The H-Factor Solution

Why does the body make homocysteine and what does a high level tell us? It’s all to do with a fundamental process upon which your life depends, called methylation.

To understand methylation we need to know a bit about body chemistry. You eat 10 tons of food in your lifetime and, somehow, this turns into you. Your body is quite literally a sea of chemicals, from glucose to fats, and amino acids to hormones and neurotransmitters.

For example, when you are under stress, the body makes more adrenalin to keep you going. When you go to bed, the body releases melatonin to help you sleep. When you’ve got a cold or flu the body makes more glutathione, which turns your immune cells into cold-busting warriors. These are just three examples of literally hundreds of thousands of adjustments the body makes every second to keep you healthy and alive.

But how on earth does the body keep everything in balance? This is where methylation comes in. In the methylation process ‘methyl groups’ (made of one carbon and three hydrogen atoms) are added to, or taken away from, other molecules.

Methylation happens over a billion times a second. It is like one big dance, with bio-chemicals passing methyl groups from one partner to another.

Take noradrenalin. The brain produces this chemical to keep you happy and motivated. However, if you are under stress, it adds a methyl group to noradrenalin to make adrenalin, which gives you a burst of energy and aggression known as the ‘fight or flight syndrome’. Then, when the apparent emergency is over, your brain takes the methyl group away.

This is how homocysteine is made in the body: when you eat a piece of fish containing methionine, this amino acid is incorporated into your bloodstream and a methyl group is taken away, leaving you with homocysteine. Ideally, the body adds a different methyl group back to homocysteine to convert it into an extraordinarily important chemical called SAMe (pronounced ‘Sammey’). SAMe is a natural anti-depressant, anti-arthritic and liver-protecting agent in your body.

Homocysteine can also be converted to another extremely important body chemical, called glutathione. Glutathione is the body’s best anti-ageing antioxidant and detoxifying agent. A low glutathione level is, like a high homocysteine level, linked to increased risk of death from all common causes. So methylation is also the key to slowing the ageing process and keeping your body free of toxic chemicals.

It is also thought that methylation plays a critical role in protecting us from certain serious diseases. Methyl groups are added to and taken away from the DNA in our cells. When not enough methylation is going on, our DNA cannot properly repair itself, which puts us at higher risk from cancer and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.

What’s Your Methyl IQ?
It can be helpful to think of people with high-functioning methylation as having a high methyl IQ. They stay in balance, while those with a low methyl IQ suffer from chemical imbalances that ricochet into almost every organ and tissue of the body.

The best, most sensitive methyl IQ test is your homocysteine level. When your H score is low (below 6 units), you are well-methylated, your SAMe and glutathione levels are most likely high, and you are in good health. When your H score is too high, you suffer from a methyl deficiency, and not surprisingly a deficiency in SAMe, glutathione and lots of other vital bio-chemicals.

This relationship between homocysteine, methylation and vital body chemicals is complex but vital (see Figure 1). Provided your body has a good methyl IQ, only small amounts of homocysteine accumulate, with the great majority immediately being methylated, en route for greater destinies.

We’ve had a taster on how the body deals with homocysteine. Now let’s look closer. In Figure 1 you can see how homocysteine can convert to either SAMe or glutathione.

If this conversion process isn’t working well — for example, due to a lack of the vitamins and nutrients which the homocysteine-converting enzymes need to function — homocysteine begins to accumulate in the body, and that spells trouble. Increased levels of homocysteine and therefore decreased levels of methylation, SAMe, glutathione and B vitamins are associated with the chronic symptoms that many of us experience every day.

What if you feel good, though? Don’t make the fatal mistake of assuming that if you don’t have the symptoms, you don’t have a problem with homocysteine. High homocysteine, especially in the early stages, is often symptom-free, exactly like many of the serious medical conditions associated with it, such as heart attacks, high blood pressure and strokes.

In any case, lowering your H score should be a priority. And intelligent nutrients are one way of doing it.

Intelligent Nutrients
The reason homocysteine accumulates in the body is because the enzymes involved aren’t working properly. Have a look at Figure 2. Here you can see the spotlight on the enzymes that keep your brain doing the right thing with sulphur and methyl groups.

You’ll see that these enzymes don’t work alone. They have helpers, called co-factors: primarily the B vitamins, folic acid (folate), pyridoxine (B6), cobalamin (B12), riboflavin (B2) and the mineral zinc. There is also a very special nutrient called TMG (for trimethylglycine).

So as you can see, the dance of homocysteine is mainly choreographed by these co-factors. The B vitamins among these are ‘intelligent’ in that they help you stay chemically flexible, well-methylated, and in the best possible physical and mental health. Sadly, very few of us get enough of these nutrients from our diet, and certainly not enough to lower a high homocysteine level to an optimal level. The average intake of zinc, for example, is 7.5mg, which is only half the basic recommended daily allowance, or RDA.

Eat Right AND Take Your Vitamins – and More
In the US, where homocysteine is now seen as superseding cholesterol as the best predictor for heart disease, more and more health consumers are becoming B-vitamin crazy. The American Medical Association published a report in 2001 suggesting that if every cardiovascular patient were to supplement B12 and folic acid, no less than 310,000 lives in the US alone would be saved in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, the New England Journal of Medicine ran a lead editorial written by top cardiologists entitled ‘Eat Right and Take a Multivitamin’, again arguing that optimal intakes of these vital B vitamins can dramatically cut heart disease risk.

Some critics continue to disparage vitamin and nutrient supplements although this is rapidly becoming an old-fashioned view among the medical community. As you will see, however, the evidence shows clearly that eating a well-balanced diet is not enough in itself to lower high homocysteine to a safe level.

But simply adding multivitamins to the equation won’t do the trick, either. Why? Because the evidence shows, again and again, that if you have a high homocysteine level you’ll need more than basic amounts of B vitamins. You’ll also need ‘methyl donors’ – nutrients like TMG and SAMe, which can donate an abundance of methyl groups to your body’s chemical dance. And, if you’re serious, you’ll need to test for your H levels.

The story of a 60-year-old man treated by the Life Extension Foundation in the US is a case in point. This man had had bypass surgery and was suffering from angina caused by a re-clogging of his coronary arteries, a very common occurrence in heart surgery patients with high homocysteine. He was well aware of the dangers of high homocysteine and was supplementing 100 mcg of folic acid a day (that’s almost 1,000 times the RDA!) plus other key B vitamins. He was smart enough to have his H score retested. When he did, he discovered that his homocysteine level, although lower, was still in the extremely high-risk range, above 15 units. So, in addition to the key B vitamins, he began to take 6g of TMG. His H score then dropped dramatically to 4, indicating zero risk.

This story shows why blindly supplementing with the big four B vitamins (B2, B6, B12 and folic acid) and failing totest (or retest) your homocysteine level or reassess your diet, can literally be a fatal mistake. If you want to live long and stay healthy, you need to know whether your regime is working for you, and what to do if it isn’t.

Are You Well Methylated?
So, in addition to the vital ‘methyl movers’ – that’s folic acid, B2, B6, B12, plus zinc – we all need an abundance of the methyl groups themselves. These, as we’ve seen, are dispensed by methyl donors such as SAMe and TMG.

SAMe is not necessarily the best nutrient to supplement, although it is very important within cells. It is, among other things, both very unstable and very expensive to produce as a supplement. Instead, TMG is the single best and most affordable methyl donor discovered so far. In combination with the big four B vitamins, it’s the best homocysteine buster. TMG, as well as being available as a supplement from Higher Nature, is formed naturally from choline, which is found in fish and eggs and so is easy to get from our diets.

These nutrients have amazing effects not only on your homocysteine levels but also your day-to-day health. When levels are optimised, you’ll find you have:

• Optimum mood, memory and mental clarity
• Optimum liver function
• Optimum condition of hair, skin and nails
• Optimum energy
• Excellent sleep
• Flexible joints
• Raised glutathione levels (slowing the ageing process and aiding detoxification)
• Dramatic reduction in risk for degenerative disease.

You can check the level of homocysteine in your blood by an accurate, easy test that you can take at home. These test kits are available from Higher Nature.

"The H Factor Solution" by Dr. James Braly and Patrick Holford is available from Amazon.com or through Higher Nature.