How Humans Heal
Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Jennifer Payeur, a holistic health practitioner and researcher who is the author of the recently released "Ancient Plant Wisdom" book. She's also the founder of Nature Provides, an innovative plant stem cell company, as well as the creator of the Nature Provides documentary. I'm thrilled to share her story and work with you because it offers a completely different approach to healthcare using plants and plant medicines that can help us heal, including from cancer-related issues. For those interested in trying plant stem cell remedies, they are available...
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The number of women who are postmenopausal is increasing every year. By 2030, it's estimated that over a billion women around the world will be postmenopausal. That's exactly why in this video I'm going to be talking about menopause—both perimenopause and postmenopause. I believe this topic deserves way more attention, and I want to be part of educating women and being an advocate during the menopause transition, helping them make informed decisions for their health now and into the future. I'm Dr. Doni, host of How Humans Heal and Women's Health expert. I've been helping women with their...
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Today I'm excited to introduce you to James Barry. James is the CEO and founder of an organ-based superfood seasoning called PLUCK. He's also a private chef with over 20 years of experience cooking for celebrities like Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Barbra Streisand. Additionally, James is the co-author of several cookbooks, helping authors create their recipes. As a clinical nutritionist and naturopathic doctor, I'm constantly talking to people about their diet and food choices. Patients continuously ask me what I eat, what they should eat, and what they should avoid. It's an ongoing...
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In this episode I'm going to talk about five types of mind-body medicine that I recommend you include in your healing plan to help your body protect you from high-risk HPV virus and prevent cancer caused by high-risk HPV strains. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson, a naturopathic doctor, clinical nutritionist, and midwife. I've been practicing for over 25 years, specializing in women's health and helping women address abnormal pap smears, including high-risk HPV. I help them heal their cervix, get HPV to negative, and keep it negative—which is unheard of in standard care. In standard care, well-trained...
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In this episode I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Toni Engram. She is what's referred to as a biological dentist. She's also an integrative health coach and the owner of Flourished Dental Boutique in Richardson, Texas. For a lot of people, we think a dentist is only a dentist, but that's not really the case anymore. To understand what it means to be a biological dentist, think of it as the functional medicine or naturopathic version of dentistry. While biological dentists still do fillings, crowns, and other standard procedures, how they do these things is very intentional. Biological...
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In this episode I’m going to be covering 5 foods to include in your diet to help clear high risk HPV and prevent HPV-related cancers such as cervical and vaginal cancer. I know how confusing it can be to figure out what to eat and what not to eat. Once you realize that the food you feed your body each day can be your medicine and actually help prevent health issues, you start to understand the importance of choosing foods that will do the most good for you. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson, a naturopathic doctor, clinical nutritionist, and midwife. I've been practicing for over 25 years and specialize in...
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In this episode I’m excited to introduce you to Dr. Brad Jacobs, who is board certified in internal medicine and integrative medicine. He is the owner of BlueWave Medicine Clinic in Sausalito, California, and also co-author of the Anti-Inflammation Cookbook. He specializes in psychedelic medicine and a form of therapy called Hakomi. Dr. Brad is now leading in-person retreats in Costa Rica on precision medicine and longevity. We'll be talking about health transformation, longevity, and recovery from trauma by making diet changes to reduce inflammation and using psychedelic medicines. Dr. Brad...
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Are you worried about how high-risk HPV could be affecting your fertility and future pregnancy? In this video, I'm going to be sharing everything you need to know about high-risk HPV and how to protect yourself from HPV-related cancer, and support your fertility and pregnancy at the same time. I'm Dr. Doni Wilson. I am a naturopathic doctor, midwife, and women's health expert with over 25 years of experience. Welcome to the How Humans Heal podcast. Maybe these are some of the questions you have: Is it OK to get pregnant when I'm testing positive for HPV? Is it OK to get pregnant if I have...
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Today I'm looking forward to introducing you to Dr. Susan Fox. She's a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and she's the creator of the "Your Fertile Health Program" as well as the "Best Prep for Pregnancy - Naturally or through IVF or Egg Freezing" Online Summit. So many people out there are struggling with fertility and going through the IVF process with all the stresses that come with it. They're needing help and guidance, but might not know where to turn or what their options are. I think it's wonderful that Dr. Susan is offering fertility support from a Chinese medicine...
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In this episode, I'm going to be talking about the concept of the "magic pill" and I'm going to be especially using it to talk about risk for HPV-related cancer, specifically cervical cancer in women. But I encourage you to listen in regardless of what health issue you're dealing with to better understand the mindset, perspective, and paradigm shift that I see my patients making in order to truly transform their health. The magic pill concept is about a fictional or hypothetical medication that can miraculously heal or cure any kind of health issue from a single pill without any side effects...
info_outlineIn today's episode I'm going to be talking about the vitamin known as folate or vitamin B9. Like the seven other variations of vitamin B, vitamin B9 is used to convert food into fuel and support healthy skin, eyes, hair, and blood cells.
During pregnancy, some form of vitamin B9 is needed to ensure the baby's proper brain, skull, and spinal cord development to prevent birth defects.
Folate is also important for the detoxification process carried out in the liver as well as for protecting our DNA.
The reason I want to cover this vitamin is because I find that there's so much confusion about it and so many of you are trying to figure out whether you need more or less folate. Also, how to navigate gene variations related to folate to make sure that you can prevent health issues that are associated with those gene variations.
Folic Acid vs Folate
One of the first confusions is about the difference between folic acid and folate. A lot of times you'll find that the word folic acid and folate are used as if they're the same thing when they are not. Folic acid is a man-made or synthetic nutrient, so it's not found in nature naturally occurring, whereas folate (which is also in biochemistry referred to as methyl folate METHYL) is the form that's found in nature and in our bodies.
Methylfolate is active folate, which is the precise enzymatic form available for immediate cellular absorption and energy release. Although it has a similar end function to folic acid, choosing this efficient and ready-to-use form is a much more effective option for people who have difficulty converting food into fuel.
Our bodies know how to use and process folate naturally. We have a certain degree of ability to turn folic acid into folate within our bodies but it's our gene variations that determine how well we can do that. Depending on your genetics you may have a 10% to 80% decreased ability to turn folic acid into folate.
Folic acid is used to fortify different foods. It's a synthetic substance that's added to man-made foods. If you think of bread and cereal, you might see on the ingredient list folic acid as they're using the synthetic form. Sometimes multivitamins and B complex or prenatal vitamins or even protein shakes or other processed products might have folic acid as an ingredient. Using the synthetic form of these nutrients is oftentimes less expensive than using the natural form.
The natural form called folate or methylfolate is found in all green vegetables like spinach, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, etc. Meat products also have this natural form of the nutrient, like liver and other forms of meat. You can also find it in sunflower seeds and some forms of beans and peanuts for example.
How To Measure Folate in Your Body
Depending on your genes, your body may have a better or worse ability to turn folate acid into folate. If you want to know your folate levels, blood work may be misleading because they show both the synthetic and the natural form under the name folate.
For a more accurate measurement of how much active folate you have in your body we need to either do a specialty test (there are labs that do specialty tests to identify your actual active folate levels) or do a test for something called homocysteine because homocysteine is a metabolite in our biochemistry that uses folate. So, if we measure the homocysteine, we can get a sense of if our bodies have enough folate, too much folate or not enough.
Another way to get a sense of this is to check your methylmalonic acid because methylmalonic acid tells us your B12 metabolism and B12 levels and how well your body is using the B12. I want you to know this because I want you to know that there’s people like me who have a lot of additional training to understand all this biochemistry and nutrients and can help guide you to optimize your homocysteine your methylmalonic acid and your folate and the use of folate in your body. So, I don't want you to feel like you're on your own with all of this.
Folate and MTHFR
MTHFR is a type of gene mutation that lowers the efficiency of the MTHFR enzyme. When you have MTHFR your body cannot properly convert folate into methylfolate. By disrupting the natural metabolic pathway, MTHFR blocks usable methylfolate from reaching the cells.
Inadequate methylfolate levels can have a wide variety of negative effects on the body, particularly those that affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems. During pregnancy, a lack of methylfolate can also have serious impacts on healthy fetal development.
Fortunately, there are several folate replacements available that can largely make up for deficiencies that are caused by MTHFR. Folic acid and folate can be cheap, but methylfolate tends to be the most effective option when it comes to treating the unique needs of MTHFR and giving the body an enzyme it can directly act upon.
It’s important to know that there are other factors affecting your body’s ability to turn folate into methylfolate whether you have MTHFR or not. This is what I refer to as your stress recovery. Depending on how well your taking care of your body and helping your body recover from various stress exposures determines the influence of your genes on your health. People with MTHFR might assume that there’s nothing they can do about their folate levels but there is. This depends on many factors that we will discuss today.
What Affects Our Ability to Use Folate Besides Genetics?
If you have a gene variation but if it's not expressing, then it is not affecting your health. But there's factors from our environment or what I refer to as stress that affect our ability to metabolize folate. Any kind of emotional or psycho-emotional stress in the present moment or even in the past or accumulated stress will influence your cortisol and adrenaline levels. When those levels get out of balance your ability to utilize folate gets hindered.
Also, any kind of physical stress (whether you have an injury, infection, nutrient depletion, etc) can affect your ability to use folate effectively and it also affects your genetic expression.
Those same stresses affect the enzymes that work with folate and our methylation or ability to use our B vitamins. Folate has to get together with B12 and all the all the other B vitamins and they do what's called the methylation cycle. If you want to learn more about methylation you can watch episode No 145 of How Humans Heal here.
So, our ability to use our B vitamins is affected by emotional and physical stress and that's why I talk about stress recovery because it really determines your ability to optimally use folate. Also, with stress recovery you can optimize your cortisol and adrenaline and you can optimize other functions in your body so that you can really get the most out of your folate from your diet.
Another important factor in how your body is able to benefit from folate is your nutrient intake and nutrient deficiencies. If you have nutrient deficiencies because you are not eating healthy or do not take any supplements to help your body with nutrients, you could have a deficiency in folate.
Also, some medications like birth control pills or methotrexate (which is a medication used to treat autoimmunity), some antibiotics, metformin for blood sugar issues, anticonvulsant drugs, etc. can all cause a deficiency of folate even if you're eating enough folate. These block the metabolism of folate. If you're taking any of these medications it’s important that you talk to your practitioner so you make sure that you are taking the right tests and the right form of folate.
Your ability to use folate is also affected by inflammation in the body. The main determinant of inflammation in the body is your diet. If you're consuming foods that are more inflammatory to your body, then your ability to use folate could be affected. To know which foods are inflammatory for your body you can do a food sensitivity panel. With this home test you can see which foods you need to reduce or avoid to reduce inflammation in your body. Also, if the digestion system is inflamed or if leaky gut is present there will be an imbalance in gut bacteria and this influences your ability to use folate and absorb nutrients in general.
Also, exposure to toxins, toxins from our environment, food, water, home toxins like mold, heavy metals, etc. all affect our ability to adequately use folate. If you would like to know more about how to detoxify your body, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here.
How Much Folate Do I Need?
The common confusion is people will find out that they have high homocysteine levels and then they're thinking they need to take more folate. But then very often people will contact me and say but I felt worse when I took folate. Why? Well we have to dig in and figure out what's blocking your ability to use that folate effectively. When you feel worse in any way when you take folate it tells me there's a traffic jam in your stress recovery and your inflammation and your digestive health, your toxin levels, your nutrients, we got to go through systematically to figure that out and address whatever we see and as we address those factors then your body will start using folate again.
It's not that you need more or less, it’s about getting your body to work in the right way to absorb just the right amount from your food and your supplements. We need to break up the traffic jams that are preventing your ability to use it effectively.
There is a dietary recommendation, everyone needs a certain amount of folate. The standard dietetic recommendation is 600 to 800 IU of folic acid, I convert that to methyl folate and that's the bare minimum. That's not taking into account your individuality, your individual genes your individual stress exposure and your individual imbalances. So, we need to figure out what is the right amount for you.
This is why I would say it's such a high priority to fully understand your potential gene variations and understand where to get the right information so you can figure out what's the right amount of folate for you. Now, keep in mind the right amount of folate for you could change from year to year if your hormones change, if your environment changes, if your job changes, etc. That’s why I think everyone should have their homocysteine levels checked in their blood work at least once a year.
You may or may not know if you have a MTHFR gene variation. Either way, you can still get your blood work for homocysteine and methylmalonic acid and you can work on identifying the factors that might be decreasing your ability to use folate efficiently. You don't have to do an MTHFR gene test but if you do an MTHFR gene test what I think is important to know is that this is just one piece of information. It can be very validating to get your genes tested and to have that information but at the same time it can be overwhelming. What is more important is to identify the ways in which you can support your body to use folate efficiently like stress recovery, detoxification, reducing inflammation, food sensitivities, nutrient deficiencies, etc.
The thing is we're all unique humans, we're all going to have some genetic variations and these genetic variations are not life threatening and actually have the potential to benefit your health because once we see where the genetic variations are we can address them using nutrients, diet, stress recovery, hormone balancing, etc. We can use many tools to help address those gene variations and to even potentially influence genetic expression.
If you want to learn more about this you can listen to my FREE MTHFR Masterclass here.
If you want to run a test not just for MTHFR but for all your genes I can guide you on which test to do for that and then I would suggest meeting with me to help guide you through that.
If you're looking for products that contain methylfolate you can look in my website and online store because I have a multi vitamins and B complexes and prenatals and protein shakes that contain methylfolate so you can be sure you're getting a product that has the right form of folate in it.
If you want to feel better by rebalancing your neurotransmitters, you start by addressing your cortisol and adrenaline levels with this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here. Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.
In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.
If you want to go through your specific case with me and improve your health (mental or physical) you can set up a one-on-one appointment here.
We’re here to help you!
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