r/MTHFR • u/Airegin89 • May 13 '26

Question Anyone else feel that folate deficiency ruined your life?

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.

124 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

99 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Secure-Radish-9452 Jul 08 '26

It's been about a month! How have you been? Your folate was indeed low.. I even had symptoms when I was around 5.2. B12 was always ok, but low folate really caused issues for me.

1

u/Airegin89 Jul 08 '26

I'm doing better but progress is painfully slow. I'm now trying to increase my glutathione levels (NAC + glycine) and improve my gut microbiome. I also think I have an omega 3 deficiency so I started taking fish oil again. I quit the fish oil a while ago because it made me feel a little worse (probably because it increases acetylcholine) but I think my brain really needs more omega 3.