Medicine Messes Up Your Methylation

  • Published
  • 4 mins read

You’re methylating right now! This means you’re turning folate (vitamin B9) from your food, into something else called SAMe. It’s the process called “methylation” and SAMe is your body’s head honcho, the CEO if you will!

SAMe stands for S-adenosylmethionine and drives hundreds of chemical reactions in your body. If you ate a salad for lunch, you’re turning that folate into SAMe as we speak. Well, let’s hope… because SAMe helps you get rid of poisons. The biggest mistake you could make is thinking that methylation problems don’t apply to you because you don’t have the gene mutation, what we call the genetic snp (pronounced “snip”). Nothing could be further from the truth. As a pharmacist and a Functional Medicine practitioner, I assure you that your medicine has the capacity to mess up your methylation! Then poisons back up. Needless to say, I am a big fan of SAMe.

Don’t think you make poisons in your body because you eat well and exercise? Wrong! Your cells churn poisons out as metabolic waste products probably a million times a minute! You better hope and pray your methylation pathway is up to snuff because if you don’t methylate, toxic by-products build up all over your body. This equates to pain, depression, inflammation, elevated homocysteine, cognitive dysfunction, depression, higher risk for neural tube defects and much more discomfort. If you have the genetic snp it’s a one-two punch for health problems galore.

So in summary, medications hinder your methylation pathway, whether or not you have a snp. These are the primary offenders:

Cholestyramine.
This is a bile acid sequestrate used for reducing cholesterol as well as reducing Herxheimer (die-off) reactions. It is a drug mugger of folate and fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin D, A, E, and K. Remember, no folate, no methylation!

Birth control or hormonal replacement drugs with estrogen.
These drugs are known drug muggers of magnesium, B6 and B2 (riboflavin); which puts the breaks on methylation. Started ‘The Pill’ recently, and now you feel down in the dumps? This could be why.

Proton Pump Inhibitors (Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid, others).
Lowering natural acid production in the stomach reduces levels of magnesium and critical B vitamins. Snp or not, your body simply cannot conduct methylation adequate levels of these nutrients!

Antibiotics.
Like amoxicillin, sulfamethoxazole, doxycycline and dozens more. Antibiotics kill your intestinal microflora (what you call your probiotics).  Without the friendly gut flora, you cannot produce vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin). You also cannot activate riboflavin or folate so, therefore, your methylation is blocked.

Ibuprofen.
This is a drug mugger of folate, so it blocks methylation directly by stealing your folate.

Blood pressure pills like ACE inhibitors.
These drugs (enalapril, lisinopril, etc) cause added zinc excretion. You need zinc to conduct methylation.

Nitrous oxide.
Been to the dentist lately? If you got NO gas, then no methylation took place for a while!

There are hundreds of other medicines that hinder your ability to methylate, snp or not! You may not have your genetic details or tests yet, so here are clues to poor methylation: Nerve pain, numbness or tingling, chronic fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, depression, mood swings, attention problems, cervical dysplasia, miscarriage, brain fog, weakness and lots of allergies.

If you’re concerned about the other medications and lifestyle choices that might be interfering with your methylation process, please refer to my book, Drug Muggers. It’s a book intended for the smart consumer, and according to my mom, this book should be in every pharmacy and doctor’s office in the world, lol. 😂

If you enjoyed this article on methylation, please share it. You should also read my other article which is extensive,  click here: ‘Methylation problems lead to 100’s of diseases

print