VITAMIN B9

Folate (vitamin B9) is essential for basic cellular functions such as nucleic acid production, methyl group biogenesis, and amino acid metabolism. Detecting and treating folate deficiency prevents megaloblastic anaemia and lowers the incidence of neural tube abnormalities. Low level of folate and vitamin B12 is linked to cognitive decline, depression, and neuropathy. Further folate deficiency has also been linked with some cancers.

Folate supports a system known as Methylation. Methylation does lots of cool things:
- Methylation of the neurotransmitter dopamine makes your mind more flexible and less "sticky."
- Methylation of histamine reduces the severity of allergies and allergy-like symptoms.
- Methylation is needed to make creatine.
- Methylation clears homocysteine, which might contribute to heart disease and cancer.
- Methylation boosts levels of choline, which protects against fatty liver, supports the digestion of fats in your diet, helps you contract your muscles, and supports sustained, focused attention.

Other Functions of folate:
- Folate helps conserve glycine by preventing us from peeing it out. Glycine is an amino acid that helps calm us down, stabilize our blood sugar, maintain healthy skin and strong bones, and get deep, restful sleep every night.
- Folate also prevents anemia, which keeps us feeling energized and helps in good functioning of our brain. B12 helps with this, but it's by boosting the specific form of folate used to prevent anemia.
- Folic acid is also used as a supplement by women during pregnancy to reduce the risk of neural tube defects (NTDs) in the baby. These are a devastating category of birth defects that include spina bifida and anencephaly. Spina bifida leads to life-long paralysis. Anencephaly causes babies to die within hours or days of being born.
- It improves fertility in men.

Folate Deficiency:
- When we talk about "folate deficiency" in its classical sense we mean anemia. Specifically, "macrocytic, megaloblastic" anemia, where you have fewer red blood cells than you should, and where they are bigger than they should be. When it's bad, this can make you feel tired, weak, and cause you to get short of breath when you exert yourself.
- It can make you pale, or cause your heart to skip beats or beat irregularly.

Causes of Folate Deficiency:
- Alcohol and cigarette smoking appear to hurt folate absorption and utilization.
- Digestive disorders can cause poor folate absorption.
- Cancers may steal folate from you, using it to fuel their own growth but making you deficient.
- Some drugs antagonize folate. Methotrexate is used to treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriasis and does so specifically by antagonizing folate. Various other drugs antagonize folate as well.


Requirements:
- The RDA is 400mcg for most adults, 600mcg for pregnancy, 500mcg for lactation.

Sources:
- Liver
- Leafy greens*
- Pasture-raised eggs

*Note:
Folate is stable in liver during cooking, but in plant foods some is destroyed by heat and some is lost in the cooking water. Folate is also stable in frozen liver but not frozen vegetables. Count frozen veggies as ZERO. So, buy veggies as fresh as possible and use them within 3-5 days of buying them.

Supplementation:
1. FOLIC ACID
This is cheaper, but may not be used as well by people with low DHFR activity, which there are no easy tests for. It is not found naturally in food.
2. FOLINIC ACID
This is one of the forms of folate found in food. It is a little better at supporting anemia prevention than methylfolate, but the difference is small.
3. METHYL-FOLATE
This is one of the forms of folate found in food. It's a little better at supporting methylation than folinic acid. In people with very low MTHFR activity, this form might be especially potent at supporting methylation and conserving glycine.