develop gestational diabetes, when most women’s bodies don’t do that?


That’s the “genetic” part: Women who develop gestational diabetes have “weakness” in the enzymes that metabolize tryptophan into serotonin and melatonin, but no weakness in the enzymes that metabolize tryptophan into xanthurenic acid. Without the pregnancy levels of estrogen “putting pressure” on these weak enzymes, they can perform as they do in most women metabolizing tryptophan much less into xanthurenic acid and much more into many other molecules we’ve all heard about, including serotonin and melatonin.


With the high levels of estrogen during pregnancy, the weak enzymes falter5


tryptophan than usual into xanthurenic acid and much less into melatonin, serotonin, and related molecules. If there’s much more xanthurenic acid, there’s much more “insulin- xanthurenic acid complex” formed, and impairment of insulin activity. With enough insulin impaired, diabetes— gestational—is the result.


But a woman can’t stop being pregnant (for many months, anyway), and she definitely can’t change her genetics, so she can’t really rid herself of gestational diabetes, returning to normal blood sugar levels (while reducing her baby’s risk of autism, too) within two to three weeks. Can she?


Yes, she can! To understand how, a refresher about what many of us learned in high school and college chemistry about how enzymes change one molecule into another. The “key” is that enzymes never work “alone.” They’re always aided by “co-factors,” which are almost always “essential” (necessary to life) vitamins and minerals! Without those co-factors, the enzymes can’t function, and ultimately we die. That’s why they’re defined as “essential” nutrients!


with gestational diabetes achieved by taking extra vitamin B6


to strengthen their genetically “weak” enzymes.


milligrams daily for two weeks, after which repeat testing found that twelve of the fourteen (86%) no longer had the problem!6


In 1975, fourteen pregnant women were diagnosed with gestational diabetes by the standard glucose tolerance test. All the women took vitamin B6


(as pyridoxine) 100


Glucose tolerance tests were done before and after. All fourteen women (100%) had “statistically significant” improvements in their glucose tolerance tests. The researchers wrote: “Low vitamin B6


In 1977, different researchers reported almost identical results in the same length of time for thirteen women. All took vitamin B6


(as pyridoxine) 100 milligrams daily.


alter metabolic pathways which result in a lowering of the biologic activity of endogenous insulin.” In English: vitamin B6


strengthened specific weak enzymes so that THE ORIGINAL INTERNIST MARCH 2018 levels appear to


“Weak” enzyme function can frequently be strengthened by adding in more co-factors! A key co-factor for the enzymes that metabolize tryptophan into serotonin and melatonin is vitamin B6


. Next, the results that women and metabolize much more


less xanthurenic acid was available to “complexed” with insulin, blocking its activity. Better blood sugar control was regained.


The 1975 and 1977 research was actually done more than two decades afterseveral groups of researchers8,9,10,11


confirmed in the early 1950s that vitamin B6


levels of xanthurenic acid to normal. For the technically inclined, all the 1950s research and much more was reviewed in a 1960 publication titled “The Effect of Vitamin Supplementation on the Urinary Excretion of Tryptophan Metabolites by Pregnant Women.”12


last publication confirmed that pyridoxine lowered xanthurenic acid!


yet despite all this forty to seventy-year-old basic science and clinical research demonstrating the cause and cure of gestational diabetes, it’s still not being applied!


And a last fact: textbooks of laboratory medicine in the 1940s told us that higher than usual xanthurenic acid in urine is diagnostic for vitamin B6


returned This had


deficiency! It’s 2016,


But you—yes that’s you, if you want to prevent gestational diabetes or cure yourself of it—can apply this extensive science, safely prevent or cure gestational diabetes yourself, and at the same time reduce your child’s risk of autism!


To eliminate gestational diabetes, use pyridoxal phosphate, not pyridoxine


Don’t use the “pyridoxine” form of vitamin B6 actually the “inactive” form of vitamin B6


does not “activate” the “receptors” for this vitamin. Most—but not all—humans can “activate” pyridoxine, but we have no way (without testing) to know if you are in the pyridoxine activating group, or not. (It’s quite possible that the 14% whose gestational diabetes didn’t disappear in the 1975 research summarized above were “poor activators” of pyridoxine.)


To make sure the pyridoxine actually “does it’s job” it’s best to use the “active” form, “pyridoxal-5-phosphate” (“P5P”), fortunately available nearly everywhere supp- lements are sold, usually in a 50 milligram size. Don’t stop using your “pregnancy multiple vitamin-mineral” as it contains the rest of the B-complex vitamins which “back up” the pyridoxal-5-phosphate.


Check with your “natural medicine” doctor


1. If you have any doubts at all about doing this! 2. Towards the anticipated delivery date. Vitamin B6


both forms can inhibit the production of prolactin, the hormone necessary for normal lactation and nursing. Work with a physician skilled and knowledgeable in natural and nutritional medicine to help you determine (possibly while checking your own blood sugar) a P5P“tapering schedule” so you can nurse your child normally. This physician will also be able to tell you about botanicals used for centuries by to improve lactation should they be needed.


A special thank you to author Adelle Davis, whose (Continued on page 35)


11 in , which actually . That’s


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