Is High Homocysteine Dangerous? MTHFR problem....
Is High Homocysteine Dangerous?
Homocysteine is an amino acid made from a common dietary amino acid. Homocysteine causes damage to your endothelium, the internal lining in your arteries.
High levels of homocysteine has been associated with the following conditions:
- Dementia
- Pregnancy Complications
- Poor concentration and Underachievement
- Cardiovascular disease
- Osteoporosis
- Diabetes
Typically a normal lab read out of homocysteine levels will be anywhere between 0 and 10.4. I prefer to see this marker to read between 5 and 8, which is what I call the “functional range.”
Your Blood Vessels and Homocysteine
The cell walls of your blood vessels are only one cell thick in most places around your body. Damage to this wall allows contents in the blood to spill out into your different systems. This can include the immune system, which can lead to your own immune cells attacking your body.
Homocysteine can cause this kind of damage to your system. This makes it vitally important to check your blood levels for this particular marker.
Research showed that homocysteine levels higher than 13.8 more than doubled patients’ risk of silent brain infarct and severe white matter lesions. Another study looked at over 1,000 people aged 60-90 showed a strong correlation between total homocysteine levels and silent brain infarct or severe white matter lesions.
This means that high homocysteine levels can lead to your brain slowly dying off. As mentioned above, homocysteine can cause your blood vessels to leak into other organs and tissues. When this leak occurs in the brain, the results can lead to catastrophic risks.
One such risk is degeneration of the brain, leading to conditions such as Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia.
Possible Causes
Some studies show that homocysteine levels only increase in the absence of certain vitamins or necessary dietary compounds. It is possible (and speculated in some research) that these high risks posed by increased levels of homocysteine could be prevented with vitamin supplementation.
Rises in homocysteine are often caused by a functional deficiency of vitamin B12 and/or folate (another vitamin in the B family). You can figure out which is the main cause by testing for methylmalonic acid levels.
These two vitamins play a key role in the methylation cycle. Vitamin B12 and folate work together to place methyl onto your DNA to foster healthy gene reproduction. When this process functions improperly, the methyl does not make its way onto the DNA, and can cause a rise in homocysteine.
Research also showed that mice fed a diet filled with methyl donors (such as vitamin B12 and folate) saw a drastic increase in health. On the other hand, diets low in methyl donors saw a rise in obesity and cancer, and even changed the color of the mice’s coat.
Prevention
Both vitamin B12 and folate are easily supplemented, making prevention simple for most people. Both of these compounds can be supplemented in a wide range of methods, however. To increase your chances of prevention, it is best to make sure your vitamin B12 and folate are in the form containing methyl groups. You can easily identify which products do this by looking at the ingredients list for words containing “methyl” in them.
One example is HomocysteX Plus. This product delivers vitamin B12 as methylcobalamin, as opposed to cheaper B12 supplements which often use cyanocobalamin (a cheaper product based in cyanide).
12 Tips To Increase Vitamin B12
Eat plenty of dark, leafy greens. This can include vegetables such as kale, spinach, Swiss chard, or greens from collard, mustard, dandelion and beets.
Get more B’s in your diet overall.