Homocysteine is an amino acid produced in the body during the metabolism of a common dietary amino acid called methionine. Vitamins B6, B12, riboflavin and folate help breakdown homocysteine into other beneficial amino acids.
Deficiencies in these vitamins may lead to elevated homocysteine levels a condition known as hyperhomocysteinemia. When homocysteine levels are elevated, they are associated with the development of atherosclerosis, stroke, cognitive disorders, and hearing loss. Elevated homocysteine is a risk factor for vascular calcification progression suggested in a study published in 2020 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. It effects the calcification of arteries and heart valves and is considered an irreversible state. Homocysteine may also increase blood clotting, reduce the synthesis of HDL, (good cholesterol), and promote the oxidation of LDL which contributes to atherosclerosis.
Brain Aging
When the MRI scans of 36 healthy volunteers between the ages of 59 and 85 were done, it was revealed that those with higher homocysteine levels had a greater loss of white matter, defined as brain tissue for nerve signal conduction.
There is some evidence that elevated homocysteine may indicated markers of Alzheimer’s disease progression in brain tissue including neurofibrillary tangles, dysfunction, dysfunctional protein accumulation, and brain shrinkage.
Studies have also shown that even modest elevations of homocysteine that occur within the normal range has been associated with a substantial increase in risk of dementia in the elderly.
Prevention
It is recommended that if you have a history of heart disease or dementia, you should talk to your physician as there are simple blood tests to determine your homocysteine status. It is also recommended that if your levels go above the recommended levels, you have a choice to supplement your diet with a common multivitamin that contains vitamin B6, folate, B12, and riboflavin – they all work to lower homocysteine concentrations in the body. However, it is not necessary to take individual vitamins that are more costly and frankly a ‘lot of pills to take”. Vitamins are best coming from foods and check your health status to make sure there are no underlying conditions that might be caused by even a moderate vitamin deficit. Check your status with your primary care physician.
THE VITAMINS AT A GLANCE
Vitamin
Function
OverdoseConsequence
Food Sources
Comments
B6 (pyridoxine)
Protein synthesis, nervous system
Numbness, weakness, loss of balance
Meats, cereal, bananas, potatoes sweet peppers
Overdose symptoms can mask multiple sclerosis
Folate (folacin)
Protein synthesis, red blood formation
Can mask B12 deficiency (pernicious anemia)
Fortified grains, bread, pasta, dark green vegetables, dried beans
Prevention of neural tube defects in early pregnancy of embryo
— The user fee legislation in Congress proposes useful regulations, but doesn’t go far enough
by Peter Lurie, MD, MPH June 10, 2022
By now, calling the dietary supplement marketplace “The Wild West” has taken on the mantle of hoary cliché. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
That moniker seems entirely appropriate for an industry that has grown from about $4 billion in 1994, when Congress clarified the FDA’s authority over the products, to over $40 billion today. At present, the industry sells some 50,000 products (the FDA estimates their number to the nearest 10,000), many without any evidence of effectiveness. Some have clear proof of danger in the form of unintended contaminants, pharmaceutical ingredients that presumably were added intentionally, and ingredient quantities that often stray from labeled amounts. Yet, the 1994 legislation sharply curtailed FDA’s authorities over these products.
According to a recent industry survey, 80% of consumers use dietary supplements, with many recently turning to supplements in response to COVID-19. And patients often keep their providers in the dark about their supplement use — or providers fail to ask about it.
But a reckoning might loom over the horizon.
Every 5 years, Congress must pass so-called “user fee legislation” — fees levied upon the various industries regulated by FDA that supplement the often-meager funds appropriated by legislators. Typically, congresspeople use this as an opportunity to pursue their other FDA priorities. This year, one long-overdue target is the dietary supplements industry.
Based on legislation developed by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), the user fee bill includes what industry cognoscenti call “listing” — a public database of all the dietary supplements currently being marketed. Yes, you heard that right: FDA doesn’t currently have such a list despite being expected to police the marketplace. The bill also improves oversight of high-risk supplements and products with pharmacological activity fraudulently marketed as dietary supplements, such as tianeptine and phenibut.
Those are good ideas, but they don’t go nearly far enough. What else can be done?
The database is critical — even the more responsible members of the industry support it, which ought to tell you something — but it should offer more extensive information. The listings should provide consumers with access to recent FDA enforcement actions where food safety and labeling laws have been violated. It should also be linked to product labels so that consumers can look up those they are considering buying and doctors can thoroughly research those they are considering recommending to patients. There is also a need to address an existing provision whereby companies can simply self-certify new ingredients as safe, without even telling FDA, much less providing any evidence. The FDA also needs to be alerted to any new ingredients, and they should be added to the database before the products can be altered and sold.
The bill should also allocate more funding. FDA’s beleaguered Office of Dietary Supplement Programs should be provided with at least $5 million more per year than appropriated in the bill, as this would bring a level of funding I believe to be sufficient to improving the agency’s oversight of this sprawling industry.
Another hoary cliché has it that the COVID-19 pandemic has shone an unforgiving light upon existing deficiencies in our healthcare system. Right again. One of those issues is the rampant disinformation. Already we’ve seen the defrocked minister Jim Bakker peddling colloidal silver and leading anti-vaxxer Joseph Mercola, DO, pushing, well, just about anything he can. Accurate and transparent information across the healthcare system, including the supplements industry, is critical.
It’s time to bring some law and order to this unruly marketplace. For there’s no telling what these folks will do For a Few Dollars More.
Peter Lurie, MD, MPH, is the president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He is a former associate commissioner of the FDA.
Epigenetics is a hot topic right now and appears more in news articles as science makes further associations. It is becoming more obvious that our lifestyle and experiences can affect our genes and can be passed down to our children and grandchildren through genetic pathways.
Factors that can influence epigenetics can include: Diet, physical activity, sleep, stress, inflammation, chemicals products, UV rays, and environmental pollution.
DNA is the blueprint for the instructions for the entire body, but chemical tags called methyl groups make up what is called the epigenome to decide which genes are active – this is called methylation or gene expression. It is often referred to as an “on and off switch” that turns on or off certain genes. It is what makes identical twins different over time. Although our DNA code does not change, the epigenome is flexible and reacts to our environment. Our experiences help shape how genes are expressed.
DNA methylation works by adding a chemical group to specific places on the DNA as “tags” where it blocks the proteins that attach to the DNA to “read the gene”. This chemical group called a methyl group can be removed through a process called demethylation. Typically, methylations turn genes “off” and demethylation turns genes “on”.
Women are not solely responsible for the health of their future children. Science is finding that the health of a man’s unborn children can be affected by things like the man’s diet, life experiences and trauma, exposure to toxins and how old he is at conception.
DNA is not our destiny. Epigenetics is the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affects the way your genes work. Through epigenetic tags, parents’ experiences and lifestyle can affect the genes that are passed down to their children and grandchildren.
A proper lifestyle “turns on” protective genes and “turns off” disease-producing genes by their positive impact on the epigenome.
DNA
Citation:
Why Should I Care About Epigenetics? Utah Valley Pediatrics, September 30, 2013
We have all heard about the rising crime rates occurring in the U.S. Our first inclination is to wonder what could be going on in our country to cause this – or at least what is contributing to this disturbing shift of behavior?
“The issues of diet and criminal behavior are limited but intriguing. If you’ve ever found yourself in front of the TV after a bad day, mindlessly digging ice cream out of the container with a spoon, you know that mood and food are sometimes linked. But while stress eating is a verified phenomenon, the relationship between food and actual mood disorders, depression and even behavior needs some attention. Can dietary changes potentially improve our mental health.? What do the studies say?
Scientists looking for answers – Hints of a Link
Before, we jump into the science (research), some basics:
As we all know, our behavior is mostly controlled by our brain. Every organ in the human body requires nutrition to function properly and when it doesn’t get what it needs it functions abnormally. So, is there any reason that the brain should be an exception? The brain is a complex organ so that alone should be enough to assume that if it does not get the proper nutrition, it might just not work as well as it should.
Recent research offers a viewpoint that the brain and the gut “talk to each other” through the presence of the microbiome – the community of microorganisms that lives inside our digestive tract. When this communication channel is “out of whack” or missing essential nutrition, major health problems can crop up in both the mind and body, enabling food sensitivities, allergies, digestive disorders, obesity, depression, anxiety, and fatigue.
“A study indicated that when levels of the brain chemical serotonin decrease from stress or not eating, it affects the brain regions regulating anger, potentially resulting in “a whirlwind of uncontrollable emotions”.
“Prison studies suggest that many inmates have poor blood sugar control, compounded by a high-sugar diet. We all know how it feels when blood sugar drops – we feel moody, foggy. Apply that to someone from a disturbed backgound.”
In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, Oxford criminologist Bernard Gesch found that giving prison inmates a multivitamin and fatty acid supplement led to violent offenses dropping 37% compared to 10% for those who were given a placebo – findings that were confirmed by a later Dutch study.
“In a large study of prison diets, Stephen Schoenthaler, Professor of Criminology and Sociology at California State University found that prisoner’s eating habits could be used to predict future violent behavior. Normally, past violent behavior is considered the best prediction of future violence. But professor Schoenthaler found that a poor diet is an even better predictor of violent behavior.”
He also found that that in a study of young offenders in California, young adult men receiving vitamin supplements showed a 38% drop in serious behavior problems.
The types of problems associated with poor diet, such as aggression, attention deficits and hyperactivity can make impulsive behavior more likely. Low levels of iron, magnesium and zinc can lead to increased anxiety, low mood, and poor concentration, leading to attention deficits and sleep disturbances. Omega-3 fatty acids, are often deficient in the U.S. diet and needed to improve cognitive functioning.
“No one blames a poor diet as a cause of crime, nor is it the only solution. But if better nutrition in general can bring about a substantial reduction in violent crime in and out of prisons, that would be something to cheer about. For isn’t a good diet, made up of good food, a better and less expensive solution than just hiring more police and building more prisons?”
Needless to say, The Standard American Diet (SAD) needs more attention for all of us, not just in our prison population. Simply, with the input of nutrition scientists, education of the consumer, and cooperation of the food industry, we desperately need more healthy food choices for our personal health and that of our food culture.
Schoenthaler, S.J., Ames, S. Dorax, W., et al (1997)
The effect of randomized vitamin mineral supplementation on violent and non-violent antisocial behavior among incarcerated juveniles. Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, 7:343-352.
The Conversation: Crime and Punishment – the link between food and offending behavior. Hazel Flight, John Marsden, Sean Creaney. 2018
The Guardian. Can Food Make You Angry? Rebecca Hardy. Wed.24 Apr 2013.
C. Bernard Gesch, Sean M. Hammond, Sarah E. Hampson, Anita Eves, and Martin J. Crowder
Influence of supplementary vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids on the antisocial behavior of young adult prisoners.British Journal of Psychiatry 2002, 181, 22-28
Biological Changes during Aging and Nutritional Consequences
S0URCE JUDITH E. BROWN, NUTRITION NOW, 7TH EDITION, 2013
The combined effects of poor diets, other risky behaviors, and biological aging increase the rates of serious diseases during adulthood. How soon a disease develops largely depends on the intensity of exposure to behavioral risks that contribute to disease development. These are often referred to as epigenetics (when the DNA is not altered, but environmental factors cause genes to be turned either on or off.)
What Are Some Nutritional Consequences?
Lowered stomach acidity may result in decreased absorption of vitamin B12? The consequences of getting less sun exposure may result in less production of vitamin D in the skin.
A person’s need for calories generally declines with age as physical activity, muscle mass, and basal metabolic rate decrease. However, when one chooses to continue their physical activity into their older years can maintain their muscle mass, experience less muscle, and bone pain, and gain less body fat than people who are inactive.
For the most part, the development of chronic disease in middle-age and older adults can be viewed as a chain that represents the accumulation over time of problems that impair cell functions. Each link that is added to the chain, or each additional insult to cellular function, increases the risk that a chronic disease will develop. The presence of a disease indicates that the chain has gotten too long – that the accumulation of problems is sufficient to interfere with the normal functions of cells and tissues.
Normal cell functions and health promotion are facilitated by healthful dietary lifestyles and other behaviors. For example:
Correcting obesity and stabilizing weight during the adult years tends to lengthen life expectancy.
Dietary intakes that correspond to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (MyPlate) or following a healthily diet pattern like the Mediterranean Diet is related to a longer life expectancy.
Maintaining adequate calcium, vitamin D, and protein intake and engaging in regular physical activity during the adult years may prevent or postpone the development of osteoporosis and help maintain muscle mass and strength.
Above average intake of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains may delay the development or help prevent a number of types of cancer, heart disease, hypertension, and cataracts.
The health status of adults is not necessarily ‘FIXED” by age.; it can change for the better or the worst, or not much at all. It’s up to you.
“Most grocery stores and butcher shops don’t want to sell genetically modified fish and food animals.” We have seen the rising interest of consumers of “Impossible Burgers” and “Beyond Burgers” now available in supermarkets; however, their success is not widely advertised.
The development of genetically engineered food animals or their products soon to be available like goats, pigs, cattle, and salmon (some already approved by the FDA will likely increase because GMO’s represent greater profits for big meat producers… “
“Certain foods encourage inflammation and an anti-inflammatory diet avoids these foods. The body makes compounds called prostaglandins (eicosanoids) that can either be pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. Both saturated fat and omega-6 unsaturated fat are building blocks for pro-inflammatory prostaglandins. Omega-6 fat is abundant in ulltraprocessed foods (not a good thing); it can contribute to an excessive inflammatory response.” How to Eat, Mark Bittman and David Katz, MD., page 61.
” Diets high in inflammatory foods were linked with global markers of brain aging and cerebral small vessel disease, on MRI. Bottom line: Smaller brain volume seen with diet-driven inflammation” See study below. “Systemic inflammatory processes in the body, including the brain, can be influenced by diet leading to its important contributory role in brain aging, the researchers observed.”
Adding more olive oil to your diet may help prevent an early death.?
A recent study from the researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was published online Jan. 10, 2022 by the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Data from 90,000 men and women, free of cardiovascular disease and cancer were asked to complete a dietary questionnaire every four years. At the end of the data collecting, 36,856 of the participants had died.
From the diet questionnaires, it was found that those who routinely consumed the most olive oil – averaging more than one half a tablespoon a day – had the lowest risk of dying during the 28 – year old follow-up period compared with people who rarely or never consumed olive oil.
The Olive Oil comsumers had:
A 19% lower overall risk of death
A 19% lower risk of cardiovascular disease
A 17% lower risk of cancer-related disease
A 29% lower risk of death related to a neurodegenerative condition
A 18% lower risk of death related to a respiratory disease
This may explain why olive oil as a major component of the Mediterranean diet has consistently shown health benefits in numerous studies. The results also suggest that when used as a substitute for products containing animal fat such as butter, we see the same benefits.
Before you dust off that juicer, you should take a long hard look at the latest fad – detoxing your body from alleged accumulated toxins from environmental chemicals that supposedly lead to illness. When searching Amazon, detox, natural, and hygiene is frequently mentioned in the titles of the latest diet books, not to mention the myriad of products from tablets, massages, tinctures and tea bags that promise to cleanse your body of these impurities and your hard earned money. You can go on two-day to seven-day detox diets which promise cleansing and weight loss. You may lose weight, but that is more than likely due to starvation rather than the diet itself. These toxins are never identified by the manufacturers of these products. When asked to provide some scientific evidence that support their claims, no one seems to be able to provide evidence that “detoxification” is not a bogus treatment. Despite this, the detox industry has become a huge business with a little help from some celebrities like Ann Hathaway and Gwyneth Paltrow. If toxins build up in the body with no way to excrete them, we would die or need serious medical intervention. However, we have kidneys, a liver, a colon, skin and lungs that physiologically are designed to rid our bodies of any unnecessary substances we don’t need.
Detox is actually not a new concept. Health reform began in earnest in the 19th century in America. During that time, there had to be a great deal of food anxiety; food often was adulterated with chemicals in order to make it palatable. As Upton Sinclair in 1909 writes of the meatpacking industry in his famous book, The Jungle: “And then there was “potted game” and ‘potted grouse’ and ‘potted ham’ made out of the waste ends of smoked beef… and also tripe, dyed with chemicals so that it would not show white… and potatoes, skins and all, and finally the hard, cartilaginous gullets of beef… All this was ground up and flavored with spices to make it taste like something.” Ronald Deutsch, The New Nuts Among the Berries: How Nutrition Nonsense Captured America, Bull Publishing, 1977.
Food preservation was crude and foodborne illnesses were rampant. People had little resources to turn to in dealing with even the common diseases of society. Whom did they have to rely on for medical advice on how to remain healthy in an age of so much misinformation and confusion? People were vulnerable to just about any ideas from anyone medical or nonmedical that would help them to maintain health and avoid disease.
In the 1848 edition of Buchan’s Domestic Medicine was listed the general causes of illness: “diseased parents, night air, sedentary habits, anger, wet feet and abrupt changes of temperature.” “The causes of fever included injury, bad air, violent emotion, irregular bowels and extremes of heat and cold.” I’m going with the “diseased parent theory. Cholera, shortly to be epidemic in many British cities, was caused by rancid or putrid food, by ‘cold fruits’ such as cucumbers and melons, and by passionate fear or rage.” William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, 1848: A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases; Google eBook .
There are two major ideas that flourished and dominated the 19th century that led to the premise that toxins must be removed from the body by detoxification – auto-intoxication and the natural hygiene theory..
AUTO-INTOXICATION
During the 19th century, people were told that constipation was at the root of most diseases and the term, autointoxication, became the mantra of the medical community. In 1852, a publication called The People’s Medical Lighthouse, a series of popular scientific essays on nature, uses and diseases of the lung, heart, liver, stomach, kidney, womb and blood had this to say about this common digestive problem: “daily evacuation of the bowels is of utmost importance to the maintenance of health”; without the daily movement, the entire system will become deranged and corrupted.” People’s Medicine Lighthouse, Lecture 71. Harmon Knox Root, A.M, M.D. 1852.
The term auto-intoxication was coined by Charles Bouchard, a French physician. Other physicians further defined the theory by describing the phenomenon as caused by the putrefaction or decay of proteins in the intestine generating offending toxins. This theory dominated a major part of the 19th century and has survived to this day
The obsession with the auto-intoxication theory led to the marketing and sales of a myriad of bowel cleansing products along with laxatives, enema and colonic irrigation equipment. These gimmicks are still available today. Although doctors prescribe colon cleansing as preparation for medical procedures such as colonoscopy, most do not recommend colon cleansing for detoxification. Their reasoning is simple: Your digestive system and bowel naturally eliminate waste material and bacteria; your body does not need colon cleansing to do so.
In fact, colon cleansing can sometimes be harmful. Colon cleansing can cause side effects, such as cramping, bloating, nausea, and vomiting. More serious concerns with colon cleansing are that it can increase your risk of dehydration, lead to bowel perforations, increase the risk of infection, and cause changes in electrolytes. Civilisation and the colon: constipation as the “disease of diseases. James Whorton BMJ 2000; 321: 1586-9
According to Quackwatch In 2009, “Dr. Edzard Ernst tabulated the therapeutic claims he found on the Web sites of six “professional organizations of colonic irrigations.” The themes he found included detoxification, normalization of intestinal function, treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, and weight loss. He also found claims elated to asthma, menstrual irregularities, circulatory disorders, skin problems, and improvements in energy levels. Searching Medline and Embase, he was unable to find a single controlled clinical trial that substantiated any of these claims.Quackwatch, Gastrointestinal Quackery: Colonics, Laxatives, and More, Stephen Barrett, MD. August 4, 2010 www.quackwatch.com
My own investigations of the online “yellow pages” in searching for “Colon Cleansing” revealed that there were about twelve establishments advertising this service in my city of Asheville, North Carolina as of this writing.
NATURAL HYGIENE
Isaac Jennings, MD put forth the original ideas of natural hygiene in 1822 and became known as “The Father of Natural Hygiene.” He helped to developed a healing system called “Orthopathy” that claimed that Nature knows better than the most learned physicians of the time. That could be true – my opinion. Among earliest promoter of natural remedies was Samuel Thompson, a New Hampshire farmer who prepared “botanics”, as they were called, made from native herbs. In 1835, Dr. William Alcott, a graduate of Yale Medical school mixed part time farming with his medical practice. Other professors from Dartmouth and Amherst followed. A popular health cure came in the form of water cures. In 1849, the Water Cure Journal, Physiology, Hydropathy and the Laws of Life, edited by Dr. Russell Trall entered the health reform movement. By 1850, the Journal had 20,000 subscribers. Dr. Trall is quoted as saying: Typhoid and pneumonia are neither more nor less than a cleansing process – a struggle of the vital powers to relieve the system of its accumulated impurities”. http://www.whale.to/v/trall2.html.
A vulnerable public eagerly received their proclamations due to limited information and confusion on the causes of disease. Other proponents among many included Arnold Ehret, a German author of several books on diet, detoxification, fruitarianism, fasting, food combining, naturopathy, physical culture and vitalism. There was also Herbert M. Shelton who opened schools in Natural Hygiene and founded the American Society of Natural Hygienists Universal Healing, wwwuniversalhealingbelize.com/Brief- history- of –naturalhygiene.
In a previous post, the misguided principles of detoxification were supported and practiced by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg . Detoxification still is alive and thriving in the form of a pseudo-medical concept.. The bottom line: Detoxification is primarily designed to “sell you something”. If you want to “detox”, do not smoke, do exercise and eat a healthy balanced diet.
Phytochemicals are biologically or “bioactive” substances in plants that have positive effects on health. They are also called phytonutrients. More than 2,000 types of phytochemicals that can act as hormones, participate in gene function, while others provide pigments that provide flavor and color.
You can’t go wrong with increasing your intake of plants from the Brassica family – broccoli, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, and Brussel’s sprouts. There are many studies that have found them to provide valuable nutrients and even help to prevent cancer and heart disease. What makes them so powerful? They are high in dietary fiber, polyphenols (phytochemicals) and provide over 40 phenolic compounds labeled “cruciferous” meaning their leaves grow in a cross-pattern. Cruciferous means “cross”.
The red color of many cruciferous vegetables is significant. Anthocyanins are pigments that cause the red and purple coloring of many kales, cabbage, and other colorful vegetables. How do they lower blood cholesterol? One study found that healthy volunteers a fed a beverage of primarily broccoli and cabbage two times a day for three weeks showed a significant decrease in the so-called ‘bad” cholesterol, LDL. Follow up studies produced the same results.
What Foods Lower Blood Pressure? One important group is those who contain polyphenols – such as berries. They are a large family of phytochemicals particularly in cardiovascular health. Their benefits come from their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and blood vessel dilating properties, and immune system functions. All fruits and vegetables contain polyphenols, but certain ones like berries, cocoa, tea, pomegranate, olives, and grapes contain especially high amounts.
The Best Cholesterol-Lowering Food: Cruciferous Vegetables.
Harvard researchers found that anthocyanins were the primary flavonoid associated with polyphenols’ benefits to blood pressure control. Just one serving of blueberries per week significantly reduced the risk of high blood pressure by 10% in those over age 60 compared with people in the same age group consuming no blueberries. Anthocyanins are present in other common fruits and berries such cranberries, blackberries, and strawberries.
Cruciferous vegetables
Source; Harvard Medical School, Best Foods for Women’s Health.
FOOD, FACTS and FADS 