http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880451/
according to this article folate deficiency helps liver repair
"An important and novel finding of this study was that folate deficiency significantly increased hepatic OGG-1 and MGMT repair activity (approx. 25% for both proteins). Exactly how folate deficiency modulates DNA repair remains to be established. .....Liver and colon DNA was hypomethylated approx. 2% and 5% respectively in rats fed a folate deficient diet relative to DNA from animals in the control group."
You know that was in rats. They say, "We speculate that the inability of colon tissue to respond to folate deficiency occurs in humans and may increase the potential for malignant transformation."
I took the 1600mcg of methylfolate and the next day I woke up foggy and tired so I don't know if I need it, aren't some people hypermethylators?
I've heard that some people are, and that it corresponds to mutations in the COMT gene. But there have been several people on this site who are COMT +/+ and don't seem to be overmethylators. There's a recent thread about that, but I can't find it.
I would probably stick with lower doses, I took the NAC over 7 days- not all at once after liver damage after surgery because my AST ALT blood tests showed 80/260 after anesthesia so it was likely that there were toxins in my body. I was bedridden and weak and couldn't speak well for weeks.
I actually stopped taking it at all. I read (and now I don't know where - I need to start keeping track of this stuff!) that excess NAC tended to influence the breakdown of cystathione towards taurine, and my taurine had just gotten down to normal levels when she added this and it went back over normal range.
Pardon my mistake; I thought you were taking 72g a day forever, and considering what was going on, it makes sense your doctor was doing an intervention.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23703836
I'm not sure if the sam-E is helping, it doesn't seem to raise energy levels like NAC which seems to have an effect on cortisol- it gives me queasiness and nausea. by the way I was curious about the methionine long term effects, what does it do for you and why does your doctor give it to you?
it seems NAC helps clear the body of medium metabolites and can be synthesized from vitamin C, selenium with cysteine as a catalyst. do I need to be sure I have a mutation?
My nurse practitioner told me to use the methionine because my amino acid test results were low, that's all. I started having abdominal bloating and thought it was due to the methionine and NAC (not sure why I though this, but I was probably wrong.), so after 3 months I had my blood test and stopped it. I stopped all my sulfur supplements: Me, NAC, ALA. I also did a low sulfur diet, increased my MTHF from 1 g to 2 g and added folinic acid, all that first week. My bloating and acne went away and I lost almost 7 lbs that week. I didn't want to stay on a low sulfur diet (which is also low protein and I've had muscle wasting issues) so I stopped that diet and the acne returned quickly, the bloating returned slowly (2 weeks, same 7 lbs). I'm guessing I still have a diet/gut bug issue, although I test negative for bad bugs and allergies.
NAC didn't help my energy levels at all, maybe the opposite. And when I added folinic acid, I could barely stay awake - starting about 20 minutes after I took it, so the onset was apparent. I used the Heartfixer/CBS recommendations for energy levels. I was already taking the Co-Q10, but added the NADH, Carnitine fumarate, and D-ribose. That seemed to do the trick.
What does NAC do to cortisol? I tested low on cortisol, but after two months of bovine supplements and 100 mg transdermal progesterone (a substrate for cortisol, which had been undetectable), I passed my ACTH challenge test.
I too have wondered about long-term use of methionine. It's an essential amino acid, and what I was taking was the RDA, so I'm not sure it's too dangerous, and who knows what the translation is from the rat study to humans, or the proportion of Me to rat body weight they used.
So, in all fairness to my nurse practitioner, she only did the MTHFR test, so she didn't know the rest of my odd set of mutations. I had been doing 2 months on an elimination diet that incidentally was high in TMG and animal protein when I first saw her. I figure the TMG may have been supporting regeneration of methionine, and it dropped when I stopped the elimination diet. I plan to start supplementing it when I get my basic folate/B12 stuff tweaked. I'm more interested in promoting recycling of homocysteine than in taking Me. And if that isn't enough, then I will consider supplementing directly, but I'd rather use SAMe than methionine, not only due the the rats dying younger, but there's an energy penalty for converting Me to SAMe. After that I may tweak the amounts of energy support.
BTW, I still get queasiness sometimes from my supplements, even without the sulfur ones.