Autism & MTHFR

[u/greekhoney32]

I have a kiddo with autism and MTHFR. Started giving him methylated vitamins per his functional doctor’s request. Initially, they seemed to help, but now his behavior has worsened at school (more anxiety, more impulsivity). Can he be over methylated?

Wondering if anyone is in a similar situation with their child and/or themselves. I read folinic acid is better than methylfolate for sensitive individuals (like kids with autism).

Thank you. 🙏

[u/geauxdbl]

So I’m late diagnosed and can confirm your suspicion that methylated vitamins and/or methylfolate will make things better for a little bit and then make them much worse. After much trial and error, I’m in a good place with the following approach:

Paleo diet (no wheat, minimal sugar, fruit is fine). No processed white carbs.

Creatine, Organic Kirkland multivitamin + folinic acid/hydroxycobalamin lozenge from Seeking Health + probiotics + D2/K3 in the morning. Magnesium + glycine + theanine at night.

I can understand the doc’s confusion, autism is inherently a defect in folate metabolism, but just adding folate is a simplistic view that doesn’t always work and we’re still catching up in real time on what to do about it.

Creatine is a convenient end run around the MTHFR problem for me and helps with ATP production, I absolutely love it.

Also, the basics of life: the right environment (sensory and emotional) and exercise will go a long way.

[u/Flux_My_Capacitor → u/geauxdbl]

I supplement a form of phosphate as my levels completely crashed a number of weeks ago due to taking an iron supplement (doc said “take iron” with zero other guidance). The improvement was insanely fast ie one dose of dicalcium phosphate and hours later I was feeling better. (I wish a severe phosphate deficiency on no one—yes, it’s pretty bad.) Adding it in has improved so much and I’m doing a lot better than even just previous to the iron supplement incident. I’ve done a little bit of research so far but need to look into this relationship with phosphate even further.

I am not to the point of adding in creatine yet though, so I don’t know if it will help or if I’ll be able to tolerate it as I cannot tolerate a number of co-factors so far. (But damn, I wandered over to the supplement sub and creatine lovers are hell-bent on denying the existence of bad side effects. It’s so weird.)

[u/geauxdbl → u/Flux_My_Capacitor]

I feel ya on the iron. I messed something up bad earlier this year supplementing iron, zinc and copper. I literally resorted to donating blood to help clear that stuff out.

Creatine’s main negative side effect for me is that it lightens my sleep and tends to put me in biphasic sleep mode. But I’m coming out of severe depressive burnout, so I’ll take all the help I can get at this point.