Have you ever wondered why chronic stress, inflammation, poor sleep, or illness can seem to affect your mood and mental clarity all at once? One piece of the puzzle may be the way your body uses tryptophan, an essential amino acid involved in producing serotonin, melatonin, and other important compounds. Under certain conditions, more tryptophan…
When you’re trying to understand why a child is struggling with focus, behavior, or emotional regulation, it’s easy to focus entirely on the brain. But sometimes it’s useful to look a little lower—at the child’s mouth, tongue, palate, airway, and sleep. I recently saw an almost teenage boy with a history of mild autism, and…
When you think about factors that influence brain health, you may think about blood sugar, inflammation, gut health, nutritional deficiencies, environmental toxins, and metabolic health. But there is another microbiome that deserves attention: the oral microbiome. Your mouth is not an isolated environment. It contains a complex community of bacteria that interacts continuously with your…
A vegan diet is often promoted as one of the healthiest ways to eat, but that doesn’t mean it’s the healthiest choice for every person—or that it remains beneficial over the long term. In some individuals, years of avoiding animal foods can contribute to chronically low cholesterol and inadequate fat intake, potentially affecting brain function,…
Research this concept by joining your colleagues at WellPower, an online learning platform built for functional medicine practitioners, naturopaths, chiropractors and nutritionists. Learn More Just the thought of candida growing wildly inside your body can make you sick. You’ve likely heard through books, blogs, and personal encounters just how many problems this yeast species…
Do you find yourself worrying excessively about the future, about money or about fearful things in general? Does a small amount of stress cause you to feel very stressed out? Do you feel good while you exercise, but afterwards feel drained and worn out? Are you easily agitated, nervous or upset? Is your behavior…
Part III of the video series MTHFR and Homocysteine picks up where the parts I & parts II leave off. In those previous videos, I’ve already outlined where homocysteine comes from and the multiple ways it can damage our bodies. You can review those ideas anytime by watching parts I and II. In this…
One of the best parts of researching methylation is meeting people who ask very good questions. One very good question came up the other day about MAO-A and whether or not it was sped up or slowed down. This question is important considering how much impact the MAO system has on how we handle stress…
In the first video the groundwork was laid in understanding where homocysteine comes from and how it impairs methylation, esp. in the brain. In Part II, Dr. Rostenberg goes deeper into the science and peer-reviewed research to throw light on how homocysteine acts as a toxin to disturb health and methylation. Like most things…
If you are reading this blog its likely that you have heard of homocysteine and know that is related to the methylation cycle. And maybe you’ve even had your homocysteine levels tested recently. But what you likely haven’t heard is what homocysteine actually DOES inside your body – and that is the focus of…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qezmdDnY0s In our last video Dr. Rostenberg laid out the fundamentals of how COMT and MAO polymorphisms affect our brain. This video expands on these ideas and explains why and how methylation nutrients can heal the imbalanced brain. The peer-reviewed research is clear that proper methylation is needed for normal brain function. It also…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPsHxqBbACs Have you ever noticed that people with methylation issues are usually very smart? It has a lot to do with having difficulty breaking down neurotransmitters. Having SNPs is not always a curse; it can bless you with attributes as well. COMT is a definitely contender for such a double-edged sword. It can keep…