MTHFR with Dr. Rawlins

And I turn my camera on just so you can see who I am. But what we do find is that if I have it on, it sometimes can delay the pictures and so forth. So when I get started with the slides, I'm going to go ahead and turn it off. I'm an OB-GYN physician, but my undergraduate was in biochemistry. This is some genetic stuff that came out really in 2005-2006 that has answered a lot of questions we've had over the years, and more and more it's answering more questions.

So initially, it was thought that MTHFR was the big one, but it turns out it's just one of many. It's really about how genetics and the environment work together so we can understand the problems and treat them much better. So, all right, with that, we will get started. Again, genetics and the environment, and this is really how you can improve that by using some nutritional supplementation and also being aware of certain things that increase your risk and avoiding them.

It is complex information, and I know some people are like, "Well, this is way too much," but part of what I'm trying to do is help you understand this has a lot of good basic science behind it. There are two major pathways that affect a lot of our health problems: one is called methylation, and the other is called the glutathione pathway. Involved in those pathways are many of the things that we consider toxins today, like the plastic stuff, and BPA affects these pathways.

What we've been able to determine is that there are a number of nutritional supplements that really help improve the symptoms and also help in removing toxins. This is a slide just to kind of put a lot of the information you hear out there in perspective. Genomics is the study of your DNA, but just because your DNA says one thing, it's affected by something called epigenomics, or the regulation of your DNA. Then it has to get transcribed into RNA and then into enzymes and proteins. What really affects you is the metabolism that is made by all of those things ahead of time.

We've been able to do some of the other studies; we can do people's genetics, and we can do their proteins and check those, but it's really the metabolites that seem to affect it the most. What's interesting is that I may have genetics that predispose me to certain problems, but that can be modified by getting sunlight, by different medications, by diet, by the gut microflora, and by toxins.

What we had hoped initially was going to be really simple turns out it's not all that much. When we look at the metabolism just of folic acid, folic acid is crucial for every step in the body pretty much. But when we give somebody folic acid, it has to go through all of these steps to become L-methylfolate, and if it doesn't get there, it's a problem. This enzyme defect then affects this last step. The other things that affect this last step are mercury, lead, and the plastic stuff called BPA.

So if you've got a bad gene and environmental toxins, it blocks your ability to make methionine, which is your protein synthesis, and then it blocks your ability to fight off viruses. It also blocks your ability to make things like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which I'm going to show you in the next slide. All of this methylfolate is crucial to making BH4, which then helps with making all of your nerve transmitters: serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and melatonin, which is why it affects sleep.

The other things that we've discovered over the years is that if you don't get enough methylfolate in the brain, and it only gets into the brain if it's in that methylfolate stage, you think about all the things that block it to get there. If it doesn't get into the brain, then you have impaired healing; your nerves don't work very well, you can damage your DNA, and so you age faster. It can damage the blood vessels in your brain, which causes seizures and strokes and those kinds of things.

So it's a big deal, and if we can figure out ways to bump up the methylfolate in your brain, we can heal many of these problems, and that's really what's happened. The data now on it is very good. When we first got this in 2006, the data was pretty good, but now we have really good data on how we can improve your health.

The other thing is that we're trying to get methylfolate, and we go, "Well, maybe if we just give really high doses of folic acid, we can just push it to the methylfolate." The problem with that is high doses of folic acid will block the receptors and not let the methylfolate in, and the methylfolate is the only one that can get into the brain and do any good. So what we have to do then is give high doses of the methylfolate to counteract the folic acid that's in our food.

That's hard to pull that out of, and so what we end up doing is giving high doses of this L-methylfolate, and then it outcompetes the folic acid that's hanging around. But this also means when you have a folic acid test, it can be really high, but what's in the brain can still be low. You know, when this started out, we started out with one gene defect on MTHFR, and then we started out with two. By 2009, we had 70 different mutations, and the ones that are tested for are just the two common ones.

But then we realized that there's a lot more to it than we thought. The next step is this MTR, and the step after that is MTRR, and they're also important in disease. You can be normal in the common ones but still have defects as you go along. So it's important to understand that anymore just getting a blood test doesn't really give you the picture of what you need to do to get better.

So who's at risk for it? Well, people with depression—we found out that depression was a big factor in this—and also people who are exposed to the plastic stuff, the BPA, and the heavy metals, which is all of us. As I mentioned, if you do a blood test for folic acid or B12, they may be normal or even high, but it's measuring the inactive form, and it doesn't reflect what's actually gotten into the cell.

So what this got approved through the FDA back in 2006 for depression, anxiety, memory loss, nerve pain, and high-risk pregnancy. So it had good data in 2006 for these conditions, but it turns out it has much better data now and even data for other conditions as well. The other things that can affect it are things like fibromyalgia, which is a disruption in these two pathways: the methylation and the glutathione pathway, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, migraines, bipolar, schizophrenia, autism, and then a number of pregnancy-related problems, including birth defects.

The other interesting thing that came out in the last—well, two years ago in 2020—was that this is one of the pathways related to COVID-19 and other viral illnesses. We realized that some of the stuff we were doing to help with this in other conditions also helped with COVID-19. These are conditions that, if we treat this methylation pathway, we can dramatically improve the symptoms. Without treatment, people with this deficiency are prone to infections, and they also are more prone to retaining the environmental toxins, the heavy metals, and the BPA because this is the pathway that clears them.

So who's going to benefit? Well, if you look at genetics, we have about 70% of the people in the U.S. that have at least a partial defect in this pathway, but all of us are exposed to toxins that will affect this pathway. So it's really something worth looking at for everybody. Again, low methylfolate means you get low serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and low glutathione. Well, glutathione is needed for memory, and it's needed to—glutathione is in every cell and organelle in the body. If your glutathione's low, you're in trouble health-wise, and it's worth trying to get that.

The other thing is that there's something called BH4, and it's called BH4 because some people have trouble saying tetrahydrobiopterin. Can you imagine? Well, that's what protects your nerves. Without it, if your BH4 is low, you tend to have more nerve pain. The other things that make you at risk for low methylfolate are a whole list of drugs. I named a few: metformin, birth control pills, and methotrexate. A whole host of diseases—the big ones are diabetes, thyroid, Crohn's disease, and kidney. Then lifestyle factors like smoking, alcohol, and toxin exposure. Some of us, you know, sometimes we're working with things that create a big exposure.

Then aging, and it turns out I haven't figured out how to solve this one yet. As you get older, you need more of the methylfolate to keep your levels the same. We talked about the MTHFR, but the MTRR and the MTR. I say that because I'm not sure you want to remember the names, but the idea is that it's not a single gene; it's multiple genes. Obesity is associated with the toxins, and so those all contribute to the risk factors.

If you look at just environmental toxins in general, there are lots of them out there, and they don't necessarily do a lot of human exposure because they go, "Well, we're not giving them to humans." But when they do the environmental toxin surveys and see what people absorb, there are a lot of them that they didn't expect the chemicals to be absorbed, but they are, especially in things like hair products. It absorbs directly through the skin, and we know that chemical exposures contribute to cancer and problems with pregnancy, diabetes, thyroid, and then a whole host of neurologic problems like fibromyalgia and Parkinson's.

In fact, when I was first learning about this, I learned that the way they get rats for testing Parkinson's drugs is they take a hundred rats, give them one dose of a pesticide, and a hundred percent of the rats get Parkinson's. Then they ship them off, and they get to test their new drug. I'm like, "Maybe you were studying the wrong thing. How do we get rid of the pesticides that seem to cause Parkinson's in humans?"

The metabolic chronic fatigue-type symptoms—I just wanted to mention real quick with autism that when they looked at the genetics, most kids with autism have one of the two major MTHFR genes. It's really this idea of genetic exposure, our genetic predisposition, and then the environmental exposure. If you look at, okay, well, then we're exposed to heavy metals, most of us get heavy metals in our water because the water systems will take out some but not all of them. If your body can clear them, great, but if it can't, then you have more problems.

The other thing is that some waters that are used to grow foods—there was an instance in Southern California where they were using fracking water because there was a water shortage to grow their organic kale. Well, it absorbed a whole bunch of heavy metals, which then caused disease if you were eating a lot of kale.

So the other things that it can cause are a whole host of things, but a lot of neurologic things: depression, schizophrenia, fatigue, memory loss, and hearing loss, as well as nerve pain and nerve symptoms, as well as GI problems, diarrhea, colon cancer, liver problems—so a whole host of things that we—and gray hair, like me. I have gray hair.

We know that heavy metal toxicity is prevalent and that it causes diabetes. We know that bisphenol A, or BPA, is prevalent and it causes diabetes and causes a lot of the environmental toxin problems that we have. A lot of thyroid disease in women causes problems with ovulation and something called endometriosis.

Now I've told you all these horrible things. What can I do about it? What should I do about it? Well, since a lot of people have these kinds of problems, what I want to do now is just present some simple things that you can do. Most of them are fairly inexpensive and over-the-counter, and some of them are more expensive, but for a lot of people, they make a big difference.

The first thing is there's no substitute for good nutrition. You can't eat hamburger, French fries, and not see a green vegetable ever and still get all of the nutrients you need. So you need to eat a variety of foods, and we're going to talk about some of the nutritional supplements. A lot of that helps with your pathway that clears the toxins.

Then you also want to say, "Okay, what do I have that may be contributing?" Sometimes, you know, microwaving in plastic is a problem. The other thing they've found is that the mercury fillings slowly release toxins into your body, and if you can clear them, great; you don't have a problem. But if you can't clear them, then they tend to build up.

As for DNA testing, what DNA tests should you do? Well, most of the time, none, because you try these nutritional things we're going to talk about, and the majority of the time, it will take care of it. Since the factors are not just genetic, they're also associated with the toxins, doing the testing only picks up the genetics and doesn't pick up the toxins. We're hoping down the road we can get a better test, and we can be much more specific in our recommendations, but for now, this works pretty well for the vast majority of people that try it.

The other guidelines to reduce toxins are you want to have filtered water. Even if the water's filtered at your city water system, a lot of times it picks up additional toxins over the distribution lines. Filtering your water at the place where you fill up your water bottles is helpful. The other thing is that even the plastic that says it's BPA-free is still plastic, and it usually has BPS, BPF, which are about as bad, but they don't have as big of a reputation.

You want to drink out of stainless steel and glass water bottles. You really want to eat as organic as you can, and you want to wash your fruits and vegetables. There are some cleaners for fruits and vegetables that have grapefruit oil in them that helps clear out any pesticides or toxins that are on your fruits and vegetables. You want to cook with glass in the microwave, and the non-stick pans seem to be a problem.

The other thing that's been fascinating over the last 40 years is the data on using a sauna. A lot of this came out of Norway, where everybody's got a sauna. You could cut the risk of heart disease in half, Alzheimer's by three-fourths, and stroke by two-thirds just by using the sauna four days a week. Then you want to use organic cleaners and no synthetic fragrances because those are hard for your body to clear.

Also, HEPA filters—NASA did some interesting studies with the space station. It's a pretty confined environment; you can't open up the window and air it out. They were noticing there were some toxins from all of the things in the space station, and they studied plants that would pull the toxins out of the air. So I've become more green at having plants.

Dietary fruits and berries tend to be really good. Mathematics, doing things that keep your brain organized, helps. Piano, classical music, exercise, and participating in structured music. Now, some of my friends that did rock band—not much of their music was structured, so the studies were in. If you're doing music, it will help with some of the symptoms.

Those are the environmental factors that can improve things, even though your genetics and environmental toxins are a problem. Now, as I talk about these just one at a time, don't start ten things all at once. You do want to drink or cook with filtered water. I'm going to discuss N-acetyl cysteine, glutathione, methyl B12, and methyl folate, and I list the doses that I typically start with for an adult.

I've changed the order now because, in my mind, this N-acetylcysteine is huge. It's very important; it's also over-the-counter and pretty cheap. What they found was that if you used N-acetylcysteine, it prevented COVID, treated COVID, and treated the long COVID symptoms. The FDA last fall, or in the fall of 2020, said, "Well, this works really well; maybe we should make it prescription." Oh yeah, that's a good idea.

Amazon quit selling that in May of 2021, and there's a big discussion—a healthy discussion—on whether or not they should make it a prescription because if it's over-the-counter and has been over-the-counter for 40 years, you know we don't make much money on that, which drives me crazy. But nonetheless, I mentioned glutathione was important. NAC helps with glutathione, but it's not its only function, so you need NAC. It's an essential amino acid, and in fact, there's a book out that's 500 pages of research on N-acetylcysteine and what it's used for.

To give you just an example, here's a list of the things that are out there that it works for, and they rate how good the evidence is. In fact, I realized I haven't updated this slide because depression now has level A evidence. A is the best, and basically, it says that it works, and it works really well. One of the interesting ones I found was the Marine Corps uses it to prevent hearing loss when they get loud noises.

Another fascinating one was this hair pulling, nail biting, and skin picking. It's the only thing that's been shown to help, and it works really well. I've had a lady in her 60s who had the hair twirling since she was a baby, and two weeks on the NAC, it was gone. Another interesting thing was in the 2018 review of N-acetylcysteine for psychiatric disorders. Given that it's got an excellent safety profile, readily available and inexpensive, they're thinking we ought to put the whole world on it, which I'm good with because it protects against a lot of the environmental toxins we're exposed to.

Let's see, where's my NAC? The doses I usually start with are 1,000 to 1,200 milligrams for everybody, and then when they get sick, I'll go up to nine capsules a day—three capsules three times a day—when people are sick because that's how it reverses it. The next one I wanted to go over is glutathione. Glutathione really functions in every cell of your body; it's an antioxidant, and it clears heavy metals and the BPA and all of that.

It has also been shown that if your levels are low, you have memory problems. If your memory is good, your glutathione level is good. It also helps fight off infections, and probably the two nutritional things that have helped with COVID the most are the NAC and the glutathione. Glutathione is destroyed by the stomach, but there are two preparations out there that get past the stomach and are well absorbed.

There's the Thorne glutathione SR, which stands for sustained release, and it absorbs and is about as good as giving the glutathione through the IV. Tesmad used a different technology to get it through the stomach, and it actually showed that it absorbed better than an IV. So those are my two favorite over-the-counter ones. Most of the ones that are out there really don't absorb very well. They do have some liquid ones, and I couldn't stand the taste of the liquid ones.

So those are my favorites. Again, the combination of N-acetylcysteine and glutathione prevents COVID, treats COVID, treats long COVID or post-COVID symptoms, and it treats the side effects of the COVID vaccine. It's really something we probably all should be on. The next supplement I want to go over is B12. B12 doesn't absorb real well. If you pop a B12 pill, less than one percent of that pill absorbs.

So they went to these oral dissolving tablets, which really improves the absorption from less than one percent up to around 20 percent—about 20 times more. The ones that work the best are the compounded injections, but most people don't need that. Most people do fine with just the oral dissolving tablets. Those other things that we talked about, the cysteine, and it's important that you have the light and temperature control with the injections.

There are some oral drops for kids because a lot of times the kids aren't very good at—you know, your six-month-old isn't real good at chewing the oral dissolving tablets. So those are available as well. Because my family were defective, we ended up using some of the drops with the kids when they had things like stomach pain and constipation and all of that that are all genetically related to what we're talking about.

Then methylfolate—this is the one that came out in 2006, got FDA approved, and it got FDA approved for depression. I love this slide. It's really got level A evidence, which is it has randomized prospective double-blind studies showing that it works. The one that's been really studied the most was the original one because if you make methylfolate but you just make it in a test tube, it doesn't stay potent very long; it degrades.

In fact, it degrades by 50% sometimes within three months of manufacture, and since a lot of the knockoff stuff is made in China, it doesn't get here before three months since they ship it by boat. So Metafolin is the generic name. If it says methylfolate and you look on the back, it'll say what kind it is. Metafolin is the one that was tested; it is prescription. The two brands out there are Deplin, and they studied both 7.5 and 15 milligrams. The best studies were on the 15 milligrams.

The people that made it at Deplin ended up—once the company got bought out, they said, "Oh, you already made it; we don't need you anymore," and so they started their own company and have an equivalent one to Deplin. Then we have Methyl Life. Methyl Life is one that is a crystalline structure, but it's an over-the-counter chewable and the least expensive, so kids can take it and adults who don't like to take pills can do it, and it does very well.

The generics out there just don't work very well. The extra folate, the extra folate S, the Quatropholate—they just are not as stable, so they're not a crystalline structure, and they're almost as expensive as the Methyl Life, and the Methyl Life has better data with it. So that's the methylfolate. Again, most of the time, I just have people use 15 milligrams, but start with the NAC, and then by week three or four is when you'll add the methylfolate.

As I mentioned, 7.5 or 15 milligrams—you can try other doses, but most people do better if they're on the higher doses. We've got level A evidence that it helps with your antidepressant because it raises your levels of serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and now we've got level A evidence that even if you don't take an antidepressant, it works really well.

A couple of other things you can think about are Epsom salts. We usually are low in magnesium, and if you soak in Epsom salts, it will absorb the magnesium directly, and that helps with clearing the toxins. If you take it orally, we use that to clean your bowels out for a colonoscopy. There are some oral magnesium supplements that are good, but the Epsom salts work really well. If you're having trouble taking pills, sometimes taking it by soaking your feet in it works pretty well.

Vitamin D— they're finding more and more that a lot of people that got really sick with COVID had very low vitamin D. The doses are like 2,000 international units, but sometimes the doses go up to 10,000 or even 25,000. If you're going to go that high, I'd definitely get the vitamin D3 test, the 25-hydroxy vitamin. Mineral supplements are helpful because you're trying to clear the heavy metals and replace them with good minerals.

I wanted to mention one other option. The second treatment from the Human Genome Project—the first one was methylfolate; the second one was this BH4. It was used for people who had an enzyme defect called PKU, which is what they test for when you're a baby, and it works really well for PKU. But what we found is if you take a much lower dose, it helps treat some of the depression symptoms that antidepressants and the methylfolate alone didn't clear.

It helped with things like the urge to hurt yourself or cut yourself—those types of things where you have an urge to cause damage to yourself. What we found also was any type of inflammation got rid of the BH4, so that's why we needed it in some people. It comes in very high doses—100 milligrams for the PKU. Maui's Pharmacy has compounded it down to a much lower dose so that we can take it. A lot of people that are struggling with these intrusive thoughts, thoughts of hurting themselves, and so forth—just taking one to two tablets a day helps take that away, and that's been amazing because nothing else has done it.

Even in the studies where they had people who were depressed and they put them on an antidepressant, which helped the depression, they still had some of these urges to cut themselves and that kind of thing. This has really made a big difference for a lot of people. The other things that you can consider are vitamin B6, but the active form of vitamin B6 is P5P, and it can cause some toxicity in some people who don't clear it.

If you take 300 milligrams a day, it causes toxicity in everybody, but even in low doses, it can. A lot of times, what I'll do is have people go on it for a week and then off a week, or on for a month and then off for a month. That way, we can make sure you don't have a buildup of the B6. Vitamin C is helpful because it regenerates glutathione in the gut. Doing TMG and DMG sometimes will help with this, but I tried the other things first, and the first three or four things that we talked about work for 85%.

Most of the time, we don't have to get to these, but you'll see about them in the literature. The other thing is zinc, and I probably should have moved that up because it turns out that zinc is very important. Zinc has been shown to help with inflammation and help with the COVID symptoms. Omega-3 is helpful; if you use fish oil, there's a lot of mercury in some of the fishes, so you got to make sure the mercury is removed. My favorite is probably chia seeds because they don't have to be ground.

If you just take flaxseed without grinding them, it just goes right through you and doesn't absorb at all, so chia is my favorite. You don't have to grind it; it does very well. Vitamin E improves both inflammation and fatty liver. When I started doing this, they said, "Oh, don't forget silymarin," and I go, "What's that?" They go, "It's milk thistle." What does it do? Well, it regenerates glutathione and helps the liver. I go, "Well, I like anything that helps bump the glutathione up."

But again, that's not your primary. The primary ones are your methylfolate, NAC, glutathione, methyl B12, and methyl folate. These methylation and glutathione pathways are very important, and we've got new insight both by the Human Genome Project and by some of these other studies that have shown that we can dramatically improve people's health just by improving these pathways.

Then you want to decrease the amount of toxins coming in. I didn't mention one of the things that the President's Cancer Panel recommended was taking your shoes off when you come in the house because you track in pesticides that are sprayed on the rocks to prevent the weeds from growing up. If you get them on your carpets and walk across them barefoot, they'll absorb right through your skin.

It's really a matter of trial and error. This is something that is pretty much over-the-counter, and you can try it and see if it works. We want to reduce toxins for everything coming in. The other thing is if you can find a sauna and use it, it's very helpful. Great studies on sauna—my favorite is the infrared, but the studies have been both with infrared and with the steam sauna, so both of them work.

There's still a lot more to be discovered, but this is something that will improve people's health many times without having to wait for big studies coming out and so forth. We know why it works; we know how it will help improve some of these things. In the case of antidepressants, it makes the antidepressants work better, and so it's worth a try.

I love this from Enrico Fermi: "Before I came here, I was confused about the subject. Having listened to your lecture, I'm still confused, but at a higher level." If you're not confused, you're not paying attention. I hope that I didn't lose you or confuse you or perplex you.

Questions? You can either put them in the chat or just come off mute.

Same. I have a question about some of these supplements. I am pregnant right now; I'm 25 weeks pregnant. I've definitely been struggling—obviously, it's a part of pregnancy to struggle with memory—but I feel like my physical energy and brain energy have been at an all-time low. I can barely get things done during the day. Just all of these supplements that you listed, are they all pregnancy safe? Do you know which ones I could take in addition to my prenatals? Do you have any recommendations on how to help brain fog in pregnancy?

Yeah, so the N-acetylcysteine would be fine in pregnancy, and they actually studied the methylfolate, which helps with brain fog, and they showed that if you take that during pregnancy, it dramatically reduces your risk of postpartum hemorrhage or postpartum depression.

Really, this is which one? The folate? The methylfolate. So those two have been studied pretty extensively. The glutathione would not be a problem in pregnancy either; there's been no evidence for that one causing any problems. The others, you know, I'd start with those three because that's where you're going to see most of the benefit.

Okay, so the NAC, and then the methylfolate, and the glutathione.

Yeah, and so I'd start with NAC—start with one capsule a day for a week or two, and then go to two. Then you can go to the methylfolate, and again, you can go with half a pill of the 15. If you get the chewables, you can break them in half. Slowly increase it; it may be that just a half a pill of the methylfolate will do you, but we see a lot of improvement with the brain fog and the memory with that—with methylfolate and the NAC.

So there's that combination that's FDA approved for memory loss, which is those plus the B6 or B12, and you're getting some of the B12 in your prenatal vitamins.

Yeah, okay. So I can take the NAC and the methylfolate at the same time; it's not one or the other?

Yes.

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much because I've been taking, before pregnancy, vitamin B12, but it's a liquid one that's very, very nasty. It was hard for me to take, but the Jarrow oral dissolving tablets are really well tolerated. My kids love them. I'll have to find those.

Maui's carries a lot of this. I mean, I'm not a spokesman for them, but they've listened to me, and their pharmacists have attended my talks, and so they kind of know what I'm saying. I was recommended by my doctor vitamins from patches. They're so they don't go through the digestive system, and so I had gotten the glutathione kind of on accident without really knowing. Well, I got it because it said it was good for your liver because it has milk thistle in it.

Well, it is good for your liver. I can't see what you've got there, but a lot of times they're trying to do things over the counter or with the patches to get around the absorption issue. That is another way—the topical. But a lot of times they don't study it, so they don't tell you how good it absorbs. What I liked about the Thorne and the Tesmad is they actually studied it and said how good it absorbs.

I've been using them for several months now and have noticed a big improvement.

Good! Bumping up the glutathione is a huge benefit. There was a picture posted in the chat about B12 on Amazon for $13.

Yeah, and so that's got the methyl B12, which is great, but the amount of the methylfolate is only 400 micrograms, so it's a minimal dose. We're talking about using 15,000 micrograms or 15 milligrams. I usually just use the Jarrow methyl B12 and then get my methylfolate separately with one of the three that were on that slide—the first three.

Dr. Rollins, I have a question about folic acid. The folic acid that's found in a lot of the supplements—that's not methylfolate. I've read that that can be toxic for people with MTHFR because they can't process it. Is that true?

Well, it can get high, so you don't want to take high-dose folic acid. Now, they haven't shown that it necessarily is real toxic unless you're taking huge doses of the folic acid, but if you're taking the methylfolate, it's never been shown to have toxicity. Some people, if they're low in glutathione, kind of react a little bit to it; they just don't feel very good. That's because you've got to get the glutathione built up before you use the methylfolate, which happens pretty quickly.

That's why I now have people start on the NAC first and then add the methylfolate later. But yeah, you do—I mean, we get a lot of folic acid in our diet, but I wouldn't take any supplemental folic acid; I would take it as methylfolate.

Yeah, it really makes me wonder about the high doses of folic acid in the supplements for pregnancy.

Well, in pregnancy, they give a thousand micrograms or one milligram, so you're still taking extra and getting in the system with the 15 milligrams. So it's 15 times higher than what's in the prenatal vitamins, and none of them really have more than the thousand milligrams in them, or a thousand micrograms, which is one milligram.

This really helps with bumping up your pathway with the serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine. So I certainly wouldn't take a lot of folic acid, but you're not going to eliminate it out of your diet either because it's in everything.

I wanted to let everybody know I did put my email in the chat. I'll be sending out a PDF of the handout or the slides after the program. I can pretty much tell by the participant list who you are, but if you don't get the slides, just email me back.

I don't see anything else in the chat, Dr. Rollins.

All right, well, thank you. I hope this is helpful. It's been helpful for my family because my kids tried to die on me. Can you imagine? It's been a very important thing in our family, and I keep a year's supply for all of them because I don't want to go back to the prior methylfolate days.

Well, we sure appreciate your time and effort in presenting for us. Dr. Rollins will be presenting in April and July, and I can send the link to our other programs when I send the slides as well.

Thank you so much; this has been very helpful to me.

Well, good! I hope it's helpful. I hope it works for you.