Methylation Madness: Insight into the Biochemical and Personal Lives of Hypermethylators

By Dr.Terence Dulin

To methylate or not to methylate? That is the question! Methylation chemistry has received tremendous attention recently due to the discussions circling around the MTHFR gene. Methylfolate and methylcobalamin (Methyl B12) are nutrient supplements being recommended more often, as of late. Many medical conditions can possibly be exasperated due to the lack of these nutrients or improper metabolism. But are they? Understanding the reasoning behind this thought is actually one for concern. Heart disease (arterial sclerosis) and other medical conditions can be traced back to the biochemical methylation pathway. Problems with the protection of DNA can also be associated with this pathway. Mutations may, in fact, occur due to this very set of biochemical pathways. However, is it correct for everyone to be taking methylfolate and methylcobalamin (Methyl B12)? Does it match every individual's chemistry? Methylfolate and methylcobalamin are just some of the molecules that are part of this story, but not the entire answer. MTHFR is just one gene that is part of a vast and complex methylation system. In this book, the authors give a clear description for easier understanding of the who, what, and why of methylation chemistry. It brings to light the very question of a methylation issue some people may have. Through candid conversations between hypermethylators and by relating the symptoms and effects of methylation, the reader can gain a better perspective of living with the symptoms of hypermethylation within this selected group. In addition, this book provides a generalized understanding of the biochemical processes, which are the underlying causes of the symptoms of hypermethylation. Other conversations with a doctor who has expert knowledge of methylation chemistry further expounds upon this complexity. Hypermethylating people are those who should be very careful when using methylating nutrients or when eating foods which are methylating. Are you a hypermethylator?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684569922

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Methylation Madness

Insight into Biochemical and Personal Lives of Hypermethylators

Terence Dulin, DC, CTN™, DCN, FAAIM and Michelle Anglisano, M. Ed in Special Education

Copyright © 2019 Terence Dulin, DC, CTN™, DCN, FAAIM and Michelle Anglisano, M. Ed in Special Education

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2019

Cover design by Carol Ricciuti-Gomes

ISBN 978-1-68456-991-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68456-992-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

To four people now known as the sulfur sisters and sulfur brother. These four amazingly vivacious, spunky, strong-willed, highly energized, yet at inconvenient times, couch potatoes made such an impact in my life. The complete openness into their personal lives and unusual biochemistries allowed me the pleasure of putting the many years of office talk Dr. Dulin and I had about my biochemistry into words others can read and hopefully receive help from. I would also like to dedicate this book to those of you who suffer with symptoms you just can’t understand where they have come from, why they are taking over your life, and—quite possibly—why they scare you. I am living proof, as well as my sulfur sisters and brother, that with the right doctor and willingness to step into the majestic world of biochemical nutrition, you, too, can fight the methylation madness and become the person you always believed you could become.

Preface

The objective of this book is to bring about a new perspective in the understanding of nutrition. By applying conversations of individuals’ chemistries and diets to introduce alternate approaches of examining nutrition, correlations are made between disease symptoms and nutritional imbalances outside the normal medical disease models. This, in turn, will raise individuals’ awareness of the complexity, interactivity, and utilization of the building blocks of food. These exchanges will point out how mood, health, and the optimization of the body’s chemistry can support people in their day-to-day functioning. Through the conversational model of imparting information, the cowriters and readers, both professionals and laypeople alike, are given the opportunity to attain answers to common questions pertaining to biochemical nutrition. Throughout the book, alternating chapters will serve as a general reference book of biochemical nutrition, with emphasis on methylation chemistry.

Biochemical nutrition is an advanced form of nutrition utilized mostly by professionals. It is up-and-coming in the general nutrition field, according to resources being published. While the biochemistry of nutrition has been well-documented starting in the 1960s, it is initiating an effect on the general populations’ consciousness, due to modern advances in genetics and biochemical pathways. Words such as methylation, histamine, and epinephrine are presently being incorporated in nutritional and medical dialogues to professionals and laypeople alike. As this new vocabulary passes into the common language, there is a thirst for greater understanding. Google searches are now a common adjunct to medical diagnoses; however, little or no attention has been paid to the interactive functionality of these new paradigms. Since little or no information is available, the medical model of disease is attempted to be used as a template for these new concepts. The one cause, one problem model is not applicable here; understanding the interactivity of all the systems together becomes paramount to understanding nutrition as a whole. This book attempts to help people understand the interactive complexities and thereby increase awareness as to how to take care of one’s self.

I

Conversation 1: Methylation Conversation Begins

As a health-care practitioner, you earn your degrees and then start to practice. Each year you go to symposiums and other continuing education courses to keep your skills honed but, more importantly, to meet and share information with other practitioners. This gives you not only the latest advances from those people in the field, but also things that have not yet made it to the mainstream of professional consciousness or that are still in the understanding or testing phase. In fact, sometimes the topics can become quite heated, and everything from egos to genius gets involved. Practitioners are always arguing the benefit versus downside of all treatments. New proposed ways of approaching a problem are bandied back and forth between experts. Understanding the newly discovered testing protocols, along with interpretation of those tests, becomes a free-for-all until standards are actually established. Now, most of the time these arguments are behind closed doors and usually never become part of the public discourse. While it is good to not expose the public mind-set to untested and untried information, it does limit the way people can get access to new forms of treatment. These are the conversations that make my fellow colleagues and students that I know all say the same thing: I would love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation! The longer you work in a field, the more contacts you make and the more interesting work you run across. Sometimes you see things that are moderately interesting to your particular field of practice, while other times you come across information which changes the direction of your thoughts. As you mull over these new revelations, for most, myself included, new connections are made that you hadn’t looked at before. This is the eureka moment we all love to experience. These moments tend to invigorate you and add new excitement to what you are doing. Naturally, they also tend to spill over into conversations with others as you try to fit this new piece into what you do and think.

Such was the case the other day in my office. I was co-treating a patient who had as her doctor an amazing researcher/practitioner. I ended up speaking with the doctor somewhat at length. It was invigorating to speak with this incredibly astute man about something I have been tracking and attempting to fix or compensate for over the last thirty-five years. This doctor was, in fact, checking into the genetic variants that are involved in human methylation chemistry. It was indeed a pleasure to talk with him and trade views on what is going on both from the genetic perspective as well as the biochemical nutrition portion. Our conversation helped me attain a better understanding of what I was doing and gave him clinical angles that may be helpful in his pursuit of the genetics driving this and other issues. It is not often that I can have an informal discussion with a researcher who has such a command of the topic. Practitioners tend to be more of the appliers of knowledge rather than the investigators. Academics and clinical practitioners tend to have different points of view. Academics are more about absolutes rather than whole picture views. If you have the opportunity to sit down with them and have a discussion, you tend to feel like a kid in a candy store with a handful of free coupons! Now, I am privileged to have contact with many of these amazing researchers and practitioners. At symposiums for the American Association of Integrative Medicine, the American Naturopathic Medical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to just name a few, you meet everyone from Nobel Prize researchers to world-renowned doctors.

As a result, my staff is then bombarded with tons of new medical and biochemical information and seem sometimes on the brink of running away from me, to hide as I go on and on about things that are possibly interconnected. Most are registered dieticians with master’s degrees in nutrition and have an innate passion for health, but if the problem isn’t yours, then it is more informative than personal and, therefore, less interesting.

Since I love biochemical nutrition, and its applications in a clinical setting, I tend to get that need to speak to someone, to share my excitement and thoughts. As the available people became sparse, I wondered who could I speak to about this, who would want to listen and offer opinions? Generally, people who have a problem tend to be incredibly interested in all aspects of that problem. They will spend many hours researching it on the internet and in libraries. The more the problem affects them, the more they seem to have a need to know. The name Michelle came to mind. Michelle was a patient over twenty years ago and had a classic case of faulty methylation issues. Over the years we became friends, and she, being a special education teacher with a master’s degree in teaching, was always interested in the new information on methylation chemistry especially as methylation problems nearly ended her life. She was always the patient who sat in my office wanting to learn more about biochemistry as it applies to both normal and abnormal situations as well as how the biochemistry can create the symptomatology in day-to-day life. So I called her, and we began to speak about these new advances in the area of methylation chemistry. For years she had suffered from many signs that this was an issue. Over the years, we looked at the genetic implications from family blood tests to hers and made many correlations. During those years, the genetic understanding was more of a comparison to parents and siblings rather than specific testing ability. Now here was a doctor talking about having the ability to understand her problem specifically and provide an accurate test to prove it. Because she can get as excited about chemistry as I can, I thought we should talk. At least it would be someone who was as passionate about the topic as I was.

Michelle and I started to have a series of conversations about this topic. Over the course of weeks, we had conversation after conversation covering the topic. She made a comment to me about how people who have these conditions don’t have the understanding to help themselves and don’t know that by changing their diets, they could be changing their own biochemical stressors and helping themselves feel better. Since problems in metabolism can, and usually will, be aggravated by eating the wrong diet, I had to agree with her. She looked at me and said, You know, people need to understand their biochemistry, at least to a small degree. It would make a world of difference in their lives and functionality. She stated that getting this down on paper would at least give a person the information to help them control the symptoms and to understand why they have them. Still unconvinced, I told her that would be very dry and probably more like a biochemistry text than a readable book. We laughed. Yep, good sleep-inducing material for most, but I agreed that her idea could be helpful for those with this issue. Then she remarked, What about telling a story? Explain a case or a bunch of them and then include the chemistry of the people, so other people with similar problems would understand the why and how of it all. She then proceeded to ponder and think methodically, as she usually does, and said, What about using my story along with others to correlate some of the biochemical processes and symptoms in a way people could understand without being a chemist or doctor? I felt her idea was a good one because using her story would keep my dry science monotone in check, but also because, ultimately, the book would be about biochemical nutrition. We decided she would become the storyteller and investigative reporter, so to speak. She could actually sit with other people who have the same type of chemical defect as her and share the chemistry’s symptoms. Then, we could explain the biochemistry as well as help people see what it does to your body and mind. She agreed as she was interested and had never been able to really sit down with people who actually had the same issue. Over the years, I have asked her to call patients and to give encouragement to them, but not to actually sit down and talk in depth. She smiled and said, Let’s do this. I said okay to this, but I wanted it to be a conversation between us and the reader. That way the fly on the wall, so to speak, would get its due.

Our first conversation started off with Michelle asking me the basics of what exactly genetic variants were and if they have to do with family history. My answer went as such: Okay, so, genetic variations have to do with alterations as to how genes work. A gene encodes for things, like manufacturing proteins, enzymes, and other chemicals. But it can have small changes in its structure that will change how an enzyme or protein is made. Those small changes in what the activity of the enzyme does changes how it functions. This is called a genetic variant. It may mean that in those changes, an enzyme can increase or decrease its function. Let’s say an enzyme is supposed to move a chemical from point A to point B, and it can do it ten molecules at a time. If it does move the ten molecules, that is 100 percent genetic expression of that enzyme. A genetic variant may cause the enzyme to only move five at a time. That would mean that the enzyme may only have a 50 percent function, and this would change the way your physiology is working. It may change how you make a type of protein or may alter a chemical process to have a lowered ability to function. That means some things will not work as well as others. Some people can eat greasy food without any problems, while others get nausea after a few bites. Since genetics is still in its early stages, we aren’t even sure how many variants there are for each gene, and this could run into too many to actually have a number that is reliable. (See the chapter on methylation chemistry for more in-depth explanations.)

This led to Michelle stating, Explain again how my family’s genetics correlate to mine. If there are different methylation issues, how does it create the one I have? And why is methylation such an overriding factor in my genetic history?

I continued, Genetics basically set the template for many things in our body. For instance, why do we look like our family? Well, genetics encode for these things. They cause the chemicals to be produced for the hair color, eye color, muscle shape, etc., but they can also pass down a damaged or lowered functional portion, causing an issue in those proteins or physical characteristics. So, as an example, let’s say a mother has a methylation problem but the father doesn’t. Then one child will get the methylation issue and another child might not. In your case, you are one of the lucky ones to have both parents with this issue. Therefore, that gives the methylation issue to children, in different forms, but nonetheless, you got it. This is how the genetics pass good traits, long life span, low cholesterol, fast metabolism, and so on onto the next generation. However, it is also how bad traits are passed. So, again, in your case, your mom and dad have a methylation issue, but the question is who gave it to them? You once shared with me that your paternal grandma had a ‘sulfur’ issue, which back in the day meant problems metabolizing sulfur medications and sulfur-based compounds. That would mean that she passed a methylation problem down in the genetic code to your father. Why, you ask? Well, sulfur metabolism via the amino acid route does have methylation chemistry at its heart. But the question is, did someone give it to her or was it some environmental/dietary damage to her genetics that started the methylation problem to begin with? That is worth a doctoral thesis. (See chapter on methylation chemistry for more in-depth explanations.)

As we talked in this particular session, Michelle told me of both students and other friends that had, indeed, the same signs of this malfunction that had caused her to seek help many years ago. I also told her of some of the cases that I had been working on (names are never used as it would violate HIPAA laws) and, more importantly, what kind of issues they were having as it related to methyl chemistry. As she would often do, she would both question and compare the symptoms of others with her own experiences. We both laughed and cried at the effects this has on a person’s mental and physical well-being. During this conversation, she asked, Does it seem like more people are having this issue or was that just my imagination? As I thought about it, I realized that, yes, more cases appeared to be showing up in my office with this particular chemical aberration. Maybe more people are showing up here due to the failure to get an answer in other places, or it could just be that after treating people for thirty-five years and seeing fifty-thousand-plus patients, word gets around and people who have similar problems show up to a place where they think they can get help. Yet my answer to Michelle was, One possibility may just be that dietary trends change the stressors on chemistry. For instance, people suddenly discover sushi as a both social and dietary activity. This means that more methylating amino acids are now being introduced into their diet as fish contain methylating amino acids. People whose genetics encode for less than optimal methylation systems will reach overload very quickly. She laughed and said, Yeah, how about the new healthy snack for everyone, edamame, that would do a number on me and all the poor methylating people out there. She then commented on how the symptoms all seemed to be so many other things and reminisced about her own search all those years ago.

I reminded her that methylation chemistry is not a single disease but more symptoms clustered together due to the many things that it does in the body. I explained how it can produce many of the secondary symptoms that people experience even if it’s not the cause. Secondary symptoms are produced when a chemical process like methylation increases or decreases another chemical in the body, causing an effect. I began with, "So let’s say methylation chemistry changes norepinephrine [noradrenaline] into epinephrine [adrenaline]. If you methylate way too much, you get a sudden rapid rise in epinephrine [adrenaline]. That rise in epinephrine [adrenaline] will affect