9 Comments
Oct 10Liked by Christine

I agree with you about AI, and I agree with you about genetic testing with a caveat: it's probably patterns of groups of "bad" genetic factors working together to increase your risk of diseases rather than one single "bad" gene. Here's a good explanation (sorry you'll have to type it into search or cope and paste):

https://chriskresser.com/methylation-are-we-supplementing-too-much-with-dr-kara-fitzgerald/

And I 100% agree about detox!!!

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Oh it is certainly patterns, and I think there is much more to be discovered there. For example, my MTHFR variant reduces my capacity to methylate by about 50% and strangely my COMT variant reduces the speed at which I can work with methyl groups by about 50%, which means they are running at the same speed - I produce as much as I am able to use. Does that mean I have some kind of reduced need for folate methylation, or is there something else at play that when added to the picture, rectifies the issue? I am betting these variants (I call them that rather than mutations) are actually perfectly designed for the environment in which they formed, but are no longer perfect for the environment in which we are now living. As with everything medical we have the problem of who sets the norms.

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Oct 10Liked by Christine

Yes!!! Very good points. Also, thinking about what I sent you, it's a long read. I support (what I think) is one of your guiding principles of everybody trying to make what they know more accessible to other people so that we can work together effectively towards individual healing. Groups of healthy individuals can then snowball to cause societal health/transformation. Or, let me summarize what I liked about that article so that you can take your time to read it: knowing your variants is important especially if they correlate to symptoms; patterns of variants affect us more than any one single variant; it is possible to overmethylate, and especially if you are healing with cancer, be careful with how you drive methylation. Hope this was a helpful summary!

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I haven’t looked at your article yet. I really flogged it today to get this article done, and got too tired - was getting careless at the end so will probably need to come back to edit it. But will look at your article tomorrow - it looks like it might be the next stage in my journey. the support groups are all going on about supplementing, but everyone who tries to supplement still finds themselves caught in undermethylation or overmethylation - there are some variables we are missing. hopefully they will come at as more people interact with this story.

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Oct 10Liked by Christine

My limited knowledge on the subject comes from trying to doctor myself seven or eight years ago. My personal experience was that I couldn't get the supplementation right, but I do believe that some supplements work great for some people (and it's also about self-observation so you know when to cut back). I wanted to add that I read your story about your hospital stay and recovery, and I had a thought to share. Is it possible part of your recovery was also because the hospital stay put you in an extended period of de facto dry fasting (i.e. maybe dehydration plus lack of calories)? In my almost 50 years, I've had the opportunity to heal from 2 autoimmune syndromes. After Covid, a "mild" autoimmune skin condition flared into a real problem. I'm now able to have remitting periods, and one of the ways that I can get it to remit is with dry fasting. I'm not an expert--I realized today that my dry fasting protocol had a mistake. However, I'm still getting clearly good results. The source I use for information is below: https://www.dryfastingclub.com/how-long-can-you-safely-do-a-dry-fast/

Cheers and wishing you the well!

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Oct 10Liked by Christine

Have you had a look at this company. Looks like they’ll do the heavy lifting for you, at a price of course.

https://www.lifecodegx.com/

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Yes, there are lots of them and price is the big issue for me. At this stage I have not got far enough to know who offers what for what price - I don’t even really know what data I do need analyse at this stage.

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I have that . Integrative medicine doctor was the only one to explain it. I have chronic inflammatory response syndrome from mold and biotoxins.

Thank you for writing on this topic.

Look forward to reading more.

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But if you go one step deeper, and ask why, you will find these are mere symptoms of something deeper. If you explore your genetic makeup you will find what that deeper issue is.

You can either treat the symptoms for the rest of your life, because they will not go away, or you can learn to manage the genes that have led you to have these symptoms. The advantage of working at the genetic level is that, by managing your shortfall, you will prevent or cure any and all symptoms that are downstream of that genetic shortfall, not just the most visible or most demanding. You are still stuck with medicating for the rest of your life, but you get to work on one thing only, your genes, and not a whole array of downstream illnesses that mount up as you age.

I got led into exploring my genetics in a quest that started with the intention to cure my lifetime of Fibromyalgia. I still do not have a clear link between the "symptom" fibromyalgia, and genetic issues involving the MTHFR gene, but I am betting it is there, simply because masses of individuals on the MTHFR support groups have one of the syndromes, and many of them have FMS. There is no known cure for FMS, and of course, there could not be, if it results from a genetic variant of some kind.

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