Homocysteine: One of the Best Objective Indicators of Your Health Status

If I could use only one blood test to monitor my health for the rest of my life, it would be homocysteine.

The amount of homocysteine in your blood is one of the best objective indicators of how healthy you are and how long you are going to live. A high blood level of homocysteine is a reliable risk factor for each of the following:

• Heart Attacks
• Strokes
• Cancer
• Diabetes
• Thyroid Problems
• Neurological conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's
• Depression
• Infertility
• Chronic Pain
• Digestive Disorders

What exactly is homocysteine?

Homocysteine is an amino acid that your body makes from another amino acid called methionine. You obtain methionine from many of the protein-dense foods that you eat on a regular basis, such as sunflower seeds, eggs, and fish.

Normally, homocysteine found in your blood gets converted into two substances called SAMe (S-adenosyl methionine) and glutathione. Both SAMe and glutathione have health-promoting effects on your body. Specifically, SAMe helps to prevent depression, arthritis, and liver damage. Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant and detoxifying agent that helps to slow down aging.

The conversion of homocysteine to SAMe and glutathione requires the following nutrients:

Homocysteine converts to SAMe with the help of:

1. Folate
2. Vitamin B12
3. Vitamin B2
4. Zinc
5. TMG (trimethylglycine - from choline)
6. Magnesium

Homocysteine converts to glutathione with the help of:

1. Vitamin B6
2. Vitamin B2
3. Zinc

When your body does not efficiently convert homocysteine into SAMe and glutathione, the amount of homocysteine in your blood rises.

A high blood level of homocysteine hurts your health in the following ways:

1. High Homocysteine Speeds Up Oxidation and Aging
   Normal metabolic processes that occur in your body are constantly producing free radicals, which are unstable forms of oxygen, also called oxidants. The pace at which you age depends in large part on your body’s ability to protect its tissues against these free radicals. High homocysteine significantly increases the amount of free-radical oxidation in your body and the damage that comes with it.

2. High Homocysteine Causes Damage to Your Arteries
   High blood levels of homocysteine can cause cholesterol that is found in your blood to become oxidized LDL cholesterol, which can cause direct damage to the walls of your arteries. This can lead to a series of reactions that results in thickening of the walls of your arteries, leaving less room for proper circulation. This whole process is commonly referred to as atherosclerosis.

   High homocysteine can also cause your blood to have a higher than normal tendency to clot, which increases your risk of developing a dangerous clot that could lead to a stroke.

   Finally, high homocysteine is known to significantly lower your blood level of nitric oxide, a gas that is critical to maintaining healthy and flexible arterial walls.

3. High Homocysteine Causes Your Immune System to Weaken
   When a higher blood level of homocysteine is the result of inefficient conversion of homocysteine to glutathione, your body has less glutathione and the anti-oxidative capacity that it provides. With less glutathione and anti-oxidative capacity in your blood, your cells are much more susceptible to damage by free radicals, which causes you to age faster than you need to.

4. High Homocysteine Increases Pain and Inflammation
   A high blood level of homocysteine promotes higher blood levels of arachidonic acid and prostaglandin E₂ (PGE₂), which are chemicals that your body uses to promote inflammation. While inflammation is an important feedback mechanism that is helpful for healing in the short term, chronic inflammation can cause lasting structural damage to various tissues like your arteries, joints, and nerves.

Ultimately, because a high blood level of homocysteine accelerates aging and decreases the strength of your immune system, it is not a stretch to say that having high homocysteine over the long term significantly increases your risk of every chronic health condition that we know of, including many varieties of cancer.

If homocysteine is such a powerful marker for disease, then why is it that we hear so little about it from doctors and in the media? The answer is simple. Currently, there are no patented drugs that are designed to lower blood levels of homocysteine. With no patented drugs for lowering homocysteine, pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to spend their marketing dollars on educating doctors and increasing public awareness about homocysteine. Even those doctors who know about the diagnostic value of homocysteine may be reluctant to order this test for their patients because
they wouldn't know what to do for those patients who have high levels.

Despite the lack of widespread testing for homocysteine, many cardiologists in the United States now use homocysteine in evaluating their patients. Many doctors in Europe are starting to include homocysteine along with the usual parameters in a routine blood work up. In Canada, it’s most likely that you will have to ask your medical doctor to write up a requisition for homocysteine.

So, what is a healthy blood level for homocysteine?

A good resource for information on homocysteine is The H-Factor Solution*, by Dr. James Braly and Patrick Holford. Based on their review of numerous epidemiological studies on homocysteine, they have come up with the following scale:

What can you do if your homocysteine is high?

Here are steps that you can take immediately to reduce your homocysteine score and significantly improve your health:

1. Eat only healthy fats and oils
2. Strive to make vegetables at least 50 percent of your diet
3. Eat high-quality protein
4. Don’t drink more than one cup of caffeinated coffee or tea per day
5. Have no more than one cup of beer or red wine per day
6. Work at reducing stress
7. Don’t smoke
8. Don’t use commercial salt. If you can’t do without salt, you can use small amounts of mineral-dense sea salt
9. Be sure to have reliable whole food sources of the following nutrients in your diet:
• Folate
• Vitamin B12
• Vitamin B6
• Vitamin B2
• Zinc
• Magnesium
• TMG (trimethylglycine - from choline)

Please Note: In the coming days and weeks, I will be writing articles on each of the factors listed above that help to lower a high homocysteine level and maintain an optimal level. I will also continue to work on our Whole Food Nutrient Index so that you can know which whole foods will provide you with enough of the right nutrients to support an optimal homocysteine level and your best health. Please feel free to visit our site on a regular basis to check for these new articles.

The single best whole food supplement that I have found to be effective at lowering homocysteine is our super green food mixture.

While I consider The H-Factor Solution to be an excellent resource for information about homocysteine, I encourage you to read my article on synthetic vs. natural vitamins before you follow the authors' recommendations on supplementation.

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