Question: What about pyroluria and measuring kryptopyrroles?

I think it's fairly harmless to increase zinc and B6 as a test of whether that's true and see if you get results from it. But I wouldn't treat it like a diagnostic value because no one has followed up any science on that disorder in the decades since it's been proposed. Kryptopyrroles are very similar to porphyrins, that LabCorp has a whole series of tests on. I would go to LabCorp's site, go to Test Menu and then search it for porphyrin, and you'll see a bunch of things that come up.

Some of the concerns are relatively similar in terms of zinc and B6 that come up with those. But in my view, the pyroluria thing is to the extent it has merits probably has some relation to the porphyrin disorders and maybe is one. I'm not sure. But I would definitely, like if you're going to investigate the issue, I would investigate it with those.

I can say that from the porphyrin disorders, some of them will cause various things to happen in the skin ranging from the skin turning brown when exposed to sun, to pain in response to sun exposure, to the skin turning red in response to the sun. Not a usual red, but a weird red. Some of them will cause red to brown discoloration of the urine, but some of them don't cause any colors because there's a whole category of porphyrin disorders that are all in the same pathway and some of them are sun sensitive, some aren't; some accumulate in the skin, some don't; some of them try to change color; some of them cause pain, some don't; you can't really go exclusively on those symptoms.

This Q&A can also be found as part of a much longer episode, here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/podcast/2019/09/06/ask-anything-nutrition-march-8-2019

If you would like to be part of the next live Ask Me Anything About Nutrition, sign up for the CMJ Masterpass, which includes access to these live Zoom sessions, premium features on all my content, and hundreds of dollars of exclusive discounts. You can sign up with a 10% lifetime discount here: https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/q&a

Access the show notes, transcript, and comments here.

Chris Masterjohn, PhD, is the Founder and Scientific Director of the mitochondria test Mitome.