Comment by momofmine on February 22, 2009 at 1:15pm

Wow, this is so helpful Shannon. Thank you so much. This brings up an important point though. For example, if someone tried to increase their methylation process, but actually had low levels of vitamin D, tyrosine, and/or BH4, and consequently had low dopamine, then could increasing their methylation cycles actually make them worse?

Because it seems like the advice out there is to increase methylation, as a blanket rule, but without other info, could that be the wrong thing to do?

Comment by Pat Robinson on February 22, 2009 at 1:26pm

Yeah, I think that is why she is focused on increasing vit D first. I'm still not clear on how to get more BH4. but, I keep forgetting and getting mixed up too.


Pat

Comment by Shannon on February 22, 2009 at 7:07pm

This is what I've been thinking about a lot today. It is possible to be an 'overmethylator,' meaning you have too many methyl groups and don't need more. If you have too many, then you'll get issues with too little dopamine again. But you also need methyl groups to synthesize dopamine so don't go thinking you can just shut off your methylation pathway to feel better :)

And yeah, my approach of the moment is to maximize dopamine production with vitamin D before hitting it with methyl groups.

Comment by lisa on March 2, 2009 at 2:26pm

I'm curious how to explore if my body is making (not sure if that is the right word) the nec. enzymes on either side of the dopamine chart.... how would i find this out?

Comment by Sarah Thompson on December 1, 2010 at 10:07am

There is some interesting stuff at BH4.org about the relationship between BH4 and PKU disorders (the neurological disorders they do the stick test for with newborns). There are some resources for synthetic BH4 there, but this is for acute, even fatal, disorders, and not what we are talking about. Nonetheless, they do talk about some of the enzyme relationships.

Comment by Karon on December 28, 2010 at 4:49pm

Great share TY

Comment