I’ve been curious about the push towards using so-called ‘active forms’ of B vitamins over the last 10 years in nutritional medicine – particularly with regard to B6 (pyridoxal-5-phosphate) and B2 (riboflavin 5’-phospate aka FMN) in light of substantial research demonstrating that these phosphorylated forms will in fact be dephosphorylated prior to uptake in the small intestine (Gropper, Smith & Groff Advanced Nutrition & Human Metabolism 2005) – so initially it seemed we were being encouraged to pay more for something that ultimately gave us less of the same vitamin. Funnily enough the only established scientific way to ensure uptake of the active forms in their intact active states is to use very high doses – however supplements containing either active B6 or B2 consistently offer very low doses compared with the regular supplements, so this seemed to rule this out as an explanation.
In spite of my scepticism & encouraged by the Pfeiffer approach, I got into using P5P and had to suspend my disbelief in the face of some good clinical results.
However finally at the MINDD conference last week, scientist Woody McGinnis at last made sense of this riddle for me!
McGinnis, who some of you might know as previously being a key researcher at the Pfeiffer Institute which specialises in nutritional and integrative management of mental health & behavioural disorders, confessed that he had also struggled with concept of P5P supplementation from a scientific perspective until Bill Walsh suggested that this form was particularly indicated for the ‘lean malabsorbers’.
What Woody essentially took from this was that patients with leaky guts could absorb the P5P intact & would ultimately benefit from this form. Adding to this is my understanding that the dephosphorylation process for P5P in the gut occurs via ALP – a zinc dependent enzyme found in the brush border of the small intestine…so here you have the double whammy – if your patient is a malabsorber AND zinc deficient (which of course commonly go together) they are the ones picking up the P5P perfectly and for the rest of us perhaps the pyridoxine will do.
Woody also attested to this with his story of his own pyrroluric son who initially only responded to P5P but in his teens (with significantly improved gut health) appeared to stop responding – at which point Woody switched him to the higher dose pyridoxine with fantastic results…..Aaahhhh at last my scientific curiosity has been quenched! 🙂