The UltraMind Solution by Mark Hyman M.D

Author:Mark Hyman, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

For George, whose mind and life were evaporating, I looked deeply into his genes and the biochemistry his genes controlled and found places where we could improve things.

He had a gene called apo E4, which is a high-risk gene for Alzheimer’s disease, 3 one that also made it hard for him to lower his cholesterol or detoxify mercury from his brain.

This gene predisposes people to dementia for many reasons. One of them may be that people with this gene cannot easily remove mercury from their brains. 4 This certainly seemed to be the case for George, who had some of the highest levels of mercury poisoning I have ever seen.

When your brain can’t detoxify mercury, the mercury accumulates there over a lifetime. This mercury may come from many sources, including vaporization of dental fillings, environmental exposures, tuna fish, or air pollution. 5 Wherever it comes from, the effect can be severe.

In one study of 465 patients with chronic mercury toxicity, 32 percent had severe fatigue, 88 percent had memory loss, and almost 30 percent had depression. These symptoms and mercury poisoning were much more common in people with the apo E4 gene. Today about 20 percent of the population has this gene.

The good news that came out of this study is that removal of amalgam fillings combined with a mercury detoxification program resulted in significant symptom reduction. 6

However, apo E4 was only the beginning of George’s genetic problems.

Some genes are critical for optimal detoxification of metals and other toxins. One of the most important is the GST gene. George had a version of this gene (glutathione-S-transferase, or GST) 7 that was very inefficient. This gene helps increase the levels of glutathione, the body’s main detoxifier and antioxidant. George’s inefficient GST gene made George accumulate even more toxins over his lifetime.

Having the combination of a problem with GST and apo E4 puts people at even more risk for dementia. 8;9

In another study, people with an absent GST gene were likely to have much higher levels of mercury in their system. 10 So the interaction between genes and the environment is the problem. People like George aren’t genetically programmed to have dementia, but they are living with a loaded gun, and their toxic environment pulls the trigger.

Luckily, we know how to work around these genes that are better adapted to a pollution-free world. We do it with diet, supplements, and other detoxification methods.

George also had another gene we found through his blood tests called MTHFR, 11 which made him require very high doses of a special kind of folate (MTHF) to lower homocysteine in his blood, which is a substance that is very toxic to the brain.

Again we see problems with methylation show up (I discussed these problems in detail in chapter 6 ).

The very core of nearly all chronic illness is the breakdown in the process of moving around methyl groups (CH3) in the body (the methylation train), and creating the most important detoxifier and antioxidant in our bodies— glutathione (the sulfation train, which I will discuss in detail later in this chapter).

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