DIY Home Test for Molybdenum Deficiency

[InChristAlone]

Chris Masterjohn posted an article about how to test for molybdenum deficiency at home. It's behind a paywall though, anyone happen to be a paid subscriber?

"Molybdenum is necessary to convert the highly toxic sulfite to the highly useful sulfate. Sulfite can cause anxiety, sleep disruption, excessive startle reflex, or mast cell degranulation and pseudo-allergies. Sulfate is needed for detoxification and healthy hormone metabolism. Much of the nausea, sickness, and mental deterioration that can happen in pregnancy is due to sulfite accumulation. You’re likely to run deficient in molybdenum if you eat a lot of meat but don’t eat liver, and in general if you don’t eat beans.

Lab testing for molybdenum status is unsatisfactory. LabCorp and Quest both treat molybdenum tests as if they are designed for the sole purpose of ruling out toxicity.

Even Quest’s ridiculously labeled “Micronutrient, Molybdenum, Blood” reports a healthy or deficient molybdenum level simply as less than the cutoff for toxicity.

HDRI offers a whole blood molybdenum test, but I have found them very difficult to work with, being hit by months of delays.

Here I report a simple DIY home test for molybdenum status that requires no more than $10-50 worth of equipment, a molybdenum supplement, and 2-4 days of data collection. I have tested this on myself and believe that it works, although my validation should be considered anecdotal."

A Simple DIY Home Test for Molybdenum Deficiency

All you need is $10-$50 worth of equipment, 2-4 days, and a molybdenum supplement.

chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com

Another article behind a paywall about molybdenum:

"If you’re a male trying to boost his testosterone or a woman trying to avoid nausea and histamine problems that ebb and flow with your hormones, you need to get enough molybdenum.

While we can generally say that eating a lot of meat, eggs, and dairy without eating liver or legumes is a recipe for tanking your molybdenum, it’s tough to know how much we are getting when the USDA and NCCDB databases, Cronometer, and anything else you might use to track your vitamins and minerals universally ignore molybdenum.

It makes it even worse that the RDA is based on not losing more molybdenum in the urine than you eat, rather than on optimizing hormones minimizing itchiness.

And it makes it 100 times worse that the RDA is based on studies of people consuming a measly 56 grams of protein, which really only works for you if you are into that sickly kind of look.

And it makes it 1000 times worse that the RDA study provided biochemical evidence that a quarter of people will accumulate the testosterone-tanking histamine-releasing sulfite on this intake!

Accordingly, here are my recommendations for how to get enough molybdenum from food, how to match it to protein intake, and a spreadsheet you can search through of molybdenum in 94 foods or food categories taken from four sources in the peer-reviewed literature."

Missing From the Databases: Molybdenum

Optimizing your hormones and mental health by getting the amount of molybdenum you really need.

chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com

And another:
"Molybdenum is so powerful that it can completely restore fertility to mice that have been made infertile with cancer drugs!

But before you reach for that bucket of beans, be aware that too much molybdenum can itself cause infertility. The goal, then, is to get molybdenum into the sweet spot.

The role of molybdenum may in fact explain the controversy over whether meat is truly manly: sulfur amino acids raise the molybdenum requirement, so whether they tank testosterone or boost it to the moon will depend a lot on the rest of the diet.

Molybdenum Boosts Testosterone​

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Molybdenum is required for a number of reactions but first and foremost it is needed to convert the highly toxic sulfite to the highly useful sulfate.

Sulfite is generated from the sulfur amino acids in animal protein, and possibly from many other sulfur compounds, including those in sulfury vegetables. Many people also consume sulfite compounds used as preservatives in processed foods and are exposed to its use in medications, medical equipment, and cosmetics.

In rats, a variation of sulfite, sodium metabisulfite, tanks testosterone, destroys testosterone-producing Leydig cells, and shrinks the epididymis, the tubular structure around the testicles where sperm mature.

In another paper, this group showed that it also decreases sperm motility.

In that second paper, they showed that it decreased the activity of antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and glutathione reductase (see my antioxidant course on their significance). It decreased glutathione, and increased malondialdehyde (MDA), which is a breakdown product of oxidative damage to polyunsaturated fatty acids (found in “seed oils”). High-dose ginger partially reversed many, but not all, of these changes.

In mice, the sulfur-containing chemotherapy drug bisulfan causes infertility alongside low testosterone, low superoxide dismutase activity, and high MDA. Molybdenum completely restores fertility, normalizes superoxide dismutase and MDA, and raises testosterone even above the level in healthy control mice.

Most likely, sulfite poisons the antioxidant enzymes, leading to oxidative damage to lipids, thereby killing off the testosterone-producing cells and sperm-maturing tubes, leading to infertility. Molybdenum rescues these effects by converting sulfite to sulfate.

Too Much Molybdenum Tanks Testosterone​

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In a separate study, however, this group showed in mice that molybdenum independently helps optimize antioxidant status and maximizes sperm number and quality. However, when molybdenum is doubled above the optimal level, these benefits start to wear off, and when it is quadrupled, molybdenum starts hurting antioxidant status and tanking sperm number and quality.

The mechanisms by which excess molybdenum causes problems are not entirely clear. While molybdenum does not stimulate metallothionein on its own, it dramatically enhances the metallothionein response to mercury, so it could interact with heavy metals to chelate zinc and copper. In ruminants, molybdenum reacts with hydrogen sulfide gas produced in the rumen to produce thiomolybdate, which prevents copper absorption and itself gets absorbed and poisons copper-dependent enzymes. It is generally assumed that thiomolybdate is not produced in humans and other non-ruminants, but this might not be true in the presence of excessive hydrogen sulfide gas induced by estrogen or a sulfur-reducing microbiome. When thiomolybdate is injected into rats, it frees copper from metallothionein. Since zinc and copper are critical to antioxidant defense, excess molybdenum may be creating deficiencies of them or altering their metabolism.

How Much Sulfite Do You Need to Tank Your Testosterone?​

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The negative effects of sodium metabisulfite on rat testosterone and fertility kick in around 100 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight, which when converted from rats to humans is the equivalent of 17 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight.

As discussed in this paper, munching on sulfite-preserved foods all day could easily get you up to 600 milligrams of sulfite, which is about half of what was used in that study to tank testosterone.

More importantly however, according to the sulfur chapter of Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, humans excrete an average of 450-900 milligrams of elemental sulfur per day, which is the equivalent sulfur load as found in 1333-2667 milligrams per day of sodium metabisulfite. For a 70-kilogram person, this would be the equivalent sulfur load of 19-38 milligrams per kilogram bodyweight of sodium metabisulfite, and thus well above the dose that starts tanking testosterone in rats.

This is all sulfur flowing through the sulfite oxidase enzyme before it winds up in the urine.

All of that sulfur must be converted to sulfate by the molybdenum-dependent sulfite oxidase enzyme in order to be rendered safe and useful.

Thus, the sulfur we derive from our dietary protein taxes the molybdenum requirement and optimizing testosterone requires having enough molybdenum to tolerate that sulfur load.

Human Molybdenum Studies Show the Importance of Zinc​

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There are no human experimental trials on this topic, but there are several observational studies that have looked for correlations between molybdenum status and testosterone:

• In the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011-2012 in the United States, higher testosterone is correlated with lower urinary molybdenum. However, this study did not adjust for zinc and copper status.
• In men attending an infertility clinic in Michigan, blood molybdenum was inversely associated with testosterone. The authors reported that this was extremely pronounced among those with low zinc, but they did not report the association with molybdenum separately among those with robust zinc status. This supports the negative impact of too much molybdenum being a result of its antagonism toward zinc, and suggests that it is meaningless to look at such associations without taking zinc into account.
• A study in Chinese men attending an infertility clinic looked for an association between testosterone and urinary molybdenum and did not find one.
• Another study in Chinese males found that various nutritional metals including zinc, copper, and molybdenum were negatively correlated with sperm metrics when they were measured in semen.
• A study in Polish men found that those with low total testosterone had the same molybdenum concentrations in their whole blood as those without low testosterone.

The second study provides the important insight that negative effects of excess molybdenum on testosterone status are likely mediated by an aggravation of marginal or deficient zinc status.

What all of these studies miss is that the molybdenum you need is the amount that maximizes your conversion of sulfite to sulfate, not some particular amount circulating in blood, urine, or semen.

Sulfite Isn’t All About Molybdenum​

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The detoxification of sulfur compounds begins with the CoQ10-dependent and glutathione-dependent conversion of sulfide to sulfite, and then the molybdenum-dependent conversion of sulfite to sulfate involves the delivery of sulfite electrons to complex IV of the respiratory chain, which is dependent on iron and is very specifically dependent on copper. The role of copper in complex IV is the singular direct role of copper in energy metabolism.

I recently produced a comprehensive guide to optimizing CoQ10 status in Does CoQ10 Deserve a Spot on Your Longevity Plan?

The Cheat Sheet has guidance for optimizing glutathione, copper, and iron status.

How Much Molybdenum Do You Need?​

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In the Molybdenum lesson I defaulted to the RDA of 45 micrograms per day because there is so little research. However, it is highly likely that sulfite oxidase is upregulated when you have more sulfite to detoxify, and that this raises the molybdenum requirement. Thus, the molybdenum you need is probably dependent on your sulfur load. See my recommendations here.

The “gold standard” would be to get the amount of molybdenum that maximally suppresses your own individual urinary sulfite.

Alternatively, you could measure testosterone on different molybdenum intakes to determine which one maximizes your testosterone, but that could take months."

The Unknown Testosterone Nutrient

Move over boron, there's a new guy in town.

chrismasterjohnphd.substack.com

>>>>>>I surmise that the DIY test is a urine test for sulfite?

So another win for beans!! And another fail for the Peat diet which largely avoided every single bean out there.

 

[loess]

Chris Masterjohn posted an article about how to test for molybdenum deficiency at home. It's behind a paywall though, anyone happen to be a paid subscriber?

@InChristAlone I'd rather not get into hot water reposting the articles here semi-publically, but send me a PM and I'd be glad to share both with you.

 

[charlie]

@InChristAlone I'd rather not get into hot water reposting the articles here semi-publically, but send me a PM and I'd be glad to share both with you.

Is the test hard to do?

 

[youngsinatra]

Molybdenum is very underrated. Critical for liver detoxification, methylation, oxidizing aldehydes..

As nearly always I prefer food sources.

 

[loess]

Is the test hard to do?

I haven't done it myself, but it's pretty simple. Just involves establishing and maintaining a relatively consistent diet over several days and monitoring urine pH over several days. If molybdenum deficient, then supplementing molybdenum will decrease your pH due to sulfite to sulfate conversion (which is molybdenum dependent) taking place. If not molybdenum deficient, then supplementing molybdenum won't cause a drop in pH, as you've properly converted all of the sulfite to sulfate, and so your body isn't peeing out excess acidity generated by that conversion. There's some nuance to it, but that's the gist.

 

[InChristAlone]

I haven't done it myself, but it's pretty simple. Just involves establishing and maintaining a relatively consistent diet over several days and monitoring urine pH over several days. If molybdenum deficient, then supplementing molybdenum will decrease your pH due to sulfite to sulfate conversion (which is molybdenum dependent) taking place. If not molybdenum deficient, then supplementing molybdenum won't cause a drop in pH, as you've properly converted all of the sulfite to sulfate, and so your body isn't peeing out excess acidity generated by that conversion. There's some nuance to it, but that's the gist.

Ok awesome. Welp, my urine ph tends to be as acid as the urine ph test strips will go which is around 5, so it'd be hard to detect any change as of now. But maybe it is a sign I have a lot of sulfite though I avoid sulfur lately. Bad microbiome produces hydrogen sulfide is that also putting strain on molybdenum stores?

 

[InChristAlone]

Found some interesting molybdenum and SIBO info that completely makes sense to me as I've worked on healing my gut:

– I think the early research that really came to the forefront of our understanding was for example, PPIs. We began to see evidence when patients were taking proton pump inhibitors, which next to cholesterol medicine seemed like everybody was prescribed some kind of a prescription for heartburn. And what we began to see is that patients over a period of time after they were on a PPI, had a much higher prevalence of the development of SIBO, or SIBO. So as we’re seeing some of that evidence thinking in the understanding of what other co-factors may predispose us to that. So we began to realize that that heavily processed foods, patients that are eating more foods in a package or a box, has a tendency to lead to some of the nutrients that are not completely well metabolized, those nutrients that travel down too far down the GI track, change the pH again. And as that pH changes between the ileocecal valve, the small intestines and the colon, we begin to see a valve that remains open and then the trans migration of bacteria. Next is, high animal meat, patients that eat a high animal meat diet, not blended with all those vital nutrients and that high concentration of plants and the fiber, these patients seem to have a lot more undigested protein moving down the GI track and then this tends to set up the changes in the bacteria.

– So I have a lot of different points on that. So if they’re not digesting protein, they’re probably not producing enough stomach acid, right? They have achlorhydria and hypochlorhydria probably because of the connection, whether to the PPI or just through aging or other causes or even stress. And so, when we look at SIBO and some of the things that you can do, would one of the things be addressing the upstream cause which would be in part, looking at protein digestion and helping to replete with good stomach acid?

– Absolutely, so one of the things that we see all the time is in these advanced stool studies, we start to see patients that are having excessive protein metabolism, short chain fatty acids, or we’re seeing the lack of some of those healthy short chain fatty acids. So we can see evidence of fat malabsorption, protein maldigestion, and same thing with carbohydrates. So the beauty of those advanced stools is we can almost pinpoint people who seem to have a tendency of having the hyperchlorhydria. And most of the studies that where they’re going down for the pH pro, these patients with GERD, majority of them, eight out of 10 are actually developing hypochlorhydria, which again is shooting acid up and down the esophageal system because the pH is not becoming acidic enough to close the valves. And that’s where we

– Yeah, I mean, just the dots are all connecting, right? So if we don’t have enough stomach acid, then we probably don’t have good iron absorption or mineral absorption, we probably have H pylori because we’ve got overgrowth in the stomach. So do you see that patients with SIBO have a whole host of different things going on, and it’s mainly connected into this mechanism of action?

– I do, completely. And oftentimes an imbalance where they don’t have enough of the lactoBacilli, which that should be very fulminant. We should have tons of the lactoBacilli, but many of them are culturing negative for lactoBacilli and other bacteria, like the sulfur producing and the sulfur reducing types of bacteria are thriving in certain of these disease stage creating a lot of the symptoms.

– So I’m wondering rather than measuring the gases, and this is all very organic by the way, everybody, I mean, Bridget, and I haven’t rehearsed this, but I’m just getting so intrigued, just listening to you and just formulating all these other questions. So you did talk about the gold standard test, a breath test to measure these different gases. And based on the ratio of these gases, we can say something about the bacterial overgrowth in the gut. And I’m thinking would it not make sense to simply be looking at hypochlorhydria as that first line of attack, or maybe even in conjunction with? Because it’s such an easy thing. In functional medicine, we talk about repleting stomach acid all the time, and there’s even a set protocol of how to do that.

– Yes, and the irony Deanna, is it feels like everybody flunks. And I think that correlates with the vast array of patients that have GERD or heartburn, is, are we really saying to patients who have GERD you have too much acid? Or should we really be saying, this is hypochlorhydria and using things like zinc supplementation or hydrochloric acid supplementation to enhance their HCL production. I mean, how many patients come in the door and they’re like, how come when I do Apple cider vinegar, Dr. Bridget, I feel better? They’re restoring their own pH. And it’s just an old wives tale, or actually potentially does work.

– Well, I was just going to ask you about that. So what do you think about Apple cider vinegar? So you’re saying patients are coming to you and they’ve tried this on their own and you are seeing that they have some symptom improvement?

– Absolutely, all the time. Same thing with just diluted lemon juice. They wake up and they have this every morning and they’re like, okay, all my heartburn is gone, Dr. Bridget, I don’t need you any longer. And I’m like, congratulations, I believe you. It’s pH balance is such an important element of body health, whether it’s in the GI track or whether it’s in serum in the blood is pH is a critical mechanism for oxidation, reduction and all of that. So the GI tract is especially, especially pH sensitive. Especially when we remember the end of that, protein digestion primarily happens in the stomach. So when patients have inappropriate acid production in the stomach, pepsinogen is a pre enzyme. It’s not active to the pH of the stomach drops below 2.2 then it’s converted to pepsin, which is where we can chop up the protein. So these patients with low stomach acid have this undigested protein running down the GI track, and this is definitively becoming putrefactive, it’s affecting butyric acid levels, it’s feeding bad bacteria. So I think you hit it on the nail, which is address stomach acid and the stomach first.

– Yeah and it’s not such a hard fix in some ways, as long as we can identify it. So you saying that makes me think that if we have undigested protein, what could happen then is, number one food intolerance or number two further on to food allergies. So that’s gonna take us into the discussion on sulfur because sulfur is part of our constitution. It’s one of the elements that comprise us. So what you’re seeing, well, tell us what you’re seeing with patients with SIBO, small intestinal bowel overgrowth and sulfur containing foods, which are everywhere. I mean, that’s like meat, dairy, eggs, even vegetables, we’re talking cruciferous vegetables. So what are you seeing that they can’t tolerate these foods at all?

– We have our unique genotypes that are out there, for example your patients who have that homozygous CBS gene. So we know that they are often your Europeans that come from colder areas of the world. And so genotypically, sulfur is the fourth most abundant molecule in the human body. So if you’re not going to eat it in the diet, let’s say, you’re not growing up in equator type of environment. And your only main sulfur vegetable is gonna be cabbage, well, you come to California with that type of Scottish genotype or Irish genotype, and you’re buying a juicer and you’re eating broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and kale, and they develop bloating and gas and indigestion. They’re just over sulfur producers. So then you not have the GI issues with the hypochlorhydria, but they’re hyper ingesting non-seasonal foods or through juices that their little bodies can’t tolerate. So they end up getting a burden of histamine and remember, how do we treat GERD? Early days, we use the Pepcid AC, the anti-histamine families. And so they take the right PPI or the right proton pump inhibitor. And they feel like that’s the treatment, but really it was the dietary connection to this massive ingestion in a sulfur sensitive individuals. So we have the genotypes, okay. Two we have those that your body is not good at converting sulfites to sulfates? So we get this sulfate deficiency and that happens in people, for example, that are demineralized. So let’s say I am eating a highly processed diet, I’m not getting adequate amounts of minerals that are trace, like molybdenum. Molybdenum is the key mineral needed to activate the SUOX enzyme to revert sulfites to sulfate. So I can handle some of those sulfur foods as long as I can appropriately convert them to the sulfate, which have a critical role in detoxification as you mentioned Deanna by the liver. It’s important hormone detoxification. So we see these patients with high estrone sulfate, we see them with high DAGAS. These PCOS girls that have that androgenic acne, which we connect the GI tract, the gut, or this endometriosis which we see has a bacterial component in OBGYN medicine to something that pelvic change but we think it may be bacteria. So I think there’s a hormone connection to the imbalance in sulfites and sulfates. And sometimes simple mineral deficiencies that you and I can implement quite lovely and helping people to produce those good sulfates. So this is why our seniors, they feel so much better when you give them the cosamin sulfate, chondroitin sulfate. This is where prescriptions Deanna, that we’re using all the time in medicine that are sulfating our patients like, albuterol sulfate for Bronco construction. We use plaquenil, hydroxychloroquine sulfate for all this autoimmune human disorders were magnesium sulfate musculoskeletal tension. These patients, you sulfate them, or you just give them molybdenum and all of a sudden they come in and they’re like, I don’t have chronic neck and muscle spasms, my GI tract is normal in three days on molybdenum because you’re generating that biofilm, that nice biofilm layer that bacteria can now thrive. And lastly, Deanna, I think the connection to butyrate how sulfites prevent the natural balance and health of the function of butyrate. So if we don’t have enough bacteria number one, we’re not making healthy butyric acid, that’s like the miracle grow on a lawn of the gut. If I want my lawn to grow, I have to put miracle grow well, I need to butyric acid to regenerate my gut.

– It’s a great metaphor.

– Yeah, they knock out that healthy butyric acid so these patients have leaky gut, they have oxidation, they have bad bacteria and then all this protein, fat, carbohydrate maldigestion.

– Dr. Bridget, you said a lot over the two minutes or so. And I was jotting some notes because I wanna play that back for everybody. ‘Cause you said so many great things and I don’t want it to be missed. And by the way, for anybody that’s online and I see we’ve got a number of viewers, please type in your questions and we’ll get them answered. We’ll do our best. So lemme just play certain things back. So first we talked about low stomach acid and its connection to small intestinal bowel overgrowth. And then we transition into talking about sulfur, sulfur metabolism and one of the things that you said is that people from perhaps the Northern European ancestry who have a snip or a variant in a specific gene cystathionine beta synthase, may have issues with sulfur. And that can be remedied by reducing sulfur in the diet and taking molybdenum. So I wanna ask a couple of things here. So first and foremost, I made a notation, do you see a difference, I don’t know if you’ve had your patients do this, between plant-based sulfur and animal-based sulfur? Because it’s a different matrix, it’s a different complex. And so first I’d like to know that. And then of course, I’m sure that most people online wanna know about your dose of molybdenum.

– Hi, so yeah, there’s a big difference between plant-based sulfur foods, because generally that is not gonna be as much methionine in our system. When you talk about animal meat, you’re gonna really be ingesting methionine in high concentrations. That is an essential amino acid, you and I have to eat that. And then we can recycle it as well. But it is one of those essential amino acids that our bodies can now convert into cystine through that methionine door. But preliminary all animal meat, especially that red meat, the amount of sulfur is going to be one of the highest. And the only thing that’s really gonna be to in that department is gonna be those apricots that are dried and things like that, or in heavily processed foods that have use the preservative sulfate or sulfites, which is always illegal in organic. So whenever you go organic fruits and vegetables, we don’t have to worry about the preservatives and the pesticides. Now let’s talk about the fruits and the vegetables. What we do, if you Google, like the people grams, you’ll see the darker the green, the higher the sulfur. But we’re not gonna get to the level of the animal meat, right? Nowhere near. And so first I wanna make it critically clear, we all need sulfur. It is essential and we never wanna tell a patient, stop eating all your broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale. Between the red meats, the animal meats and the veggies, we need those high antioxidants. It’s really never pulling it out altogether, but really trying to eat it seasonally. And according to like not a high concentration in one meal, you know? And when we talked about it-

– I’ve had a number of people tell me, I just wanna interject here quickly because some people might be thinking this as well. I’ve had a number of people tell me that they can’t have garlic, not even a little bit on a pizza or a healthy pizza or even broccoli, just a serving a broccoli, just bloats them and they feel so uncomfortable. So is there a remedy for them?

– Yes, well, first of all, we all know, even in beauty and in hair that when see people who have really curly hair that is disulfide bonds. And so how do we break curly hair? We heat it. We break sulfur bonds by heat.

– That’s a great analogy.

– Yeah, so whenever you’re thinking about trying to help a sulfur sensitive individual tolerate the Brussels sprout, you can’t sim it and serve it or the garlic, you can’t serve it fresh. It’s very allicin burdened. The more you cook it down and heat it, you start to break down some of those sulfur bonds. So they can do a garlic clove in the oven when it’s all cooked and mushy, but they certainly can’t do it super fresh. And I giggled ’cause my husband and I are the opposite. He won’t touch Brussels sprout unless they’re killed. I won’t eat them unless they’re fresh because I’m Latin, he’s Scottish. Like we can giggle about bit but we have a hard time meeting in the middle. And so this is where the more European they are, I’m like stay with the blonder lettuce. The more you can tolerate the sulfur cravers, I want it dark and I want it fresh. And you will have these Europeans, they can’t eat fresh salad. They just can’t. The salad is the biggest trigger. But when they take the spinach and they cook it down, they have no problem. So we just need to find the mechanism to get it in our bodies that suits us. But molybdenum always helps.

– There’s two transporters, one on the intestine and one on the kidneys. So molybdenum works in both, both in absorbing the appropriate amount of sulfur, but ideally converting to sulfate and it works on the kidneys to make sure you pee out excess. So about 100 micrograms twice a day in patients that are the most symptomatic with sulfur. Now, for people like myself, Deanna, I don’t need any molybdenum. I am a sulfur craver. I don’t want to eliminate any access. And in fact what’s really interesting is if you use too much molybdenum, you actually start to break sulfur bonds. So I started getting really flexible, you can actually start pull my hand to pull me out of joint of my It’s interesting because sulfur is notorious for strength and twisting, right? Disulfide bonds, help with turning and twisting, which is why we see the curls. This is heavily involved in your tendons, which is why your tendons’ been stretched. So people who have tight tendons and tendonitis, bursitis, plantar fasciitis, when you get the molybdenum, they’re like, why did that just take my plantar fasciitis away? So it really, you have to kind of feel the body out and find your sweet spot. So I get hyper flexible. The next person they’re like, wow, I don’t have all my muscle tension and my tendon issues. So it is a benign mineral that you start to feel your body.

– Does anything happens to hair?

– It gets straight. I’ve been notorious to straighten people’s hair. So I always warn everybody, if your locks get a little bit less straight, sorry. ‘Cause I do love curls.

– So what you’re saying is for people with the CBS snip and people can get that snip by getting your genes tested through a qualified health practitioner, somebody who knows a bit genomics, right? Somebody like you. So then you see whether or not you’ve got the CBS snip and if you do, it might be worthwhile to be on a dose of, I like how you call it, molly. It’s so much easier than molybdenum.

– I call it molyb.

– You need to eat 100 micrograms twice a day, right? Excellent, so gosh, talk a little bit about histamines too before we close. Because you did mention that by way of sulfate. So what’s the connection because we’re hearing so much about people being very sensitive to histamine containing foods.

– Yes, absolutely. So what we have to remember is every time the body produces sulfites, whether we’re eating sulfites or whether our body’s producing it through that transsulfuration pathway, the natural by-product of sulfites is histamine. They go hand in hand. So if I eat a high, if I eat a high sulfur diet, I’m gonna have more histamine. Which means we tend to have the rosacea, the flushing, the itching, the heartburn, because that’s the histamine. So we want to help patients neutralize histamine, things to remember methylation, you can use histamine demetholate to break down histamine. We can use vitamin C to break down histamine. We can use cosataine to break down histamine, nettles. And then I love off-label sulfation. So when you get somebody’s mag sulfate, your crazy itching and their tinnitus, and their ringing in their ears is incredibly important. And often in these sulfur sensitive individuals, you have to put them on a low histamine diet. So that’s like avocados, Cortes, citrus, pineapple, strawberries. There’s an overlap of these sulfur and histamine foods. So it’s pulled back a little bit, but many times these patients are aware. They know, if they eat pineapple, or if they eat citrus or feed strawberries say, either tend to be more hyper excited. They can’t turn off at night. They can’t sleep. They wake up normal as the day goes on, they get a little bit more excitotoxic. That’s the histamine, it’s a powerful excitatory neurotransmitter. And so when you pull them out, they’re like, I sleep better, I’m less itchy, I’m less agitated. So yes, the molly helps to lower the burden kind of getting that sulfide out as quickly as possible and then using a lower histamine diet so they don’t get that kind of combination toxicity

– Excellent, low histamine diet. And I would think that methylation, you mentioned methylation before, and you’ve been known for your work on methylation. And so I’m thinking that it’s all fitting as part of this big web, right? And if we had the biochemical pathways, we would see how transsulfation connect right there with methylation.

– Right.

– So really what we’re talking about here is proper detoxification, helping the body to do its job of excreting the toxic load better. And the power of food as I listened to you talk about following a low histamine diet and watching that we’re getting the sulfates and not the sulfites and making sure that we have that conversion, it’s so important. Bridget, as we close, top five foods that you think are wonderful for people with SIBO. Maybe you can leave us with something around food. What might be the top five that you think would be healing for the gut for these folks?

– Great question, Deanna. So, because we know so many of the patients that have SIBO one of the big complications is this lack of protein digestion. So this undigested protein kind of feeding the bad bacteria. And because the protein has such a high concentration of sulfur it drives that sulfur producing SIBO patient. Does that make sense? So I’m really gonna be talking about one of the subtypes of SIBO patients. These are the people that have a lot of the sulfur sensitivities. So they’re gonna do really well on a low sulfur diet and what’s called a failsafe diet, which is the low histamine diet as you’re trying to recover from SIBO. While they’re doing that, they’re taking their probiotic, you’re putting your good bacteria in, you’re gonna be using some of that molybdenum. And I like manganese. I like 100 micrograms and molybdenum twice a day and about 10 milligrams of manganese twice a day, ’cause that’s clearing the ammonia by product, right? The breakdown of protein is always gonna release an ammonia. So that helps the brain fog and all of that. And we’re gonna start looking at well, what are low sulfur foods and low histamine foods. So it’s things like in your vegetables, it’s your cucumbers, it’s your carrots, it’s your celery, it’s your green beans. ‘Cause patients begin to feel like, well, what do I eat in terms of vegetables? And then the blonder lettuces, like the butter leaf or the romaine and things like that. When they’re looking at fruits, like there’s a list of high sulfur and salicylates fruits. And you’ll see, like if I eat a golden delicious apple, it’s not very high in the histamine sulfur pathway. But if I eat that dark green granny, it’s higher. So we try to give our patients the handout of which foods are going to be really dominant and which ones are going to be really low in the sulfur family. So we’re getting all of our fruits, our vegetables, and you’re gonna find a lot of the spices become a problem too. So we’re like when they get back to the basics, like salt with a little bit of pepper, but not tons of all those fancy spices when you’re cooking, ’cause they tend to be activating.

SIBO & The Connection to Sulfur | Metagenics Institute

Drs. Minich and Briggs explore the SIBO-sulfur link in this cutting edge discussion, where they use a personalized lifestyle medicine approach to examine SIBO.

www.metagenicsinstitute.com

 

[Blossom]

We have our unique genotypes that are out there, for example your patients who have that homozygous CBS gene. So we know that they are often your Europeans that come from colder areas of the world.

Thank you ma’am. I just found out recently that I’m homozygous for CBS C699T and it explains quite a bit about my different challenges.

 

[InChristAlone]

Thank you ma’am. I just found out recently that I’m homozygous for CBS C699T and it explains quite a bit about my different challenges.

Yeah I bet I have some too, I am mostly polish and german descent.

 

[Blossom]

Yeah I bet I have some too, I am mostly polish and german descent.

English/Irish, German/French and Scandinavian. I increased my molybdenum from 100 to 200mcg and despite the sulfur farts (excuse me) I really like it!

 

[charlie]

English/Irish, German/French and Scandinavian. I increased my molybdenum from 100 to 200mcg and despite the sulfur farts (excuse me) I really like it!

Yeh it really pushes the sulfur out.

 

[Blossom]

@charlie, you can say that again!

 

[Ashs]

@InChristAlone what would be the ideal dosage and frequency of 'molybdenum '.

 

[DKBS]

Thank you ma’am. I just found out recently that I’m homozygous for CBS C699T and it explains quite a bit about my different challenges.

how did you test for that? I have been looking at Amy Yasko

 

[Blossom]

@DKBS, yes. I found out after I ran my raw data through genetic genie’s methylation profile (free but you can donate $ as able/willing) at the end of January.
What do you think about Yasko’s work? This is all so new to me and I don’t really want to get caught up in any dead ends tbh. That said I’ve had a few specific blood marker abnormalities over the years that are commonly seen in people with this variant so I tend to think it can genuinely effect people when under or over expressed. I’ve made a couple changes based on the information that have helped a bit so far (added b2 and increased molybdenum).

 

[YourUniverse]

The “gold standard” would be to get the amount of molybdenum that maximally suppresses your own individual urinary sulfite.

does excreted sulfite cause foamy urine?