While this process is natural, it does have the potential to go awry: After SAM-e converts to homocysteine, it’s recycled back into methionine to start the process all over again. However, if you don’t have enough nutrients in your body (namely, B12 and folate) or perhaps there’s a defect in any of the enzymes that help the aforementioned recycling process, homocysteine can actually accumulate in your body. High levels of homocysteine, which is something Colleen and I both have personally dealt with, are a risk factor for clotting and heart disease.
Beyond the blood clotting risk associated with high homocysteine, there’s a wide range of health concerns linked to methylation imbalances: cardiovascular disease, asthma, Parkinson’s disease, even conditions like autism, dementia, and ADHD. “Because it’s ubiquitous, it’s involved with so many processes in the body,” Fitzgerald explains. “It’s broad, wide, and deep.”
Additionally, when your body isn’t methylating properly and creating enough SAM-e, your body cannot produce adequate levels of powerful antioxidants, like glutathione, that can help manage oxidative stress. It then becomes a not-so-pretty cycle: “Oxidative stress will wind down methylation activity, so the mitochondria can get busy to help clean up that oxidative stress,” says Fitzgerald. “But if [your oxidative stress] is chronic, your methylation cycle can’t keep up, and you’ll always have this drain on your antioxidant system.”