Are you anxious, depressed, distracted,
worried about your cancer risk? The
enzyme COMT could be relevant.
Here's how to find out if it is for you
and what to do about it.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. And this is
Chris Masterjohn Lite where the name of
the game is "Details? Shmeetails. Just tell
me what works!" And here we're going to
talk about COMT.
In the last few videos I've been using the
StrateGene report, I'll link to the video
about how to get it, but I'm going to
assume we all have a StrateGene report
for the rest of this video.
If you look at my StrateGene report
on the second page you go down to the
bottom, you will see the third to last
and second to last lines are for COMT.
This is an enzyme that uses methyl groups
from the methylation process, to
methylate a few things, but chief among them
are dopamine and estrogen. And you can
see that there are two different
mutations, the V158M mutation is the
one where most of the research is, there's
another one that has less research
behind it. And you can see over here that
I'm heterozygous for each of them
meaning I have +/-, one of those variants
from one of my parents, but not the other.
Now I think it's a little bit deceptive that it
shows it yellow here because it indicates
intermediate risk. Actually to be +/- for
that, to be yellow for that
means that you are in the middle 50% of
the population.
If you are +/+ and red, it means that you
are in the lowest 25% of the population
for your genetic ability to use that enzyme.
And if you're green -/- it means you're in the
top 25% of the population and your
genetic ability to use that enzyme.
To be +/- and yellow means that you're in
the 50% more or less majority right in
the middle, where you are in the center
of the sweet spot.
So what does this mean?
If you're red +/+ it means that you
have less COMT activity on a genetic
basis. You will be less able to methylate
dopamine and that is going to make you
more mentally rigid. That means that it's
more difficult for you to let go of things,
it's more difficult for you to switch
mental states, it's more difficult for you to
see something that you're not
currently paying attention to and shift
your attention to it.
Well that might actually be a good thing
when you're trying to focus on
analytical or creative work, it can be a
bad thing if what gets into your mind is
an anxious thought or a depressing
thought because it might be really hard
for you to let go of it. On the other
hand, actually I should also point out
that if you have low COMT activity you
are going to methylate estrogen at a
lower rate and that makes you less able
to clear the estrogen metabolites that
are capable of doing damage to DNA and
contribute to a portion of the estrogen-
related cancer risk. Now if you have the
opposite case where you're green -/- and
you're in the 25% highest activity of
that enzyme then that's probably really
good for your estrogen metabolism, but it
can also predispose you to be very
distracted and to be not very good
at focusing. Now if you look at these
mental traits if your nutrition is
good it's just a personality variation;
and that's why we would expect there to
be this distribution where 50% is in the
middle, 25% is high, and 25% is low,
because if you get too high you can't
focus as well and if you get too low you
get too mentally rigid and you get stuck
on things and you ruminate. You could of
course swing back and forth because it's
not just your COMT genes that matters.
In order to methylate dopamine you need the
support of the methylation system and in
order to not over-methylate dopamine you
need your glycine buffer in place.
These are the things that I talked about in
the MTHFR videos, I'll link to the three
relevant videos in the description of this one.
But basically if you're not following
the methylation protocol to support the
methylation process and have the glycine
buffer system in place then you will be
much more vulnerable to falling off one
or the other end depending on where you are.
In other words if you're in the
bottom 25% of COMT activity and you're
deficient in your methyl groups because
you're not providing enough choline, enough
folate, enough B12, enough betaine, etc.
Then you might go from a personality
trait of low COMT to a pathological
level of being neurotically or
psychotically mentally rigid. So what you
want to do is you want to take advantage
of your personality trait to be really
good at focusing, for example, but you
want to give enough nutrition to where
it stays a personality trait and not a
problem. On the other hand if you have
high COMT activity then you could go off
the deep end in distraction if you don't
have the glycine buffer system in place
because when you do get your methyl
groups you methylate dopamine too much,
especially when you have a really robust
supply, because that buffer system with
the glycine is not in place. So as long
as you get all aspects of that nutrition
right you should stay within the
boundaries of healthy personality
variation and you should also be able to
support the methylation of estrogen to
get whatever protective effects you can
get out of methylation for that purpose.
And even if you're right smack in the
middle for COMT it doesn't remove those
risks because even if you have a normal
COMT enzyme not having enough methyl
groups can still predispose you to too
much mental rigidity, and not having the
glycine buffer system in place can still
predispose you to too much distraction
or not enough focus. So it's always
important to get the nutrition, it's just
that your COMT genotype biases you
towards one set of problems or another
when that nutrition is not in the
right place, and please, please oh please
if you're yellow +/- like me just
know that you're right in the middle of normal.
All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. This has been
Chris Masterjohn Lite, and I will see
you in the next episode.