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Methylation protocol big problems, advice please!

PeterPositive

Senior Member
Messages
1,426
I know this is an old post, but I wonder if someone knows why methylation with a leaky gut is dangerous?

Well, methylation is something that happens in every cell of our body... so that's good and useful, especially when it's working correctly.

Trying to a improve a methylation deficit can be tricky and if one starts off heavy-handed (e.g. too high dosages) it may cause more harm than good.

The usual mantra is to "start low and slow"... crumb dosages of supplements, testing tolerance slowly and increasing doses one step at a time to see if benefits also increase.

With this said, it would also be good to determined if one really needs to improve the methylation cycle via supplements such as methylfolate & C... basic blood tests can give a rough idea of what is going on, how bad are deficiencies etc...

In regards to the leaky gut issue... that's one of the many things that can worsen if you don't go slow enough, but it can also improve by far, as I've experienced. It "only" took me 3 years, though... so patience is not an optional in most cases. :rolleyes::)

cheers
 

caledonia

Senior Member
I know this is an old post, but I wonder if someone knows why methylation with a leaky gut is dangerous?

Low potassium can definitely be dangerous for your heart.

I'm not sure why I was saying leaky gut was dangerous except maybe I was thinking it had something to do with the low potassium. But the person responded saying some supplements they were taking were actually the cause, so that was ruled out.

Leaky gut, in general, is more like a long term danger because of the inflammation it causes.
 

South

Senior Member
Messages
466
Location
Southeastern United States
If people with gut problems tried to fix those before starting any health protocol that says "fix gut problems first", they'd have a long, long wait to try most health protocols, in my opinion.

How many health protocols I've read that have a little footnote at the end "oh and if you have any gut problems, fix that first". I don't think that is realistic for those of us with those gut problems, and sometimes, the other health protocol might improve misc symptoms enough so that the person might THEN be able to try a strict fix-the-gut program, that they were not energetic enough to attempt before.
 

Johnmac

Senior Member
Messages
756
Location
Cambodia
If people with gut problems tried to fix those before starting any health protocol that says "fix gut problems first", they'd have a long, long wait to try most health protocols, in my opinion.

How many health protocols I've read that have a little footnote at the end "oh and if you have any gut problems, fix that first". I don't think that is realistic for those of us with those gut problems, and sometimes, the other health protocol might improve misc symptoms enough so that the person might THEN be able to try a strict fix-the-gut program, that they were not energetic enough to attempt before.

I went for methylation (Freddd Protocol) first, & that appears to have fixed my flaky gut.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
I want to say something about folic acid. Until you get rid of every bit of folic acid from your supplements, food products, drinks and white flour products In at least the USA. you are completely unable to know for sure how you respond. The methylfolate is needed but you can't ever know how it affects you, or not. And that isn't going to be seen until many of the other needed nutrients are had. The specific nutrient deficiency that stops the cell formation/healing is the one that has the new symptoms that pop up or worsen which is why the folates causes such a puzzle. Those are the clues one gets. If properly identified and taken care of, it leads to the next step. Otherwise it drags on not getting much better. There are 10,000 incomplete steps that each take you to another temporary collection of symptoms many of which don't feel very good until the last step completes the process for any given thing. Then it has to be maintained.
 
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Messages
87
My suggestion would be to stop all methylation supplements including your multi, and take 50-100mg of a slow release nicontinic acid form of niacin.

Take the niacin 4 times a day until symptoms settle down. In my experience it will take 4 or 5 days if you have methylation cranking pretty good.

I believe what you are experiencing is potassium/magnesium insufficiency symptoms. So you can also try supplementing with magnesium and/or potassium.

Then the question is, is this a normal amount of deficiency caused by having a higher need because you're cranking up methylation? Or is this an exceptional need caused a combination of methylation and leaky gut?

If you have symptoms of leaky gut, such as multiple food intolerances or candida overgrowth, you should stop methylation and treat the gut first or this situation can become dangerous. A 4R gut rebuilding program seems to be the best way to treat the gut.

@caledonia
I saw this and have had leaky gut/candida symptoms for years...should I stop methylation? Nothing seems to treat my gut issue so far...diet nor herbals. It's beyond frustrating. Any ideas are welcome. I just don't think my body works well enough to clear out the issues.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
The problem is that these deficiencies cause inflammation and tons of symptoms, potentially hundreds of symptoms anyway. MeCbl, AdoCbl, L-methylfolate and the individually best l-carnitine, any of which in deficiency shuts down all 4 over time and in doing so stops the ability to heal. Turning on healing then causes a multitude of contradictory seeming symptoms which amount to refeeding syndrome. As the B12 and folate starts up there is a bigger demand for nutrients than a persons body may have required in 30 years and hence the body can't supply the suddenly needed nutrients. So when I started I got increased low folate symptoms which I had all my life. Then when I started 400mcg of Metafolin it caused the most horrendous folate deficiency symptoms I have ever had with maybe one or 2 of 8 or so compartments healing and the other 6 or7 in worse folate deficiency, with a vengence. Then each time I increased l-methylfolate a few symptoms started improving and most got even worse as did low potassium. Then I added l-carnitine and suddenly had tons of energy and even more intense folate deficiency symnptpoms but fewer of them. At 4 mgs of Metafolin a day things were getting overall better, fewer different symptoms but still very intense. With each 50% increase there was some improvement. At 12mg I had days when all but 3 or 4 symptoms were very reduced. At about 18 mgs daily it began to be very few symptoms but they kept coming back. At 24mgs I had the symptpoms for about 5 days out of each 2 weeks and an extra doses got rid of them and going back to 24mg s they came back. At 28.8mg/day there were none coming back any more. I am folate deficiency symptoms free. However there were serious "methylation problem" symptoms getting worse quickly including SACD type demyelination which turned out to be copper deficiency, and then boron and manganese and molybdenum in a vary neat demonstration of refeeding syndrome deficiencies, each one corrected exposing the next layer of fewer symptoms.

I know of no way to heal without turning on cell building which can't help but cause refeeding syndrome, which is what almost everybody here is struggling with. It seems anti intuitive that fixing one deficiency just brings another to the forefront. Recognizing that allowed me to heal. The cost has been high. However, how many people do you know that are alive 23 or 24 years after congestive heart failure diagnosis? I also no longer have FMS, CFS, MCS, asthma, seasonal allergies, IBS, daily vomiting, acid regurgitation at night and so on. my kidneys have been improving since I reached 22mg or so of methylfolate. WIth my recent diagnosis of CblC disease, adult onset, it is clear that I had excess MMA and Hcy causing multi organ failure and widespread tissue breakdown. It causes (or results in) low cellular folate. which amounts to methyltrap. All these things are caused by the deadlocks in the methylation-ATP cycles. Even just folate polymorphisms can cause the deadlocks. It doesn't need anything as exotic as I have. Once the deficiencies are corrected its like people expect the struggle to be over. It isn't. The real struggle is just starting, refeeding syndrome. How much of what nutrients are needed to produce 50 pounds of new meat and to heal the rest of the body? The answer is more nutrients than your body has had to deliver of almost everything than it has had to deliver since the physical breakdown started. It can take a long time to starve to death from some vitamin deficiencies, one cell failure at a time .On the other hand scurvy and pellagra and beriberi are relatively fast which made them easy to recognize. With wholesale starvation, like concentration camps in WW2, ordinary food caused refeeding syndrome because everything was deficient.

With this kind of situation one has to start with the deficiencies that cause most of the symptoms. The deadlock quartet affects hundreds of poor methylation symptoms. In the presence of AdoCbl, MeCbl and L-carnitine, partial folate deficiency causes from dozens of symptoms to only one or two as one gets close to sufficiency. Then copper deficiency hits maybe 8 or 10 items with some of them HARD hits. Born hits only a couple of noticeable symptoms, and manganese and molybdenum each a couple of noticeable symptoms. Other people will hit things in different orders but the catch here is that each one has a smaller and smaller subsets of symptoms that look like same old with perhaps barely noticeable differences. So one deficiency might cause thin nails and hair whereas another causes brittle nails and hair. A person not paying close attention doesn't have a chance. One important thing is that as far as I can tell when one is successfully supplying the current "most limiting nutrient" the difference is noticeable in from less than an hour to as much as a one to two days with a change of symptoms patterns from day 3 or 4 onward. Also, except for excess of B1, B2, B3 and inositol causing increased low potassium and/or folate, an increase in potassium and/or methylfolate need is a real flag of something happening. So for me MeCbl cause a need for about 400-600 mg of potassium. Methylfolate caused a 1200 mg increased need. L-carnitine caused about an increase of 400-800mg of potassium, copper increased potassium need by 400mg, of boron, manganese and molybdenum increased potassium need by 200mg or so all together, each on the respective 3rd or 4th day after starting. I'm needing the most potassium now that I have ever needed except by excess b1, b2, b3 and inositol. As things complete some healing potassium need comes down a bit.

I don't know of any other method that works. For me it was a race with death or irreparable damage. I don't know of any other hypothesis that works. I had a terrible explosion and spreading from external to internal candida after an antibiotic from a dental infection threw things out of balance. The Augmentin for 10 days and/or Diflucan for a month appears to have caused liver damage, or something did and those are most likely cause, so now I'm having to deal with that. Not a single thing that I responded to, not the B12, not folate, not copper or anything came in "low", that is below bottom of range. Some were lower end of range. But if I had relied on "the usual" test results to show what was low, making my body break down, there was nothing. It's not easy. There is no magic formula. Most hypotheses turn out not to work. So one makes ones choices but can change them every few days. The correct ones generally give fast responses. The only one that I failed miserably on was glutathione but it taught me all about methyltrap, so now I can recognize it before it causes real damage. When I started having demyelination damage from the copper deficiency I was into the doctors and doing tests in a couple days and started copper the next day on theory. Within 4 hours I felt cessation of damage and in a day I felt it more, but painstakingly slow, as the references said. However, the other 3 minerals each have increased the rate of improvement very slightly, started the three at 1 a day and felt the effect of each and on the 3rd-4th day potassium need went up 200mg. I hope this helps you in figuring out what you need to do. Finding the the most limiting factors will make most everything else work better, so much better that other things become the most limit factors. Good luck.
 
Messages
87
@Freddd
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. It helps! Did you have a sensation of being swollen a lot in the beginning of upping methylfolate? The more 5mthf I take, the more I feel swollen (it may be a nerve sensation I feel, but I am also gaining weight). Is there anything you think that would treat candida safely? I agree that drugs like diflucan are harsh and dangerous. It's frightening when you get the candida diagnosis not to treat it. I have attempted treatment via diflucan in the past which I believe was unsuccessful. Last, what testing do you use for seeing what minerals you are deficient in? My doctor doesn't offer one, but I need to find a reliable one we can order. Thanks so much!
 

caledonia

Senior Member
@caledonia
I saw this and have had leaky gut/candida symptoms for years...should I stop methylation? Nothing seems to treat my gut issue so far...diet nor herbals. It's beyond frustrating. Any ideas are welcome. I just don't think my body works well enough to clear out the issues.

If you're already doing methlyation and tolerating it, it should be fine to continue. A gut program can be added on.

Here's an interesting thing that happened to me - I got the last of my mercury fillings out, and around the same time, started methylation. About a year and a half later, my autoimmune thyroiditis healed, and my gut/candida issues cleared up.

I was previously attributing this to methylation, and had forgotten all about getting that last filling out. Now I'm thinking it was more due to reducing my mercury load (or maybe a little of both)

I'm getting ready to start a Cutler style frequent dose chelation program. I tried another method which was not frequent dose, and it made several symptoms worse as just ended up redistributing more mercury.
 

Violeta

Senior Member
Messages
2,895
The original poster doesn't seem to be here any longer, but his questions made me wonder if the angina could have been brought on by CoQ10 deficiency. So I am wondering if there is a possibility that for some people, the excess additional mfolate and mB12 would have a negative effect on production of CoQ10 by in some way inhibiting the mevalonate pathway. Any ideas?

The mevalonate pathway has acetyl-CoA at the beginning of the pathway, and Acetyl-CoA needs pantethine. Pantethenic acid needs B2 enzyme for metabolism.
So a relative B2 and B5 deficiency could have been the cause of the OP's angina?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetyl-CoA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mevalonate_pathway

https://books.google.com/books?id=g...G#v=onepage&q=angina coq10 deficiency&f=false
 
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Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
@Freddd
Thanks so much for sharing your experience. It helps! Did you have a sensation of being swollen a lot in the beginning of upping methylfolate? The more 5mthf I take, the more I feel swollen (it may be a nerve sensation I feel, but I am also gaining weight). Is there anything you think that would treat candida safely? I agree that drugs like diflucan are harsh and dangerous. It's frightening when you get the candida diagnosis not to treat it. I have attempted treatment via diflucan in the past which I believe was unsuccessful. Last, what testing do you use for seeing what minerals you are deficient in? My doctor doesn't offer one, but I need to find a reliable one we can order. Thanks so much!

Hi Nikki,

In my situation, sounded similar, I had more than one thing going on. When I started MeCbl and other items, all the neuropathic areas felt stiff. I used that as a clue to do stretching. When muscles break down and become smaller, they become shorter and the feeling stiff is a real feeling instead of a paresthesia, but both can happen. Once I had healed the cardiomyopathy enough, and maybe improved my kidney problems a bit (both kinds of damage potentially caused by low AdoCbl (often with high MMA) I took off 85 pounds of water in two periods over 2 years. Then each time I went into refeeding syndrome caused folate deficiency I would start putting on water at 2-3 pounds a day. Just missing one of my daily mfolate doses is enough to trigger that. It still does that. My blood pressure lately has been around 112/75, down from higher levels for decades..

I'll tell you how I decided to try copper, and then boron, manganese and molybdenum. First, I had symptoms specific to copper deficiency and had for 5 years of worsening. Then they started worsening quickly with certain characteristic neurological symptoms. I started researching "refeeding syndrome" and found all the trace minerals on the typically needed lists. Without the methylfolate all they could go after were the minerals and potassium and phosphorous (phosphatidylcholine and such) compounds. Also, as the deadlock quartet goes back to duplicating the "miraculous" results of liver extract concentrate and that contains the whole set of trace minerals, they seemed like a good idea. My copper test came out at the low end of "in range". By the time of the return of results I had been on the copper for 5 days and had fist noticeable result in 4 hours and definite results in 12 hours. I had noticeable changes with boron in 12 hours. I had an increase in potassium need from the copper of 400mg daily and when I started the 3 items, one each day, I could feel each one of them in 12-24 hours and the 3 together increased the potassium need by another 200mg.

I did it by which symptoms were still present, a double handful with 175 or more just plain gone leaving only those from damage brought to prominence by refeeding syndrome or physical damage or Sub Acute Combined Degeneration. Also it all fit with studies of case histories and liver extract concentrate contents and results.

I took relatively small doses, each one ion turn caused a noticeable result and they all had refeeding syndrome potassium deficiency, a flag of cell formation. Everything agreed.

I am really sorry I don't know what to do about candida. This was my first experience with it and it was quite awful. Diflucan managed to stop it before it made it to my bladder or lungs. I had had an awful experience on Augmentin that was over 3 days before the candida explosion. Something in all that, most likely the Augmentin, caused me some liver damage. Perhaps candida is linked to the liver damage? I don't know but the two seemed to come together, for reasons unknown.

I have had olive leaf extract suggested for internal. Also Coconut oil cold extraction unprocessed organic etc has some anti fungal properties. I've had success with viral problems with Olive leaf extract but nothing seemed to help the candida.

My doctor suggested simply age can make us more susceptible to candida, that it is a matter of out of balance body biome caused by the antibiootic, which really kicked me hard.