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Natalie Tysdal 

Lisa, thanks so much. Good to have you on the show today.

Lisa

Thank you so much, it's such an honor to be here.

Natalie Tysdal 

So what you specialize in, I know you do a lot of things, but I want you to tell us why you chose to really go after this MTHFR, which don't worry if you're listening and you don't know what that is, we're gonna explain it, it really affects a lot of women. And tell me why you chose that as something you really take time to help people with.

Lisa 

Yeah, well, I kind of got led to it, I would say. Like, I was led to this. So I'm a functional nutritionist, but I have a background in chemistry and biochemistry. So that background actually helps me to understand the biochemistry of these enzymes. And when I went through functional nutrition school, I started learning about bile. Bile was the first kind of step, and I was like, wow, this is really amazing. Like, we really need bile. And so that led me to the gallbladder. And then the gallbladder led me to the liver.

and then the liver led me to detox and then detox led me to the MTHFR. And it was just sort of all a big cluster and I realized, wow, you can't just like talk about one thing. It's like you pull in all these different things and then at the crux of it seems to be this thing called methylation and this MTHFR enzyme, which can be a bottleneck and can cause so many problems. And one of the biggest problems is the synthetic vitamins, which we could talk about that later, but it just seemed to be so pervasive and...

It was affecting so many people. So when I was working with clients, I just started realizing, oh my gosh, you have MTHFR. This is why you're affected. This is why all of your health problems. Seems like every client I got was like, we need to support methylation. So that's kind of how I got into it.

Natalie Tysdal 

So I'm familiar, only familiar with MTHFR. I think for a lot of people they'll be like, what the heck are you talking about? Can you explain what it is, why some of us have it? I have it by the way, I found this out years ago, but I've never really done anything with it. And I have a feeling now at my age, it's really starting to impact my health. And so I want it to learn more and I want people to understand first, how will they know if they have it? And then can it be corrected? What can we do about it?

Lisa

Yeah.

Lisa 

Yes. Okay, so MTHFR is an abbreviation for methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase. And you don't have to get caught up in that, but just know that it performs an action called methylation. And methylation is something that our body does billions of times a second. It's sort of the way our body communicates. It turns things on, it turns things off. It's basically a way that enzymes add a carbon molecule.

two different molecules. So I consider it like a bucket brigade. There's all these bucket brigades, like you're passing, the molecules are passing buckets along in your body, transferring these methyl groups from one molecule to the other. It turns things on, it helps to build things. It's really important for reducing inflammation. It's really important for detox. So methylation is going on billions of times a second, but the MTHFR is a bottleneck.

for that situation. And what makes it worse are two things. So 50% of the population has a variation, I don't call it a mutation, it's a variation, in an enzyme which means you are a slower methylator. So you're just slower, it doesn't mean you have a handicapped. And the other thing is folic acid. So folic acid is synthetic folate, and it basically if you have an MTHFR variation folic acid,

will block this enzyme from working. So not only if you have a slower enzyme, but then if you're consuming foods with folic acid, it's basically impairing this process. And what methylation does is it helps your body to make neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, so it affects mental health and it also affects focus. It helps your body to make red blood cells and repair damage to cells.

It helps to make tight cell junctions in your gut. It can contribute to neural tube defects or the spectrum of defects that can happen in a developing fetus when there's a problem with DNA repair or DNA division and cell division. It can block your body from making good quality bile, which is important for dissolving the fats in your food and then absorbing fat soluble nutrients and also

Lisa 

cleaning out your colon so you can end up with bacterial overgrowth and you can end up with you're not absorbing fat soluble vitamins like vitamin D which is really important. And then it can also lead to things like autoimmune disorders because it's required to detoxify heavy metals and so if you're getting a buildup of heavy metals then that tends to seek out fat soluble tissues like your thyroid gland.

And so you can get a mercury and various metals in your thyroid, which contribute to autoimmune. And it can also lead to estrogen dominance because estrogen requires methylation to reduce estrogen, like get out of your body. Like our body's always making estrogen, but we need to get it out too. And so if methylation is blocked, you can end up with these toxic estrogen metabolites. And then finally, it can contribute to sort of this nervous system, like

Natalie Tysdal 

Wow.

Lisa 

fight or flight because you need methylation to detox cortisol. And so if you're getting this accumulation of cortisol, then you can be constantly locked in a fight or flight state. So it has huge, huge implications and it manifests differently in different people. So women might have estrogen dominance and so they could have PCOS and really heavy periods or they could have hypothyroid and Hashimoto's or maybe they have anxiety and depression or they have children with cleft palate.

or like a tied tongue tie that can be a symbol or a sign that maybe there was some methylation going on, methylation block. So now the reason that it is such a problem is because of our food supply. So our food supply has enriched, like we consume a lot of enriched wheat and enriched white rice products. And so I'm just kinda gonna give you a little bit of history. We're gonna go back to the 1920s.

or sometime around there where we stopped from eating whole wheat products and we started eating white, like refined white products. So when food manufacturers refined the grain, it stripped out the bran and the germ. So we were left with the endosperm which basically has no nutrients. And grains used to have about 45 minerals and vitamins and one of them was folate.

And when you strip out the folate, and now we're only consuming this endosperm that doesn't have the B vitamins, well, there was all these health problems that started developing like beriberi or problems with your nervous system and neuro two defects. And researchers traced it back to, well, we're not getting the B vitamins we need. And so food manufacturers started adding in

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah. Right.

Lisa 

these certain nutrients and one of them was folate. But the problem is they didn't add in folate. They added in something that was similar but not quite the same, which is folic acid because I think it's cheaper or they say it absorbs better. So they started adding folic acid in. Well, 50% of the population, that is beneficial to them because they can convert it to folate in your body. But for people with MTHFR, they cannot convert it. Not only that, it blocks this process.

this methylation process with the MTHFR enzyme. So it's this big cluster.

Natalie Tysdal

Wow, okay. Yeah, I mean, okay, my brain is a little overloaded right now, you are very smart, and I don't know how you remember all of that. It's fascinating. And that's why I really wanted to get into it. So now that you, and we might have to go back and listen, I will a few times to really understand it, but let's talk about how many people are affected by it, and how would I remember...

Natalie Tysdal 

probably 10 years ago, it was soon, it might've been right after one of my daughters was born, that I did some type of testing where I became aware of this. But for the general population, they have no idea if they have this THFR. Is it a gene? Is that what you said it is?

Lisa 

Yeah, it's a gene and the gene makes our enzymes. So it's a blueprint and the blueprint makes our enzymes and the enzymes are like little Pacmans and they grab things and they do things and then send it off on its way to go and live a life in our body.

Natalie Tysdal 

People are affected by this and we're pretty much talking about women, but does it affect men?

Lisa 

It does affect men, but it's more, I feel maybe it's just because I help women, but I feel like it affects women more, I think because of the way that we process stress. So stress has an impact on methylation. And so women tend to carry more stress and we don't let things go as much. And so that stress suppresses that action. And also because of estrogen, because we have higher levels of estrogen.

and estrogen, it needs to be detoxed by methylation. And if it's not, then that leads to a whole host of problems. Estrogen is good, we like estrogen, but when it gets built up or we have these toxic estrogen metabolites, that's when it gets to be a problem. So it's estrogen plus prenatals are notorious for having folic acid instead of folate.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, because we know babies need the folate, right? That's why it started, I remember hearing this, that manufacturers started putting it in breads and things because the population wasn't getting the folic acid or folate, as you say, right? And so that's why it happened. Yes.

Lisa

Yes, they need the folate.

Lisa 

Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, and you had asked how do you know if you might have it? So the first sign would be something like high homocysteine on your regular blood tests. So if you're homocysteine.

Natalie Tysdal (10:24.182)

If you're going to be a doctor, like I just talked about this in a recent podcast episode, sometimes we go to the doctor and they do what they think is a blood panel that's necessary. But what should they be asking for specifically if their general care practitioner says, I'm going to do some blood work? What should they ask for in that blood work?

Lisa 

Home assisting would be one. So you can't get necessarily your genetic tests from BloodWorks. You'd have to specifically ask for an MTHFR test. And that, like doctors are not necessarily believers that this is a problem. So you might have a little bit of a conflict with your doctor, but in that case, you can order your own test online and you can just get one.

Natalie Tysdal 

to do that.

Lisa 

So you would just go and purchase one online and I can send a few links to Potential. MaxGen Labs or EmpoweredX Labs would be a couple that I recommend. So one is sort of a more comprehensive genetic test and it's a swab, like a mouth swab that you send in. So it's not, you don't have to take a blood sample. But it also gives you some other important genetic.

Natalie Tysdal 

or give me the links up in the notes of where people can.

Lisa 

results to there are certain there's some sort of top level genes that are very impactful and another one of those is called the PEMT and the COMT. So those would be two that you'd want to be aware of. So that's kind of that would be what I would do like ask your doctor if he can give you an MTHFR test and if not you know just don't argue just go order it's either 100 or 200 dollars and one in two people have it so I think it's worth knowing.

Natalie Tysdal

This is one of those things I talk about often as a health reporter. I've worked with thousands of doctors and experts. If don't just accept the first thing someone tells you, like do your homework, find the right person, get the tests on your own, do your research, understand like these things you're telling you. I know it's a lot and it was kind of nerdy talk that is awesome that you have, but understand it so that you know, when you're eating and when you're taking vitamins, any type of supplements, what they're for. So yourself. Okay, so now that we've said all of that, what, who is this typical person? Who is this?

Lisa 

The typical person, okay, she's an empath. She's very sensitive to stress. She has multiple kids maybe, and she's maybe had a miscarriage. She struggles maybe to sleep at night. She's got some maybe digestive problems, gas bloating. And it really, what really triggers an issue, you'll really find out if you have these health issues if you go through a really stressful event, like maybe a death of someone.

maybe emotional or some kind of abuse when you're a child that you suppress, a divorce, something really stressful usually kicks it off. So you can live your life and with a MTHFR variation and not have a problem, but when you go through something really stressful, that's kind of when it starts showing up because stress suppresses methylation and then that's kind of where everything kind of falls apart.

Natalie Tysdal 

Wow. So you can live your whole life thinking of fine, but it's just like everything else that when we know ahead of time, we can better deal with these issues. So more about the...

Lisa 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And another thing is if you, you know, as a female, if you had heavy periods and painful long periods, there's a chance that you were having issues detoxing estrogen. And so you went on the birth control pill to try to solve that, which made you gain weight. It kind of made things worse. You know, it could make you susceptible to cancers. You might have an early hysterectomy because your body is not.

detoxing this estrogen and you know, the doctors do their best, they try to help you solve the symptoms and put you on birth control but, you know, the underlying cause is your body is not able to get rid of this estrogen. So that's another thing is if you were, as a child you had, or a teenager, you had really painful periods, it's another good indicator.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, and that's so common.

Lisa 

Mm-hmm. Very common.

Natalie Tysdal 

Okay, so let's talk about some solutions now. So we've identified the person, we know what the issue is, what types of things can we be doing to work to feel better?

Lisa 

Yes.

Lisa 

Yes. Yeah, so you could save yourself the 100 to $200 and not get the test because I think everybody should actually live through the lens of supporting methylation. And the main thing would be to, first of all, look at the foods that you're eating, read the labels, turn the package around, see if it has enriched wheat or enriched rice or fortified. This is commonly cereals. It's your pizza crust, pasta, breads.

This is all gonna have folic acid. So if you love wheat and your body tolerates it, you wanna look for either organic or whole wheat and that will typically not have folic acid. And for cereals, so if you, if you're a woman and you have the gene, your kids probably do too. So you wanna be careful with the cereals that you're giving them because they are very fortified with vitamins and minerals and folic acid. So I prefer, you know, if you need some stepping stones to sort of get away from that.

those kind of foods, switch to organic, switch to whole wheat. But I actually think that switching to root vegetables for your carbohydrates is an even better step because there's so many nutrients and it's more filling, there's more minerals and vitamins. So just like kind of taking baby steps to get away from some of those foods. Maybe like think about the food that your family eats the most of. Maybe it's pasta, maybe it's bread. Just switch that one thing out.

and go to something that doesn't have folic acid. So that's the first step. The next, okay.

Natalie Tysdal 

So let me give you an example. So let's give an example of that. My family loves cereal. My son, as hard as I tried to give him really healthy things, he wants Reese's Puffs and cereals. And he loves bagel bite pizza. So in my family, given those two favorite things, and just yesterday we had this whole discussion about, oh, you shouldn't be eating this, but he's a 14-year-old boy, it's so hard. So what would you trade out?

So I would ask if we could mix some cereals, like maybe you would get the organic one on the bottom shelf that's kind of a copycat and see if you'd be okay mixing some cereals and just talk about how these synthetic nutrients are made in a lab and your body doesn't recognize them and even though it might not affect you now, it could affect you later. So I just have that conversation without any stress, like don't let them see fear or worry, like it's not a worry. And then on the other hand, you know, let them have their cereal.

and then give them maybe a food-based multivitamin that would have B vitamins to sort of compete with those vitamins that they're taking in. So like an organic, like a beef organ supplement would be a whole food-based B vitamin. And so you would be, you know, helping to support giving him the right B vitamins if you can't get him to not eat the cereals. But I get it, yeah, happens with me too.

Natalie Tysdal 

Okay, let's talk about the pizza for the families that are like my family just likes pizza. What's a good way to start supplementing that or to trade out?

Lisa 

Yeah, well, it really depends on your time. How much time do you have? Can you make your own pizza dough? Is that a possibility? Or can you switch to a cauliflower crust? I actually think cauliflower crust tastes better than regular pizza. You would just have to.

Natalie Tysdal 

really good cauliflower crust at Costco in the production. And I actually love it. And then I put all this stuff on top that everybody wants. And my family hates it when I do this, but I didn't without telling them I was doing it just to prove, you know, and it's real crunchy, it's good. It's not a real thick crust. And it was weeks later when someone saw the box and they said, don't make that for us. And I said, why? I did it last time you loved it. And so I'm one of those moms, but there are things.

Lisa 

I would just start having conversations before you start switching out your kids foods, just talk about what you're learning and how it could affect them and how like they could actually have more focus and concentration if maybe they took some of those foods out and maybe you asked them to do it for a week. Say can you switch your foods for one week and see how you feel and then we can talk about it. But you know, they're especially teenagers, you're not going to be able to tell them what to do anymore. So you have to sort of be their coach and ask them, you know, what can we do?

Natalie Tysdal 

and let them champion their own health so they want to feel better for sure. Okay, so you were moving on and I stopped you because we wanted to talk about trading out one thing. So now, I'll stop. Okay trading out, yeah, one or two things at a time. And then the next thing would be to eat more foods with natural folate. So this is your animal proteins like beef and beef liver but not many people wanna eat beef liver but it is a really high source of these B vitamins. And let me just stop for a minute because this is important. You don't want to just start taking a bunch of folate because you can have problems with that too.

So you need a complex of the B vitamins. You need, there's several B vitamins that you need to support this enzyme and other minerals. So you don't wanna just start taking a bunch of vitamins. So food is the next thing. So more animal proteins, oranges, citrus, fruits have folate and cruciferous vegetables and leafy greens are really important sources.

So you wanna incorporate more of those. And then hopefully while you do that, you're kind of pushing other things. Lemon peel. So a lot of people like to do lemon water. So if you slice up your lemon and you put the whole slice in your water because there's a lot of folate in that peel so you can get folate through that. That would be step two.

Natalie Tysdal 

One, okay, what else?

Lisa 

Then step three is you want to take a look at the toxins that you're taking in to your body on a daily basis. So is it your makeup, your cleaning products, your laundry detergent, are you on birth control, are you taking a lot of over-the-counter pain medicines, are you taking a lot of pharmaceutical drugs, because those are something that your liver has to detox. So when you can lighten the load on your liver.

then you can use methylation to do other things like DNA repair and cell division. So that would be the next thing is maybe thinking about like, okay, you run out of your makeup. You run out of your face lotion. Is there something you can switch to that's a little bit healthier? Just little steps.

Natalie Tysdal 

So we could do a whole podcast on this, and maybe we will one day. Because I think it's a big, big issue, and we're not educated. So when we go to the grocery store, we grab off the shelf, what do we need to look for? What are those toxins that we should be trying to get rid of? And when, like you said, you run out of it, you don't clear out everything all at once. That's gonna be so hard. When you're gonna buy something new, let's take laundry detergent for example. You just mentioned that. What are we looking for?

Lisa 

Yeah. If you're gonna switch laundry detergent, you could look for one that doesn't have perfumes and dyes. That would be easy one. Like Tide has a non-perfume non-dye. So that'd be something easy. You could even go as far as making your own laundry detergent, but I don't think that's necessary. I have done that and I don't feel like it cleans as well. So you have to find a balance between what's available and homemade. So I just find one without perfumes and dyes and that just takes it down one notch.

Natalie Tysdal 

And is that kind of generally in makeup products and laundry detergents and cleaning products, is that what we're looking for? Dyes and perfumes?

Lisa 

Yes, and heavy metals. So makeup typically has a lot of heavy metals and it might not be listed on the ingredients, but maybe you'd want to look for a brand that specifically is clean beauty, that doesn't have, they're not sourcing, it's not a list that's 20, 30 ingredients long, or they don't tell you what's on it. So, you know, maybe just look for some affordable clean beauty thing that you can find or, you know, higher quality beauty products, but yeah.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, I have daughters with a lot of allergies and we're so cautious of that. So we only buy clean shampoo and makeup and things because they get such outbreaks from that. I'll put a link for anyone of what they use. But that's a big one too that, again, we go to the store, we go to the beauty counter, Sephora, Ulta, and it's just like fun city. You know, it's beautiful and looks great, but can have a lot of lasting impact. Okay, what's next?

Lisa

Mm-hmm, yep. The next thing is to potentially, now we're at the point where, oh, so stress. So you really wanna look at where is the stress in your life? What is your biggest source of stress? Sometimes we can't change the stress, but we can change our mindset about it. And so, you know, just practicing gratitude for everything, because we, as women, tend to focus on what's going wrong in our life, and then we get hyper-focused on that.

Forget to focus on what's going well, and then practicing releasing, letting go and surrendering on a daily basis. So when you can do that, you are allowing your body to work the way it's supposed to do. And you have to really feel it in your heart. You have to feel the surrender in your heart. And then the answers and solutions to your health typically start to come. So stress is a big one.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, it's so true. I just had that conversation. I mean, that's, again, it's a whole nother podcast. We need to do several podcasts, Lisa. We can involve people, I know we can. But I just had this conversation with one of my daughters. Your college is a tough time of, you get to choose. You get to choose to take on that stress or to work your hardest and then surrender it.

Lisa (24:28.158)

Yes, absolutely, yeah. And then finally, so the final step is potentially supplementing with some B complex. So that would be methylfolate or methylcobalamin. So this is the B vitamin, so you need riboflavin, methylfolate and methylcobalamin. These are important in the methylation cycle. Also magnesium, glycine vitamin C. These are important and you could take a food based multivitamin like a beef liver or an organ supplement or you could do just a traditional supplement that has methylated B vitamins that know what they're doing. If they list folic acid on the bottle, on the bottle, that manufacturer doesn't know what the heck they're doing. So yes. And you want to go cautiously because like I said, there's some other genes.

Natalie Tysdal

Watch for that first. Okay, okay.

Lisa 

And if you start taking methylated B vitamins and then you feel overwhelmed and anxious and like mad, then you have a genetic predisposition for not breaking down dopamine. And that can lead to some of those problems.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, yeah. Did we make it through your list of all the things to do?

Lisa 

Let's see, I just, yeah, we pretty much did. I just, you know, like if you have fatty liver or if you have gallstones, that's a really big indicator that you might have an MTHFR variation. So, just kinda.

Natalie Tysdal 

And I know you spend a lot of time on those topics too, not just MTHFR, you have a whole lot of things you help people with. But can you just give us a brief of how someone might know that they have fatty liver, how that leads to system?

Lisa 

Okay. Yeah. Fatty liver. Well, that would be another, you know, we talked about a blood test. So if you get your blood test back and your liver enzymes are high, that's a sign that there's kind of inflammation going on. If you are waking up in the middle of the night and you can't get back to sleep, like you're waking up at two or three in the morning, which is really common. That's a sign that your liver is struggling to regulate your blood sugar because while we're sleeping, our liver is slowly releasing glucose into our bloodstream to keep us asleep.

And if our blood sugar drops, then our body has to, because it's a survival thing, we have to have a certain range of blood sugar. It's gonna raise cortisol and adrenaline in order to raise your blood sugar. And that's what actually wakes us up, is that cortisol and adrenaline. So that's a sign that your liver is really struggling, that it's not regulating your blood sugar at night. So those are two big ones.

Natalie Tysdal 

Yeah, okay. Well, we've just spent almost a half an hour and I learned so, so much. I'm gonna put a lot of these links and things you mentioned in the show notes for anyone who wants more information. Where would you send people if they wanna work with you, learn more and just get more from your knowledge?

Lisa 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm at Lisa Health Joy at Instagram, Facebook, and I just started a YouTube channel, so I try to give out a lot of information on there, just about first steps to working with, supporting your methylation. I do have online courses that help you dissolve gallstone, reverse fatty liver, and improve your metabolism, so you can find that all through those platforms.

Natalie Tysdal

Lisa, thank you so much. It's really been a great episode for learning today. I appreciate it.

Lisa 

Yeah, it's been wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay. Sounds great. Okay. All right. Bye-bye.

Natalie Tysdal

Talk to you later, we'll do it again. We'll pick another great job. Okay, take care.