Research this concept by attending our BeyondMTHFR© coaching program, built for functional medicine practitioners, naturopaths, chiropractors, and nutritionists.

Listen to what Dr. Rostenberg has to say about how blood sugar and digestion impact the methylation cycle.  If you ever suffer from anxiety, depression, insomnia, moodiness, fatigue, etc. you need to pay close attention to your blood sugar and insulin levels.  You’ll see in the video how having insulin and blood sugar swings will sabotage your best efforts at getting your methylation cycle balanced.  We now know that skipping a meal, getting too hungry, not eating enough, etc. can actually kill our brain cells and cause neuro-inflammation.  Low blood sugar is a phenomenal stress to the central nervous system and without it, our brain gets foggy and inflammed – sound familiar?

When you first get started working on balancing your methylation pathways, there are some primary issues that need to be addressed.  It is important to make sure that we balance our blood sugar, digest our food correctly, eliminate toxins on a regular basis, and help our immune system to kill pathogens.  All of these systems need to be working correctly while we take methyl support nutrients.  The reason why is that methyl nutrients stimulate our biochemistry.  If we have digestive, immune or blood sugar issues and we just dump methyl support on top of that our results will be less than satisfactory – and it may even make you sick!

Just taking Methyl Folate and B12 for MTHFR problems without fixing these underlying health issues in this video might make you feel worse.  Having SNPs like ACE, GAD, MAO and COMT makes a person more susceptible to the effects of blood sugar issues because these people over-produce stress hormones.  Some people can skip meals all day long and never miss a beat.  Other people, like those with methylation imbalances, will feel and act like a totally different person.  It is fair to say that low blood sugar is miserable and should be avoided at all costs!  Remember glucose is necessary to fuel our bodies and our brain, if it drops too low, it doesn’t matter what your SNPs are…you’re body will react negatively whether you know it or not.

Common Symptoms of Low Blood Sugar:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Aggressive behavior
  • Moodiness
  • Physical weakness
  • Fatigue
  • Rapid heart beat
  • Tremors
  • Nausea
  • Dizzyness
  • Blurred Vision
  • Lack of appetite despite hours of fasting
  • Excessive hunger
  • Sweating
  • Inability to sleep through the night, waking up sweating and/or hungry

Without blood sugar balance, you cannot digest your food and your liver doesn’t have glucose available for Phase II detoxification.  This means you may become malnourished due to low stomach acid.  It also means that since glucoronidation is slowed in the liver, the body will detoxify fewer molecules of estrogen, bilirubin, drugs, and other toxins.  You may even see people develop other hormone imbalances like hypothyroidism and estrogen dominance because of the blood sugar problem.  The body needs glucose to detoxify, repair and fuel itself.  So without even discussing glutathione and detox problems like GSTM, GSTP, or CYP enzymes, it is easy to see how low blood sugar can slow detoxification.  This is why blood sugar is important for everyone who is interested in optimizing their health.

The bottom line is that blood sugar balance is critical for anyone with methylation imbalances.  Missing a meal now, means there will be less digestion happening at the next meal.  This will reduce the amount of nutrition absorbed from the GI tract and make it even harder to have balanced methylation going forward.  If you suffer from any of the symptoms shown in the video or listed above, then blood sugar is a likely culprit.  Treating SNPs is a big part of it, but to succeed in our efforts, we need the BIG PICTURE approach.

Supplements are necessary because they provide our body with nutrients we depend on for life.  But fixing the blood sugar and digestion is the FIRST thing to do in every case!  If you would like help with your blood sugar swings and digestion to help your methylation cycle, please contact Dr. Rostenberg at Red Mountain Natural Medicine today. Phone 208-322-7755. Email redmountainclinic@gmail.com.

Now it is your turn…

Do you have any issues with methylation nutrients causing symptoms?

Do you have a blood sugar issue discribed above?

What success have you had in treating your blood sugar problem?  Has eating frequently helped you?

Please leave a comment below!