methylfolate side effects

[pslmt]

HI, (I have PA) I tried taking a multi with methylfolate 400mcg. I took it for 3 days and felt trouble sleeping, a little anxious. I know these are side effects. Does anyone have experience with taking methylfolate? Because I have MTHFR and I know I have methylation issues, maybe this is why Im so sensitive to it?? Can I get enough folate by just eating a lot of greens?

[Gambit62 Administrator]

MTHFR affects your ability to methylate vitamins - mainly B9 folate - but can also slightly affect B12.

Methylfolate doesn't always seem to help - seems to depend on what variants you have - really seems to cause a lot of problems if you have two copies of C677T (homozygous) - but there are also other genetic variants that don't necessarily respond well to methylated forms of vitamins so having one of those can also affect things - I'm not an expert by any means and not sure that there actually are experts on how variants in different genes interact overall - still quite early days on that.

Best form of folate is definitely food so try that. You could also try plain old folic acid - MTHFR reduces the efficiency of the methylation process but doesn't stop it entirely so you can still convert but just that you might need to have more in your blood to convert all that you need.

[Jeast]

I used methylfolate 800 mcg without side effects when taking b12 tablets, but since I've been injecting, it makes me feel just unwell overall. I stopped taking it for a couple of weeks and used Sam e as methyl donor for methylation. Trying to add the folate back in, found I had to crush the tablet. Roughly an eighth of the tablet is all I've been able to take without getting sick. I'm gradually increasing. There's a lot of folks discussing this in depth at forums.phoenixrising.me/ind...

(Couldn't grab just the home page so put folate in the search box when you get there). Massive amount of info about methylation and b12 so don't get discouraged.

I'm eating greens too, but my folate was 4 something the last time it was tested. Malabsorption issues may interfere with use of dietary folate?

I'm hetero for c677t and there are a number of other errors that affect folate. Check tcn2, mthfd1, slc19a1, prickle.

[seamail57]

Funny, I was just about to post a very similar question ! I too, have been experiencing insomnia since taking Jarrow methyl folate. Think I might switch back to Thorne Research B complex for my folate needs instead....

[Hidden in reply to seamail57]

I think Thorne is methyl folate. They usually only do the active forms seamail57 .

[seamail57 in reply to Hidden]

Yes indeed, however I seemed to tolerate this better than the 400 mcg pure methylfolate i was taking.....

[Hidden in reply to seamail57]

You mean adjusting dose or just taking folate with no other b vitamins? It's always recommend that you take a b complex and not single b vitamins as you can knock the other b vitamins out of balance. That would make you feel worse seamail57 .

[seamail57 in reply to Hidden]

The Thorne's B complex has less folate in it, and as you say has other required B vitamins in it rather than the other product I was using which just had methylfolate and nothing else ....

[Hidden in reply to seamail57]

Thanks for clarifying. I hope that you continue to improve health wise.

[Hidden]

I think that you will find this link very helpful. When you start to power up the methylation cycle with active b vitamins you can get a detox reaction. Hence , feel worse and as Dr myhill says in this article some people don't sleep as well at first. This happened to me and has settled down. I appreciate that everyone is different and I'm not a Dr so I can't advise you to persist or abandon it. Just giving you some info from a Dr experienced on the subject. She advises people having side effects to take it slowly and reduce dosage.

drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/CFS_-_T...