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CBS Protocol

xjhuez

Senior Member
Messages
175
pancreatic enzymes (pork glandular) by Nutricology

Andy,

I've been looking into digestion support lately - pre/probiotics, enzymes and betaine hcl - and I wonder if you might explain why you chose that particular product.

Thanks
 

xjhuez

Senior Member
Messages
175
Note: for those taking yucca, I did ok with taking two pills a day instead of sprinkling it on my food at every meal (because it tasted funny).

I'm glad to hear that it works like this. I've been taking it with every meal, and it's kind of a pain in the ass to have it with me at all times. And then you forget that you still have 2 caps in your pocket when you toss your jeans into the laundry..
 

AVS

Messages
11
xJhuez

By no means do I consider myself an expert on any of this so take this all with a grain of salt or vitamin C or whatever :)
I take the pancreatic enzymes for the simple fact that (in my logic) the pancreas is your digestive enzyme factory. The pancreatic duct, which dumps digestive enzymes in to the duodemum, just after the food leaves the stomachs, is where I believe the support should be rendered. The duodenum is where the majority of the nutrient absorption occurs. Here is also where the gal bladder and or bile duct (if you don't have a GB) dumps bile into the duodenum and emulsifys the lipids or fatty acids of your intake. So all of the macro nutrient "digesters", Lipases (fat digesters) Proteases (AA digesters), amalyases (carb digesters) and nucleases (nucleic acid digesters) are released into the duodenum from your pancrease to break down your food into raw materials to be absorbed by your body to be used by your genes (eventually) to build cellular structures and functional proteins (like enzymes). The pancrease also supports glucose metabolisms (which is pretty important) and for someone like me who is a sympathetic driven (type A) person I tend to put the alpha cells (glucagon forming cells) and beta cells (insulin producing cells) to hard work becuase of the hormones I tend to over use in the sympathectic capacity. So, for me it is only prudent to attempt to support this "hard at work organ". Now, from what I understand, these need to be taken prior to meals (empty stomach) and need to be on board for at least 30 min to and hour in order for them to get into the blood and make their way back to the pancrease (please don't ask for the physiology on this b/c I really do not know but I will look into it). Anyway, if you do take them with food they will act like digestive enzymes, which won't hurt you, but they will not make it to support your pancreatic tissue, and therefore your natural digestion.

Just my two sense, if anyone know more or this please chime in becuase I am alway learning

AVS
 

AVS

Messages
11
xjhuez

I also wanted to mention that all of the other products that you are looking into, I don't believe would hurt either. I take a probiotic (away from the pancreatic enzymes) and on occation a digestive enzyme with food so I wouldn't discount digestive support from other angles as well. Also, I wanted to ask about Betaine HCL, I haven't heard much on this support?

Thanks

AVS
 

xjhuez

Senior Member
Messages
175
Thanks for the great answer.

Betaine HCL increases stomach acidity. I did a very simple (and possibly useless) test last week with backing soda - http://www.drdebe.com/stomach-acid-assessment.html. I did it 3 mornings consecutively and I didn't produce a singe belch at any point. Apparently this demonstrates I have low stomach acid, but it's not exactly convincing, only indicative, and I've yet to actually try Betaine HCL.
 

ahmo

Senior Member
Messages
4,805
Location
Northcoast NSW, Australia
xjhuez

I also wanted to mention that all of the other products that you are looking into, I don't believe would hurt either. I take a probiotic (away from the pancreatic enzymes) and on occation a digestive enzyme with food so I wouldn't discount digestive support from other angles as well. Also, I wanted to ask about Betaine HCL, I haven't heard much on this support?

Thanks

AVS
Hi AVS. I've been following the GAPS diet since Jan 2012. Developed by neurologist Natasha Campbell McBride to help her autistic son, healing the gut is the top priority. She advocates HCL at beginning of meal, when digestion needs help, plus ox bile at end of meal. I was initially using a mixed digestive enzyme, but have recently switched to ox bile on its own. This gives me a larger dose, and is much better on the budget. I also take apple cider vinegar before meals. My tendency has been toward alkalinity, but recently when I felt heartburn, which I'd been treating w/ apple cider vinegar, I tested urine and was acidic. So I used 1/4 tsp bicarb in water, and it shifted to alkaline. I'm only using bicarb as needed.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
Wow, this is awsome (these are my first few posts). I am so grateful for people like you who are willing to help me understand. I am so into learning more about methylation and I couldn't have asked for a better place.

dbkita, thank you for your insight on the CBS A360A. I was trying to make that a priority issue after reading "heartfixer". I noticed that Dr. Roberts had a +/- A360A and he was treating it as his first priority (he did also have an SOUX defect so that may have been a contributing issue). Anyway, in heartfixer they are all about both CBS defects being a priority. I notice that in Yasko methidology she doesn't focus on 360A as much as the 677T. I was concerned with my CBS ++ because my father had a heart attack at 52y/o and I believe he has passed on the APOe 4 (I am APOe 4/2, Pamela McDonalds work on lipid/cholesterol clearing) and the heart fixer guys really fix hard on the fact that CBS upregulation is a huge contributor to heart disease by causing a free radical response from ammonia, alpha keto glutarate, and other excitotoxins when homocycteine escapes down the transulfuration pathway. I also figured that my BHMT 4 and 8 were contributing to the CBS problem as well.

So would you suggest then that I tone down my treatment on my CBS A360A and move on to treating the MTHFR C677T and SHMT? I do understand that I need to address that C677T but I was waiting until I got my CBS under control because I read that it may be worse to treat methlyation intermediates with out first addressing CBS because of the fact that you may lose everythiing down the CBS pathway.

Again I am really excited to have someone to talk to about this. I really appreciate everyones help.

Just for reference here is what I currently take daily:

Fish oil (epa dha), resveratrol, vit C, vit D spray yasko, ultimate B complex yasko, CBS/NOS support yasko, molybdenum, yucca, charcoal (every once in a while b/c of constipation), probiotic, pancreatic enzymes (pork glandular) by Nutricology,

on occasion - GABA, nettle, magnesium, potassium

I have Methylmate B (active folate), MTHFR caps (liver support), SHMT spray, Methylcobolamine B12, Hydroxycobolamine B12 but I am holding off because I want to make sure that the CBS is not an issue.

Thank you all so much

Andy

You are SHMT1 heterozygote. 33% of all humans are heterozygote. 40% of all Europeans and 43% of African descent are heterozygote. So I have no idea why a heterozygote SHMT1 is a "first priority" mutation. There is a big difference between heterozygote and homozygote.

You are homozygous CBS A360A. You are wild type for the other more important SNP. Even Dr Yasko herself downplays the A360A from what I have seen in sample reports when it is by itself. To my knowledge her and other in her camp and those like Dr Roberts are the only ones who even think A360A has any relevance and they do so without consideration of the overall haplotype. I personally think treating a A360A heterozygote is very peculiar.

If you want the likeliest scientific rationale, then I would suggest focusing on MTHFR gene and proper methylation. Your SHMT is heterozygote like almost 40% of Americans and your CBS is A360A. Big whoop imo.

However, to make sure for CBS there is no harm in getting your serum and urine taurine levels, serum ammonia (urine ammonia levels is borderline quackery sorry), and test urine sulfates with test strips. If those variables are in bounds then trans-sulfuration flux is not a big deal. If not, then it is something to address but honestly it is not the SNPs that have been tested and observed. It is either others we do not know about or epigenetic factors. My point is if you are worried about CBS being out of control, which is not impossible then do the tests to verify it. On the other hand the 10x upregulation meme perpetuated by Dr Yasko and her followers is an absolute colossal error. So don't let that scare you.

Many of us on here with CBS mutations if we restricted protein to the levels Dr Yasko suggested for example would get crushed for other reasons. It is too complicated to distill into single SNPs most times. That being said you may want to try a low free thiol diet to see if you are sulfur sensitive.

At some point we cross over from science to belief. Both have merit. Personally I am both a physicist and bioinformaticist and a spiritual person. I see nothing wrong with making choices based on belief but then just make sure you go into it with eyes wide open that it is a choice based on trust and belief and not science. Some on these forums have wonderful anecdotes on treatment protocols. But their success is not always transferable.
 

AVS

Messages
11
Thank you very much for your input , I really appreciate it. I'll keep testing my urine sulfate while I have the strips and start with the low thiols. Thank you again this all helps me a lot.

Andy
 
Messages
66
Just got my 23andMe back and I'm CBS C699T HTZ. I know it's hard for anyone to quantify the difference
between HTZ and HMZ other than HMZ is worse. Does anyone have any idea of the difference in effect on
up-reg of the transsulfuration pathway, cysteine levels and other factors between these 2 types????
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
If you read my "couple of questions" thread you will see in the articles I linked you will see that the heterozygous CBS C699T has almost no impact on trans-sulfuration flux post methionine loading. In addition if you check out this link:

http://browser.1000genomes.org/Homo...0-44485850;v=rs234706;vdb=variation;vf=135834

You will see that heterozygous CBS is there for 34% of all Americans and even higher for other ethnic groups.

Many on here believe the heterozygote CBS is a big problem for them. I don't know what to say other than the data, I offered you. But I will say I wish I was heterozygous instead of being homozygous. The bump in ammonia when I try to eat a steak is not fun in terms of body pain. Sigh.
 
Messages
66
If you read my "couple of questions" thread you will see in the articles I linked you will see that the heterozygous CBS C699T has almost no impact on trans-sulfuration flux post methionine loading. In addition if you check out this link:

http://browser.1000genomes.org/Homo...0-44485850;v=rs234706;vdb=variation;vf=135834

You will see that heterozygous CBS is there for 34% of all Americans and even higher for other ethnic groups.

Many on here believe the heterozygote CBS is a big problem for them. I don't know what to say other than the data, I offered you. But I will say I wish I was heterozygous instead of being homozygous. The bump in ammonia when I try to eat a steak is not fun in terms of body pain. Sigh.

I imagine those percentages are updated as more data comes in. If you check the link you provided, the current percentage for America and for All is 22%, 32% in Europe.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
I imagine those percentages are updated as more data comes in. If you check the link you provided, the current percentage for America and for All is 22%, 32% in Europe.
Sorry but you are interpreting the data wrong. The percentages you quoted are for allele frequency, not the frequency of then hetero or homozygote genotypes as listed in the table below the pie charts.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I don't understand SNPs very well so I'm not sure if this will be useful or not, but I was going over the methylation study done with Rich's protocol and I found a section on CBS C699T.
http://www.mecfs-vic.org.au/sites/w...Article-2009VanKonynenburg-TrtMethylStudy.pdf

Figure 4 shows the distributions of the values of the sum of S-adenosylmethionine and Sadenosylhomocysteine (the two methylation cycle metabolites measured in this study) as a function of time on treatment for patients who do not have the CBS C699T polymorphism as well as those who are heterozygous and homozygous for it. As can be seen, those having either one or two copies of this polymorphism have lower values of SAM + SAH than those who do not have it. The differences are statistically significant (p<0.04) between the (-/-) and the (+/-) groups for all three times.

Figure 4. Sum of SAM (RBC) and SAH (RBC) for patients who do not have the CBS C699T polymorphism (-/-), those who are heterozygous (+/-), and those who are homozygous (+/+), at 0, 3, and 6 months of treatment. The difference between the (-/-) and the (+/+) groups is statistically significant at 0 months (p<0.04), but not at 3 and 6 months. (Even though the sums of SAM and SAH were lower at all three times for the (+/+) group, there were only two patients in this group, so the statistical power was low in comparing it to the (-/-) group.)

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