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Hello everybody, Dr. B and Elizabeth here, and we are excited to bring you today. All things folate. So do we folate or do we not folate? What’s the answer? ChiroSecure, thank you again for your generosity and giving us this platform to educate the amazing chiropractic population out there and practicing chiropractors.
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And we want to bring you the latest and greatest. This is one of the topics that I get pinged on and asked on so much. And it’s also making a new splash in the research. Area. So let’s dig in and dive in on some all things folate. Until then, Elizabeth, you ready for a nap? She always loves to take a nap while WeChat and she’ll be back to wrap up the show.
All right, there you go, girlfriend. First of all, one of the things that people get confused about is the name of folate when you’re looking at a bottle. A supplement bottle, you wanna look for folate versus fol lick acid. Okay? But it can be a little bit tricky because supplement manufacturers have a way of disguising things, right?
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So what you wanna look for is an . L in front of methylfolate, so L methylfolate, or maybe you’ll see a six s methylfolate. Now, sometimes in parentheses they’ll put methylfolate and they’ll put in parentheses from flic acid. That’s a little trick. That’s a way of disguising that it’s not, that’s it’s in synthetic form versus a natural absorbable form.
Okay? So that’s a little trick there. So you wanna look for six s or l methylfolate, sometimes, rarely, but sometimes you’ll see . Methylfolate or or methy, folic acid, u or not acid, they won’t use the word acid. That will generally be a good Ross usable form and not the synthetic form. Okay? The other thing you would be mindful is the dosage.
So this is where we’re gonna dive into some new fund literature that’s out there. It’s all about balance. First of all, it is not just about M-T-H-F-R, the gene mutation. Please, whatever you do, never treat the gene. Treat the person, the individualized biochemistry and the individual status of that particular person.
Do not just start throwing folate at them if they have an M-T-H-F-R gene mutation. First of all, you have to understand the different gene mutation configurations. Okay? And second of all, you never ever treat a gene. You treat the individual person because they may have a genetic SNP or mutation, but they are fine in their levels of methylated substrates, like B nine methyl folate.
Or B12 melamine and they don’t need a bunch of extra just because they have a gene mutation. That’s the number one mistake you can make. Alright, so get that in your little notebook. Next you can look at levels of folate, but when you’re doing blood tests, a conventional lab. Like LabCorp or so forth will oftentimes be measuring folic acid versus true folate.
So you have to make sure the lab you’re using is measuring what you want measured. Secondly, on labs, you want to look what’s in the blood cell, not what’s in the bloodstream, because you wanna see. What the cells are getting. So you wanna make sure you’re measuring RBC, red blood cell folate levels. Okay.
So those are just some ground rule things to think about. Just like anything else, it’s all about balance. Too much of a good thing can be just as bad as not enough of a good thing, and that’s what the consensus is now in the current research paradigm. All right? So it’s not just about loading up on folate next Big Pearl.
You wanna get a good history of that person’s lifestyle and diet, the more stress they’re under. The faster they’re gonna burn through B vitamins, so you need to sit down and have a conversation. What is their stress life like? Chemical, physical, emotional stressors. Okay. In times of more stress, we need more aid, because supplements are supplemental.
We don’t need the same dose, the same ones all the time. So what is their stress load like? They’re hanging on a beach in Hawaii. No work. Caress in the world. They’re not gonna need as much. All right. Pregnancy is a stress test of the body, so sometimes they will need more they next diet. This is incredibly important.
In the 1990s, they started supplementing, fortifying processed foods with folic acid. That was to prevent neural tube defects, which apparently it is done, but now there’s some concern about it is causing other concerns, which we’re gonna talk about as far as neural development here in a minute. So you need to find out how much processed food is it.
Now we’re looking at that, not just the general population, but especially your preconception and your prenatal. Okay, this is where it’s gonna get really important. How much processed food are they eating? Because if they’re eating a lot of the sad diet, the standard American diet, and a lot of processed food that includes fast food drive-throughs, cans, packaged, you name it, okay?
Chances are they’re getting a lot of fortification of folic acid. Now too much folic acid has been shown to be linked, especially in the early weeks of pregnancy. So oftentimes this is why we need to look at a their preconception paradigm and those early prenatal weeks because early exposure to too much folic acid.
The studies looked at folic acid, but we can take that to look at folate as well, to think about, potentially think about folate as well. Too much has been linked with neurodevelopmental concerns. So a recent study came out that looked at brain development and the use and having too much folic acid on in those first weeks of pregnancy.
And what they found was too much of folic acid alone caused some neurodevelopmental delays, but too much folic acid and not enough B12. So I know this gets a little hairy. I’m trying to simplify it. Folate. The synthetic form is fo lick acid and B12, I say they, they meet and they get married, and that marriage forms a baby called glutathione.
Long story lot more in between the marriage and the baby, but those two have to be equal. Amounts and work together in order to get down to our master antioxidant. Okay, so in a recent study, what they showed was too much folic acid alone by itself caused developmental concerns and too much folic acid, along with not enough B12 caused even more developmental concerns.
So my moral and my story for you is again, how much exposure are they getting to these substrates? So what is their diet like? Educate them on too much processed food, start turning the tide and getting them to eat good natural forms of fate with dark green leafy vegetables. Get the mixed rainbow, get that dark green leafies on board and buy a good healthy diet and being able to absorb these nutrients.
So you gotta look at their gut. They are going to get a good portion of the natural form of folate that they need for optimum mom health, but optimum neurodevelopment. The other thing that has been hypothesized. To be linked with too much folic acid. Now this might drop some of your drawers here because so many of you in the tongue tie tots world have been told to look at if they have M-T-H-F-R gene mutation, give ’em a bunch of folate and that’s gonna prevent a tongue tie.
Wa hold your horses because again, we never treat a gene. And there was a hypothesis paper that they looked at too much folic acid is associated with tongue ties. And what and their hypothesis, their theory was that during the early weeks, folic acid was needed to . Basically, again, for neural tube defects.
All right. And it affects mostly midline structures of which a tongue tie is a midline structure. But if it’s needing, if it’s needed in those first weeks of cell division and there’s too much of it on board, could it lead to early closure? And basically tether, in this case, a tethering of a tongue tie.
And that’s exactly what they found. Okay. Women that took folic acid preconception wise and early on in pregnancy on a regular basis, they had a higher association with the offspring, with tongue tie. So now everybody out there working with tongue tie is going, oh my gosh. This is completely opposite of what I’ve been told because my, what I wanna shoot home to you is it is an individualized care plan for everybody.
So either work with a practitioner that’s savvy on this, get a little bit more education on how to look at these things, but please just don’t say, here, you need extra folate because you’re pregnant. Now, some general guidelines of what they’re seeing is not more than a hundred excuse me, a thousand micrograms.
Or one milligram a day in a vitamin. So you need to also take a prenatal look at the dosage, sit with the patient, try to figure out what they’re getting in their diet. Are they getting a lot of fortified foods and potentially large amounts of folic acid, which you don’t want folic acid on board at all.
That means no processed foods or very minimal processed foods. Are they eating some dark green leafy vegetables and getting natural folate in their diet? And then try to titrate the amount that they’re getting from the supplement according to what that individual might need. And again the spread is quite large.
It’s the recommended is anywhere from 400. Micrograms to a thousand micrograms. So that’s a big spread right there, right? So you’re gonna need to look at the prenatal and dose it more accordingly to, depending on their diet, their stress, and their lifestyle. I know that’s a lot to take in, but it’s an important message because this is one of those subjects that’s getting
Thrown around like in a blanket kind of statement. And everybody needs this and this is a recipe and it’s really not like that. So if you really wanna look at. Prevention of neural tube defects, midline defects, tongue ties, brain development. It is being a little bit more personalized and a little bit more savvy on how to help that during preconception and prenatal period.
So everybody take a deep breath. These videos are up on on Kyro Secure’s website, on our Academy of Neural Development Disorders website or Facebook pages and websites. So you can go back, you can listen, you can keep learning and you can gain more knowledge. Okay. With that said, we are gonna come into February, which is the heart holiday that, yes, Valentine’s Day, it’s coming up.
Before you know it and we will see you there the third Thursday of February. And until then, me and Miss Elizabeth wish you an incredible early winter, and hopefully you’re safe wherever you are. And Kyra Secure again, thank you for giving us this awesome platform.
Today’s pediatric show Look to the Children was brought to you by ChiroSecure. .
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