MTHFR gene variants reduce 5-methylfolate production, which disrupts two critical processes: neurotransmitter synthesis, causing neurological and emotional problems, and DNA synthesis, slowing tissue repair and cell turnover.
So what would be a downstream problem if I inherited 1 or 2 there and I decreased the amount of 5-methylfolate that I am making? Well, I said that methylation has 2 big picture things and then a lot of downstream things. The first big picture thing is it's involved in a lot of neurological neurotransmission activities and forming neurotransmitters and all of that. So in some cases, you might wind up with certain types of neurological or neuro-emotional types of changes that go on, and that could be manifested in many different ways with poor MTHFR function. The other though is DNA synthesis. So in the formation of the nucleotide cascade where you're trying to make DNA, obviously we need to make DNA for cell turnover. That's kind of a big deal. So if I have slow cell turnover, I'm going to have poor regeneration of tissues.
