Hi, Velha, Sunday and the group.
I'm very interested to learn that treating your methylation cycle led to improvement in gut function.
I would really like to understand the cause and effect "tree" in the pathogenesis of CFS better.
The best treatment sequence is not easy to determine even if one knows the sequence in the pathogenesis, because there can be interactions.
For example, the development of a partial methylation cycle block may be what leads to the gut dysfunction in many cases. However, when the gut dysfunction has developed, it can lead to poor digestion and absorption of substances that are important to get the methylation cycle running again, such as amino acids. So even though the methylation cycle block may have led to the gut dysfunction, it may be necessary in some cases to work on the gut first. In other cases, the gut may still be working well enough to bring in enough of the essential nutrients, and in those cases, of which yours might be two, fixing the methylation first works well.
Yesterday I had a conversation with Dr. Richard Kunin, the president of the Orthomolecular Health-Medicine Society, a person who has studied methylation issues for many years. He pointed out to me that when methylation goes down, one of the first things to suffer is the exocrine pancreas function, i.e. the part of the pancreas that normally produces digestive enzymes. I did a little literature searching, and he appears to be right. That might be one way (or maybe it's
THE way) that a partial methylation cycle block leads to gut dysfunction. When you can't digest food for lack of digestive enzymes, I think the bacteria are going to respond by consuming the food and overgrowing. This may account for low chymotrypsin or pancreatic elastase in some of the stool tests from PWCs that I've seen. In the past, I've suspected that this might be due to low stomach acid production, which would lead to lack of a signal to excrete the digestive enzymes from the pancreas when the food moves into the duodenum. But maybe the problem really is with the pancreas itself, because of the methylation cycle block. Sorry to be thinking out loud here, but you've got me going!
So it's very interesting to me that you have had this result.
I do think, though, that some of the treatment failures with the methylation cycle treatment have been due to poor absorption of nutrients that are essential to methylation cycle operation. I'm particularly concerned in this regard about the people who report that they cannot maintain their weight, and are continuing to lose. I think this usually means problems in digestion and/or absorption, and in these cases, I think that the gut needs to be dealt with first, or the person will eventually need to be fed through a picc line, as has been used for some of those reporting to the "A New Day" forum.
Rich
P.S. I just read Velha's later post indicating that weight loss was a problem. Hmmmm.
