Improving Hormones and sleep?

[seattlesounders]

Hi all, I would be very grateful for any insights on my genetic genie results. Symptoms wise my sleep is very disrupted, and I have mild Crohns disease. Lab wise I have low pregnenolone and DHEA levels, low Alkaline phosphatase and Insulin. I also have high homocysteine, Bilarubin and Iron.
Urine and hair tests showed elevated Lead and Mercury and I’m wondering if my system can even handle chelation. Grateful for any insights. Wishing you all good health in the New Year!

Methylation

Homozygous Mutations
VDR Taq rs731236 AA +/+
MAO A R297R rs6323 T +/+

Heterozygous Mutations

COMT V158M rs4680 AG +/-
COMT H62H rs4633 CT +/-
VDR Bsm rs1544410 CT +/-
MTRR A66G rs1801394 AG +/-
MTRR K350A rs162036 AG +/-
BHMT-02 rs567754 CT +/-
BHMT-08 rs651852 CT +/-
CBS A360A rs1801181 AG +/-


Detox
Homozygous mutations
CYP1B1 L432V rs1056836 GG +/+
SOD2 A16V rs4880 GG +/+

Heterozygous mutations
CYP1A1 C2453A rs1799814 GT +/-
CYP1A2 164A>C rs762551 AC +/-
CYP1B1 R48G rs10012 CG +/-
CYP2D6 S486T rs1135840 CG +/-
CYP2D6 100C>T rs1065852 AG +/-
NAT2 I114T rs1801280 CT +/-
NAT2 G286E rs1799931 AG +/-
NAT2 K268R rs1208 AG +/-

 

[Critterina]

@seattlesounders

With low DHEA, did they test your testosterone, too? DHEA (25 mg) increased my stamina by more than 6x in less than a week. My testosterone was undetectable. (DHEA is the precursor to testosterone). Did they check your cortisol levels (saliva test for possible elevated evening levels)? Or might you be awake at night because you're hungry?

Instead of going directly to chelation, would it be possible to try a gentler approach: Vitamin C (3 g/day), Vitamin E (400 IU) and alpha lipoic acid (100 mg)? I'm not sure that would help, but it's something to look into. Hey, at least your body can put those metals into your hair and urine. Some people are sick because they can't even do that, their metal burden stays inside where it does more harm.

So, what I see is

1. the MTRR A66G - methylB12 sublingual will help with the high homocysteine. Might help you sleep.
2. the VDR Taq - you probably will want to get your Vitamin D levels tested.
3. The SOD2 - I don't know much about Super Oxide Dismutase, but it's important in controlling free radicals. I know you can buy the enzyme in a vitamin store. I also bought some chaga syrup that is supposed to have it. But really, I don't know if that mutation you have really affects its efficiency in a negative way or by how much.

Hopefully some other people will chime in with their opinions. My view and understanding are very limited.

Happy New Year!

 

[seattlesounders]

Thanks so much Critterina. Encouraging to hear DHEA supplementation worked for you - will investigate further here. I did indeed try the Cortisol/DHEA saliva test. Both were low. Testosterone was within range but also also low, so I tried 10mg Pregnenolone supplementation but it makes me feel light-headed for some reason.

You pinpointed my deficiencies well - blood tests show I'm low on B12 and D. I also did a Spectracell test to look for deficiencies at a cellular level and here there was a surprise - I supplement extensively and yet I'm functionally deficient in Glutathione, Serine (non-essential amino acid) and Folate. Would love to hear from anyone who has similar mutations and/or deficiencies.

 

[Critterina]

@seattlesounders ,

Happy New Year!

The DHEA is over the counter. I started with 25 mg/day and got the results described. I have also tried 36 mg/day (average) and 50 mg/day (no labs at that dose, but no acne, either). I found that for every mg of DHEA I took, I raised my total testosterone about 0.5 ng/dL. and my DHEA about 3.6 ng/dL, although the DHEA curve curved down and the testosterone curve curved up, meaning I was getting greater conversion to testosterone with higher concentrations of DHEA.

Low serine? Does your supplementation regimen include Magnesium? What is your choline intake like? And do you know if you have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease?

Have you had an ACTH stimulation test? For me, my morning blood cortisol is 'normal' about 6 mcg/dL. There is some controversy about how to read the ACTH stim test (also known as the short cosyntropin test). Some say that if your number doubles within an hour, you're OK, and emergency room data bears this out, I'm told. Some say that it should get to over 20 mcg/dL in the first half hour. I meet the first criteria and not the second. (Twice 6 is 12, not 20, and it takes an hour to get there.) So, the upshot of this is that I am on 6 mg of prednisone, and I am sleeping though the night now. Part of it was that I didn't have enough cortisol to keep my blood sugar stable, so I would get hypoglycemic during the night. And since I have early-onset obesity, I'm well-trained to squelch my inclination to eat any time I'm hungry. Of course, I had a whole host of other symptoms, too, which you didn't mention. But maybe it's worth getting tested or, if your doctor is willing to do an experiment with you, try taking a mg or two of prednisone before bed and see if you sleep any better. Like I said, I was at an extreme, I had been sleeping for about 1-2 hours, then up all night until 5:30 or 6 am. I took 20 mg and slept for 12 hours. I felt like a new person the next day.

Good luck on your journey to health in the New Year!

 

[seattlesounders]

Same to you C!

Very interesting info above. How did you get such precision for DHEA effect on Testosterone? Were you repeating the saliva test or doing multiple blood tests?

To answer your question on supplementation I'm good for Magnesium but borderline for Choline. Full borderline list below (according to Spectracell):

Vitamin B2
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B12
Pantothenate
Biotin
Choline
Oleic Acid
Vitamin D3
Manganese
Zinc
Selenium
Spectrox
Immunidex

I don't know if I have fatty liver, but I have had some relatives suffer Liver failure. I had a liver panel blood test but don't know if they tested for this. How is this tested?
Thanks for the tip on the ACTH test - had never heard of this and will follow up with MD!

 

[Critterina]

@seattlesounders ,

I had five blood tests for hormones during 2014 that included DHEA and testosterone, one without hormone supplementation, two with only oral DHEA, and two with oral DHEA and other hormones. I tried hormone replacement in 2013 at what was considered a low, safe starting dose - very conservative - and it was way too much. I was off it for a year. So we started at half that dose this year, cut it in half again, then went to 3x then 2x a week. If you take half my daily 2013 dose, spread it over a week, that's about right. We're still working on it, though. I have to do the math as no doctor is going to take the time to make a graph and find the slope of the line, then calculate a desired does to get to a goal. (My goal is 50% of the normal range for post-menopausal women NOT on hormone replacement, except for DHEA, where I bumped it up to 80%, since strength and stamina are so related to it for me)

So, it appears that people like me can be functionally deficient in B6 even when taking 100 mg/day of pyridoxine hydrochloride. I suspect it's something like the MTHFR or MTRR SNP, that I can't convert it to pyridoxine-5-phosphate, but I have no scientific evidence or research to refer to. It was remedied by switching to the active form, (sold a P5P because obviously the American public can't handle chemical names with multiple syllables.) I'm fine with either 50 or 100 mg of the P5P. If you supplement with B6, I would skip the run-around and just go to the active form.

Did you have a full amino acid panel (blood/serum)? If so, let's talk.

I had upper right belly pain and they did an ultrasound. My doctor was really happy because it showed that I didn't have NAFLD, so that's one way they can test for it. Maybe there's a blood test that would be less expensive/resource intensive. I asked because of the serine. Low serine can lead to low choline, and that to NAFLD. If your choline or acetylcholine was good, no worries, but choline was low...For now you can look up what foods have choline and maybe beef (liver) up your diet.

If they do the ACTH stim test and it doesn't go over 20 in the first half hour AND they tell you it's normal, you have to be a bit diplomatic, but perhaps you'll want to pursue treatment anyway. You could get a second opinion. You could check the Merck Manual and ask them about what standard they use, and why not that one. You could ask to do a one or two day prednisone experiment (very inexpensive for a couple of milligrams and overall relatively safe, although I'm not A doctor, much less YOUR doctor). It's not easy to navigate, and it's not cut and dried how to interpret the results and what to do about intermediate results..that's where the "practice" comes in to practicing medicine.

Cheers!