More on high homocysteine....

Today's Post: Thursday, 10-22-2009

In our post B vitamins CAN help prevent heart disease last Monday, 10-19-2009, we posted that some research suggests, but to my mind does not yet prove, that bringing down high homocysteine levels may not, prevent cardiovascular disease or heart attacks and strokes.

(It does look like people who have very high homocysteine levels AND already have cardiovascular disease &/or previous strokes or heart attacks PLUS other risk factors may not be helped by lowering homocysteine after they are already damaged, particularly if the other risk factors they have are not fixed quickly and extremely well.

But, there is some reason to believe, based on many other studies, that measuring your homocysteine levels before you get into this sort of trouble and lowering them to 8.9 or below may be quite protective.)

So, in this post, we add some ways in addition to taking the B vitamins that do this.

But it’s quite clear that if your homocysteine levels are high, 9.0 or above, or very high, well above 12.0, in addition to lowering them directly, you would be extremely well advised to measure your other heart and cardiovascular disease risk indicators and work to improve them all to the desirable range from the danger or high risk levels.

If homocysteine turns out to only or mostly be a secondary trouble indicator like smoke is to a fire indicating damage from other risk factors, not only will doing this give you critically needed protection, it will likely help lower your homocysteine levels by putting out the fires.

And, if as I think likely from the body of research suggesting it, high homocysteine levels help create or cause cardiovascular damage at least initially, then you would also be extremely well advised to measure your other heart and cardiovascular disease risk indicators and work to improve them all to the desirable range from the danger or high risk level they may be at now.

In short, I believe when all the relevant research is done, lowering high homocysteine levels before your cardiovascular system is damaged.

But if you have high homocysteine levels, whether I’m correct or not, either way, if you have homocysteine levels above 9.0 or worse, above 12.0, given what we now know, it likely will benefit you to lower them because even if they are a trouble indicator it will sensitize you to measuring and optimizing your heart risk indicators as a way to prevent serious heart, brain, and other circulation problems. And, virtually all the things and supplements that you can use to lower high homocysteine, have other health benefits.

Taking 500 mcg to 1,000 mcg a day of B12 in addition to any you get in food, multivitamins, and regular B complex supplements has helped lower homocysteine.

Taking B6 in the range of 50 to 75 mg a day from all your supplements or possibly up to 100 mg a day total has helped lower homocysteine. (B6 in amounts over 100 mg may be harmful and as you get over 200 or 300 mg a day are likely to be harmful to your sensory nerves, so may be a bad idea & over 200 certainly is. I’m conservative on such things & prefer 75 mg a day or so.)

The most effective of the 3 usually used is taking folic acid. 400 mcg a day in your multivitamin, 100 mcg a day in your B Complex supplement and 400 to 1600 mcg a day from a folic acid supplement has helped lower homocysteine.

Doing that plus making a strong effort to eat green vegetables and beans and lentils high in folic acid in its form that your body can use directly may be even more effective. (Your body has to convert the folic acid in supplements to that version to use it. And, some people don’t convert it well.) In addition, eating plentiful green vegetables and beans and lentils if you aren’t allergic to legumes, is dramatically effective at protecting your health and your heart and the rest of your cardiovascular system. It helps prevent or reverse excess body fat. It helps prevent or reverse high blood pressure in several ways. And it tends to help lower or prevent high LDL and blood sugar and insulin levels. So, it’s extremely protective and worthwhile to do on its own. Plus it also helps lower homocysteine!

In addition to these steps, particularly if your homocysteine level still tests at 9.0 or more, you can do 3 other things I posted as a reply to comment to my Monday post.

“Here are three other things that lower high homocysteine.

You can take 500 to 1,000 mg a day of TMG, tri-methyl glycine.

You can take 500 to 1,000 mg a day of NAC that also raises your levels of glutathione which may prevent or reverse damage from homocysteine or other causes.

And, you can come as close as you can to completely avoiding tobacco smoke. Not only does tobacco smoke work to increase homocysteine levels, it directly causes cardiovascular disease including building up plaque in your carotid artery that you are getting examined, and it also triggers heart attacks in people who have cardiovascular disease but might not otherwise have heart attacks.”

TMG may have other health benefits according to Dr Mark Hyman due to its contribution to your body’s ability to do methylation in processes where it needs that done.

The glutathione release from taking NAC not only protects your health, it may slow aging and help you live longer. (See our post from Thursday last week, 10-15.)

And, no one who wishes to avoid ED, heart attack, and stroke should allow themselves to be exposed to tobacco smoke virtually at all. That’s for many, many reasons in addition to smoke increasing your level of homocysteine. One of the reasons too to avoid and reverse high homocysteine levels is that they appear to speed aging. Tobacco smoke for sure speeds aging & reduces longevity whether it does so by increasing homocysteine, several other ways as I think likely, or both as I also think likely.

Lastly, here are several other key points about preventing heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases.

1. A combination of low HDL and high triglyceride levels indicates a LARGE amount of the kind of small particle LDL that causes plaque build up in your blood vessels and vice versa. It’s literally a direct cause of heart disease. Because the particles are so tiny they literally fit into the molecules in your blood vessel walls.

Ideally you want your HDL to be at least 50 and 100 or close to it is better. Taking niacin, eating berries -- and nuts if you aren’t allergic, regular vigorous exercise, and moderate drinking of red wine all help increase HDL. Not exercising at all, never eating these foods, and eating a lot of refined carbohydrates tend to lower it. Extra virgin olive oil tends to keep HDL levels high while other vegetables oils tend to lower HDL and excessive animal saturated fat tends to increase LDL.

These same actions tend to lower triglyceride levels. So does getting adequate amounts of omega 3 oils from wild caught fish high in them and purified fish oil supplements. Eating onions and garlic also helps.

And since exercise directly lowers the amount of small particle LDL, it not only increases your HDL, it decreases your triglycerides

Since ingesting hydrogenated oils INCREASES the amount of small particle LDL on one who knows this will ingest virtually any of this heart attack starter voluntarily. Since ingesting hydrogenated oils and the transfats they contain has this effect, doing so lowers your HDL and increases your triglycerides, the reverse of what you’d like to see.

But when you look at food labels for peanut butter, ice cream, candy, commercial baked goods, microwave popcorn, and many other products a very surprising number of them, if not most, still contain this stuff. However, if you totally boycott such foods, it will likely protect your heart better than almost anything else you can do except eating vegetables, exercising regularly, and not smoking.

2. LDL levels of over 100 are moderately risky, risky above 130, and very risky above 160. Your HDL to triglyceride ratio is likely more important and, for heart attacks at least, your level of CRP inflammation may be more important. But one way to improve your HDL to triglyceride ratio is to lower your blood levels of small particle LDL. And lowering high levels of total LDL likely does help do that.

Taking niacin (I take 300 mg twice a day after meals), taking sterol supplements (I take 3 capsules a day of the sterol supplement with beta sitosterol called, Cholesterol Balance form Natrol which is quite inexpensive.), and avoiding excessive butterfat and fatty meats while eating a lot of vegetables and beans and lentils if you aren’t allergic to legumes all help lower LDL. Many doctors don’t yet know these methods lower high LDL about as well as statin drugs. Plus these methods are far safer and have other heart protective benefits.

3. It also helps to lower high CRP levels. Many of the things already listed do this. Regular exercise does for example. Getting adequate amounts of omega 3 oils from wild caught fish high in them and purified fish oil supplements lowers high CRP levels. NOT eating refined carbohydrates helps. And proper brushing and flossing and other care of your teeth and gums prevents or lowers high CRP inflammation!


4. By now we have already listed many of the actions that prevent or reverse insulin resistance, high blood sugar, and early stage type 2 diabetes. But since many people don’t know they have these conditions and they each tend to indicate poor health habits and cause damage to your blood vessels that helps cause cardiovascular disease and makes it worse when it has other causes, it’s important to know your fasting glucose and HBA1C levels and to bring them down immediately if they are high.

Fasting glucose levels of 100 or more are risky. 110 or more is a red flag. And, 125 or more is usually diagnosed as type 2 diabetes.

HBA1C measures the blood sugar on your red blood cells which live about 90 days so it gives you a superbly accurate 90 day moving average of your typical blood sugar levels.

You want your HBA1C levels to be 5.8 or lower. 6.0 to 6.5 is sometimes diagnosed as type 2 diabetes but does not require drugs to bring it down though low dose metformin can be helpful.

HBA1C of 7.0 or higher IS type 2 diabetes and is quite dangerous. Doctors will prescribe drugs for it. By measuring your fasting glucose and HBA1C once or twice a year and lowering levels that are a bit too high right way with the methods here you can avoid going to this level – and you and your heart will be a LOT healthier.

In addition to the above actions, particularly NOT eating refined carbohydrates; eating a lot of vegetables; and getting regular VIGOROUS exercise on most days seem to be most helpful.

Taking 200 to 600 mcg a day of chromium polynicotinate and 200 to 600 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid are known to help.

There are many other supplements that may help and may well work that I’m less familiar with.

One article I read earlier today says that 8,000 mcg twice a day of the B vitamin Biotin was effective at lowering HBA1C and excessive insulin levels. And because it lowered these things and increased a fat controlling substance adiponectin, taking Biotin may also help with fat loss.