What is Methylation? And what are common signs of a patient suffering from a methylation issue?
What Is Methylation?
Methylation is a biochemical process that helps to keep your body healthy and well.
Methylation is necessary to help cells of the body detox, keep the hormones and body in balance. When we are over methylating or under methylating the body struggles with all sorts of health challenges.
“methylation is provided by S-adenosylmethionine or SAMe, called the universal methyl donor. This compound gives methyl groups to substances that need to undergo methylation. So, methylation relies on SAMe, which in turn is reliant on vitamin B and 5-MTHF (the active form of folate called methyl folate)”
Common Methylation Issues
Some of examples of poor methylation ( undermethylation) include allergies, chronic inflammation and chronic pain such as fibromyalgia, fatigue, hormone imbalances, infertility, neurological issues, weight gain, mental health challenges, neurological and memory issues. When the body has a serious methylation issue it will have high levels of folic acid but low levels of other nutrients.
This can lead to a variety of health imbalances; such as lymphatic congestion, chronic infections and chronic inflammation. Serious chronic healing crises to certain types of massage, healingholistic or wellbeing treatments and detox protocols. Such as serious lymph and teeth infections.
7 Common Causes Of Methylation Issues
Diet And Gut Health:
a poor diet such as processed food, manmade and genetically modified food, sugar.
Gut issues are well reputed to be related to methylation dysfunction.
Genetic:
MTHFR is a genetic variant or SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) that can have significant consequences on health
Hormone Issues:
hormone issues can be both a cause and contributor for example certain drugs or herbs that influence the hormones can impact your ability to methylate properly.
Lifestyle:
an unhealthy lifestyle that is unbalanced can contribute to further imbalances in the body.
Lack of sleep:
poor quality sleep can seriously impact the hormones and upset the natural circadian cycles that are an important part of detoxification.
Stress:
stress puts a lot of pressure on our hormones, organs, glands, brain and nervous system.
Toxins:
Toxins such as caffeine, drugs and over medication, heavy metals, toxins, stimulants, sugar increase the risk of methylation difficulties.
Top Tips To Improve Methylation
How to boost the methylation process naturally by supporting methylation pathways in the liver .
Clean Diet:
Eat a clean diet and improve gut health, eliminate sugar, processed foods, fungi and yeast from diet. Add methyl folate-rich foods in your diet such as citrus foods, leafy greens, avocados.
Dry Brushing:
Dry brushing is a technique that involves using bristle brush to improves blood flow and lymphatic flow.
Mould Remove:
Clean any mould from your home or move to a more healthier mould-free environment.
Healthy Exercise:
Regular exercise has been shown to improve methylation ” it has been shown that 6-month of vigorous training including one session of 1 h spinning and two sessions of 1-h aerobics resulted in increased methylation in adipose tissue in response to exercise in sedentary middle-age men (Rönn et al., 2013). ”
Infrared Sauna:
Infrared saunas can helps support methylation and improve immune system in many cases.
Lymphatic Massage:
Lymphatic massage is often more safer for clients with serious methylation issues. As the healing crisis can be overwhelming in other types of massage. Find a fully qualified lymphatic practitioner to support you.
Manage Your Stress:
Remove unnecessary stressors, learn how to manage your anxiety and stress e.g. meditation, mindfulness, relaxation therapy and other stress management techniques.
Vitamins:
Certain supplements and vitamins such as B6 and B12 can often support a methylation issue. But equally using unnecessary or the wrong supplements can lead to further methylation problems so always get tested by a private extensive lab to see what you nutritionally need. Than waste money on supplements you don’t need or those that will cause you more harm.
Stay Hydrated:
It is important to drink plenty of fresh water, to support natural detoxification, harmony and balance in the body.
Chronic pain is not always the result of physical injury, it may be the body’s response to a traumatic event
Not only damaging to our mental health, trauma can also have an incredible impact on our physical body. Some chronic pain complaints, for example, can be attributed to residual trauma, our body responding to past events through muscle tensing.
So, what is chronic pain? What types of chronic pain are psychological? And how can past trauma affect our current physical state?
Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts for at least 12 weeks, although it may in fact last for several years. It can limit your mobility and reduce your flexibility, strength, and endurance, making it challenging to get through daily tasks and activities.
Collectively, we can categorise chronic pain as somatogenic pain (the cause is found within the structure of the body, the ‘soma’) and psychogenic pain, with the most common types of pain (across both categories) including headache; post-physical trauma pain; lower back pain; arthritis pain; neurogenic pain (pain caused by nerve damage); and psychogenic pain. The latter describes pain that isn’t caused by disease or nerve damage, the cause is thought to be in the mind.
Trauma and the physical body: psychogenic pain
Psychogenic pain is chronic, disabling pain that is primarily caused by psychological factors. Factors such as beliefs, emotions, fears, or mental illness – like depression or anxiety – can trigger, exacerbate, or maintain pain that started in an innocuous way, such as an accident or fall.
Dr Robert Scaer (amongst others) has shown that chronic stress and trauma has a profound impact on the entire mind-body system, resulting in disease, sometimes decades later.
Scaer studied the ‘diseases of the freeze’ – those diseases originating from a dysregulated autonomic nervous system – as a result of trauma. This includes chronic psychogenic pain.
He showed that the majority of what we consider to be ‘arthritis’ of the neck and back is in fact myofascial pain associated with stress and trauma. An MRI scan shows no relationship with pathology.
Trauma and the physical body: myofascial pain syndrome
Myofascial pain syndrome (MPS) is a description of muscle pain: pain and inflammation in the body’s soft tissues. A chronic condition that affects the fascia (connective tissue that covers the muscles), it may involve either a single muscle or a muscle group.
Myofascial and related chronic pain is often traceable to complex childhood trauma and is always distributed through the back. This can be explained by understanding the back’s role in protecting us from physical trauma or threat.
When threatened with violence, the back will step in to protect the body; the muscles of the core are intensely activated, pulling the body into a contracted foetal position for self-defence.
Picture a five-year-old child who waits for her father to come home. A bully, her father often threatens to beat the children when they’re naughty and walks through the door shouting. Immediately her body reacts by moving into a defensive position.
If she’s safe enough to do so, she’ll curl up into a foetal position to get the best protection she can. However, if she is unable, she will form an incomplete foetal position. Her body will still want to contract but can’t. This incomplete foetal position will be stored in her muscle memory: tense and trying to contract without being able to.
The emotional memory of this event is stored in the muscle groups involved in the defence forever afterwards; the emotional memory of trying to defend. The neural pathways are set, and in later life when the body experiences chronic stress – any stress – all these muscles will contract as they always did before, pulling tight into the same type of protective response. Instead of pulling the body into a foetal position, however, the muscles of the back and neck ache with widespread myofascial pain.
This type of pain is uniquely stress-related.
Neglect and the physical body: example case study
Trauma may lead to a life of low-grade sustained vigilance, sensitive to environmental as well as internal triggers.
If you can imagine a child that was repeatedly bullied from the age of six years old, while trying to find their place in the world and connect with society, they are rejected and lack social bonding. At home, parents are absent because they work all the time and therefore don’t offer sufficient care-giver support.
The child grows up with low self-esteem, feeling unworthy and unsafe in the world; trust in them and others is diminished. They may develop an inability to express themselves and repress their emotions for fear of punishment, judgement, or rejection.
When confronted with a difficult situation, they bottle their emotions and feel internal anguish, repeatedly releasing toxic stress chemicals into the body.
Their immune system is compromised, making them more susceptible to illness. Over time, they develop chronic pain.
Healing trauma: body and mind
What has emerged from pioneers in the field of epigenetics and neuroscience, is an understanding of the importance of healing past trauma – and doing so by working with the subconscious mind.
While we cannot go back in time and ‘un-experience’ a traumatic event, our history is imprinted within us, crystallizing as our core beliefs or “truths”. To effectively heal from our past we must bypass the rational mind and access the source of our belief systems.
Using the QEC method, we are able to change the belief systems and conditioning that no longer serve us. The neuroplasticity of the brain allows us to ‘rewire’ our neural pathways, freeing us from the limitations of our past.
In this way, we can fundamentally change the way we feel about ourselves and the world around us.
Most commonly used for working with trauma, depression, grief and loss, stress, health and relationships, you can learn more about QEC here.
Women are more than twice as likely to develop Multiple Sclerosis as men. Multiple Sclerosis usually affects people between the ages of 20 and 50 years, and the average age of onset is approximately 34 years. Multiple Sclerosis can affect children and teens (pediatric MS).
I was 17 when I was diagnosed with Remitting-Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) in 1987. Back then MS was not very well known, and the Internet didn’t exist either, so no real way to research what MS is, other than taking the word of my Neurologist. I remember having symptoms as early as the age of 14.
I was constantly tired, and couldn’t keep up with my fellow students in gym class, running track. I slept a lot. My parents thought I was just being lazy. Because I was affected so early on in my life with MS, I knew I wanted to help others who were newly diagnosed with MS in whatever way I could. So I wrote a self-help book “Blue Fingers Brass Knuckles” full of diagrams, questions to ask your doctors, how to cope with the diagnosis through laughter, and the power of inspiration, faith, courage, and love.
In today’s world, MS is a common household word and you can Google information about MS. However; unless you’re following a teen with MS on social media to know the unique set of challenges that comes with it, you won’t know until you experience it…and even then, you’re left wondering…is this MS or just me?
Emotional Issues Of Teens With MS
There are approximately 8,000 to 10,000 Americans who have been diagnosed with MS before their 18th birthday. Although pediatric MS cases are rare, some studies estimate that 2 to 5% of all people with MS had symptom onset as a teenager or even younger. The good news is that pediatric MS specialists say teens who begin MS therapies soon after their diagnosis rarely develop disabilities before their 20th birthday and can lead a relatively symptom-free life well into adulthood.
“There’s some evidence that people who get pediatric remitting-relapsing MS move to progressive MS slower than those who are diagnosed as adults,” says Tim Lotze, MD, associate professor of child neurology at Texas Children’s Hospital at the Baylor College of Medicine. “Maybe that’s because the “lucky” ones who are diagnosed earlier start on treatment sooner.”
Different Physical Symptoms Teens With MS
But while teenagers may have fewer physical MS symptoms than adults, they can have more emotional or mental issues. Adolescence comes with all kinds of angst. Add in an MS diagnosis, and the stress can skyrocket. “You grow up fast when you’re diagnosed that young.” Here’s what I, other teens, their parents, and healthcare providers have learned about living with MS as an adolescent.
Difficulty with Diagnosis In Children With MS
The number of children diagnosed with MS seems to be holding steady in recent years, although accurate data is lacking, says Brenda Banwell, MD, chief of the Division of Neurology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and director of the hospital’s Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis Clinic. However, the awareness of pediatric MS has increased considerably among healthcare practitioners, meaning children are more likely to be diagnosed quicker.
There’s also a growing amount of research focusing on pediatric MS.
The Canadian Pediatric Demyelinating Disease Network has performed a comprehensive prospective analysis of children with a first attack of what may be MS and has published extensively on the clinical, biological, and MRI features of MS in children.
Doctors and scientists affiliated with 18 clinical centers throughout the United States have formed the Network of Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis Centers to study the causes and treatment of pediatric MS. To learn more, visit usnpmsc.org.
These and other studies show that while MS symptoms are similar in teens and adults, teens may be more difficult to diagnose.
“Teenagers may have more vague symptoms like their back hurts, or they’re having headaches or migraines with blurry vision or they’re having trouble walking,” says Soe Mar, MD, director of the Pediatric Onset Demyelinating Diseases and Autoimmune Encephalitis Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital at the Washington University School of Medicine. Couple those indeterminate symptoms with normal teenage stress and Dr. Mar says some clinicians may think a teen with MS is suffering from physical symptoms that are due to psychological trauma rather than MS.
Specific Teenage Symptoms Of Multiple Sclerosis
The onset of MS in children and youth is associated with a higher relapse rate and a higher volume of brain lesions, relative to early MS in adults. Pediatric MS occurs in the context of normal academic learning and during brain maturation. Of note, 30 to 40% of children with MS have a cognitive impairment, Dr. Banwell says. This impairment varies from mild to severe and mainly involves executive functioning, such as multitasking, organization, attention skills, processing speed, and word finding.
About a third of teens with MS have emotional issues, such as depression or anxiety or combination of both. But this mirrors the general population of teenagers, so it can be difficult to tell if MS is the culprit for mood disorders or if it’s simply being a teenager. Either way, mental health is an important facet of care for youth with MS.
When I was diagnosed at 17, I was devastated. Thinking I had something like cancer that I would die from. I was an emotional wreck. It was affecting me in every facet of my life. And because we didn’t know much about MS back then, doctors didn’t realize that mental health is an important part of “health care” for me, so I was stuck working through these emotions by myself.
That’s why I can’t emphasize enough how important is it to have partnerships with psychiatrists and psychologists for teens who have MS. These professionals can help teens and their parents sort out what’s causing depression or anxiety and how to best treat it.
Research shows that teenagers also tend to have more frequent relapses than adults, perhaps because they haven’t yet developed full nerve myelination, Dr. Lotze says. A 2014 study published in Multiple Sclerosis Related Disorders shows that children have 2.3 times more relapses than adults per year. The flip side is that children recover much better than adults from relapses,” Dr. Lotze says. “There seems to be fewer residual symptoms, maybe because myelin in children can repair faster. Or there could be something innate in the pediatric brain that can make new networks after an MS relapse.”
The Importance of Medications In Teens With MS
While MS therapies can reduce disease activity in teens, the key is persuading them to consistently take their medications. “A lot of teenagers don’t think they need medications after they recover from a relapse,” Dr. Mar says. Most teens think “I just want to be a normal kid and not have to take 20 pills a day or go in for my injections.”
Several high school students who were recently diagnosed with MS were interviewed on the importance of taking their MS medications and the response was amazing. One student says “it helped when her mom told her that MS was like having diabetes. Another student said, “If taking my medication will keep my MS symptoms away, I’m all for it…but I don’t like it.”
Early-stage Coping In Teens With MS
While an MS diagnosis can be devastating for anyone, it can be particularly difficult for teens and their families. Parents struggle to accept the diagnosis. “No one expects a child to be diagnosed with an adult disease,” Dr. Banwell says. One thing teenagers have going for them, though, is resilience.
There are many documentaries, YouTube videos, and programs on TV that tell stories of other teens with MS and how they overcame their fear. For example: there was an ESPN program on a female runner with MS. A boy who is an offensive lineman on his middle school and high school football teams approached his diagnosis like an athlete. He talked to a sports psychologist who told him that he only needed to focus on his MS for the five minutes a day he injected his medication. So, for 23 hours and 55 minutes, live life like you don’t have MS. Staying positive that MS won’t affect the rest of your life in a big way.
Freaked-out Parents Of Teens With MS
When my Mom and I walked into my neurologist’s office and were told I had MS my Mom bawled for at least 20 minutes. We looked at each other with that Mother-Daughter look knowing we had to stick together and be there for one another. Each other is all we had. This is a typical reaction for any parent as they don’t want to hear that their child has been diagnosed with an incurable disorder.
Sometimes the parents can be more of an issue for a physician than the child, due to them reading about medical journal articles and studies about MS regarding what could happen to their child. It’s terrifying! “Teenagers have a sense of invulnerability, so their MS can fade into the background. That’s not the case for the parents.” Dr. Banwell said a colleague recently completed a study showing that the impact of a child’s diagnosis with MS is so substantial for parents that they can end up using more healthcare resources than their child.
When you have a child, who has such a serious disease, you must have a strong support team. You cannot do this by yourself. Connecting with other parents of children in similar situations to ask questions to, and get support from, is invaluable.
Overcompensating Teenagers
While parental stress about their teen’s MS diagnosis is understandable, it can create additional emotional issues for the child. This is all happening while kids are at the age of trying to get independence from their parents. Teens tend to avoid talking to their parents about their disease because they don’t want to worry them.
One teen said “I look like a different person when I relapse. I look so sick, and I know that upsets my parents. I would talk to my Mom about it, but I don’t want to make her even more upset,” Napier says. “My Dad calls me constantly to see how I’m feeling. It breaks my heart to see how worried they are. I wish there was a way to let them know I’m going to be OK.”
Teenagers can also hide their feelings for other reasons. Many blame themselves when diagnosed with MS. “I was getting all this attention from my Mom because of my symptoms, and frankly I was enjoying it.” After the symptoms subsided, the initial attention from my Mom went away. I started wishing that something else would happen again so I would get more attention.” It’s sad, but true I felt this way. And then, I found out I had MS. I felt like it was my fault even though deep down I knew it wasn’t. It can take several months to stop feeling devastated that they “brought the disease upon themselves” and to admit those feelings to their family and friends.
Dr. Lotze says a key to breaking through these types of communication barriers is for parents to “not hide anything from the kid from day one. Parents need to make a plan on how to talk to their son or daughter.” A therapist can also help the whole family, including anxious or resentful siblings, open lines of communication.
School Relationships
Family relationships aren’t the only ones that suffer when teens are diagnosed with MS. Teens can face misunderstanding or even bullying about their disease. Most teens don’t want to tell their classmates about their MS diagnoses because they don’t want to be treated differently, or that rumors would be spread. They don’t want to be labeled “teachers’ pet” because of being allowed to turn in assignments late or eating lunch in the nurse’s office to rest. However; if you don’t face the truth by telling your story to stop the rumors, people will continue to say what they are going to say without knowing the truth.
The best way most teens find it helpful is to make a video so the entire school would know you have MS. You’re not looking for sympathy, you’re looking for support. Upload it to your YouTube channel, then post it on your social media. Word spreads. You can also ask the principal if they can post a link to your video for the school to see. By telling your story, the gossiping, the whispers, and the bullying will help stop this and help you make friends. MS is a lonely disease, so get out there and tell your story. You need a support system in every facet of your life.
Learning How to Be Different
It’s OK to not be OK. Being different from classmates is hard…. missing out on being excited to have your crush take you to homecoming or attending school football games with your friends. Keeping a positive mindset makes all the difference in the world, it will keep you moving forward, climbing up this hill called life, and MS is just one more thing in your backpack to make you stronger.
Perhaps being diagnosed with MS has sparked an interest to be a neurologist specializing in pediatric MS. Or being an MS advocate helping others with their meal plans and workouts. This can include becoming a health and wellness coach, specializing in helping others with MS to manage their symptoms naturally. By now, you can see the blessings of being diagnosed with MS as a teenager. You can show others that you can get through anything.
The MS Wellness Coach
Hi, I’m Jen Martin a Master Certified Wellness Coach, specializing in helping women with MS to combat fatigue, increase energy levels, and improve their overall health naturally, so that they can live life with vitality and abundance. On Facebook, I’m known as The MS Wellness Coach – empowering those living with MS and other auto-immune disorders how to manage their symptoms naturally.
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