Chris Masterjohn explains that MTHFR variants often don't cause problems on their own. Low riboflavin status impairs the enzyme and raises homocysteine. Supplementing 1.6 mg daily riboflavin cuts homocysteine by about 40% in people with low MTHFR activity and poor B2 status.
Questions this video answers
1.6 milligrams per day.
About 40%.
Depending on the liver, roughly 2–5 milligrams per serving; imported New Zealand lamb liver cited as ~4–5 mg.
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This is why your MTHFR is just a riboflavin deficiency. Hi, I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of ChrisMasterJohnPhD.com and this is Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is Details Shmeetails. Just tell me what works. And today we're going to talk about riboflavin or vitamin B2 for MTHFR. MTHFR is an enzyme that uses folate to support a cycle in the body called methylation, which is extremely important to your mental and physical health. I have tons of information on this, all compiled very nicely and neatly for you at chrismasterjohnphd.com methylation so head there if you need some background info on this. But today we're going to narrow in on the specific topic of riboflavin. Riboflavin is vitamin B2, and MTHFR is an enzyme that uses riboflavin to make the methyl group on methylfolate. And MTHFR has two common polymorphisms or variations in a gene that result in. All of us are being on a spectrum where some of us have very low MTHFR activity, some of us have very high mthfr activity, and 2/3 of us are somewhere in the middle. And in fact, MTHFR activity is very evenly spread across the entire population. Now, why is it the case that the MTHFR activity is lower in some people? Well, it turns out that, that according to experiments in cells, the variations of MTHFR that are low are just low because they're not as good at binding riboflavin. And so when you have this version of the enzyme and your riboflavin status is rather low, your MTHFR doesn't work very well because you are not getting enough riboflavin to bind to the enzyme to make it work properly. And that would lead us to believe that perhaps if you just get riboflavin status higher than it otherwise would be, the MTHFR would work just fine. Well, in fact, there's evidence for this in humans. So what we know from humans is that if we look at the people with the MTHFR polymorphisms that lower the activity of that enzyme, if we look at those people and we look at who whose homocysteine is high, it turns out that all the elevated homocysteine is concentrated among the people who have poor riboflavin status. It also turns out that if we take people with these MTHFR polymorphisms and we supplement them with 1.6 milligrams of riboflavin a day that the homocysteine goes down. And where do you see the homocysteine going down the most? In the people who have low MTHFR activity and poor riboflavin status. In those people, 1.6 milligrams of riboflavin decreases homocysteine by 40%. That's a big number. So how do you get 1.6 milligrams of extra riboflavin? Well, a serving of any type of liver would give you more than that. Depending on which liver you're consuming, it would give you anywhere from 2mg to 4, 5mg in the case of imported New Zealand lamb liver. So if you're eating imported New Zealand lamb liver, you can eat that twice a week, two servings per week, and you get the extra 1.6 milligrams of riboflavin averaged across all of the days. Right. So if you're eating high quality liver, that's all you need to do. You can also get about that amount of riboflavin by eating 3 or 4 ounces of kidney, of heart, or of almonds. And then if you want to eat several servings per day of more moderate sources of riboflavin, for example, about 3 servings per day of red meat, cheese, eggs, salmon, mushrooms, seaweed, sesame or wheat germ or wheat bran. And you can mix and match those. Right? So three servings of any of those foods added on top of what you already eat right now is going to give you the extra 1.6 milligrams of riboflavin. Now, you could also supplement with riboflavin. And the thing is, most riboflavin supplements that are available are much higher doses than that. So there are a couple low dose supplements that are available, and I'll link to them in the description of this episode. But in general, I think it's better to get the riboflavin from food. And if you have to use a riboflavin supplement that is, I don't know, 100 milliliters per serving, there's not really anything wrong with that. It will turn your pee bright yellow. But there's no evidence that taking higher amounts of riboflavin is going to do any harm. So food first. If you need two supplements. Now, I discovered this while I was recording a podcast with Alex Leif. And Alex Leif has a blog@alexleaf.com where he is actually the one that found these studies on the effect of Riboflavin on mthfr. He has a blog post on on this topic where he goes into a little bit more detail and cites the studies. So I will put a link to Alex's blog post in the description of this episode. I'll also link to the much more detailed, very long podcast that Alex and I recorded together on Riboflavin. I'll put that in the description of this episode as well. I hope you found this useful. Signing off. This is Chris Masterjohn of ChrisMasterJohnPhD.com this has been Chris Masterjohn Lite and I will see you in the next episode.
