Hi, Freddd.
I find this puzzling. The main folates found in vegetables are 5L-methyl tetrahydrofolate and folinic acid, both of which are readily used in the bodies of most people. Folic acid does not occur naturally.
As I've suggested, I suspect that you have what appears to be a rare deficiency in the enzyme MTHFS (methenyltrahydrofolate synthetase) which is the enzyme that normally converts folinic acid to methenyltetrahydrofolate, from which it can normally be converted to other forms of folate, including 5L-methyltetrahydrofolate. I think that explains why your body is not able to use folinic acid, and in fact why it blocks your folate metabolism, as folinic acid is known to inhibit the SHMT reaction, which is the main reaction that converts THF to 5,10-methylene tetrahydrofolate, which in turn can be converted to 5L-methyltetrahydrofolate.
Best regards,
Rich
Hi Rich,
Just a quick stopby. I'll be back after labor day. If you do a little data mining on the internet it can be noticed that there are some people, a substantial number in all but probably only a small percentage who have the induced folate deficiency symptoms that they are calling "detox". The very easy test to see if it is indeed paradoxical folate deficiency is to stop the green drink, folinic acid, folic acid and take Deplin size doses of Metafolin to see if the symptoms rapidly correct. I'm not argueing that vegetable food source paradoxical folate deficiency is common as it most clearly isn't. However, if even 1% of 7,000,000,000 people are so afflicted, that is 70,000,000 people who may be afflicted. This would explain an awful lot of the chronic puzzling unsolvable chronic disease problems we see. This could make the difference for those perhaps 70,000,000 people who are now untreatable "writeoffs".
The pattern is sure building up. First I experience it and identify it from glutathione/NAC as do a significant number posting about glutathione "detox" and NAC "detox". Then I experience and identify it from folic acid and then folinic acid. Once again plenty of people taking folic and/or folinic acid identyfy "detox" that can be reversed with Deplin size doses of Metafolin. Then I experience it with premium B-complex made from food extracts, the folate extracted from broccoli, and again so do various others experience "detox" with these. Then I experienced it, having elliminated all other soucres for folate from my program, from my fresh organic veggies from my garden, quantity dependent. Then I identified it in a person taking a "green drink" supplement and saw it reversed with Metafolin. Then a search of the internet indicates that the "predictable detox reaction" from green drinks is fairly widespread, is attributable to "detoxing" and identical with paradaoxical folate deficiency.
Then there is the difference in side effects between Deplin at 7.5 and 15mg with is "well tolerated with no side effects different from sugar pills" and Cerefolin/NAC with all sorts of nasty side effects which just happen to match 100% "NAC detox" reaction which just happen to match 100% severe induced folate deficiency.
Then there is the dose of Deplin to consider. 800mcg of Metafolin can be very effective if a person has no paradoxical folate deficiency. The people being dosed with Deplin, and I am meeting some out in the field, all have resistant depression as would be expected from paradoxical folate deficiency. It is being used with some effectiveness with people with MS (low CSF cobalamin, high CSF HCY). They are taking amounts, ie 7.5mg-15mg 1-2 per day, that are necessary to overcome food or supplement based paradoxical folate deficiency. In fact the amount I found effective by titration is at the LOW end of what the double blind clinical research found was needed to overcome their resistance (of unknown causes) to folate effectivness for depression. Insurance companies are refusing to pay for Deplin becasue it is "just a vitamin" so some of the folks with MS are turning to Solgar Metafolin at half the price of the Deplin per mg.
That's also ignoring that the incidence of "detox" reactions here with people taking the hycbl and folinic acid is perhaps 20-50x as great as those taking mb12-metafolin with a little folic acid. That was a naked eyeball shocker the moment I signed in here and started reading. I mentioned it right up front that something was very different and it wasn't the symptoms sets of the participant. It was the protocol being used. I called this reaction an artifact of the protocol even though at that point I didn't know just why and tended to overattribute to hycbl because I didn't suspect folic/folinic acid at that time. Learning about the severe induced folate deficiency from glutathione/NAC caused extensive neurological damage almost putting me in a wheel chair and I am still not fully recovered. In the literature, if you look, you will find a number of people with "unexpectedly profound neurological response" to Metafolin. There is another set of people likely having paradoxical folate deficiency.
All it takes is a demonstration case or two to the contrary to invalidate a hypothesis. We have a whole lot of demonstration cases invalidating the very limited genetic hypothesis. That has gotten impossibly untenable Continuing to maintain that it can't be happening because it should be very rare is rather ridiculous in the face of the information and is terrible science. Instead the task at this point is to learn to clearly identify the susceptable groups.
It's comforting in a statistically based analysis system to throw out those outside the 2 standard deviations response range but writing off those folks, condeming them to ill health and death rather than understanding what is going on with them and allowing them a life of good health bothers me ethically. It also creates an underclass of untreatables that are uninsurable, untreatable even if insured, with all sorts of drugs thrown at them like mud against the wall hoping that some of it will stick. The drug side effects are often so terrible that they learn to suffer in silence rather than take even more unaffordable drugs whose benefit is dubious and side effects terrible. These people are called names by the doctors and treated badly with the hope that they will just go away or something. If they are considered at all it is as a new profit center for yet undeveloped drugs overpower the symptoms enough that they shut up and stop bothering the medical system. The docs despise them becasue there is something different about them because they "don't get better" no matter how much of the persons money they suck up. That was the key question asked of me by a doc kicking me out of his practice thousands of dollars later "What makes you different from my other patients as you don't get better?" Makes me want to say that medicine should be done on the same basis as so many other things, "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back".
I'm sorry if this seems a bit of a rant. I'm po-ed at the insurance and medical industry of which I have been a part for most of my life. It seems that they want to kick those who are down and make them be quiet writeoffs by drugging them into submission even if the drugs don't work for their problems, "mothers little helpers".