Why Is Methylated Folate Important?

Folate is an essential nutrient best known for supporting neural tube development during pregnancy. But for everyone else, folate is still a must-have. It’s involved in multiple processes, including DNA methylation. This is why we formulated our multivitamins, prenatal multivitamin, and postnatal multivitamin with a bioavailable form of folate called 5-MTHF. More on that below!*

Folate Sources for Optimal Absorption

Dietary sources of folate include fresh fruits, leafy greens, yeast, and legumes, but these can easily be degraded during food prep and cooking; this means that those foods often become less nutritious sources of folate as soon as they’re manipulated, i.e. chopped or cooked. Taking that into account, finding a multivitamin with methylated folate is a great option to make sure you’re getting enough of this essential nutrient.*

Is Methylated Folate the Same as Folic Acid?

TLDR: No! Form matters. Folic acid is the form used in many supplements because it’s highly stable. The caveat? Once folic acid enters a cell, it needs to be converted into 6S-5-Methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF) by several key enzymes before your body can use it. And up to one-third of men and women have a genetic variation that can impact the last step of the conversion.* (1)

When formulating our multivitamins, Essential Prenatal Multivitamin and Essential Postnatal Multivitamin we decided to include a more bioavailable form of folate: methylated folate (or MTHF). Unlike folic acid itself, it doesn’t need to go through enzyme conversion—which means that it's the form that can be utilized by those of us with that common MTHFR gene variant.*

References:

1. Tsang BL, Devine OJ, Cordero AM, et al. Assessing the association between the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) 677>T polymorphism and blood folate concentrations: A systematic review and meta-analysis of trials and observational studies. Am J Clin Nutr. 2015;101(6):1286-1294.