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Low folate and vit D
Hello all,
I have been eating low vitamin A for 2.5 years, about 200 - 300iu, I have had good health improvements but after a recent blood test I have low folate levels and low vit D in the blood.
I have been mainly eating oats, honey, sunflower seeds, white potatoes, rice, lamb, beef, chicken, some white fish, baked beans, lentils but not every day, cabbage, limes, lemons.
I got the blood test because I was feeling fatigued and thought it was related to having Covid a year ago.
I am now supplementing 1000iu of vit D, because I don't get much sun exposure these days.
Before supplementing folic acid I am trying to eat legumes every day. Along with adding in broccoli, asparagus, and some kale. Not too much, keeping vit A at 3000iu, but getting my folate up to 500 micrograms.
I will re test in a month.
Has anyone else had low folate levels followng a low vitamin A diet ?
All comments and recommendations are welcome.
Cheers
Gary
The reference range for folate is so wide that it's damn near useless. With that being said, what exactly do you mean by "low"?
Did you also get your homocysteine and hemoglobin checked? Those could give you some insight as to how severe the deficiency is.
Years before i went on this A detox, i had vit D level below 20 (for several months) and very fatigued. Upon high supplementation with D3, within three days I had much more energy. I cannot speak to the folate, but the Vitamin D I would think it will help the fatigue.
i also think you had a typo about 3000iu of a
@beef - the standard UK NHS blood test did not test for homocysteine.
Haemoglobin estimation 160 g/L 130 – 180 range
Serum folate 2.2 ug/L 4 – 26 range
Serum total 25-OH vit D level 54 nmol/L 76 – 250 range
everything else within normal ranges.
@rachel2 - 3000iu was not a typo, if i start eating some broccoli, asparagus or greens it will push my Vitamin A up to that level.
My normal diet plus 100g of beans and 250g asparagus should give me the daily RDA of folate, according to cron o meter,
but a Vit A level of 2700iu. I just can't stomach too many legumes. It could be a folate absorption issue, if so my next blood test should be low folate as well, we will see. For the short term i dont mind going higher with Vit A and will monitor any reoccurrence of previously resolved issues.
I do feel energy levels rising already after 4 days of vit D supplementation.
Folate requirements can vary drastically between individuals. This is one of the few things Chris Masterjohn has actually managed to cover pretty well. I suggest you look into MTHFR gene variants, as you might have gotten the short end of the stick.
With that low of a serum folate, there's clearly something wrong.
You might wanna try supplementing methylfolate, methylcobalamin, riboflavin, glycine and/or creatine and increase your choline intake and see if that improves the issue. I have no science at hand to back this up, but this is a summary of what Masterjohn recommends, and it did help me, for all I can tell.
I personally just supplement glycine, since my case isn't that bad. On top of that, glycine has many other health benefits and I cba to make my own gelatin at home.
Yours vitD is not that low and the drop of folates is probably due to the raise of background inflammation from A depriviation.
To put it in a nutshell immune system replaces defficiency in every vitamin with pro inflammatory cytokines, as a compensation for the loss.
It happens not only with D, C but with A, Bs(incl. folates) thats why vitamins are so popular for various symptoms management and correspondingly vitaminless diets are hard to carry on for sick individuals.
Also, measuring D25 is semi useless since it is only a precursor for active metabolite - D1.25 and if your D1.25 is sufficient or even high supplementing with D3 could bring troubles like increase of serum calcium levels(transient hypercalcemia).
@ rockarolla - I will only be supplementing Vit D3 until I can get more sun exposure, weather permitting. If my levels come up after a month of supplementing, I will re-evaluate.
The same with my Folate. I will try and eat 200g of legumes daily with 100g of added Asparagus or broccoli, this should keep my Vit A around 1000iu a day, but the folate up to the 500mcg.
I don't know if one month will be enough to raise these levels, especially only hitting the RDA to fix a deficiency.
We will see.
I have not eaten higher vit A foods for a while so this will be interesting.
Cheers, all.
Hi @gary,
Thanks for sharing your update.
You might want to be careful with the sunflower seeds because they contain a good amount of lecithin. I've shared other posts here about who lecithin can pull retinol out from the protective RBPs.
Also, have you been tracking your LDL cholesterol levels while on this diet?
@ggenereux - Thank you for the information about sunflower seeds. I have not been eating them every day, would almond and walnuts do the same thing? I started to eat some nuts and seeds about a year ago to get some fats in.
The last time i tested serum lipids was in Oct 2017 -
Serum triglycerides 1.1 mmol/L
Serum cholesterol 4.9 mmol/L
Serum HDL cholesterol level 1.39 mmol/L
Serum LDL cholesterol level 3.0 mmol/L
Serum cholesterol/HDL ratio 3.5 1/1
Non HDL cholesterol level 3.5 mmol/L
I may get these checked again at the end of the month. I am currently searching for a good private UK blood test company to avoid trips to the local Doctors office.
If anyone in the UK knows of any please let me know.