The percentage of people who have problems with folate appears to be about 20% in younger people, and 80% in older people. As you age the risk increases. This is new science, and not yet fully understood or replicated.
I've always believed that there's a certain capacity for our body to heal itself... but that it's got limitations. And at some point, the stresses, the toxins, the lack of nutrition, etc.... (varies by person, of course) exceeds that capacity. At this point, the body can't keep up with the stresses we put it under and things start going wrong. It is entirely possible that as we age, the folate builds up and builds up and the body is ok with it to a point, but by the time we're past a certain capacity level, it now starts having issues.
I'm never going to find the direct link to the stats I'm about to share, but it might be another potential implication. The rate of MTHFR in the population is actually quite high even when we only test for the two most common genes. But if we only look at those two genes, we can't possibly tie them directly to health issues that might be methylation issues - often misdiagnosed as ME/CFS... because it's not a big enough picture and there are hundred's of thousands of people with MTHFR defects who aren't ill.
I used Genetic Genie to get the bigger picture as a result of my 23andme testing... and one of the stats I read on mthfrsupport.net was that (in general) if you have 5 or fewer of the X number of genetic defects identified to date that can impair methylation or detoxing processes; that those folks will tend to start having memory issues, fatigue, intolerances, etc around their 80's. Well, lets face it.... lots of folks start suffering health issues and memory issues, etc in their 80's... that's almost 'typical' and most of them don't necessarily seek out treatment or diagnosis - they blame it all on getting old and cope as best they can. This almost exactly describes my Maternal Grandmother and Paternal Grandmother (maternal grandfather died young of heart attack and paternal grandfather died young-ish of cancer).
If you have between 5 to 10 genetic defects in these genes, that you tend to get ill in your 60's... lots of these do try to seek out diagnoses, some blame some of the symptoms on aging... guess it depends on how bad they get how quickly... without being able to test my mother - I can guarantee that she had at minimum 4 genetic defects (and likely a few more) because I have four genes in the pathway that I have homozygous defects on - so she HAD to have passed those four on to me; as well as likely the rest of them. My father died young from blood clot complications after an injury. My mothed pass at 75 after dealing with chronic pain, chronic fatigue for about a dozen years. She did get diagnosed with Fibromyalgia based on pressure points (which honestly? Feels like a crappy way to diagnose someone) but did not get any relief from any treatments offered for Fibromyalgia. I truly believe she was misdiagnosed. And I was just learning about methylation issues before she passed and did start getting some relief from starting methylcobalamin.
If you have between 10 to 20 genetic defects - that you tend to get ill in your 40's. Not sure how this is counted, and let's face it, I doubt the studies are overly conclusive at this point or moding western medical science would be paying more attention. But, if you count unique genes, I'm at 12 and if you count the homozygous defects as 2, then I'm at 16 - so I fall into this category. And sure enough, my health issues started when I was 39 and got way worse very quickly thereafter.
More than 20 defects? You get sick much younger.
I almost wonder how common the more than 20 defects are... and if that might not account for the 20% of folks who have trouble with folate at a younger age.... and how often that rate increases as you hit each of these age brackets and comparing that to the number of defects. It might actually paint a better picture. And I do think it also fits into the concept I have that our body's ability to handle the folate decreases with age because our internal healing capacity gets a little maxed out. It would also be interesting to compare societies that don't supplement with folic acid in their refined grains with similar diets otherwise (like comparing US/UK) and finding folks with similar genetics and see how often folks might be getting ill sooner with the mandated folic acid? It might not be a direct link... but I bet there are some interesting stats that could be helpful to start digging deeper.
