COMT Gene Mutation and Estrogen Dominance

so in this video we're going to discuss how COMT gene alterations can lead to estrogen dominance and why this is not always the case where comt alterations will lead to estrogen dominance so if you're curious about comt how it relates to estrogen dominance keep watching we're going to discuss this in detail comt or catechol on methyl transferase is an enzyme that allow us to break down catecholamines and as it relates to estrogen dominance this enzyme this comt enzyme basically helps us break down catechol estrogens it's a type of catecholamine and in this video we want to discuss how alterations in the COMT gene can lead to estrogen dominance so you might be asking what is estrogen dominance and basically it's a phenomenon of excess estrogen in the presence of too low or too little progesterone so there's an imbalance you have too much estrogen too little progesterone and basically as it relates to comt there's an alteration and enzyme function that leads to higher levels of the estrogen so first a little bit more on comt so comt as I said the enzyme that breaks down catecholamines and many other things that we don't think of as necessarily catecholamines like estrogen so specifically it's catechol estrogens and the process occurs through methylation so methylation is basically a process where you had a methyl group to other molecules and in this case the comt enzyme uses Sammy as its methyl donor along with magnesium so these are the two cofactors for comt magnesium and Sammy and basically what happens is you turn hydroxy estrogens into methoxy estrogens or methylated estrogens so you say okay big deal well if you have an alteration in your comt enzyme basically slows the process of turning that hydroxy estrogen into meth oxy estrogen or catechol estrogens and basically you get a buildup of more of these hydroxyl estrogens and estrogens in general so that makes sense basically it's like a overflowing river so when the levels get too high and the estrogens they overflow and sort of saturate and increase this tissue saturation of estrogens so basically you get more of this estrogen activity and leads to the symptoms of estrogen dominance so how do if you have a genetic alteration and you're COMT gene or if your CMT enzymes aren't working properly well basically you have to do the genetic test to to look at this and what you'll find is that there's several points along the comt enzyme that can be altered and that's we can get basically a bunch of different snips or snps and what seems to stand out most to me clinically is one in particular and most of the research is done on this particular point or single nucleotide polymorphism and that's the b:v like victor 158 m and basically if this specific point is altered to where you have homozygous or net alteration here you're gonna have slowed estrogen breakdown or slowed breakdown of all these catecholamines that step from hydroxyl estrogen to meth extrusion is going to be slow for estradiol and any other estrogens that go through that pathway and when you have the normal functioning comt or Val Val it's going to work more efficiently or normal but basically you're gonna have more efficient estrogen breakdown so does that mean that everyone with the comt homozygous snip or Matt Matt will have estrogen dominance no not at all because there's multiple pathways through which estrogen can be eliminated and also it's important to note that the methylated forms provide an efficient way for elimination by the body but these once they're methylated they're still estrogens and can still bind to estrogen receptors so these forms can still basically have an estrogen effect in the body so what we want to be careful is not to over emphasize one pathway or overemphasize looking at just one thing we want to look at when we look at estrogen dominance and CMT we also want to basically do the labs to verify yet is this excess estrogen or not and then we want to look at the other pathways there are other pathways through which estrogen is broken down comt is just one and then there's several that follow it and other alternative pathways where estrogen can be broken down and I'll have more on this topic in future videos so hopefully that was helpful in understanding a little bit more COMT gene alterations and estrogen dominance how that one may lead to the other and in some cases may not basically cause there's not always a linear path there for every single situation.
functional medicine