Apropo, I know Lynch is associate with Seeking Health which sells vitamins. I do find he has condensed a lot of research into more understandable bits for those of us without PhDs. In fact his advice is to go low and slow when adding methylated supplements, and he says he does not personally take B vitamins daily for his methylation variants. So, I put him the category of maybe being pretty pragmatic about the whole vitamin thing.
When I first found out I was homozygote for C677T (and had variants on other methylation-related genes), my doctor focused on supplementing methylated B vitamins. He started testing for homocysteine, still does. I'd say my doctor is definitely agenda free (he doesn't make money on vitamins). And I do now restrict my animal protein somewhat to keep homocysteine in check, because I'm still adjusting amounts to find the right levels of the B vitamins to avoid side effects. It's a balancing act to find the right mix.
So, I found out the hard way that changing my diet from mainly plant protein and carbs (legumes and grains) to increasing my animal protein (to work on IBS problems) without supplementing methylated folate raised my homocysteine.
If you want to know why homocysteine is bad, check out the article below.
That said, apod correctly points out that the lack of C677T enzymatic activity gets one in "trouble" because the dietary folate from greens do not get converted as completely to the active form, and eventually homocysteine builds up because those co-factors are missing. Using methylated folate will bypass the underperforming enzymatic dietary folate conversion and supply the necessary active versions to convert homocysteine back to methionine. Without supplying the right amount of methyl folate, eating an excess of animal protein will lead to high homocysteine. What's an excess? This is an N=1 and I track my homocysteine levels pretty closely to know.
Here's an image from
DNA methylation, a hand behind neurodegenerative diseases
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/ ... 00085/full
Methylation-frontiersin-org.jpg
ps. Bear with me on the methylation info - this image isn't as complete as I'd like, so I'm still working on finding a good one that has the gene names and co-factors from a reputable source but still understandable...and yes I know about heartfixer and Yasko's stuff. No need to post them because they are not what I'm looking for.
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