BONUS: Enzymatic Biochemistry with Christian

In this first bonus episode for S2E4 Genetics, Christian shares more technical details of his genetic biochemistry, along with the ailments, discovery process, and several of the false starts he had to contend with. Be sure to check out the main episode on Genetics and Epigenetics for more context.

Join the Conversation:
https://www.avenuesofawakening.com/p/s2e4-genetics

If you’re interested to contact Christian, email at info@avenuesofawakening.com

Transcript

00;00;00;24 - 00;00;23;10
Thomas Whitmire
This is the first of two bonus episodes coming out of our season two episode for genetics content. Here, I'm just going to let Christian explain in more detail about the biochemistry of his genetics and epigenetics, the various effects it had on him, and how he came to discover those things. Make sure to check out the main episode first for the big picture.

00;00;23;13 - 00;00;45;26
Thomas Whitmire
I should mention you will hear a few repeated quotes from the main episode to provide narrative continuity, but 98% of this content is new, and you can reference the show notes and chapters for the specific topics that he covers as you'll hear. This is science heavy, so in that spirit, I'd like to keep in mind that these are topics he's actively workshopping for himself.

00;00;45;29 - 00;01;06;27
Thomas Whitmire
They're not final conclusions, and they may or may not apply to our own unique makeup. Speaking of which, I will drop one more bonus episode in the next few days, using me as a case study so you can hear another short example of how this kind of investigation would look practically. All right, let's roll.

00;01;06;29 - 00;01;32;19
Christian Bonanno
I have something called a CBS deficiency. It's a deficiency in an enzyme called 66, the thinning beta synthase. And what this does is it turns homocysteine into cysteine and eventually glucose iron. Probably all heard about with iron. Now the CBS enzyme needs, vitamin B6 or a form of vitamin B6 as a cofactor. And cofactor is called P5 B.

00;01;32;22 - 00;02;04;18
Christian Bonanno
And what happens with my mutation is it changes the enzyme shape. So when I take when I take B6, it will attach to the enzyme. But it attaches incorrectly. Since this enzyme, gets rid of homocysteine, I end up having high homocysteine. High homocysteine levels are actually a lot more common. And they're caused by a number of different, vitamin deficiencies.

00;02;04;20 - 00;02;33;25
Christian Bonanno
B6 is probably the biggest one, but, B12, zinc sulfate, all three of those can lead to high homocysteine. Why? This is important. For me is that what happens is I actually have what's called a functional B6 deficiency so they can measure my B6 in my blood. And I've shown is extremely high, but yet I have all these problems with B6 because what they're measuring is inactive B6 into B6 bound.

00;02;33;25 - 00;03;03;09
Christian Bonanno
So this these enzymes out, it's just dysfunctional. So they have to do different measurements, different tests to measure my B6. So the B6 deficiency it does, it just affects that enzyme. We have hundreds of enzymes and most of them are called amino transferase. And these control the breakdown of proteins in our bodies. So what happens is is all these amino transferase is in my body slow down as well.

00;03;03;13 - 00;03;28;24
Christian Bonanno
So for example, I get a buildup of like chain amino acids which they found in my blood tests, which is something that led to this diagnosis. But I get, slowdowns in a gene called glutamate. De carboxylate is, which leads to a buildup of glutamate. And hence a lot of my anxiety disorders, my history of psychosis.

00;03;28;26 - 00;04;01;16
Christian Bonanno
Glutamate is a big one in this, B6 deficiency. And so there's just like a whole series of effects. And one of these things is how it affects my red and white blood cells. So this is what happened to me finally getting in to see a hematologist is they diagnosed me with what's called familiar. So you'll Asaro psychosis which is just means for some reason my body makes too much hemoglobin and hematocrit and they don't really know why.

00;04;01;19 - 00;04;34;01
Christian Bonanno
But it can lead to strokes, heart attacks, blah blah blah blah blah. And so talking to the, hematologist, at first he was afraid it might be an adrenal tumor because of my other symptoms. But after my checks and talking more and me actually bringing down my blood pressure by taking extra high doses of B6, so, for example, to say, bring down my blood pressure when I would go to the and see the doctor.

00;04;34;03 - 00;04;56;27
Christian Bonanno
So I had something called a record label hypertension, which is hypertension that gets really, really high. And then it gets really, really low, like this wide, really extreme range of hypertension. And so because at first I thought I had hypertension. So they gave me a 24 hour monitor. But they saw my blood pressure dropped to 90 over 60 at night.

00;04;56;29 - 00;05;22;07
Christian Bonanno
So like we can't give you hypertensive medicine because you'll pass out. Yeah. And so they were like well we don't know what to do. So I cheat. So, so So when I go to the doctor's office or anytime when I'm in a stressful situation, my blood pressure will rise really rapidly. And so when I would go to the doctor, a lot of times that blood pressure would be 160 over 100.

00;05;22;09 - 00;05;48;25
Christian Bonanno
Holy smokes. And yeah. And so it would be a constant thing. Like I could go to the doctor because they frustrate me so much. But it's like 160 over a hundred spiking. And I get yeah, I could leave and measure it and it made me feel like 130 over 85 or I'm still like higher on tendency, but a lot of times, and this would go back to the last podcast I was talking about MPs like exposure MPs.

00;05;48;28 - 00;06;18;05
Christian Bonanno
Finding is something that raises my blood pressure. And and so I have all these environmental stressors that can raise my blood pressure. But since taking this high dose B6 and I'm literally taking about 200 times the RDA, maybe more, it's hard to do because the form I'm taking is not listed in the RDA. So it's because I take I take 50 instead of taking it.

00;06;18;07 - 00;06;50;12
Christian Bonanno
Most people take paroxetine. But I take piroxicam all five phosphate. And so paroxetine turns into actual five phosphate. And that's the coenzyme that's used in the body. So taking P5 t saves the body a step of making B6. And it also you're less prone to have there's a big chance of people getting neuropathy by taking pyroxene or regular B6 because it ends up depleting zinc a lot.

00;06;50;15 - 00;07;15;16
Christian Bonanno
So anyway, so I really don't know how much I'm taking. Could be a thousand times, but that this is the this is a treatment for this is I have what's called partially B6 responsive hypo homocysteine urea. That's that's that's a good one. So yeah. So, I'm lucky because some mutations, it doesn't work at all.

00;07;15;16 - 00;07;41;22
Christian Bonanno
And you have to go on a very strict diet. Oh, yeah. And so these are kids who who grow up. And what's interesting is I'll try to find a picture of my grandfather if I can. But this is a very typical trait. I think my grandfather had some, CBS polymorphisms that led to him having this homocysteine, high homocysteine body morphology.

00;07;41;24 - 00;08;11;11
Christian Bonanno
Really tall, very skinny, very neat. So, so I think I got parts from him, but the majority came from my mother's side. The bigger problem of of what this causes me and other people who are higher homocysteine depending. Right. So this homocysteine kind of gets recycled and it's called the methionine cycle or the methylation cycle. So I've heard of this one.

00;08;11;15 - 00;08;43;21
Christian Bonanno
Yeah. Yeah. And I'll I'll share some images that you can show with this tape or my clear but essentially the only way out of this cycle is through the KBS enzyme and with B6. So if you don't have enough function of that, you just have this methionine cycle going around and around and around. So what happens is homocysteine gets changed using B12 by an enzyme into the theanine, which is an amino acid that we had in our diet.

00;08;43;21 - 00;09;11;12
Christian Bonanno
It's in every protein. And then the timing gets turned into Sammy. Now, a lot of people are going to know what Sammy is. And then Sammy is used to methyl eight thing. So that's why they call it the methylation cycle. And so then after it's methylated, it turns into Sachi. Okay. Just another enzyme that's kind of important, but I'll leave it out.

00;09;11;12 - 00;09;39;28
Christian Bonanno
But and then we'll eventually back into homocysteine again. So you get the circle of methylation. This is what's called epigenetics. A big part of epigenetics is methylation. So this is this. The tightening cycle or nucleation cycle controls the methylation of our genes. And I'll I guess I'll get to that later. But so what happens with me is that I turn into a hyper methylation.

00;09;40;01 - 00;09;51;23
Christian Bonanno
And so let me explain why that's important, what methylation does to genes. Is it.

00;09;51;26 - 00;10;17;03
Christian Bonanno
It shuts them off. So for the majority of genes it shuts them off. So I'm just going to say generally it's just CMOs. So if you think about there, the gene, our genes are wrapped around these in these little bundles in our cells called chromatin. Right. And so if they're wrapped really tightly that means they're methylated. You know methylation wraps in really tightly.

00;10;17;03 - 00;10;40;00
Christian Bonanno
And that's when they're methyl methylated. And when you do methylated them they expand and they get looser. And so when they're really tight, our DNA reading mechanism or RNA can't read the gene. Right. And so it was essentially like shut off or slow down the activity of a lot of these genes because it's like trying to read, but it can't.

00;10;40;00 - 00;11;10;23
Christian Bonanno
But when you do methylated, it expands, it can read them correctly and everything turns back on again. So being this hyper methyl later, like, all these genes get turned off for me. So now we're into not only the B6 affected genes, but every gene I have that is slower functioning. It gets even slower. So I was talking to you earlier about the by biotin and the bitterness gene.

00;11;10;25 - 00;11;40;28
Christian Bonanno
So I have, polymorphisms in this gene, a carrier of what's called a bitterness deficiency. I've had this tested years ago at Duke University. This enzyme activity, and it showed about 75% of normal, which is low, but it's not harmful. But what happens when, since I'm hypermethylation, it shuts that gene off and it makes it look like I have a biotin deficient by today's efficiency.

00;11;41;01 - 00;12;03;21
Christian Bonanno
So genetically I don't have a biotin is deficiency but epigenetic I do. Okay. So they can't read that in, in those and these enzyme tests. They can't read the methylation status because they take the gene, they look at the gene without the the metals added on to it. And so they're looking at just the pure gene.

00;12;03;21 - 00;12;40;27
Christian Bonanno
Yeah. So this is what's confused me for the longest time. Like why am I showing all these symptoms of these things in genes I have that are not mutation. It's just polymorphisms. But I'm having these definite, you know, side effects. I mean, I biotin saved my life like years ago. I had so many bad problems linked to it, gone like, and it still helps me today, but I've found that this, methylation can lead to a sort of phenotype in people to like.

00;12;40;27 - 00;13;19;15
Christian Bonanno
And this has been discussed a lot too, like, tribal methylation is just ten more towards, depression, addiction, and hypermethylation is ten more towards psychosis mania, and heart disease, and hypermethylation is on the other side too. They tend more towards neurological disorders like old timers and Parkinson's and things like that. So, and this is all across the literature, this definite like, you know, hyper versus hypo methylation people.

00;13;19;17 - 00;13;52;04
Christian Bonanno
And so, I mean, you can have so homocysteine by itself doesn't really tell the whole story. Like you can have high homocysteine and be a low methyl later because, if you don't have enough B12, the homocysteine is just stuck. Yeah. They can't even get around. So since I get a lot of B12 and, from the food I eat, and I really don't have deficiencies in those enzymes, I don't have that problem, which is go shooting right around, to methylated my genes.

00;13;52;04 - 00;14;22;01
Christian Bonanno
So, the other more important thing for me now is the wrong I'm finding out the cause of my high hemoglobin, high human and low white blood cell count is how this affects, how this actually, affects the methylation of DNA itself. Now, this is like this is different than methylated single genes. This is methylated like the whole gene.

00;14;22;03 - 00;14;52;07
Christian Bonanno
And it's kind of complicated. But yeah. So that is because there's enzymes. I mean look at the name again okay. So it's called DNA methyltransferase. So like it directly methylated DNA. And it's just different than methylated a gene because it's methylated the whole DNA. So it's literally like like it will slow down your DNA like your whole DNA.

00;14;52;07 - 00;15;16;00
Christian Bonanno
You know. And this is where this is where really the tightening comes in. Like that. Since I'm this hyperventilate or I'm also hyperventilating, my DNA and this DNA methyltransferase, it uses zinc as a cofactor. So what's happened to me since I was a hyper hyper methyl later, I began to become deficient in a lot of these things.

00;15;16;00 - 00;15;49;12
Christian Bonanno
So I became deficient in B12, which is why I started taking it. But zinc was probably the biggest one I was efficient in, and so the B6 deficiency led to a B12 and a B6 deficiency, I mean, B12 and zinc deficiency. So you can see how this progresses. It's like, you know, when I was born. Yeah. Like, but the bigger problem is, is that I have, polymorphisms, almost mutations in the D and a gene called DM three A and D3B.

00;15;49;14 - 00;16;12;09
Christian Bonanno
And these are linked to leukemias. And so when I was talking to my I brought this up to the hematologist because I had a second blood test done. And even though my hemoglobin hemoglobin went down by five and 6%, which is great, my white blood cell count went down 10%. And I said, and that put me in what's called leukemia.

00;16;12;11 - 00;16;33;05
Christian Bonanno
So anything below 4% is called leukemia. It's a terribly low. But he was like, what? You know, he's like, yeah, everything's going down like. And he look back markers. He's like, everything goes down, everything goes up like. So I can't seem to raise my white blood cells without my red blood cells going up, and I can't seem to lower them.

00;16;33;05 - 00;16;58;15
Christian Bonanno
Well, they're both going down. I think it's coming down to zinc. I still think I'm not taking enough zinc, to raise my white blood cells. Now, there have been times in the past that my white blood cell counts have been like 5.5, which is totally normal. So I know this is something that can be done. And talking with him, you know, he he he said the changes in that gene are tied to leukemia in older age.

00;16;58;18 - 00;17;25;16
Christian Bonanno
So there's something I really need to be careful of. Like if I wasn't taking zinc, I might have had leukemia, but I've been taking so much zinc for so long, it's actually probably gave me a copper deficiency that I'm trying to correct right now, too. That's another story. But I just understand now, how did why it was so difficult for me to weed out what was going on with me because of this one change in the KBS enzyme, it led to a cascade of things that look like everything.

00;17;25;16 - 00;17;48;04
Christian Bonanno
I mean, all the all those things were driven by the high glutamate, and there's a whole nother there's something called dynamic acid. Just saying that if people are going to listen to this and Noah kind kinder nick acid, it's and me being low and Kendrick acid was not was just enabling glutamate to go wild in my body and do whatever it wanted.

00;17;48;04 - 00;18;20;22
Christian Bonanno
So just hyper excited state all the time. The important thing about the KBS enzyme two is probably one of the bigger, earliest, genetic links. They had, autism and Asperger's. And so this goes back to my Asperger's diagnosis. Why I have this, and it's because of this KBS deficiency that causes all these problems with, glutamate and glutamate, again, is a big in the glutamate Gaba balance.

00;18;20;22 - 00;18;46;06
Christian Bonanno
So I would say high functioning autism have or people have Asperger's. I don't like that definition of high functioning, low functioning doesn't make sense to me. Asperger's, probably high glutamate, autism, low glutamate, high Gaba. So if you can think of like I can see all mental illnesses on the scale depression, high Gaba, mania, anxiety, high glutamate.

00;18;46;08 - 00;19;16;24
Christian Bonanno
So you can have someone with depression and anxiety. They have high Gaba glutamate at the same time. So, you know, and since B6 is really important to Gaba, glutamate, interchange, because having glutamate turn into each other, via a glutamate, glutamate, the carboxylate gene, which uses B6 so they can swap back and forth. So if you don't have enough B6, you're not making that swap.

00;19;16;27 - 00;19;49;00
Christian Bonanno
And you're stuck either depressed. They're stuck manic. Then this gets back into my thyroid. And what we were talking about, in the other podcast about the Emfs syndrome, my EMF sensitivity, and which I thought was everything, and it is a lot because I can definitely trace back my worse outcomes. Coming out in 1999, when Wi-Fi started being installed everywhere in early 1999 and late 1999, they installed it in my workplace.

00;19;49;00 - 00;20;19;12
Christian Bonanno
I was a network engineer, and they put it in, and that's when all my symptoms got worse and worse, and I was using it at home and and, that's when I had to leave my job. And the rest was just disabilities. And, and so my now this is all this is where I'm just getting into hypotheticals. But, to me, it seems like the most likely place of sensitivity.

00;20;19;14 - 00;20;47;19
Christian Bonanno
People have to emphasize the thyroid gland, one, because of its location. It's very open to the skin, very close to the skin. I mean, if I can feel the thing. Yeah. And so, it seems the most obvious point is, for that to happen. And my problem since I've been getting test in 2014 was I'm always hypothyroid.

00;20;47;22 - 00;20;54;03
Christian Bonanno
I'm always either hypothyroid or just at the border of hypothyroid. I'll send you my chart and you can show that. And like you're.

00;20;54;03 - 00;20;55;04
Thomas Whitmire
Saying hyper.

00;20;55;04 - 00;21;20;16
Christian Bonanno
The hyper thyroid. Yeah, yeah. So if you think hyper, everything in me is hyper, I can feel like whatever I have is hyper. And you know me well enough to know that, like, so there's, Yeah. So there's a voltage gated ion channel, a potassium voltage gated ion channel called Caspian Q1, and that's in the thyroid. It's mainly expressed in the thyroid, one of the biggest places expressed.

00;21;20;16 - 00;21;54;04
Christian Bonanno
And it's gene changes. And it's called something called the long cutaneous syndrome and an enlarged heart. My brother died of an enlarged heart. So I carry they call it a benign mutation. But there is disagreement on that. But it's literally at 0%. I have a change in this, in this gene. And, what happens with it is, is it so what this does is it allows calcium to, to enter into the cell.

00;21;54;04 - 00;22;24;08
Christian Bonanno
When you have calcium in the nerve cell, it excites it. So calcium in the nerve cell excites it. So what they found, countless research papers, is that emfs of all kinds. We're talking electrical in the house or radio frequency emfs from 5G sonar. All these things, they open up those channels to let calcium to come into the cell and over excite the, the whatever cell the calcium is getting into.

00;22;24;10 - 00;22;52;12
Christian Bonanno
So what I'm seeing is that so I already have the sensitivity to, this calcium coming in. And then you add on to the fact that, I have this DNA methylation problem, but then you expose me to emfs, which is great. I mean, I mean, just think of it, radar. I mean, radiation, thyroid, like, hello, people like, you know.

00;22;52;12 - 00;23;31;15
Christian Bonanno
Yeah, it's it seems like something we should at least investigate again. Like I'm asking questions. This is. Yeah. All hypotheses. And so but I think for me the, the bigger risk was my hypermethylation because, because I can't seem to shut off the action of the thyroid hormone, it just makes me even more sensitive. And so the hypothyroid turns into, like, they call it a thyroxine storm.

00;23;31;15 - 00;23;49;15
Christian Bonanno
And this actually happened to me a couple weeks ago. I had to go to the hospital because my blood pressure was really, really high. You know, my doctor, you know, that was my mistake. But, something I did. But I just have to be really careful with, my thyroid because of that. So.

00;23;49;17 - 00;24;11;00
Christian Bonanno
But again, I'm hoping with the B6, the sensitivities will go away. Now, I don't know how much I'm out of the clear with Emfs. I know for a fact that the places I've been in town where the emfs or higher, especially we have one beach here, and it has a huge marine radar tower. Oh, boy.

00;24;11;02 - 00;24;34;02
Christian Bonanno
Yeah. And I found my blood pressure was always much higher there. Now, recently, I've been going back there on my blood pressure has been lower. So I'm hoping that the B6 is controlling the sensitivity. But that's why I'm going back to these, like my, you know, my core, my my initial belief was no, I'm just sensitive to emfs and that's it.

00;24;34;02 - 00;24;51;17
Christian Bonanno
But it turns out, yeah, I had another risk that made me more sensitive to it. And I think this is going to be true for a lot of people. And I think it's going to be true the more and more people are exposed to it. It's just going to make things like it's going to take longer for other people to feel effects.

00;24;51;19 - 00;25;17;20
Christian Bonanno
No, but I think other people will start feeling effects. And I think we're starting to see that, just grossly looking at the rise in, thyroid disorders and thyroid cancers. Is that. I mean, I wasn't aware of that. I'll send you a chart, a clear clear. Oh, my gosh, rise in these disorders since 1999. Like literally everything I can see that makes more sense.

00;25;17;20 - 00;25;23;00
Thomas Whitmire
Actually, I always figured it was going to be major brain case. I'm sure all cancers are rising. I figured it'd be brain cancer.

00;25;23;00 - 00;25;24;02
Christian Bonanno
But thyroid, the.

00;25;24;02 - 00;25;25;15
Thomas Whitmire
Point of entry makes the.

00;25;25;15 - 00;26;02;05
Christian Bonanno
Most sense, actually. Yeah, and and the link with thyroid disease and autism to is, is. Wow. Really? So you can see how I can say as well, the rise in autism could be linked to people being sensitive to emfs or especially mothers, exposing their children in the womb to emfs because a lot of this epigenetic stuff happens in the womb and I yeah, I mean, again, like, I'm not a conspiracy kook.

00;26;02;07 - 00;26;28;12
Christian Bonanno
Not like, but there's too many things that we're not looking at when it comes to, radio frequency, electromagnetic radiation and just willy nilly exposing it, especially to fetuses like. So, you know, I shouldn't say the fetuses. I should say to the mothers. Right? I don't think it reaches a fetus, but if it affects some other cyborg gland, that's going to affect the epigenetics of the fetus.

00;26;28;14 - 00;26;53;24
Christian Bonanno
There you go, there you go. So, it's not like. Yeah, it's getting into the baby through the womb. It's well too far in the body for especially 5G. 5G doesn't penetrate that deeply in the body. But it can definitely reach the thyroid. And and definitely affect the skin. Where the these the yeah these potassium bullet iron gated ion channels are too.

00;26;53;24 - 00;26;58;06
Christian Bonanno
So.

00;26;58;09 - 00;27;29;08
Christian Bonanno
But yeah. So that's kind of the story in a nutshell I believe. Feeling a recovery coming on and a stable one. I think I'm having some side effects, from the high levels of B6. Yes. Mainly about histamine. Like, I might be making too much histamine, so I don't know. Like what? You know, what dose I have to figure out.

00;27;29;08 - 00;27;50;26
Christian Bonanno
And there's still things that to work out. I might need to change my diet a lot more, lower the amount of methionine I get in my diet, increase the cysteine. That's pretty easy. But. So yeah, I found out a lot of interesting stuff. I don't know if you have any questions. I've been talking my head off, but.

00;27;50;29 - 00;27;51;28
Christian Bonanno
All right.

00;27;52;00 - 00;28;09;22
Thomas Whitmire
If you made it through that nice job, and you can pick back up in the main episode at seven minutes and 35 seconds. You can also look for the second genetics bonus episode, where I'm going to share my own story of what led me to work with Christian and what we found. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.