The Methylation Miracle by Paul Frankel Ph.D

Author:Paul Frankel, Ph.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

PART II

THE METHYLATION-ENHANCING PROGRAM

CHAPTER 6

WHO NEEDS THIS PROGRAM?

Now that you’ve learned the importance of proper methylation, you’re ready to begin following a program to help optimize methylation in your body. But first you need to be sure that you need the program. Following any plan to improve health and longevity requires change, and if you’re like most people, you need to be motivated to make the effort. Let’s begin by reminding you of what you stand to gain from the program:

• Reduce your risk of heart disease

• Reduce your risk of cancer

• Slow or help prevent age-related diseases including Alzheimer’s disease

• Reduce the risk of a host of other diseases and conditions, including birth defects, arthritis, osteoporosis, and liver disease

• Improve your mood

• Improve existing ailments such as herpes, diabetes, depression, poor digestion, fatigue

• Enhance physical training results

How’s that for motivation?

WHAT’S IN THE PROGRAM?

My program is designed to help your body achieve optimum methylation. By optimum I mean not too much and not too little—I mean “just right” like the story of Goldilocks. Of course, “just right” is an approximation—people vary too much to come up with a plan that will fit everyone, especially as this field is still in its infancy.

Still, we would do well to apply what we know in those aspects of living that influence methylation. My program focuses on three main components: simple guidelines for eating a proper methyl diet, advice on certain healthful habits, and suggestions for adding nutritional supplements. In this chapter I first discuss the major health stressors, many of which stress your methylation mechanism. I then provide you with a self-assessment based on these stressors to help you determine how likely it is that your methylation mechanism is less than optimum. Next I give you a game plan for beginning and following the program. Finally, I provide you with evidence that my program works, in the form of case studies of people who have followed the plan, all with excellent results. Although all the components are important and work together synergistically to enhance one another’s effects, don’t worry, you don’t need to change everything at once. Sometimes small changes can make huge differences in your health.

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

My program takes a conservative approach because I believe balance is the key. Obviously, we need to have methylation and other metabolic processes moving along at a nice clip, but it’s possible to go overboard and throw the whole system out of balance. For example, vitamin B6 is used to lower homocysteine through transsulfuration, which is a different mechanism from methylation. Instead, it converts the homocysteine to cystathionine and eventually cysteine, and then some goes on to later become glutathione in a two-step energy-dependent reaction involving glutamate, glycine, and cysteine.

Glutathione is an important antioxidant chemical in the body, but what happens if this B6 pathway is too active? For one thing, you could end up with not enough homocysteine left over for the methylation reaction, as if your dietary methionine was too low, and this can result in a reduction in SAMe levels! This happens.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.