First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

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ChipW
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

Post by ChipW »

I bought a bunch of methylfolate, and betaine after getting a homocysteine level of 12 on my last blood work.
I wish i had heard of masterjohn before i did. Looks like i should of bought creatine, alpha-gpc and glycine.

Maybe try all of them?

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SusanJ
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

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ChipW wrote:Maybe try all of them?
I follow Masterjohn's advice to use extra creatine, phosphatidylcholine and glycine on most days, but also take the B regimen daily (400 mcg methylfolate, 500 mcg B12, 2.5 mg B6 and 500 mg TMG aka betaine). Mine went from 10.4 with B vitamins at higher levels, to under 7 with the addition of creatine, phosphatidylcholine and collagen peptides (which contain glycine) and B vitamins at lower levels.

Unless methylfolate gives you side effects, IMHO, it's likely going to be part of what ends up working. Any MTHFR, MTHFD1 or SLC19a1 variants might be at play for you, and all effect conversion of dietary folate to the active version and transport into cells. Make sure your B12 is in normal ranges, or supplement, because it is also needed to recycle homocysteine. TMG and choline supplementation depend on several snps in the choline pathway (you can search for our prior discussions). Or check out the methylation wiki if you want to know more genetic details.
ChipW
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

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Thank you, Susan. I have one of the MTHFR mutations, but can't recall the specific one at the moment. I will dig through my foundmyfitness report later. I think i will add the additional supplements until my next blood work in 4 months. Ill keep taking the methylfolate, it doesnt cause any side effects. Honestly, i didnt have any symptoms of bad methylation before other than the high homocysteine scores.

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Rainbow
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

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ChipW wrote: I think i will add the additional supplements until my next blood work in 4 months. Ill keep taking the methylfolate, it doesnt cause any side effects.
Hi ChipW, when you get your next bloods back, please feel welcome to post an update :)

I'm currently taking 1 mg methylcobalamin a day, and it doesn't seem to be causing me any side effects. The brand I use is Jarrow, which I selected because the lozenges contain 0.5 mg methylcobalamin each, so I can dial back on the dose if needed. I'm going to continue on the methylcobalamin for a while and then add folate.

I will test again before trying any Masterjohn strategies. My impulse is to try everything at once, but if I do that, I'm pretty sure I'll end up feeling confused about what works and what doesn't. Although I clearly need to do whatever I can to lower my homocysteine, I don't want to pour my money/energy down a black hole drain of supplements/protocols without knowing whether it's worth it, and to what extent the various components are doing their job!
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

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For what it's worth, my functional medicine doctor had me take TMG to quickly reduce my homocysteine (which I recall was 10.4), and it worked like a charm. I began working with this doctor several months after I had started taking sublingual B12, followed methylfolate and B6, so I don't know what my homocysteine was before I started the B vitamins, but it was almost certainly higher. I have no idea if there is a downside to TMG, but I believe that some people take it temporarily while waiting for the B vitamins to kick in.
~Anna
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ChipW
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

Post by ChipW »

Masterjohns suggested doses seem really high. 3 grams of creatine, 3grams and up of glycine and 1200mg of choline.
Susan, how much do you take of those 3? I saw your doses for the B vitamins

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SusanJ
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

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ChipW wrote:Susan, how much do you take of those 3?
First you need to know that I'm very petite - 5'6" and 112 pounds - and tend to take much lower amounts than any recommended doses for anything.

Creatine - 2-3 grams most days. If you get micronized creatine, it's about a half teaspoon.

Glycine - about 2700 mg most days, through one serving of Great Lakes Collagen Hydrolysate.

210 mg phosphatidylcholine (PC), every other day - from one Now Sunflower Lecithin softgel.

I have not retested since I switched to every other day for the PC, so will have to see what effect it has on my homocysteine to cut that in half.
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Rainbow
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

Post by Rainbow »

Quick update: I'm currently taking 1 mg methylcobalamin and 0.8 mg methyl-tetrahydrofolate. I usually split the B12 into two doses of 0.5 mg per day, because I heard Masterjohn talking about an upper limit on how much B12 you can absorb at a given time. Should I be doing the same with the folate?

Also, regarding folate side-effects, I seem to be doing fine. It's hard to judge, because my mood, sleep and stress levels have been fluctuating a lot recently. Factors like starting grad school, adjusting to a new environment/job and struggling to make friends have definitely been taking their toll, but I wouldn't say I've been feeling more anxious — rather, more melancholy and "down". I'm not sure if this could also be a potential side-effect of folate.
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Rainbow
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

Post by Rainbow »

I'm relieved to report that after taking 1 mg methylcobalamin and 0.8 mg methyl-tetrahydrofolate for the past few months, my homocysteine has dropped from 18.9 umol/L to 5.8 umol/L.

The testing conditions were slightly different: this time, only a ~12 hour fast, as opposed to the previous ~20 hour fast. In addition, the results were analyzed by a different company (Quest). Is such a huge change possible? (It's also making me wonder about the effects of fasting on methylation.)

In addition to the supplementation, I've recently been much less restrictive about how I eat. This is because I'm working on healing from amenorrhea. At the moment, I usually eat in a 12-hour window, but I'm not strict about it at all. I got my period for the first time in six months on 31 December.
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Re: First Blood Results: Very High Homocysteine

Post by Julie G »

I'm relieved to report that after taking 1 mg methylcobalamin and 0.8 mg methyl-tetrahydrofolate for the past few months, my homocysteine has dropped from 18.9 umol/L to 5.8 umol/L.
Kudos!
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