= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RomeoStevens comments on Public Service Announcement Collection - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (328)
P/S/A: There's a treatable genetic mutation that half the population has which has more or less recently begun to be treated called MTHFR that causes several vitamin deficiencies (due to you not processing them into the usable forms - and it's treatable because you can take the usable form as a supplement) and homocysteine issues, and it's symptoms can range between none to raging horrible problems with depression, anxiety, IBS, fatigue, and a list of other things.
Specifics:
It reduces the body's ability to convert folic acid into the usable form, methyl folate and reduces the body's ability to convert vitamin B12 into the usable form (called methylcobalamin). This same mutation also tends to cause homocysteine levels to be too high or too low.
Caution:
Knowledge about this is kind of new, because we only mapped the genome so long ago (and figured out what this gene does, and figured out how to treat it, and began producing the supplements to treat it, etc). It can be tricky to treat. If you pursue this, you should seek a medical professional who has significant experience treating people with MTHFR.
What are the symptoms:
"Research is still pending on which medical conditions are caused by, or at least partially attributed to, the MTHFR gene mutations. From the partial list I recently went through on Medline, these are the current symptoms, syndromes and medical conditions relating to the MTHFR gene mutations" - www.mthfr.net This site lists 64 different conditions and symptoms ranging from miscarriages to schizophrenia. See Also: Disclaimer.
Disclaimer:
There's a reason I chose the symptom link above, but you should know that it is not a perfect list of symptoms. For an alternative list and an explanation about why I chose this symptom list, please see my response to Yvain about that under "the guy you're linking to".
WHOAH, this is amazing! Thank you for the summary and link.
I'm curious why you say caution is warranted given that supplemental B12 and folate are highly innocuous with doses 10x the RDA still not showing any toxicity.
Caution is warranted for a few reasons:
I've been told that the liver uses methylfolate for detoxification. If you take too much too soon, or ramp up too quickly, you will end up really feeling like hell because of the detoxification process. This may be more of a problem for people who have toxins built up in their system due to inefficient detoxification.
I've been told that methylfolate can increase your blood pressure. Your doctor may need to be monitoring this.
I've been told that if you do need all three of methylfolate, methylcobalamin and a homocysteine regulator but do not get all three, or if you get them in the wrong amounts, treatment can be ineffective (the risk here is that you will become disheartened and give up on a treatment that could have changed your life).
I've been told that if your digestive system is a mess, you may need to fix it up before the treatment will work. Once again, the risk is becoming disheartened and missing out on a useful treatment.
Other reasons I may not know about because I am not a medical professional.
You have to remember, everything is connected - your body is a system. A very, very complicated system. Change one thing over here, and there can be unforeseen consequences over there.
Unfortunately, doctors are tasked with the unrealistic expectation of learning about thousands of diseases and thousands of symptoms and trying to match each disease to each symptom... and, on top of that, all of them are complicated to treat... to be really honest, I don't think it is possible for any human to do a good job of diagnosing every disease, or treating every problem. From what I've seen, when people use the "throw a doctor at it" approach, it can fail pretty hard pretty often. What you want is the "find the exact right doctor for this specific problem" approach. Don't expect a GP to solve everything you bring to them. Instead, find someone who specializes in your set of symptoms or diagnosis and has lots of experience with it. That's much more likely to get you a functional treatment plan.