Methylation Cycle

The Methylation cycle is a biochemical pathway that occurs in every cell of our body as well as the liver and the fluid supplying the brain. This chemical process takes place billions of times. Methylation takes nutrients and vitamins and minerals from our food to make the necessary energy that our cells need to keep us healthy, as well as balance our mood, remove toxins and fight infections.

However not everyone has a perfect methylation process. You may have genetic mutations which are called SNPS which stands for Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms. A polymorphism is defined as an occurrence of two or more forms of the phenotype. We will call them SNPS for short. Genes contain instructions for making the protein including enzymes. When the instructions in the gene are wrong
the protein is made differently and does not function as well as it should.

The Genes have guanine, adenine, thymine or cytosine. So a Normal Gene might be C677C this would be the normal gene associated with MTHFR with Cytosine attached. However the gene could be mutated and could have thymine attached to it instead of the normal cytosine, and would look like this C677T. This gene would be mutated and so would not produce the correct protein or enzyme necessary to have good methylation.

Both parents contribute to your individual gene pool so you get one from your mother and one from your father. If your mother and father both possess the gene you will also possess the gene. If that gene happens to be mutated you will have that gene. If you have both genes from the mother and father your gene would look like this C677T+/+ meaning both your parents gave you the gene. This is called homologous. If the gene looks like this C677T+/- that would mean that only one parent had the defect (+) and one did not have the defect(-). This would be called heterologous. When a gene is mutated, it can cause multiple problems, especially as you age or are exposed to environmental issues. Accord-
ing to Dr. James Roberts (Heartfixer) the more the defects in your genotype, the more likely it is that you will increase your susceptibility to infection and toxicity and the greater your risk for age related degenerative diseases states. Perhaps this is why certain disease states run in families, the genotype. Many researchers feel that defects in methylation increase the possibility of you developing a disease condition. Increased research is being done on the methyl cycle and its various disease or disorders. However nothing is a direct cause but rather a product of your environment, lifestyle and genotype.

Understanding the methylation cycle starts with thinking of a place where everyone’s job depends on someone else doing their own job correctly. Now imagine if one person doesn’t make the right piece or it is slightly off. The next person can’t use it or can use it but not completely. Now imagine that there is a worker who makes it too fast for the other person to keep up the pace. What about the person who makes it too slow. Trouble can happen in these scenarios that are exactly what happens in your body as it tries to maintain homeostasis.
The pathway of Methylation manages or contributes to a wide range of crucial activities and each cycle has a specific duty or responsibility in the body including:

• Detoxification
• Immune function
• Maintaining DNA
• Energy production
• Mood balancing
• Controlling inflammation

All of these processes help the body to respond to stress, infections, toxins and the body’s own genetic susceptibility. When the environmental factors overwhelm the body’s ability to deal with them, we develop diseases or health conditions. Some of the diseases researchers feel we develop because of faulty methylation are:

It is important to remember that none of these genes cause a specific disease but rather play a role in predisposing you to disease in general. The more methyl cycle defects in your genome the greater is your susceptibility to toxicity, infections and age related diseases. These diseases are age related but may occur earlier in you if you have methyl defects. It is our genotype specifically the status of genes making up our Methyl cycle that make us more or less susceptible to environmental influences of toxins, stress and microbes.

With the mapping of the human genome we have not only discovered how methylation causes problems but also how to fix them. We can clear the pathways and create better methylation for our bodies.

Methylation is exceeding complex, so let’s look at the vitamins and minerals that are important in methylation. They are folate, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin B2, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1 Thiamine, Vitamin E succinate, and Vitamin C. The minerals to examine include boron, magnesium, ferrous iron and potassium. Looking at these vitamins and minerals can be a great first step in supporting your bodies
methylation processes.