For your health, keep your homocysteine level LOW.
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In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Wednesday, 7-12-2006
To protect your health, keep your homocysteine level LOW.
Recently the Wall Street Journal said that B vitamins (folic acid, B-12, B-6, etc.) are "touted" for heart health, as they lower levels of the toxic amino acid homocysteine.
Then they mentioned a study that concluded that although the vitamins did indeed lower homocysteine, they did not lower heart attack risk.
This certainly sounds authoritative.
I t seems to suggest that homocysteine is not really that bad for your heart or that the vitamins are ineffective in lowering it or that homocysteine is more like smoke than a central component & that lowering it is like thinking that blowing away just the smoke will put out a fire.
Mercifully, thanks to my Medscape eNewsletter, I saw the actual study.
Every single one of the seeming implications of the study as the Wall Street Journal reported it is totally wrong.
Simply put, this reporting (& the editing of it) was not the Journal’s finest hour.
Suppose that you had a blood pressure reading of 230 over 110. (If you aren’t aware, this is about as dangerous as having your arm covered with gasoline & having it on fire. You can die of a stroke at almost any moment with blood pressure that high when you are at rest & not just temporarily exercising.)
Then suppose you saw doctor who put you on some medication that usually lowers blood pressure well in other people; but it only dropped YOUR blood pressure to 220 over 100.
What would you think if your doctor then announced that maybe this drug didn’t really lower blood pressure after all or that when you had a severe stroke it was because lowering blood pressure didn’t really help prevent them?
In fact, you, or your family’s attorney – if the stroke killed or incapacitated you, would have excellent ground for a massive malpractice suit !!
The reason is simple. Lowering blood pressure this high by enough to put it into even the high normal range of 140 over 90 IS protective. And, the drug was fine for the purpose it was prescribed. The real problem was two-fold. You were in enough jeopardy, you very likely should have had more done than just the one drug even initially. And, when your blood pressure failed to come down enough, more drugs or treatments were not only indicated, your survival depended on that being done for you.
In your case, the drug did work some; but you needed a LOT more done to put you into the safe zone.
The attorney would bring forth doctors who pointed out that the job of that doctor was to keep adding & experimenting until the blood pressure was low enough to be safe. And, that increasing the dose of the first drug & adding other drugs that lower blood pressure right away is what a competent & responsible doctor does in such situations. And, the attorney would stress that this doctor failed to do that.
This is exactly what happened in the study with homocysteine.
The doctors who did it, performed it because of the other studies that DO show that homocysteine does directly cause harm to your heart; & they say so right in the text describing the study. High levels of homocysteine are not a “secondary” indicator of problems. They help CAUSE the problems. (They also help trigger Alzheimer’s disease & age related mental decline, quite likely in part because the tend to trigger reduced blood flow to the brain.)
The group that was studied already had existing heart disease & homocysteine levels over 13.0.
(The level that seems to be safe & trouble free is 6.0 to 8.0. 10.0 or above begins to be harmful. And, levels above 13.0, as this group had, is clearly NOT likely to lead to freedom from heart attacks.)
The control group took the B vitamins OK it was reported. And, they still had virtually the same number of heart attacks, yes.
But what did they expect? In this group, their homocysteine levels were STILL over 13.0 !!
What the researchers ACTUALLY found, is that despite the fact that people with somewhat lower levels &/or who were initially in good health who add the B vitamins get a decent homocysteine levels decrease, in THIS group, there were enough other causes for the high level of homocysteine that were not yet being addressed, that the B vitamins alone were not enough to lower the level enough to be protective—or lower it very much at all.
One of the most important reasons to NEVER smoke cigarettes & make a strong effort to avoid second hand smoke is that cigarette smoke strongly INCREASES homocysteine levels.
To lower the levels in this group, you may well have needed to ensure they all no longer smoked or were around second hand smoke.
In addition, one of the causes of high homocysteine levels is that homocysteine is a byproduct of processing an amino acid that’s unusually high in meat & very low in plant sources of protein.
To lower the levels of this group initially you may well have needed to put them on a nearly 100 percent vegetarian diet or at least cut back their meat consumption by 90 percent.
Of the B vitamins, the most effective homocysteine lowering of the B vitamins is folic acid. The researchers did NOT double its dose & ensure the control group also ate a diet high in greens & other fruits and vegetables that are high in the natural form of folic acid & have other phytonutrients that may well be needed to make it most effective for lowering homocysteine.
(A more recently reported study did show that adding more vegetables to the diet DID reduce the incidence of heart disease, so this may very well be the case.)
They also didn’t check with the people knowledgeable about supplements for other supplements that lower homocysteine, or if they did, they didn’t add those to the B vitamins to get the homocysteine levels down enough to be protective in this group.
Methyl group donors seem to get the job done. The methyl form of B12 works better than the form in most vitamins, & the one likely used in this study. And, trimethylglycine, known as betaine, also works well.
They also didn’t add N-acetylcysteine (often called NAC), a form of the amino acid cysteine.
Here’s what is on www.wholehealthmd.com about N-acetylcysteine.:
“In some studies, NAC appears to significantly lower levels of Homocysteine and possibly lipoprotein(a), substances associated with an increased risk of heart disease.”
Lastly, they don’t seem to have addressed the stress levels the control group was experiencing or helped to lower it.
Dr Dean Ornish found that doing so IS heart protective; & it may well be that unrelieved stress above a certain threshold is harmful in part because it raises
homocysteine levels.
Clearly, if the researchers had added all these steps, they likely would have lowered the homocysteine levels in the control group below 10.0 or even lower; & even more certainly, the rate of heart attacks would have dropped sharply as many of these steps have that effect in addition to their homocysteine lowering effects.
The conclusion is that measuring your homocysteine levels is important. And continuing to take action until it’s 8.0 or below or 9.9 or below at worst is extremely important.
The Wall Street Journal reported this study in a way that many got the exact opposite impression.
To protect your health, it’s very important for you to know that those impressions are totally false.
And, as you’ve seen, a careful reading of the study by someone who is knowledgeable, indicates just that.
Get your homocysteine level measured & take action if it’s high.
(Unfortunately for your health it may well be too high. Check it & see.)
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Wednesday, 7-12-2006
To protect your health, keep your homocysteine level LOW.
Recently the Wall Street Journal said that B vitamins (folic acid, B-12, B-6, etc.) are "touted" for heart health, as they lower levels of the toxic amino acid homocysteine.
Then they mentioned a study that concluded that although the vitamins did indeed lower homocysteine, they did not lower heart attack risk.
This certainly sounds authoritative.
I t seems to suggest that homocysteine is not really that bad for your heart or that the vitamins are ineffective in lowering it or that homocysteine is more like smoke than a central component & that lowering it is like thinking that blowing away just the smoke will put out a fire.
Mercifully, thanks to my Medscape eNewsletter, I saw the actual study.
Every single one of the seeming implications of the study as the Wall Street Journal reported it is totally wrong.
Simply put, this reporting (& the editing of it) was not the Journal’s finest hour.
Suppose that you had a blood pressure reading of 230 over 110. (If you aren’t aware, this is about as dangerous as having your arm covered with gasoline & having it on fire. You can die of a stroke at almost any moment with blood pressure that high when you are at rest & not just temporarily exercising.)
Then suppose you saw doctor who put you on some medication that usually lowers blood pressure well in other people; but it only dropped YOUR blood pressure to 220 over 100.
What would you think if your doctor then announced that maybe this drug didn’t really lower blood pressure after all or that when you had a severe stroke it was because lowering blood pressure didn’t really help prevent them?
In fact, you, or your family’s attorney – if the stroke killed or incapacitated you, would have excellent ground for a massive malpractice suit !!
The reason is simple. Lowering blood pressure this high by enough to put it into even the high normal range of 140 over 90 IS protective. And, the drug was fine for the purpose it was prescribed. The real problem was two-fold. You were in enough jeopardy, you very likely should have had more done than just the one drug even initially. And, when your blood pressure failed to come down enough, more drugs or treatments were not only indicated, your survival depended on that being done for you.
In your case, the drug did work some; but you needed a LOT more done to put you into the safe zone.
The attorney would bring forth doctors who pointed out that the job of that doctor was to keep adding & experimenting until the blood pressure was low enough to be safe. And, that increasing the dose of the first drug & adding other drugs that lower blood pressure right away is what a competent & responsible doctor does in such situations. And, the attorney would stress that this doctor failed to do that.
This is exactly what happened in the study with homocysteine.
The doctors who did it, performed it because of the other studies that DO show that homocysteine does directly cause harm to your heart; & they say so right in the text describing the study. High levels of homocysteine are not a “secondary” indicator of problems. They help CAUSE the problems. (They also help trigger Alzheimer’s disease & age related mental decline, quite likely in part because the tend to trigger reduced blood flow to the brain.)
The group that was studied already had existing heart disease & homocysteine levels over 13.0.
(The level that seems to be safe & trouble free is 6.0 to 8.0. 10.0 or above begins to be harmful. And, levels above 13.0, as this group had, is clearly NOT likely to lead to freedom from heart attacks.)
The control group took the B vitamins OK it was reported. And, they still had virtually the same number of heart attacks, yes.
But what did they expect? In this group, their homocysteine levels were STILL over 13.0 !!
What the researchers ACTUALLY found, is that despite the fact that people with somewhat lower levels &/or who were initially in good health who add the B vitamins get a decent homocysteine levels decrease, in THIS group, there were enough other causes for the high level of homocysteine that were not yet being addressed, that the B vitamins alone were not enough to lower the level enough to be protective—or lower it very much at all.
One of the most important reasons to NEVER smoke cigarettes & make a strong effort to avoid second hand smoke is that cigarette smoke strongly INCREASES homocysteine levels.
To lower the levels in this group, you may well have needed to ensure they all no longer smoked or were around second hand smoke.
In addition, one of the causes of high homocysteine levels is that homocysteine is a byproduct of processing an amino acid that’s unusually high in meat & very low in plant sources of protein.
To lower the levels of this group initially you may well have needed to put them on a nearly 100 percent vegetarian diet or at least cut back their meat consumption by 90 percent.
Of the B vitamins, the most effective homocysteine lowering of the B vitamins is folic acid. The researchers did NOT double its dose & ensure the control group also ate a diet high in greens & other fruits and vegetables that are high in the natural form of folic acid & have other phytonutrients that may well be needed to make it most effective for lowering homocysteine.
(A more recently reported study did show that adding more vegetables to the diet DID reduce the incidence of heart disease, so this may very well be the case.)
They also didn’t check with the people knowledgeable about supplements for other supplements that lower homocysteine, or if they did, they didn’t add those to the B vitamins to get the homocysteine levels down enough to be protective in this group.
Methyl group donors seem to get the job done. The methyl form of B12 works better than the form in most vitamins, & the one likely used in this study. And, trimethylglycine, known as betaine, also works well.
They also didn’t add N-acetylcysteine (often called NAC), a form of the amino acid cysteine.
Here’s what is on www.wholehealthmd.com about N-acetylcysteine.:
“In some studies, NAC appears to significantly lower levels of Homocysteine and possibly lipoprotein(a), substances associated with an increased risk of heart disease.”
Lastly, they don’t seem to have addressed the stress levels the control group was experiencing or helped to lower it.
Dr Dean Ornish found that doing so IS heart protective; & it may well be that unrelieved stress above a certain threshold is harmful in part because it raises
homocysteine levels.
Clearly, if the researchers had added all these steps, they likely would have lowered the homocysteine levels in the control group below 10.0 or even lower; & even more certainly, the rate of heart attacks would have dropped sharply as many of these steps have that effect in addition to their homocysteine lowering effects.
The conclusion is that measuring your homocysteine levels is important. And continuing to take action until it’s 8.0 or below or 9.9 or below at worst is extremely important.
The Wall Street Journal reported this study in a way that many got the exact opposite impression.
To protect your health, it’s very important for you to know that those impressions are totally false.
And, as you’ve seen, a careful reading of the study by someone who is knowledgeable, indicates just that.
Get your homocysteine level measured & take action if it’s high.
(Unfortunately for your health it may well be too high. Check it & see.)
posted by David at 1:29 PM
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