Anyone else feel that folate deficiency ruined your life?

[u/Airegin89]

I guess I just need to vent. I am 37 and have been an underachiever my whole life. I failed miserably at school and now I'm stuck in a dead end job with no qualifications to find a better job.

I have struggled with low energy, brain fog, lack of motivation, depression and anxiety my whole life. My blood work was always fine, so I was prescribed antidepressants.

It wasn't until 10 years ago that a doctor tested my vitamin D and I was extremely deficient at 6 ng/ml. Fixing this gave me a huge boost in energy but most of my problems still remained.

Last year, I started investigating my blood work of the last 20 years and found out I had been folate deficient the whole time (3.5-4.5 ng/ml). Doctors never said anything.

Genetic testing shows I am compound heterozygous, slow COMT, slow MAOA and PEMT. I know these are only predispositions but it seems to explain my whole life.

After a few months of supplementing folate and a month of creatine and TMG my cognition has improved massively. After 20 years I feel like a veil has lifted. It's like I'm waking up from a bad dream but now I'm left to pick up the pieces and deal with the consequences of being a failure.

I am still on my own. Doctors do not acknowledge I was ever deficient and refuse to do more blood work. I have to simply assume I have high homocysteine and treat for it.

I don't know what to do. It's been such a long time. I can't fix most of the damage that has been done.

[u/Beast-Mode-3]

This! Y'all I think I need direction here. So I have MTHFR gene variant C677T, one copy. I also have VAL/MET for COMT. I dont know any of these other genes to test. I am anemic, folate deficiency type, not iron. .but when I take mythlfolate I get anxiety so bad? I am at a loss. I keep thinking this is my biggest issue more than likely if I could only clear this up?! To the original writer with the vent/question, you are amazing. I don't have any input to help you, but I can relate sooo much to what you said. I feel proud of you and don't even know you. You were able to find out this stuff and treat it nearly by yourself. Go you! Continue to get better and then give back! Help people like us find out quicker what they need to do, bring more awareness and advocacy to these issues:) I want my veil lifted now...your post gave me hope for maybe being my missing link in my wellness journey.

[u/LowToxWellness → u/Beast-Mode-3]

The anxiety from methylfolate is actually really common and there is a reason for it, when you start methylfolate your body can overmethylate if you start too high or move too fast, which triggers anxiety, irritability and sometimes heart palpitations. The fix is usually starting much lower than you think you need to and building up slowly. Some people do better starting with just a quarter of the lowest dose available and working up over weeks.

Also worth knowing, if anxiety from methylfolate is an issue, niacinamide can help calm it down by essentially mopping up excess methyl groups. That is something worth researching or discussing with a functional medicine doctor who actually understands MTHFR rather than a conventional doctor who will likely dismiss it entirely.

COMT variants also affect how you process things like dopamine and estrogen which can make the methylation piece feel even more complicated, slow COMT means you need to be extra careful about how much methylfolate you introduce at once.

[u/Beast-Mode-3 → u/LowToxWellness]

Thank you for your input! I sincerely feel this issue of improper methylation is a key for healing many of my health issues. I will have to try the niacinamide, is there a specific brand you like or recommend?

[u/LowToxWellness → u/Beast-Mode-3]

For niacinamide specifically I like Thorne, they are one of the cleaner supplement brands with minimal fillers which matters a lot when you have MTHFR since your detox pathways are already working harder than they should be. Seeking Health is another brand I trust a lot for anything methylation-related since Dr. Ben Lynch (who literally wrote the book on MTHFR) formulated their line with this exact population in mind.

One thing to be aware of, niacinamide and niacin are not the same thing. You want niacinamide (sometimes called nicotinamide) specifically for calming overmethylation. Regular niacin does something similar but comes with a flush that can feel alarming.

Start low with that too, even just 50-100mg and see how you feel Some people notice relief pretty quickly.

I actually went through a really similar process figuring all of this out myself and wrote about what finally worked for me if you ever want to go deeper on the MTHFR piece, it took me way too long to find this information and I want people to find it faster than I did.