USA news on Youtube Sep 11 2018

Hi, it's Dr. Minkoff.

If you've been listening to the news

or reading natural medicine journals

you've probably heard about this thing called "methylation".

This came about because,

probably starting 10 or 15 years ago,

we were able to track genes cheaply.

So, you could get a 23 and Me done,

you could find out what your genetics were.

and you could find out if you had small inherited defects

in this process called "methylation."

Now, methylation,

"methyl" in chemistry is a carbon that's got 3 hydrogens on it.

And carbons have 4 places where they can bond to,

and so there's a fourth one that's empty.

Now the body has a lot of processes

where it needs these things to do something.

And it goes all the way from detoxing,

stress reactions, neurotransmitters, hormones,

energy production, DNA repair, immunity.

And these methyl groups are used.

So, just to give you an example,

let's suppose that this is your DNA,

and the DNA has a gene that's supposed to be producing something

like a neurotransmitter.

And if the body has enough of it for the moment

it will take this methyl group,

stick it on there,

and it stops this thing from being active.

So it's like a switch.

It gets put on something.

Let's say you have something that you ate

and it's something that is a toxic molecule,

and the body wants to get rid of it,

it can stick a methyl on here,

and that tags it so then when it goes through the liver

or the kidney, it gets routed out.

So these methyl groups are really important.

And some people, genetically, don't make enough,

and interestingly enough,

some people make too much.

Or, they take therapies to increase their methylation,

and they get symptoms from it.

Now, my experience with the genetics on this,

are that when I did my own genetics,

I found that I had a bunch of these defects in my body.

but they weren't being expressed in terms of

a function problem, or a biochemistry problem.

So because you have the gene, or the gene variant,

doesn't mean that you're necessarily sick

or you're going to be symptomatic.

It's estimated that somewhere between 25% and 30% of all people,

have a methylation defect.

Does that mean that they're going to be sick?

Not necessarily.

Depending on their nutrition

and their environmental circumstances,

they may be fine.

Now there's been tons of attention to people who under-methylate.

And I see in our clinic all the time

people who need to be on extra methyl groups,

because they can't make them.

The defect is that they can't make enough of them.

So we can actually give them supplements,

these are usually B vitamins,

that are already methylated,

they're already in a form that the body can use,

so we can just bypass the deficit.

Sometimes people are over-methylated,

or if they get too many of these methyl groups,

that we give them, they get symptoms

where they're anxious,

they seem like they have ADD,

they can't stop moving,

they're hyper.

And it's because they're over-methylated.

And over-methylation can cause levels

of stress hormones to go too high.

Like epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine.

These things can be jacked way up.

So, if you were thinking that you have it,

you did the 23 and Me,

and you found out what your genetics are,

and you thought, just in case,

I should take some extra methyl B12,

methylfolate, trimethylglycines,

you see all these have "methyls" in them,

so that I will be better, because I have this gene deficit,

and you end up with

anxiety, hyperness, can't sleep, driven,

you may be getting too much.

So, we want these in balance.

And I think one of the important things for people is

that if they get their genes done,

then they get with someone who understands both the clinical side of it

and the biochemistry side of it,

so that they could get adjusted correctly.

Because you have the gene,

doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong with you.

So, I think this is helpful to know.

And if you're seeing a practitioner

I would ask him about this.

We do some nice biochemical tests on people

to see, "Are they under-methylated?"

One of the things that is the most common

for people who are under-methylated,

is they have this amino acid in their blood

in too high a level, called "homocysteine."

And this is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

Homocysteine, when it's too high

irritates the inside of arteries

and leads to premature coronary artery

or peripheral artery disease.

So in someone who has high homocysteine,

and this should always be checked on a first visit on everyone,

If their level is high, they need to have more methyls,

and we give them more methyls,

we check it in couple of months,

the homocysteine comes into a normal level,

and they need to stay on that for their whole time.

Now, sometimes homocysteine is changed just by diet alone.

I had a patient who went on a bulletproof diet.

They had high homocysteine, the level was 14-16,

it should be around 8,

and they went on a bulletproof diet with an intermittent fast.

So they ate dinner at 6 o'clock at night

and they didn't eat anything else until noon the next day.

18 hour intermittent fast.

And then the food that they ate was mostly vegetables and proteins,

with some extra fat, during that period.

And in a 6 week period,

their homocysteine went from 14 down to 8,

just with diet alone.

So, lifestyle and diet can affect these things

We usually try first to do that.

If it doesn't come around, you may need supplements.

So, I hope this has alerted you to this idea of methylation.

It can be under or over.

You may have biochemical abnormalities

if the methylation isn't working right.

Or you may have symptomatic abnormalities,

where your mood is wrong,

or your sleep is wrong,

and it may be tied to this.

Okay?

I hope this helps.