--if you're talking about getting homocysteine and methylomaic acid tests, that you are talking abut Vitamin B12 (cobalamin). And 285 is a rather low level.

Deficiencies in B12 do make the concentrations of those substances rise, and are often a better predictor of frank B12 deficiency than just having serum B12 levels done.

There are a lot of reasons B12 can be deficient. Vegetarians do have problems getting enough B12, as it only comes in food from animal products. Some people have a genetic tendency to underproduce intrinsic factor in the stomach, which is how B12 is broken out of protein-containing foods, or have genetic difficulties with their methylation chemistry (B12 has to be methylated before being used, which is why many of us who supplement use the already-methylated methylcobalamin form).

But yes, low B12 can cause all sorts of neurologic and other problems. If you haven't already, you should definitely look at our very long B12 refeence thread:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread85103.html\

Can you give us more history?