Is Homosistin a Predictor of Heart Disease? | 2min snip from Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair

Speaker 2
The result of lobia bvitamens is an elevated level of homosistin. Well,
Speaker 1
that's amarcus exactly. So often, your doctor, but not all the time, measures homosistine levels because it's been shown to go up as a predictor of heart disease and dimenta. And high levels are particularly dangerous. Ah, most doctors would want you to have less than ten micromolas, moles per leder. Some people go as high as a hundred. If you're that high, you're certainly going to die in the next few years of cardy vascular events. So you try to keep the homocistine levels down. And the best way to do that is to make sure be 12 levels are up, tmole, not too high, ecause that can also cause problems. Again, you have to measure it. Use inside tracka to measure my bee vitamens. But also, you want to avoid too much alcohol. Definitely don't smoke. You minipores will also affect your homasistine levels. Certain types of cancer will. And aging itself leads to increases in home asisting. And tis disall materializes as plac well it does. But homasisting itself, i don't think is the problem. It's that the methylation pattern on the dena is getting messed up. The sertuins can't copse, orat one's not good at going where it came from. And your body will get older. And when your body is older, it has more inflammation. Can't get rid of plant, builds up calcium in the arteries instead of being in your bones. And that we call diseases. But that's actually aging going on. I
Speaker 2
think a lot of people think about elevated homosisians in terms of what's going on in like, ther blood vessels throughout their body. But we're having a conversation here about our brains. It's important they're as well morso
Speaker 1
yes, it's known that high homo sistine levels, which is a version of anamino acid, do correlate with increased susceptibility to dimentia. And the reason, probably, is that we have vasculature in our brain, and that these are very small vessels that are needed to bring oxygen and take away toxins. And they clog up really quickly. And with high home sistine levels as an indicator, we're geting plac also building up. And not only that, the etheleal cells that are like the lining of the blood vessels, they literally are, but they need to remain flexible, like rubber bands. They become defective. They age ad they become stiff, and then they start to accumulate this collestoral and then you get inclusions, and that that can ultimately end in a stroke. But even before that, those inclusions are limiting the amount of oxygen your brain gets, leading to, of course, losing your ability to remember, even at my age, but
Speaker 2
ultimately what's called vascular dimentia.

The Science of Keeping the Brain Healthy | Episode 7

Lifespan with Dr. David Sinclair

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