation, at about 55 or 60% of your true state of normal. And what I mean by your true state of normal is you might not have any idea how good you would feel if you just put the right raw materials, if you knew what was missing from your body and you put the right raw materials back in your body. We have seen this over and over and over again with vitamins, minerals, amino acids, you know, fatty acids, omega 3 fatty acids, you know, the human food supply. Our soil has become so depleted over the last few years and our food supply so infested with chemicals, herbicides, pesticides, insecticides that are destroying, disrupting our cellular biology, that finally the time has come for us to supplement in ways that can reduce the expression of many of these conditions. And I've long since held that we are not as disease or pathological as we think we are. We are nutrient deficient. So let's begin. Today's discussion is about one of my most passionate topics, and that is the most common gene mutation in the world. It's called the MTHFR gene. I know if you look at MTHFR, what you're thinking, no, it does not mean the gene. It means methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. Now, that doesn't sound like it's important to you, but it's very important. 44 to 60% of the population is estimated to have some form of this gene variant. And what this gene does is it takes folate, which is the natural form of, of folic acid, and synthetic folic acid, which is a laboratory made chemical. Understand that you cannot find folic acid anywhere on the surface of the earth. It does not occur naturally in nature, but it takes these two forms of vitamin B9 and it converts them into the active form. So remember that folate that you get from green leafy vegetables and a healthy diet, and folic acid, which you can get from supplementation, which is the first line of defense in the United States against neural tube defects in pregnant women. Both of these compounds enter the cell, but before they are used, they are the crude oil entering the cell. Before they are used, they have to be converted into the gasoline so the body can recognize it. So folic acid and folate, natural form and synthetic form, both go through the same process of being broke down and converted into the gasoline version, the usable version or called 5methylfolate. And this is where our journey is going to begin today because whether or not you are supplementing with the reduced form or with the non active form of folic acid or even dietary folate makes a major difference in your cellular biology. And these supplements are dirt cheap, they are very inexpensive, and they very well could change the trajectory of your life if you are suffering from any of the ailments that I named in the beginning of this podcast. So there is a. A research study, a clinical study. I almost shed a tear when I saw this because it's proved everything that we have seen in clinical practice over the last 10 years. You know, our clinic director is a board certified OB GYN, Dr. Sarda. She has delivered 9,000 babies. She's a regenerative medicine doctor, she has two master's degrees, she's constantly educating herself and she and I have stood at the top of the mountain and beaten our chest about the need to get folic acid out of the diets of people with mthfr, this very common gene mutation, and supplement with the necessary micronutrient called methylfolate. So this experiment, this not experiment, this clinical study, which was completed in 2020 and published in 2024 in the journal of Clinical Medicine, a very renowned journal, really highlights what happens at a cellular level when our body is deficient in something called methylfolate, specifically 5 methylfolate. So let's begin this journey. This study starts by talking about adequate levels of folates are essential for homeostasis in the organism, meaning in human beings, for the prevention of congenital malformations, including neural tube defects and the salvage of predisposed disease states. What does it mean to salvage a predisposed disease state? It means that if you have a predisposition because of a genetic mutation or a genetic anomaly, the presence of a genetic, the expression of a gene, that these predispositions do not have to be your destiny. The BRCA gene does not always mean that a woman is going to get breast cancer. The presence of MTHFR does not not mean that you're destined to have ADD or ADHD or OCD or manic depression or bipolar, or that you're going to end up with cardiovascular disease or that you're going to end up with a higher incidence of cancer, all of which are linked to this gene mutation. The question is why? Because this gene provides for one of the most important active nutrients in the human body. And so this study goes on to examine how the cellular biology depends on the genetic predisposition, which is meaning whether you have MTHFR or You don't. And therefore, a pharmacogenetic approach to individualized supplementation or therapeutic intervention is necessary for optimal outcome. Pharmacogenetic means that we can actually intervene not with pharmaceuticals, but with supplements to offset the expression of this gene. This is really exciting stuff. So depriving cells of folate leads to reversible S phase arrest. Now, what's S phase arrest? First of all, I want you to think of DNA as a ladder. You know, you climb up and down this ladder, you take this ladder, you twist it, and you shove it into the nucleus of every single cell in the human body. We have an estimated 32 trillion cells in our body. And inside of the nucleus of every one of those cells is a twisted ladder of DNA. And what this twisted ladder does is a few things. It actually writes messages into the cell to make certain proteins. That's called transcription. Those messages are called mRNA, if you heard of the MRNA vaccine. It is a synthetic copy of a message from your DNA to make a messenger rna. It also unzips right down the center and creates an exact copy of itself. Okay, so that is called replication. This is why one cell in your body can divide and become two identical cells. So when this ladder unzips, just like the zipper on your jacket, as it unzips, it's very important that these teeth line up when you zip it up again. So imagine this ladder starting to stitch itself back together. All of these amino acid sequences in this latter starting to come back together. Well, what if you are deficient in a certain raw material, specifically methylfolate, 5 methylfolate. Then what happens is these two rungs do not line up. When they don't line up, the cell enters something called S phase arrest. Now, this is a protective mechanism so that genetic mutations don't promulgate, so that cancers and viruses are silenced. So that if a impaired DNA has a sequence that is missing, it doesn't just continue to divide. This is very good thing in our cellular biology. It's the checks and balance system that God designed to make sure that a limited number of mutations will ever be expressed. And if you have something really genetically deficient in your DNA that it doesn't continue to express itself. However, when methylfolate 5 methylfolate is missing, this cell goes into or the DNA goes into something called S phase arrest. Here's the interesting point. S phase arrest is reversible. How is it reversed? In this case, it is reversed by supplementing with 5 methylfolate, not folic acid. 5 methylfolate depriving cells folate leads to this reversible s phase arrest. Since 5 methylfolate, the gene mutation in MTHFR is the key enzyme in the biosynthesis of the active form. We evaluate the relevance of this MTHFR gene mutation against people that do not have the MTHFR gene mutation. Here is really, really an interesting point. Folic acid supplementation resulted in a two and a half fold increase in 5 methylfolate. Meaning if you supplemented with folic acid there was a 2.5-fold increase intracellularly in 5 methylfolate, the active form. So it was this cell was able to take the crude oil folic acid, convert it into the gasoline 5 methylfolate, 2 1/2 fold increase in intracellular concentration. If you did not have the gene mutation. MTHFR, 44% of the population has this gene mutation. 44% of women have this gene mutation, which means 44% of young women that are looking to get pregnant, 44% of children that have attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity disorders, that have obsessive compulsive disorders, that have learning disabilities, that have deficits in attention and inability to pay attention, 44% of children that have autism. And the question is what happens when folic acid is supplemented in somebody without the gene mutation? Well, you have a two and a half fold increase in this necessary metabolite. However, when these cells were exposed to 5 methylfolate. Let me back up for a second. So the in the MTHFR gene population that does not have this genetic mutation, there was a two and a half fold increase in the population that had MTHFR when they supplemented with folic acid, there was a zero fold increase in 5 methylfolate. I cannot emphasize that enough. Whether you're eating dietary folate and eating a good clean healthy diet. And I would maintain that it's really hard to do that based on the depletion in our soil or you are supplementing with folic acid. If you had the MTHFR gene mutation, there was a zero fold increase in the active metabolite. Zero. When they took the cells that had the MTHFR gene mutation and they supplemented with 5 methylfolate, there was a 10 fold increase in the intracellular levels of the necessary metabolite. That cannot be overlooked. This ends the discussion on whether or not pregnant women should supplement with folic acid or 5 methylfolate. And I will maintain that you should supplement with a methylated multivitamin. These are the same price as regular off the shelf multivitamins. But make an Enormous difference in your cellular biology. I'm so passionate about this project, like talking over myself. I'm, you know, I'm writing a book about genetic mutations and, and simple supplementation can just change the trajectory of your Life. I wrote 15 additional pages just because of this study. And I'm so happy that this study came. I'm going to fly to Israel and hug this scientist. So there are three main factors that are influencing folate levels in individuals, including dietary intake. Most individuals are not getting the right amount of folate from their diet. But even if you are a healthy eater and you're getting the right amount of folate, if you have a genetic predisposition, this can significantly impair of, if, if not completely impaired, your ability to process folate. And if you're using certain medications, we know that methotrexate, other corticosteroids, actually block the metabolism of folic acid. So here's the interesting thing. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, they put you on methotrexate. They know that methotrexate blocks the conversion of folic acid into 5 methylfolate. So what do they give you? More folic acid, which is not going to convert into the active form, 5 methylfolate. So if you are one of those people that is taking a corticosteroid, if you have rheumatoid arthritis and you're on a Methotrex, Trixate or other kind of corticosteroid, or you're regularly taking prednisone or methylprednisone, or any of these other corticosteroids or any inflammatories, you should seriously consider talking to your doctor about supplementing with 5 methylfolate. Here is the most interesting thing. And I get really wound around the axle on this. So this diagram here is describing, it's showing you a visual difference between dietary folate intake. So you see all those vegetables up there at the top of that diagram. This is a person eating a healthy diet. Now let's just assume for a second you don't have the gene mutation mth hfr. Let's make that assumption for one moment. If you do not have the gene mutation, the folate in your diet passes through the cell membrane, enters the folate cycle. It goes through 10 conversion steps. You'll see at the very bottom of this diagram, it ends in the conversion of the active metabolite 5 methylfolate. That's the mother load, that's the gasoline. That is the driver of our cellular biology. It is one of the most necessary methylated nutrients in the human body. It is, is absolutely essential to good cellular health and to the function of our cells. It is very early in the methylation cycle, which means that this nutrient is actually used to then feed other genetic enzymes and reduce levels of homocysteine, which is directly linked in many cases to hypertension. Maybe one of the reasons why 85% of all hypertensive diagnoses in America are idiopathic of unknown origin. Well, the origin is known, we're just not addressing it. So when you look at the incidence of hypertension, the increased incidence of hypertension in people that have this MTHFR gene mutation, you might wonder, well, what is the link between MTHFR and hypertension? Well, the link is the deficiency in this micronutrient that then enters something called the homocysteine cycle and helps lower homocysteine. Well, if you can't lower homocysteine, it rises. When it rises very often it causes a vascular constriction which drives up blood pressure. I'll put a link to that study as well. If you have an impaired homocysteine cycle, then you are have a deficiency very often in something called el methionine, Elmethionine then goes up and enters another cycle in the brain which helps to break down catecholamines which are fight or flight neurotransmitters. These people that are suffering from bouts of anxiety that is unexplained by their environment, where they look into their outside environment and they go, I don't know why I'm feeling the presence of a fear. Without the presence of a fear, I don't know why I lay down to go to sleep at night and my mind is always awake awake and I'm body tired, but I'm mind awake. I don't know why I'm so anxious all the time. I don't know why. Sometimes when I lose my temper I can't get the train back into the station. I just. The cork pops and I cannot put it back in the bottle. This gives an explanation between the mental conditions related to nutrient deficiencies. If you can't break down catecholamines, catecholamines rise. Catecholamines are fight or flight neurotransmitters. They give you the sensation of fear, they give you the sensation of anxiety, they give you the sensation of anxiousness. So what if we could normalize a lot of these quote unquote mood disorders with micronutrients? This is what's so exciting to me because I want the humanity to understand we are not as diseased and pathological as we think we could be. Nutrient deficient. That is a really exciting vantage point. And then this methionine then breaks down and turns into something called same as adenosylmethionine. Same as greatly linked to all kinds of mood disorders and mood dysregulation, things like mood numbness. There are tons of people out there that live decades of their life in a mood numb state. And because they are just walking around at a C or a C plus, they never seek any intervention for it. They might not know why they can't feel certain moods. You know, they're on the vacation of a lifetime in a place they've always wanted to go with the family they love the most and they just can't get into the mood. I mean, they look around and they go, I should be elated right now. Like, I'm intelligent enough to know that I should be really happy right now, but I'm not. I'm intelligent enough to know that I'm attracted and in love with my spouse, but I have no libido. I'm intelligent enough to know that there's nothing consequential enough going on in my life to cause me to be in this depressed state. But I don't know why I feel like this could very well be linked to your nutrient deficiencies. So let's go back to this diagram. This is really exciting. So the folate, which is the natural form found in the vegetables and healthy diet, it passes through the cell membrane just like folic acid does. It goes through these 10 conversion steps and becomes 5 methylfolate. Look at what happens to 5 methylfolate. 5 methylfolate butts in line. You remember when you're at Disney World and you're in the FastPass line and some bozo comes blasting by your family and just gets right in the ride in front of you. That's what 5 methylfolate does to cellular biology. It doesn't wait in line. It has an extra fast pass that allows it to skip the entire sequence of gene mu and jump right in the cart. It has the fast pass ticket to your cellular biology so that that micronutrient goes directly into the cell at a tenfold increase and allows your cellular biology to function normally. This is really, really exciting stuff. Your obgyns should not be supplementing you with folic acid unless they know whether or not you have the gene mutation MTHFR. And if you do have it. You absolutely need 5 methylfolate. But guess what? If you don't have it, 5 methylfolate still works. That's the exciting thing about this micronutrient. In addition to dietary intake, plasma levels of folate are also modulated by genetic predisposition, period. So that is a fact now no longer up for debate. I get a lot of flack for this on social media, saying that I can just. I'm promulgating nutrients and saying that they could lead to the expression of disease. But here is your direct link to that. The most important genetic polymorphism that decrease activity of MTHFR are two common functional polymorphisms. An estimated 44% of the population has this genetic polymorphism. An increased need for folate is linked to adolescence, especially prepubescent adolescents during the developmental cycle of the brain lactation. There are so many pregnant mothers that for some reason cannot lactate. They cannot actually produce breast milk postpartum after delivery. There's so many mothers whose depression begins during their pregnancy and it starts with their supplementation with their prenatal vitamin. They're listening to their doctor, they're doing the right thing. They want to have a healthy pregnancy. So they take the prenatal vitamin with 1400 or 1800% of the daily allowance of folic acid and they start to go nuts, they start to feel depressed. You show me the study linking elevated pregnancy hormones to postpartum depression and I'll say that I'm wrong. I have been unable to find one to date. But there are direct links between the mthfr gene mutation and postpartum depression, which, by the way, can begin during pregnancy. It's also linked to malabsorptive disorders and diabetes as well as an increased incidence of cancer. And so folate deficiency is a serious public health risk and it's linked to severe congenital malformation. So in 1998, here comes the government intervention. Guys, what did Ronald Reagan say? The nine most dangerous words in the human language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Help. Okay, well, here it comes. Here comes the help. So in 1998, to combat this risk, the u. S. Food and drug administration, one of my favorites, required the addition of folic acid to enrich grain products such as bread, pasta, rice, cereal and flowers. This is where you find fortified or enriched foods. They are sprayed with the chemical folic acid. Going to remind you this is a chemical. It is not found anywhere on the surface of the earth. You can't find this anywhere in mother Nature. So, so we started to infuse this into the food supply. Now, for people without the MTHFR gene mutation, it had a positive result. I'm not saying that this was a sinister plan. We actually saw a decline in neural tube defects, which is what your obgyn is going to tell you. Well, when you supplement with folic acid, there is a decline in neural tube defects. This is very true in the population without MTHFR. What about the other 44% of us? What about the other 44% of women out there trying to get pregnant, having repeated miscarriages? What about the other 44% of women out there supplementing with folic acid and getting postpartum depression? What about all the 44% of women out there that are supplementing with prenatal vitamins and still having repeated miscarriages? It's very likely, I'm not going to say 100% of the time, very likely linked to this genetic predisposition. I think all obgyns should be testing patients. I think Dr. Sarter would agree with this, testing them for this MTHFR gene mutation. So it became a public health risk. This measure, as well as high dose folic acid supplements prescribed for at risk population have the risk of causing excessive folic acid intake and have unfavorable developmental consequences such as increased risk for autism spectrum disorder. Autism has gone from 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 36 children. I graduated high school in 1988, just dated myself right there. I did not grow up with, nor did I know, nor do I have any friends or have friends that know friends that had autism. And if you ask your child today, if your child is under 15 years old, they probably have four or five friends or six friends or eight friends that are affected by autism or Asperger's. Could this be a nutrient deficiency? Could the soil depletion and the excess folic acid and the presence of a simple gene mutation potentially be causing these kinds of conditions? Well, that's what this study would implicate. So we talked about reversible S phase arrest. We talked about how the, the DNA stops replicating, but then when the 5 methylfolate shows up intracellularly, that the DNA continues to zip. So, you know, if you were unzipping your sweater and the teeth didn't line up, it would just stop right there. As soon as you fix those teeth and they line up again, this sweater unzips and zips normally. This is exactly what's happening to our DNA. To evaluate whether folate deficiency induced S Phase arrest is reversible. We used folic acid and 5 methylfolate. We showed that folate supplementation rescues cells from S phase arrest in a concentration dependent manner. In patients without MTHFR gene mutation, the cell was only brought out of S phase arrest in patients with MTHFR if they supplemented with 5 methylfolate. So this is, you know, just continued evidence that supplementation can potentially improve all aspects of our cellular biology. Cells with normal MTHFR activity were able to normally metabolize folic acid, no problem. Therefore, it was not surprising that the metabolic activity was no different whether they were treated with folate, 5 methylfolate or folic acid. However, in the patients with MTHFR, the phase this cell entered S phase arrest 100% of the time dependent on their polymorphism if they did not supplement with 5 methylfolate first. Intracellular concentrations of 5 methylfolate were investigated. When cells with normal NTHFR were exposed to folic acid, the intracellular concentration rose 2 and a half times compared to MTHFR cells that rose 0. In contrast, when cells with the MTHFR gene mutation were exposed to folic acid, they did not observe of any increase in the intracellular concentration of 5 methylfolate. And by the way, there's a period at the end of that sentence. This is no longer the subject of debate. The results of this study show that intracellular concentrations of biologically active folate, otherwise known as 5 methylfolate, alter S phase arrest and enter the methylation cycle normally. Meaning now we can reduce homocysteine. Addressing potentially hypertension. We can go into the brain and quiet the catecholamines. Potentially addressing attention deficit disorder. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. You know, I've often will tell parents if you want to just do an experiment with your child, if your child is, has a, you know, it's a full contact support to get your kid in the car to go to school in the morning or you know, they get to school and the calls come home that little Johnny's not paying attention, he's disruptive, he doesn't follow directions, he hasn't finished his assignments. Just do this very, very safe experience for one week. Get all of the fortified or enriched foods out of their diet. Militantly get the fortified or enriched foods out of their diet. Fortified or enriched foods are sprayed with the chemical folic acid. And just see after seven days, if you don't have a completely different child in the house, there's no risk to getting fortified or enriched foods out of their diet. You find These in grains, cereals, breads, pastas, flours, you know, the crackers that kids eat. If you're interested in looking at some of the snacks that are non fortified, non enriched, I do a what's in Gary's Kitchen episode all the time. I talk about all kinds of great snack foods for kids, masa chips and other things that you can use to swap out these foods that have really high amounts of folic acid. It is astounding how many mothers and fathers call us and say, I cannot believe the difference in my child in seven days after getting the folic acid out of their diet. That's a high likelihood that that child has very common genetic mutation called a genetic polymorphism called mthfr. This is really, really super exciting stuff. The study concluded that we have provided evidence that 5 methylfolate can bypass folate insufficiency due to MTHFR deficiency, period. This finding is of immense importance since the significant. Since a significant percentage of the population, 44%, roughly over 60% in Europe, is unable to properly metabolize folate due to this deficiency in this enzyme, which is coded for by mthfr. In such cases, folate supplementation with 5 methylfolate is, is considerably more efficient than supplementation with folic acid since it can enter the folate cycle directly without the need for enzymatic modification. Guys, I really hope that you were able to pay attention for the entire length of this podcast. Short Please show this to your ob gyn, show it to your pediatrician. Share it with your family. If you have friends or loved ones, or you're a mother or a father with small children, or if you're thinking about getting pregnant or you're trying to get pregnant and. Or if you're one of those women that has suffered from repeated miscarriages or you have attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. If you have a history of cardiovascular disease in your family that is not genetically linked, could very well be the nutrient deficiency. And guys, that concludes one of my favorite podcast shorts because it really substantiates the need for proper supplementation. Let's start getting data on our bodies. Let's start supplementing for deficiency, not the sake of supplementing. If you look at my vitamins, I have a vitamin called 10x optimize where I have surgically gone into the methylation cycle and provided these methylation nutrients. You do not have to buy my vitamin. There are all kinds of great brands out there that make methylated nutrients, but I've decided to dedicate the entire balance of my adult lifetime to the study of genetics and epigenetics, because I think that this is the future of modern medicine. I think we can be healthier, we can be happier, we can live longer, more fulfilling lives by making sure that our bodies have the raw material they need to do their job. And that's just science.