Page 48 - Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments in Psychiatry

48 | Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments in Psychiatry

times in the body each day. This process impacts a broad range
of physiological and psychiatric issues. Methylation deactivates
noradrenalin, for example, a neurotransmitter associated with
cortisol and the stress response. Methylation acts on dopamine,
norepinephrine and serotonin to impact, among other things,
mood, memory, concentration and sleep.
For the methylation cycle to work properly, the correct
substrates, or materials, must be available. Nutrients involved in
this activity include folic acid (noted by its derivative
tetrahydrofolate, or THF, in Figure 4.1), B6, B12, and SAM-e
(shown as SAM in Figure 4.1). As expected, supplementation with
each of these nutrients has been found to have some psychiatric
benefit and deficiencies have been seen to affect brain
performance.

Figure 4.1—A simplified schematic of the methylation cycle.