If you’re not getting enough vitamin B12, vitamin B6, and folate through your diet, you will almost certainly develop cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or some other degenerative illness.

Why?

Being deficient in B12, B6, and folate causes an amino acid called homocysteine to rise in your blood, and if you have too much homocysteine floating around in your blood over many years, you’re virtually guaranteed to develop heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or some other chronic, degenerative illness.

Make no mistake about it: Ensuring that your homocysteine level doesn’t get too high is one of the most important ways in which you can prevent disease. In order to keep your blood homocysteine level at an acceptable level, you must make sure that you get enough B12, B6, and folate through your diet.

But be sure that you get these nutrients from real food and/or nutritional supplements made with real food. There’s a significant difference between synthetic forms of these nutrients (found in most supplements and fortified foods) and forms that naturally occur in food.

For example, folic acid is the synthetic form of folate, which is the natural form found in foods like oranges, lentils, and chickpeas. The vast majority of supplements on the market contain folic acid, not folate, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that taking folic acid can actually impair your body’s ability to make use of folate.

If you’d like more information on homocysteine and why it’s critical that you prevent it from getting too high, please read on…

What is homocysteine?

Homocysteine is an amino acid that your body makes from another amino acid called methionine. You obtain methionine from plant and animal foods that are rich in protein – examples include legumes, nuts, 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. Specifically, SAMe helps to prevent depression, arthritis, and liver damage. Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant and detoxifying agent that helps to slow down aging.

Put another way, you want your body to efficiently convert homocysteine into SAMe and glutathione.

How does your body break down homocysteine?

Your body converts homocysteine into SAMe and glutathione with the help of the following nutrients:

• Vitamin B12
• Vitamin B6
• Folate
• Vitamin B2
• Zinc
• Magnesium
• TMG (trimethylcholine, which comes from choline)

Of these nutrients, studies indicate that the most critical ones needed to keep homocysteine at acceptable levels are vitamin B12, vitamin B6, and folate.

As mentioned above, please note that we’re talking about folate, not folic acid. Folic acid is a synthetic version of folate. Folate is the natural form that is abundant in fresh plant foods like lentils. Folic acid is not normally found in significant quantities in foods or in the human body.

With growing evidence that suggests that supplementing with folic acid over a period of years can actually interfere with your body’s ability to make proper use of folate, it’s frightening to know that folic acid is the form that is primarily used to fortify foods and to make low grade nutritional supplements.

So in ensuring adequate intake of vitamins B12, B6, and folate to keep your blood homocysteine level at acceptable levels and minimize your risk of a wide variety of degenerative conditions, it’s essential that you take only whole food forms of these vitamins.

This means that you should be getting these nutrients from minimally processed foods and/or supplements that are made from minimally processed foods.

What if you’re not getting enough vitamin B12, B6, and folate?

Inadequate intake of whole food forms of these micronutrients can predictably increase the amount of homocysteine that floats around in your blood.

And 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 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 damage cholesterol that is found in your blood, which can lead to direct damage of 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 nitric oxide in your blood. Nitric oxide is a gas that is critical to maintaining healthy and flexible arterial walls.

3.      High Homocysteine Causes Your Immune System to Weaken

When a high blood level of homocysteine is the result of inefficient conversion of homocysteine to glutathione, your body has less glutathione and the antioxidant activity that it provides. With less glutathione and antioxidant activity in your blood, your cells are more susceptible to damage by free radicals, which accelerates overall aging.

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 necessary for healing in the short term, chronic inflammation can cause lasting structural damage to tissues like your arteries, joints, and nerves.

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 table:

How can you keep your blood homocysteine at an acceptable level?

1.      Don’t smoke – smoking directly increases your blood homocysteine level.

2.      Minimize your intake of caffeinated coffee, tea, alcohol, salt, and salty foods – too much of any of these substances can increase your blood homocysteine level.

3.      Eat a well balanced diet that includes plenty of naturally occurring B12, B6, folate, and the other micronutrients that are needed to convert homocysteine to SAMe and glutathione.

4.      Strive to stay away from unhealthy fats and oils, mainly those found in highly processed foods and animal foods that are prepared with high temperature cooking techniques (deep-frying and high temperature baking or grilling).

5.      Be mindful of emotional stressors that come your way, and take steps to promote a sense of balance in every area of your life.

By far the most important step that you can take to ensure a healthy blood homocysteine level is to ensure adequate intake of B12, B6, and folate.

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.

Some 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 prescribe for 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, general practitioners rarely order a blood test for homocysteine; if you want one, you have to ask your doctor to include it on the requisition that details the blood work that he or she wants done.

Author:  Dr. Ben Kim