Methylation Cycle Block Theory & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
I was reading on co-cure a post by dr Rich van Kronyenberg, who is active in the forums over there and sometimes answers CFS questions. Ive read alot of what he has written that is up on the net. He talks alot about Glutathione depletion and its relation to chronic fatigue syndome. Alot of the things he talks about i tend to agree with because of my personal experiences with chronic fatigue. I had really low glutathione levels and was able to boost them up to normal with the help of NAC and glutathione pushes. One of his recent posts talks about a new paper out of Dubbo, Australia. It talks about how certain people can have a genetic predisposition and additional stessor that lower glutathione levels and interfere with the methylation cycle. This is really interesting to me because i was researchng the methylation cycle and came across certain supplements that promote methylation. I have tried just about every supplement known to man and i came across a few things that consistantly help me. These supplements that ive been taking for a long time just happen to promote the methylation cycle and go along with this hypothesis. They are Choline, Betain (in digestive enzymes), and l-methionine. Here is a diagram that illustrates this cycle:
I also came across a few articles on how the methylation cycle can relate to nitric oxide production in chronic fatigue. Ive thought that i had low nitric oxide levels, because when i take supplements that boost nitric oxide levels (l-arginine, hormone relaxin, etc) i can feel almost normal, but after a few days of this i crash really hard and am worse of than before. I came across some articles that might explain why:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/104/10/1086
http://www.he.net/~altonweb/cs/downsyndrome/index.htm?page=metabonomics.html
“The overexpression of CBS (enzyme that synthesises cysteine at expense of methionine) resulting in the trapping of folate and loss of adenosine from the SAM cycle as the cause of oxidative damage ”
“Overexpression of CBS may overproduce cysteine and collapse SAM cycle”
So im tring to understand all of this and its hard;). The first article talks about how the vitamin folate (which is part of the methylation cycle contributes to another enzyme, and with out this enzyme the body cannot keep up demand for more nitric oxide.
After reading all of this i decided that i need to take folic acid supplments. This maybe will kick start my bodys nitric oxide production and take care of a nitrate tolerance i could have which is keeping my body from producing it normally. Its a long shot that this will help or makes any sense at all. But its only folate supplements (which is a b-vitamin) and it wont hurt.
