What’s the difference between Methylfolate and Folinic Acid?
There is a big difference between both. What you need to understand is what they do? And what they do are two different things.
The beautiful thing is your body is able to transform methylfolate back into folic acid and folic acid into methylfolate, but it’s not easy.
There’re enzymes for that.
Now, let’s talk about methylfolate first.
Methylfolate is a new big dog on the block and what methylfolate does is support methylation (methylfolate methylation).
So, if your patient takes their methylfolate, they are going to support their methylation. Now methylfolate has to work in tandem with methylcobalamin in order for that happen.
Remember that if you just support methylation with methylfolate, it might not work. Methylcobalamin is needed.
Now methylfolate supporting methylation is really important because methylation supports over 200 some odd enzymatic reactions.
Wow, that’s impressive now folinic acid.
What’s it do? Folinic acid supports DNA based production.
That’s pretty important. Everything on us from hair to skin to toes to eyes to our lining of our intestines, all this requires DNA based production. Folinic acid is in high demand because your gut lining is repairing itself.
Hopefully, every seven days your entire gut lining, shedding and replenishing folic acid.
Now folic acid DNA bases methylfolate methylation.
Let me give you a little example or a scenario, what the difference is here.
If patients are undergoing chemotherapy, majority of them are taking methotrexate. Methotrexate is a known inhibitor of dihydrofolate reductase.
This is the enzyme which blocks folic acid from getting into the folate pathway. Interesting fact: Methotrexate has done wonders for a lot of people. But there are issues with methotrexate as with other drugs.
So, what happens patients undergoing chemotherapy have their hair fall out.
Now what some doctors do is they give methylfolate to their chemo patients to grow their hair. But unfortunately, it doesn’t happen because methylfolate supports methylation and patients undergoing chemotherapy are probably deficient in methylcobalamin and other things. The methylation is probably inhibited so you might want to use folic acid.
Why hair? It’s a lot of DNA, tons of DNA.
So, you need to understand function and what type folic acid DNA bases methylfolate methylation.
Conclusion
Methylfolate is important in chemical reactions in your body, especially turning genes on or off as well as DNA repair. You could end up with a lot of body issues if you have a methylfolate deficiency. For methylfolate to work correctly you also need a combination of folinic acid because both of these supplements works in tandem. Folinic acid is not very well known since all the media buzz these days is focused on methylfolate. What most people over look is that methylfolate alone cannot solve your health issues. This is why it’s very important to take both supplements in correct doses. If you are considering methylfolate or folinic acid supplements I would encourage you to talk to your health care provider. Your doctor will be in a better position to advice the correct doses and also test to see if methylfolate and folinic acid is correct for your body.
