For years we have been advising women of childbearing age to take folic acid, but what do you think? Folate is what we really need. But aren't they the same thing? The answer is no.
Folic acid is not found in nature. Folic acid does not have a methyl group. Folates do. This methyl group is important for a vital process called methylation. In the human diet, plants and animal liver provide us with natural forms of folate, especially green leaves. In fact, the word folate comes from the Greek folium , meaning leaf. This powerful nutrient provides humans with one of the most important compounds for health: the methyl group.
With the industrial revolution, the predominant focus was on mass production and extending the shelf life of foods. By processing grains into refined flour, many of the nutrients were lost but their shelf life was extended. This has led to many nutritional deficiencies and diseases. But instead of returning to whole grains and fresh foods, an artificial nutrient was invented and added to these foods: folic acid.
And in the rush to get it to market, folic acid was tested only on rats. It turns out that these rodents have a great ability to convert folic acid into its most available form, folate… but we are not rats. And while folic acid has helped reduce some birth defects, it has not been successful enough.
Converting folic acid into folate is a complicated process, even more so for Mexicans who have multiple defects in the genes involved in this process. This can lead to folate deficiency, elevated homocysteine, increased cardiovascular risk, and more birth defects such as cleft lip and palate as well as spina bifida.
Mexican women of childbearing age should take active forms of folate. In fact, we should all take folates and not folic acid.
There are many steps that must occur for folic acid to be converted to 5-MTHF (Folate). This makes it an extremely complex and inefficient process where most of the folic acid is lost and never reaches 5-MTHF. And the solution is not to administer more folic acid. Excess folic acid has side effects such as:
- Preferentially binds to folate transport proteins
- Binds with greater affinity to folate receptors
- Causes a pseudo deficiency of MTHFR
- Reduces DHFR activity, reducing biopterin recycling, causing a deficiency of the same
- It can mask a vitamin B12 deficiency
So the solution is not more folic acid, but to supplement with the active form of folate (5-MTHF), effectively skipping all those complicated steps in the metabolic pathway. You can find folate in our product Folixol. It also contains Quatrefolic® a patented folate with the best bioavailability on the market.
References:
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Folic Acid Food Fortification—Its History, Effect, Concerns, and Future Directions. Published online 2011 Mar 15.
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The history of folic acid. British Journal of Haematology, 2001.
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Different folic acid requirements in specific populations. Journal of Endocrinology and Nutrition Vol. 14, No. 4 October-December 2006
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Periconceptional use of folic acid in health centers of the Health Jurisdiction of the Tlalpan Delegation. Gac Méd Méx Vol. 146 No. 2, 2009.
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High doses of folic acid induce pseudo-methylenetetrahydrofolate syndrome. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2050313X19850435
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