Quatrefolic Methylfolate - Best Brand (?)

[Lotus97]

Has anyone tried Quatrefolic methylfolate? How does it compare to other brands? It seems like it's supposed to be better. Metabolic Maintenance is selling two types of methylfolate(5-MTHF), but their Quatrefolic one is $20 more.
Quatrefolic, pure S isomer methylfolate glucosamine salt, has been proven to have greater stability, solubility and bioavailability than any other form of 5-MTHF.

 

[Red04]

Lotus,

This is completely off topic, but I was curious as to your background and experiece with methylation, CFS, etc....

Have you been mostly cured? What have you tried? How long we're you ill?

I don't want this to sound condescending, but you are a relatively new member and you comment and give advice on virtually every topic of every thread. You have 600 posts in 4 months. I didn't know if you lost your account and had to create a new one or gained experience before you got here?

I am mainly curious as I feel I recognize most people and know there overall disposition and experiences.

 

[Linda828]

Hey Lotus,

The Thorne 5-MTHF is also a glucosamine salt put out by Gnosis, the makers of Quatrafolic. That is what I use. I saw that claim by the company that it was more stable and bioavailable, but I don't know how they substantiate it. A salt is a salt and once disassociated with the calcium or glucosamine, the same 5-MTHF would be present. I assume neither would dissassociate until in your digestive tract.

Regarding cost, Thorne cost's about 20 cents per milligram and includes microcrystalline Cellulose, Hypermellose (derived from cellulose) capsule, leucine, silicon dioxide.

I just checked out the metabolic maintenance company you mentioned and am impressed. At a 10 mg size their quatrafolic is only 16 cents per milligram and has absolutely nothing in it but glycine.

As far as the Metbolic Maintenance calcium salt MTHF products, how do they get around the patent put on it by Merk? Supposedly, no one can market it with more than 800 mcg in a solo vitamin and 1000 mcg in a combination vitamin. I actually called the Throne company when I saw they marketed it with larger quantities, and that is where I learned about the difference between the two types of MTHF and their reason for producing the glucosamine product. Basically it was to get around the patent.

Right now I'm looking into getting metafolin through my local compounding pharmacy. If I can get enough people wanting large enough quantities, we might be able to get a good deal and get a very pure product that way. The Pharmacy has to buy it in Kg quantities.

My main gripe with the Quatrafolic is that I don't know if I do very well with the glucosamine. I can smell the sulpher through my skin. I'm actually going to get the calcium salt one now that you have pointed out a company that sells it for reasonable prices and with no additives.

Thanks for asking the question. It helped me.
Blessings
Linda

 

[kday]

Quatrefolic (6S)-5-MethylTetraHydroFolate is a good form of L-methylfolate.

If you want metafolin, there is no need to compound it (unless you don't want specific additives) since it's readily available from companies such as Solgar in 400 mcg and 800 mcg forms for pretty cheap. You can also get 1,000 mcg capsules of Metafolin from Seeking Health that is free of magnesium stearate. If you are in the states, it's sold in many vitamin stores as well as VItamin Shoppe.

Merck owns L-methylfolate as Metafolin® so Quatrefolic® had to formulate slightly different.

 

[drex13]

Has anyone tried Quatrefolic methylfolate? How does it compare to other brands? It seems like it's supposed to be better. Metabolic Maintenance is selling two types of methylfolate(5-MTHF), but their Quatrefolic one is $20 more.
Quatrefolic, pure S isomer methylfolate glucosamine salt, has been proven to have greater stability, solubility and bioavailability than any other form of 5-MTHF.

You can buy this from Swanson (their label, but it's Gnosis Quatrefolic) pretty cheap. Me personally, I haven't been able to handle any of the methyl supplements (mb12 or methylfolate)

 

[Linda828]

Swansons is actually more expensive than metabolic maintenance (20 cents per mg), but the ingredient list looks good.

My interest in going through a compounding pharmacy is to get an affordable price when doing very large doses every day of MTHF. I won't go with many of the more available brands such as solgar because of the additives.

 

[Lotus97]

I actually bought Swanson's quatrefolic because it was on sale ($2.00 for 30 capsules) and I only wanted a tiny bit. I don't think I can handle the methylfolate now, but I plan on doing some tests after my health improves a bit. I probably won't buy the same brand next time unless it's on sale again which is why I need to know whether I'll have to adjust my dosage when I switch to a different brand (that is if I ever finish the first bottle of methylfolate). Actually, I'll probably switch to a thorne b-complex which has folinic and methylfolate. The main reason I bought the methylfolate is because I want to test it by itself with no other supplements. My health is at the point now though that I'm in no mood to conduct any tests with methylfolate or methylcobalamin. Probably no tests with Alpha Lipoic Acid or NAC either (possible mercury toxicity).

 

[Lotus97]

Lotus,

This is completely off topic, but I was curious as to your background and experiece with methylation, CFS, etc....

Have you been mostly cured? What have you tried? How long we're you ill?

I don't want this to sound condescending, but you are a relatively new member and you comment and give advice on virtually every topic of every thread. You have 600 posts in 4 months. I didn't know if you lost your account and had to create a new one or gained experience before you got here?

I am mainly curious as I feel I recognize most people and know there overall disposition and experiences.

I've been sick for the last 15 years. I'm too disabled to work so maintaining my health is a full time job for me. Especially in the past 4 years or so. I've been diagnosed with various conditions, but it seems like Lyme disease is what's underlying my illness.

2 1/2 years ago I was probably at my worst. Then I made a recovery over a 2 year period to the point where I was able to work out at the gym during summer 2012. Just to put things in perspective, even though I was able to work out again I was still too disabled to work, my mom did my cooking, dishes, laundry, and grocery shopping, and when I got back from the gym I'd spend the rest of the day either in bed, at the computer, or watching TV. I attribute my recovery to 4 things. Getting a lot of sleep (10-11 hours), limiting activities and sources of stress, taking a lot of supplements, and eating healthy. Limiting activities for me meant spending most of the day in bed. Since I didn't have much social interaction, limiting sources of stress meant I stopped watching TV and movies, following politics, and reading fiction novels. I can't list all the supplements, but I was actually taking all the ones in Freddd's protocol except for SAMe, methylfolate, or B12 (unless you count a 200 mcg oral dose of methylcobalamin). I was also taking a lot of adaptogens which probably helped my adrenals, but limiting activities and sources of stress and getting a lot of sleep is what probably helped my adrenals more than anything.

I pushed myself too hard over the summer and began to get worse again. By the end of the summer I was so exhausted from my workouts that I spent most of the day in bed. I then stopped going to the gym and did shorter workouts at home. I got to the point where I'd get exhausted after even 5 minutes of working out. Then in late August my tooth with an amalgam cracked. I have been unable to determine if I have mercury toxicity because for the first 3 days after my tooth was removed I herxed on Clindamycin, the antibiotic I was prescribed and around the same time I started taking methylfolate. For the next month or two I was in a state of extreme anxiety/overstimulation and experienced severe heart palpitations and tachycardia. I was taking no B12 except for the low oral dose I mentioned earlier. I did not know what was causing these until I discovered Phoenix Rising and read about methylation. There was a quote by Rich saying that even a toothpick of methylfolate is enough to blow some people away. I did not intend to take methylfolate however. I had been taking Jarrow's B Right B complex for over a year, but then they decided to add methylfolate to the formula. They don't list how much methylfolate is in it, but it was enough to seriously mess me up. That's why I want to try taking methylfolate by itself to see how much causes a reaction in me. After reading accounts of some people being especially sensitive to methylfolate I am having considerable doubts as to whether or not I was exposed to mercury. If I was, it probably wasn't significant or I'd be a lot worse. My health has been getting worse since then, but as I mentioned earlier Lyme and adrenals seem to be at the top of the list as culprits. I tried methylation again, but took only B12 and no folate except for 5 days I took folinic acid. I again became overstimulated, but not nearly as much as with just the methylfolate.

 

[Victronix]

It's always fascinating for me to hear people's stories, but I'm sorry to hear what you are going through. I'm glad your mom is able to help out. I also am basically socially isolated (although married also) due in part to spending a lot of time trying to figure out my health situation and lying on the futon watching movies, avoiding stress, etc. I did not notice the addition of methylfolate to B-Right, which surprised me when I realized that it had changed when I looked at the label, since I'm extremely sensitive to methylfolate, so far. I'm taking a break from it at the moment.

One idea that stuck in my head was that I wondered if taking just a little methylfolate even could make a permanent, or long term, change -- it took so long to feel normal again afterwards and involved a lot of mood rollercoastering. I was quite depressed for a couple of weeks after stopping, so I wondered if even a small dose could have long term impacts.

I also had intense depression after stopping B-12, long ago, but that pretty much was done in less than 2 days.

 

[Lotus97]

That's interesting because after my second attempt where I was mostly only taking B-12 I stopped for a couple of weeks and then I started to get really depressed which was weird because after I stopped methylfolate for a couple of weeks I wasn't depressed at all. Then I started taking B12 again and my mood improved. But the change in mood didn't last even though I was taking a B12. I think what actually caused the depression was the immune system supplements I was taking. They either caused a cytokine flare, a reaction from my immune system being reactivated, or from the immune system fighting a viral infection (most likely from Lyme) or some combination of the three. That is interesting though that I experienced at least a temporary mood boost from the B12. I also experienced when taking Glutathione so maybe I was glutathione depleted which might also have been from an immune system response. I'm not really taking glutathione regularly anymore. Dr. Nathan said that if you take Glutathione that sends a message to the body that it doesn't need any more, and it stops making it. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I'm going to focus on the Krebs Cycle along with taking NAC to increase my glutathione.

So are you taking a break from methylation or just from methylfolate?

Although it can be difficult being socially isolated, I'm too sick to do much of anything even if I had friends. I actually don't even think about it most of the time to be honest. It's only when I'm talking to my online friends and then they start talking about hanging out with friends in real life that I remember. Also, social interactions can be draining for some people even if the people you're spending time with are relatively pleasant people.

 

[Victronix]

I'm taking a break from methylfolate, not methylation -- I started off with a diagnosed B-12 deficiency several years ago, so that's a fact for me for the rest of my life, not something I will ever be able to take a break from. It probably came about due to a series of stomach drugs and antibiotics that wiped out my digestive system. At around the same time as that diagnosis, my doctor (at the time, a total idiot) suggested we alter my method of taking my thyroid medication (which I'd taken for over 20 yrs) and my thyroid went crazy, a process that took 2 years to wind down from and which involved trips to the ER and counseling for anxiety and even a disability diagnosis for awhile. So over the years since then there have been ups and downs and I've never normalized. I settled in to working a 3 day work week and resting on the days between. I go through phases. There is a lot to figure out still and recently I don't have the mental energy to do it. I started on a gluten free diet in November, I think, and although I think that has really helped some things, in other ways, I've had a real drain of resilience and energy and inspiration, more depression, more exhaustion. Then again, this is the height of the flu season and I just got the stomach flu last week, so . . . hard to tell what's what these days.

>>Although it can be difficult being socially isolated, I'm too sick to do much of anything even if I had friends.

Exactly, that sums up my life in a nutshell.

 

[Lotus97]

Yeah, when I was on antibiotics last year I had diarrhea for over a month. Even though I'll probably have to take them at some point for Lyme, I'm not looking forward to that. I've wondered about my thyroid. My TSH and T4 were normal, but I've read that I could still have thyroid problems. When I asked my doctor about more tests she said I didn't need any. She has had a lot of tests done, but she hasn't really done much about them. She doesn't seem very knowledgeable about the health issues people here are having. Even so, she's still probably the best doctor I've had so far.

 

[Lala]

I had digestive issues, diarhea etc. from antibiotics too until I realized I had been taking too little probiotics. I ordered swanson formula with 66 billions in one capsule and took two daily. These problems dissapeared during couple of days and have never returned. I had apparent die off from probiotic first two days. With antibiotics hundreds of billions in probiotics are often neccesary to maintain intestinal tract in good condition.

 

[Red04]

Most people eliminated B-Right once the folic acid "revelation" was made. Which was that folic acid was blocking methylfolate and causing a paradoxical folate deficiency. I think Rich did and many others have adopted this to be true. Before that connection was made timing was important to many, in that the B-Right needed to be taken 12 hours off from methylfolate. Until someone figured it out.

My wife has had a relapse from accidental folic acid a few times as well. It will bring the symptoms back fast and in a hurry. I see that the folate in b-right is now from folic acid and quatrafolic. There are some other brands of multi-b that don't contain folic acid you may look into.

If you haven't given freddd's protocol a chance while avoiding folic acid, controlling potassium, and titrating the deadlock quartet with all basics in place. I would think about restarting there. If you are one that can get through it and find benefit from it, the results are absolutely amazing. I would enlist your mom to help you monitor and track symptoms. I think to get through it, you have to (right or wrong) forget that detox or overmethylation even exist. Just think of startup symptoms as induced folate deficiency and potassium demand and titrate up or down accordingly.

Here is a link to a doctor referencing/explaining folic acid blocking active folates: http://www.methyl-life.com/a-doctor-explains.html

 

[Lotus97]

I was taking at least 1000 mcg of folic acid and that didn't block the methylfolate much if at all.

 

[Red04]

How do you know it wasn't blocking it? If you were feeling bad, couldn't it have been a paradoxical folate deficiency? Most people on here didn't know either when we were taking b-right and the old adb12 had folic in it too. It took a long time to figure it out.

I don't think anyone here thinks folic acid is a good supplement. I think this has become a fundamental of almost all the methylation protocols.

Have you eliminated it and followed freddds protocol? Or rich's?

 

[Lotus97]

I understand folic acid can cause problems for some people, but I was taking over 1000 mcg of folic acid during the period where I made a significant recovery. I wasn't taking methylfolate or B12 during that period. It wasn't until I started methylfolate that I had problems. Once I stopped methylfolate I felt better. Some percentage of the population can even convert folic acid into methylfolate.

 

[Red04]

Just because methyfolate started causing problems, doesnt mean it won't help you. In fact,I would argue the opposite. You said during your recovery you were too disabled to work. That seems like you had a ways to go. My wife and many others recovered well beyond that over a few months. Have you considered that methylfolate caused an induced folate deficiency and that's why you felt worse? The fact that methyfolate made you feel worse could be the clue that says you actually need it. Maybe I'm projecting what worked for my wife on you. But, it seems like you are discounting freddds protocol without trying it. Freddds research says methylfolate will make you feel worse and you need to titrate the other things accordingly.

I see a lot of people asking a lot of questions on the forums about all kinds of tertiary things, but none are asking how to follow the protocols. Or what symptoms this could be. Its always about toxins or thyroid or some other supplement not on either protocol. If I was sick I would give freddd or rich's protocol a try down to every last supplement before I tried anything else. They have spent a lot of time figuring this out. And I can tell you that freddds works.

What exactly are you currently taking? And why?

 

[Lotus97]

I agree with about the first part. I assumed I need methylation because of my reaction to methylfolate. My plan is to get to the point where I can tolerate B12 and then I'll consider adding the folates. I get around 300 mcg of reduced folate from my diet. Plus I'm taking 950 mg TMG, coenzyme q10 (methyl donor), Carnitine fumarate, 200 mg choline, 200 mg B6, 200 mg B2. And it's possible my body is converting some of the folic acid into methylfolate. I am taking a lot of Niacin though because I'm not really interested in kicking methylation into high gear. All the supplements I mentioned I'm taking for other reasons other than methylation. The TMG is actually in the form of betaine hcl as a digestive enzyme. I'm learning as much as I can right now so I'm prepared for each step of methylation. I've already spent dozens of hours reading these threads. I probably should spend more time researching other areas besides methylation. Maybe it's my bad experience that keeps drawing me back and wanting to figure things out. As I mentioned, I have other health problems such as Lyme and adrenals which aren't going to be solved by methylation alone. It might be part of it, but not all of it. I don't have time to list all my other supplements or why I'm taking them.

 

[Red04]

Is it possible that a methylation defect is attacking your immune system and preventing your body from fighting off Lyme? My wife had all kinds of infections that were cleared up with methylation supplements.