Solutions for Fatigue and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome There's something in this report for everyone

I believe that MoRS by Systemic Formulas is the best methylation donor available today. The methylation cycle is very complex with many rate-limiting factors that can cause depletion. MoRS is the only product I know of that addresses all of these factors. MoRS has the active form of several methyl donors that are utilized directly in the cell without being converted to another form (such as methyltetrahydrofolate). This is important because many people do not have the enzymes to make the conversion genetically and are therefore predisposed to methyl depletion (this is known as an MTHFR genetic SNP). These individuals are also more predisposed to toxic build up and need to take a supplement with the active form of the active methyl donors such as MoRS.

_______The best meal to promote methylation is an omelet. _______

Important contributions MoRS provides include:

• Nutrition that reverses the damage to your genes

• Nutritional switches that turn genes on and off

• Support for telomere stability (the only true aging marker)

• Unparalleled cellular metabolic detoxification

• Removal of toxic estrogen metabolites through Phase II

estrogen metabolism The ingredients in MoRS are clinically proven to support methylation, telomere stability, and cellular detoxification. Even though the methylation section is in Step 5 (Detox), I typically recommend that clients start with MoRS because it helps to shut the stress response off and prepares the body to be cleansed and restored.317

Methyl Bombs

MoRS formula supports the entire methylation pathway. It is almost always my product of choice, however there are times when I need to bypass the gastrointestinal system because of a client’s specific situation. In these cases I use a protocol developed by Dr. Alan Vinitsky called “Methyl Bombs.” Dr. Vinitsky’s Protocol is a 5:2 ratio of folic acid to Vitamin B12. I recommend using folate (folinic acid or 5-MTHF) instead of folic acid.

Take 1 Activated B12 Guard® lozenge by Perque with 17 drops of Folate Drops by Vibrant Life, letting the lozenge dissolve and placing the drops under your tongue 3 times a day at the same time. Note: If the patient experiences anxiety or heart palpitations, it is necessary to take an additional dose within 3 hours. If it is not taken within 3 hours the reaction will continue to occur.

The key is to maintain glutathione levels during this process. Dr. Vinitsky suggests an increase in your Vitamin C intake to just under bowel tolerance (especially in the beginning). Most children can handle 30 doses per day and most adults can take up to 40 doses per day but no one should exceed a daily dose of more than 200mg of folate or 80mg of Vitamin B12 per day.

Amines and phenols are eliminated through methylation. Even histamine is methylated! Excessive substrates may turn off methylation (feedback inhibition). One thing that can lead to excess supplements! This is protocol that has been designed specifically for you when taking supplements.

substrates is taking too many

why it is important to follow a Heavy Metal Detox

Lead and mercury slow your ability to remove some of the toxins from your body because lead and mercury affect the methylation process. Dr. Garry Gordon believes that lead makes mercury 100 times more toxic than it would be without it.318 According to the EPA, mercury is the second most toxic element known to man (only uranium is more toxic).319

As I researched and learned about the dangers of heavy metals, I immediately wanted to get tested and get them removed right away. This is not how it works. Please understand that it takes years to truly remove heavy metals from your body. I cannot tell you how angry it makes me that there are practitioners who tell people that it only takes 3 months to get rid of heavy metals! This bad advice hurts people. It can take 2-4 months to remove the heavy metals from the body’s tissues, but at that point you haven’t even started getting to the main storage source! It is the storage source that matters.

Mercury has a high affinity for brain tissue and must be removed from the brain! Lead loves bone and must come out of the bone! That cannot happen in 3 months! If you are actually taking a true chelator and using it appropriately, then you can empty the body’s tissues in 3 months, but the work has just begun.

I had a client named Richard who had been properly tested for heavy metals in the past. The test showed he was high in lead and moderately high in mercury. When he first came into my office, Richard only weighed 110 pounds, spoke and moved slowly, and was always hunched over. At that point, he had been chelating heavy metals for about four years. His “natural” medical doctor was giving him EDTA IV chelation therapy once every two weeks during that period. He used DMSA when retesting Richard for heavy metals, which kept showing a higher level of lead each time he retested. With symptoms continuing to progress, he came to me looking for answers. I explained to him that IV chelation is not only one of the most expensive routes, but is also dangerous because of the pharmacokinetics of true heavy metal chelators. Pharmacokinetic interactions are determined by a supplement’s or a medication’s absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination. This basically refers to how long it takes your body to absorb the substance, distribute it throughout the body, use the substance, and then eliminate it.

For example, it takes about 2-3 hours for your body to eliminate about half a dose of Tylenol®. People who have damaged livers can take longer because the drug is processed by the liver for removal. This is why Tylenol’s® label says to only take it every 4-6 hours. Half-life is an important pharmacokinetic parameter. EDTA’s half-life when administered via IV is only 1.5 hours. EDTA’s halflife administered rectally is 8 hours. DMSA’s half life is 2.5-3.5 hours. Full absorption is at about 4 hours when taking the few minutes the digestive tract needs to absorb it into account. Half-life of DMPS, when given via IV, is about 1 hour while orally it is about 9 hours.320 Every person is different and the means used to administer a treatment alters its lifespan as well.

When we talk about heavy metal removal (chelating), the chelator needs to be taken according to its half-life for safe and effective removal. This means that very little will be left in circulation to redistribute in the body when it is stopped. Following the half-life rules, an IV would need to be administered every 1.5 hours, which is impractical and is why no one does it. The other issue with Richard was that the only chelator he was taking was EDTA, which does a great job of pulling lead out of bones, but does not effectively remove it from the body. That’s why every time he retested for heavy metals with a “different” chelator it showed higher and higher levels in his body’s tissues. The bones were releasing the lead but it remained in his body.

Richard was basically neurologically crippled by the improper administration of a heavy metal removal protocol. The protocol his doctor used caused the lead to be pulled out of his bones and forced it into circulation. Richard told me that he was very smart, but that he has noticed his ability to function and to talk declined drastically since his treatments began four years prior.

I hope that you can see that the chelation therapy that is chosen, the way it is administered, and the amount that is given all work together. Choose an experienced practitioner who knows the science behind this topic! You must remember that this is all about science. In order to safely remove the the toxins from your body you must follow the basic rules of chemistry. This includes the basic rule involving concentration gradients. This basically means that substances move from high concentrations to low concentrations. This must not be chelation process.

violated during the

So what is a true heavy metal chelator? A true heavy metal chelator contains what is referred to as a double thiol group right next to each other. A thiol group is a sulfur-hydrogen attachment. The double thiol group acts like a claw, which is the greek meaning for the word chelation.

Cilantro or chlorella are not true chelators. True chelators would be considered dimercaprol, DMSA (dimercaptosuccinic acid), EDTA (ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid), DMPS (dimercapto-propane sulfonate), ALA (alpha lipoic acid) and BDTH2, which is no longer on the market and was once sold under the name OSR#1. A $31 million trial of chelation therapy by the National Institutes of Health found very positive results from chelation therapy.321

There was a dentist who retired after 25 years and wanted to detox mercury out of his body. He was properly tested for heavy metals, but hardly any showed up in the results despite the fact that he had been constantly in the presence of mercury in his workplace. He repeated the test and got the same result. He then balanced the trace minerals in his body following the protocol I detailed in Step 2 of this book. After balancing his trace minerals, he repeated the same test he had taken before but the results were drastically different. This time tons of mercury showed up in his testing. This is an important reminder to not skip any steps in my 5 Steps to Restoring Health Protocol™! Even though you are excited to detox the body, each step is essential.

It is essential that you employ a well-trained and experienced health practitioner. My wife and I struggled greatly when we first began to learn about heavy metal chelation because of the bad advice and protocols that we were told to follow. We were both tested for heavy metals and found that we each had moderate to moderately high levels of mercury and lead in our bodies. Following the guidelines and a practitioner’s advice, we took DMSA according to its half-life. Shortly after starting the chelation process I developed a rash and fever that continually progressed and I had to stop the treatment. This practitioner did not know why this was happening or how to fix it. My wife also experienced severe symptoms and had a massive Lyme flare up when following the DMSA half-life protocol.

A year later another doctor referred us to a physician in Florida who had personal experience with Lyme disease, mold sensitivity, and heavy metal toxicity. I was simply there to support my wife and did not expect my life to be impacted by this visit. We told that physician about our bad experience with the DMSA protocol and she informed us that there was another chelating agent that was much better and safer than DMSA. To begin the chelating process again, she prescribed DMPS to Heather and I. We were told to take one DMPS capsule a day. Much to my surprise (I was supposed to be the healthy one, remember?), I began to feel sick and my skin became hot and prickly. Suddenly after that, I got a rash over my entire body and my lips began to feel puffy! Heather called the physician right away, not knowing what to do. The physician consulted with another physician in New Zealand but the only answer they had for me was to take an oatmeal bath and to go to the hospital if my symptoms worsened. I have never been a fan of hospitals and didn’t like that answer. The next morning the swelling in lips and under my eyes took over my whole face. I was so hot that I was shivering under the covers but couldn’t stand to have anything touch my skin.

After that horrific experience, I decided there was just no way I could ever get the heavy metals out of my body. I stopped my treatment and Heather followed my lead by stopping her treatment as well. My digestive tract was so stressed out by those experiences that I developed nut, sunflower seed, and mango allergies. It took about a week to identify that it was almonds that were causing the intestinal pain that was so intense that it stopped me from being able to work or function normally.

A few years later, I was sitting in a seminar searching for more information to help my wife. The speaker explained the details of heavy metal chelation to me in a way I had never heard before. He explained the importance of understanding the half-life of a chelator, understanding the client you are working with, and gave a brief mention to the idea that some people are fast metabolizers. I realized that I was a fast metabolizer and that the allergies I had developed after the DMPS chelation therapy were caused by leaky gut.

After that point I thought I should give chelation one more shot, but I needed to heal my gut first. My digestive tract had always been sensitive, but I had never been diagnosed with any digestive ailment before. After fixing the problems with my digestive system, I never had an issue with heavy metal chelation again. About a year and half into my treatment, my brain clarity and focus drastically improved. I also no longer have any allergies!

Certain chelators are fat soluble, which means that they cross the blood-brain barrier. DMSA and DMPS are not fat soluble, but ALA is. It’s important to work with a practitioner who is experienced with heavy metal detoxification so they can customize it properly for you. You do not want to start with a fat soluble chelator before you empty the body’s tissues treatment in order to pull mercury out of your brain and lead out of your bones. ALA (alpha lipoic acid) is a heavy metal chelator that targets mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.322

body’s tissues first! After draining the

of toxins, you can begin the chelation ALA is an essential cofactor of four mitochondrial enzyme complexes. It’s found in almost all foods in small amounts and is synthesized via fatty acid biosynthesis. ALA has two forms: R-lipoic acid and S-lipoic acid. It has antioxidant properties and helps to regenerate Vitamins C and E. It is a true chelator that crosses the blood-brain barrier, is antiviral, and increases the production of glutathione (GSH). This is important because the brain has the lowest level of antioxidants in the body. When taking ALA, be aware that it can cause some GERD-like symptoms (heartburn) when taken on an empty stomach.

It took my wife about a year after I began my chelation therapy to feel ready to begin again. Despite her long list of health problems and the many ways she tried to treat them in the past, attacking the Lyme and heavy metals at the same time is what gave her the best results. We worked with some great and knowledgeable practitioners throughout her journey, but they were only able to give us some pieces to the puzzle. Heather’s complicated situation forced me to research and put all the pieces together into a new and effective protocol. This not only helped Heather, but has now helped countless others who have used my 5 Steps to Restoring Health Protocol™.

The Methylation Cycle

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a symptom, not a diagnosis, and the name of the game is to identify the underlying causes. In fatigue syndromes we don't see macro-pathology, we see micro-pathology - that is to say the problems are bio-chemical and occur at the molecular level.

There are several cycles, which I now know to be centrally important in causing fatigue. All these cycles interlink with each other like Olympic rings and getting one cycle going will drive another. The important cycles which I know to be major players include blood sugar wobbles, allergy problems, sleep cycles, mitochondrial function, anti-oxidant status, the NO/OONO cycle, thyroid and adrenal hormones cycles and de-toxification. I am greatly indebted to Rich van Konynenburg for updating me on a new player which interlinks with many of the above, namely the methylation cycle.

The Methylation Cycle

Rich van Konynenburg's idea is that ineffective methylation is a major cause of fatigue. There are many possible reasons but those that he's identified for which methylation is essential are:

To produce vital molecules such as Co Q-10 and carnitine.

To switch on DNA and switch off DNA. This is achieved by activating and deactivating genes by methylation. This is essential for gene expression and protein synthesis. Proteins of course make up the hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, immune factors and are fundamental to good health. When viruses attack our bodies, they take over our own DNA in order to replicate themselves. If we can't switch DNA/RNA replication off then we will become more susceptible to viral infection.

To produce myelin for the brain and nervous system.

To determine the rate of synthesis of glutathione which is essential for detoxification.

To determine the rate of synthesis of glutathione which is an essential anti-oxidant as glutathione-peroxidase. Furthermore oxidative stress blocks glutathione synthesis - yet another vicious cycle!

To control sulphur metabolism of the body, not just glutathione but also cysteine, taurine and sulphate. This is an important process for detoxification.

As part of folic acid metabolism. This also switches on synthesis of new DNA and RNA.

For normal immune function. The methylation cycle is essential for cell mediated immune function and blockages here will mean that infections will not be adequately dealt with. I know this clinically because many patients tell me that once they get on to their B12 injections (an essential co-factor for methylation) this seems to protect them from getting infections.

The overall effect here is that if the methylation cycle doesn't work, the immune system malfunctions, the detoxification system malfunctions, our ability to heal and repair is reduced and the anti-oxidant system malfunctions.

The Bio-chemistry

(You can ignore this bit if you like because it's not essential to know but it's interesting.)

There are four cornerstones to the methylation cycle and on each cornerstone sit four molecules namely homocysteine, methionine, S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) and S-adenosylhomocysteine. Each of these molecules leads into the next one by means of enzymes. The important co-factors that allow this to happen are the B vitamins such as folic acid, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6. In converting from S-adenosyl methionine into S-adenosyl homocysteine, a methyl group is given up and this can be used to stick on to other molecules - hence the name, the methylation cycle.

However, there is a particular bio-chemical glitch here. In order for the methylation cycle to work these B vitamins have to be in their activated form, namely methylcobalamin, folinic acid and pyridoxyl-5-phosphate. In order to get cobalamin into methylcobalamin, the methylation cycle has to be working. So if this cycle has crashed completely, the body can't make methylcobalamin in order to get it up and running again. Since this cycle is so fundamental to other biochemical cycles including trans-sulphuration and folate metabolism, it can't change the vitamin B6, folic acid and cobalamin into the active forms necessary for the methylation cycles to work.

This means that in order to get this cycle up and running initially we have to prime the pump with the activated vitamins, but hopefully once the methylation cycle is up and running, it can function on the vitamins in their normal states.

Testing for how well the methylation works

We don't have a simple test to see how well the methylation cycle works. What we can do is measure levels of homocysteine and SAMe. If these were raised this would show a blockage in one part of the pathway. Indeed, a raised homocysteine we know to be a major risk factor for arterial disease, almost certainly because this represents blockages in the methylation cycle. However, one could have a normal homocysteine and normal SAMe but blockages elsewhere in the system, which would still impair the ability to methylate. So there is no simple test.

One can also measure urinary MMAs (test for methylated B12) and FIGLu (test for methylated folate) but these can only be done as part of an Organic acids present in urine (Metabolic Analysis Profile).

How do we go about treating this?

Rich van Konynenburg has identified a package of micronutrients specifically to support the methylation cycle. He recommends the activated form of vitamins. These are more expensive than the basic forms, but I think that the idea here is that they are necessary in the short term to get the cycle working and in the longer term they can be dropped off. In addition to the basic three B vitamins Rich van Konynenburg has one or two other additions which you may also like to choose to use, but my initial suggestions would be as follows.

The Methylation Cycle - which supplements to take to support

This is the package of supplements to support the methylation cycle. It needs to be taken in addition to everything else, i.e. the standard nutritional package (multivits, multiminerals, EFAs, vits C + D) and the mitochondrial rescue package (D-ribose, acetyl-L-carnitine, CoQ10, etc.)! But the methylation package will change with time because as the methylation cycle starts to work again, it will start to stand on its own feet. Everyone”s package will be a bit different depending on how poorly their cycle is working. One day we will have the biochemical tests to tailor make each package for each person, but until then I suggest the following regime for those sufferers who have been taking vitamin B12 in oral form (as either hydroxocobalamin or cyanocobalamin):

For two months a daily dose of

Methylcobalamin 1 mg sublingually

Methyltetrahydrofolate 800mcg (ActiFolate)

Pyridoxal-5-phosphate 100mgs (50mgs twice daily)

Glutathione 250mgs daily

Phosphatidyl Serine 200mgs (100mgs twice daily) - BioCare

If you are better - fine! If you are worse - it may be the reaction to the methylation package because it may cause an acute detox reaction (see below). Slow down the regime - take smaller amounts of the supplements and build up slowly. If you are unchanged - swap the sublingual B12 for injected B12 ie:

Daily subcutaneous injections methylcobalamin 0.5mgs (this is a bit more expensive than cyanocobalamin). Some CFSs will not respond clincially until 5mgs daily is injected. B12 is very safe with no known toxicity- as a colleague commented - the only way you could kill yourself with B12 would be to drown in the stuff! I would prefer people to start with this regime but I know many do not fancy the idea of injections - actually I am a wimp too, but they are easy and almost painless.

Methyltetrahydrofolate 800mcg (ActiFolate)

Pyridoxal-5- phosphate 100mgs (50mgs twice daily)

Glutathione 250mgs daily

Phosphatidyl Serine 200mgs (100mgs twice daily) - BioCare

If you are better - fine! If you are worse - it may be the reaction. If you are unchanged, add in:

Tri-methylglycine or TMG (not to be confused with betaine hydrochloride, so always ensure that you are taking pure-grade TMG)

Lecithin (phosphatidyl choline) and Phosphatidyl Ethanolamine.

S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe) directly as a supplement 400mgs daily

For those sufferers who have already tried B12 by injection as either hydroxocobalamin or cyanocobalamin before starting the methylation cycle protocol, go straight on to injections of methylcobalamin.

Once you are substantially better

Then the regime can be relaxed. Once you are a good methylator, then methyl B12, ActiFolate and glutathione could be tailed off. Injections could be swapped for oral supplements. However, do this slowly - some people need a small supplement long term in order to stay well.

Methyltetrahydrofolate 800mcg (ActiFolate).

Hydroxocobalamin 5000mcgms sublingually (or cyanocobalamin sublingually as Shot-0-B12). It may be necessary for some people to continue with B12 by injection to get the best effect (easy to self inject 0.5 - 5mg daily - once you have improved on methylcobalamin, then switch to the less expensive cyanocobalamin). Then the injections can be spaced out and the frequency adjusted according to clinical response.