If you feel sicker when you take all the right vitamins, you may have genetic mutations that have been activated by your illness!
Gene mutations are where a good gene in your DNA was altered (mutated) by microbial or environmental toxins. Mutations in genes can either have no effect, alter the product of a gene, or prevent the gene from functioning properly or completely.
“Due to the damaging effects that mutations can have on genes, organisms have mechanisms such as DNA repair to prevent or correct (revert the mutated sequence back to its original state) mutations.” (Bertram J (2000). “The molecular biology of cancer”. Mol. Aspects Med. 21 (6): 167–223.)
There is a huge movement in the chronic illness arena revolving around finding and taking fistfuls of supplements to address the 40 different types of gene mutations, such as MTHFR, which is one of the best studied mutation sites. MTHFR is short for Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, an enzyme in the body that is responsible for helping your body break down and metabolize proteins correctly.
When you eat protein, your digestive processes need enzymes like MTHFR in order to break the protein down into various amino-acids. One of these amino-acids is a rather large one called Methionine, which breaks down into Homocysteine, which can breakdown further into Cysteine and Taurine, which both go on to feed the brain.
The problems in the chronically ill person seems to be be that there are about 40 different ways the MTHFR-enzyme gene is not expressing correctly. This makes the amino-acid called Homocysteine to not be able to convert to Methionine correctly.
As a molecule, Homocysteine is like slivers of glass. Normally your body should instantly convert Homocysteine into Cysteine and Taurine, or go back to Methionine. With MTHFR problems your body cannot get the Homocysteine to convert, and therefore it accumulates in the body.
As you can imagine it is not a good thing to have slivers of glass, even small slivers, streaming through your body. Massive irritation of the tissues happen as the Homocysteine molecules slice their way through your blood vessels and organs.
ALMOST all chronically ill people, whatever the diagnosis, have problems from high Homocysteine. that is most often undetectable with blood tests. The multitude of symptoms that can be set up from this one situation has lead conventional doctors to place people on handfuls of complex vitamin combinations.
Before you go running out to have your genes tested for this problem, remember this…taking vitamins and supplements to respond to the changes caused by this gene mutation is only going to treat the symptoms, which can make you feel better, but will not fix the cause…the epigenetic expression and genetic mutations that are causing the problems.
That is what our doctors are working on…addressing the causes, not just reacting to the downstream symptoms with a lifetime of vitamins and supplements. If you recall from the quote in the third paragraph, there are mechanisms within the healthy human body that are designed to repair these mutations. It is our goal to facilitate these natural repair mechanisms to eliminate these mutations.
Most people would say they enjoyed a very healthy life…until they didn’t. That same you is often still in there, we just have to help it come out again!
As you can see, this is a big topic. Stay tuned for more on what we do to help your body correct these MTHFR issues.