Ok – for those that are saying broken brain, and genetics, etc… Here’s a personal story. It’s long but please read it. Especially if you have family that might have some of the mental health labels applied to them.
Have any of you heard of the MTHFR gene? I will freely admit I never heard of it till our family came to a little crisis.
It’s linked to a whole bunch of stuff – mostly high homocysteine levels – which means bad stuff for heart attacks and strokes. But it’s also linked to brain chemistry.
Basically if you have one of the variants on this gene you don’t produce the most effective version of the enzyme that is key to the methylization cycle. Which in turn means you don’t break down folate (green leafy veggies) or folic acid (in breads and flour) into L-5-methyl folate. (B9- to methylized b9)
You’ve probably heard that b9 and b12 are inportant for mood/stress/etc. They regulate and control your neurotransmitters – seratonin, dopamine, melatonin, etc… You need the methylized version to cross the blood brain barrier.
If you have this varient/mutation you only methylize between 10% and 60%.
This mutation is linked with:
ADHD
Asbergers
Autism
Depression
Anxiety
Bipolar disorder
Schizophrenia
Autism
Plus a bunch of other stuff non mental health
Strokes
Deep vein thrombosis
IBS
Fibromylagia
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
etc….
So you’d think you’d be screwed if you have this mutation. You’d be wrong. It’s correctable with over the counter vitamins. You need to get the methylized version of b9 and b12. Costco sells the b12 in the form of methylcolban (sp). Amazon sells the methyl b9.
If you suspect that you or a family member might have this it’s pretty easy to find out. You get your genome tested with 23andMe for $99. Then you can look at the raw data. (You still have access to the entire data – just not their interpretation of it). You look up the mthfr c677t and a1298c markers and see.
As a parent of a child that was having issues this has been a big deal to discover and fix.
My son had been diagnosed with opposition personality, ADHD, anxiety, and depression. They wanted to medicate him for all of this, which I resisted because something didn’t seem right. I knew there was a problem but he didn’t cleanly fit into those buckets. A friend tipped me off about the mthfr… Since my husband and I had already done 23andMe I looked up our results. We both had 1 marker of the mutation. I tested my kids – and sure enough – my son with the issues had the homozygous mutation – meaning he wasn’t methylizing more than 10%.
He’s been on vitamins for a while – and it’s been a huge improvement in his mood and social coping skills. As well as a dramatic improvement in school.
This isn’t on the radar of most doctors. Lets face it, genotyping is new.
So yes – there can be broken brains, of a genetic type… But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fully treatable.
I’m sharing this fairly personal info because if no one had tipped me off – I never would have looked it up, done the research, done the testing, and found the answer.
