Introduction to Fire In a Bottle
In my last post I recommended a strategy of combining lipoic acid – a natural, mitochondrially produced substance which oxidizes NADH to NAD+ – and succinate, which drives mitochondrial ROS production and oxidation of NADH to NAD+ via the activity of the enzyme NNT. Both of these are designed to shift the redox pool of …
Lactate and the Lipoic Acid Flu, An Hypothesis and n=1 Read More »
It’s rare to find a scientific paper whose RESULTS are hilarious. Sometimes the authors conclusions are hilarious. If you’ve lived through the last 30 years of articles about the best sources of antioxidants and how to avoid oxidative stress, though, the actual findings of this study1 will certainly seem ironic, if not hilarious. I’ve written …
Speed Your Metabolism With Oxidative Stress! Slow It With Antioxidants! Read More »
I help my friend Devon with catering. He has a pig farm and does pig roasts/weddings, etc. He asked me the other day, “Is there any thing I can do with these pig heads?” “YES!” “You can make jowl bacon from the jowls and the rest can be made into headcheese.” Headcheese, or souse, is …
When Life Gives You Pig Heads, Use Them To Boost Your Antioxidant System Read More »
For the background material on understanding this post, start with Hydrogen Peroxide Flips The Switch. In most cells, most of the time, it is ideal to be in a state of oxidative balance. The simplest measure for this is the percentage of a small molecule called glutathione, sometimes referred to as the body’s “master antioxidant”, …
For background information on this post, start by reading the introduction to oixdation. Terms you should understand before reading this article are superoxide and ROS. Additionally, you should understand the basics of the human antioxidant system. Hydrogen Peroxide is the Signal Superoxide is a free radical which is produced during metabolism at the bottleneck in …
I gave a lecture on The ROS Theory Of Obesity at Interbrook Farm in Sept of 2019. I made hand drawn slides with a Sharpie. Unfortunately my sense of humor is on full display in these. Maybe they’ll be useful to someone. Also, u/leerylizard posted an annotated guide to the ROS Theory Of Obesity on …
The Illustrated Guide And Annotated Guide to The ROS Theory of Obesity Read More »
A mitochondria works like a battery. It maintains a voltage gradient across its inner-membrane. The outside of the membrane has a positive charge and the inside has a negative charge. Protons from the outside flow back through the membrane down the gradient, releasing energy, through a large cross-membrane protein complex called ATP synthase, which uses …
If you’been reading through the Introduction to Fire in a Bottle series, I explained the concept of oxidation, discussed the oxygen catastrophe and its implications for evolution, I introduced our unlikely hero superoxide and then we met our bodies inbuilt antioxidant defense system. Along the way I introduced the key point that Reactive Oxygen Species …
Two Elegant Experiments Demonstrating that ROS is The Signal Read More »
Oxidation (in a biological context) is the flow of electrons from elements like Hydrogen and Carbon to Oxygen Oxygen is very reactive. Chlorophyll took its electrons away and it would very much like to get them back. In metabolism – the oxidation of starch and fat – free radicals, notably superoxide, are produced from Oxygen. …
When I took oncology at Cornell in the mid-90’s, the root cause of cancer was explained in the following way. Certain things – such as ionizing radiation from a nuclear explosion – cause free radical formation. The free radicals can damage the DNA, causing genetic mutations. When enough mutations accumulated in key genes affecting the …
The primordial atmosphere of the earth didn’t contain Oxygen (O2). The atmosphere was a “reducing atmosphere”, the exact opposite of today’s “oxidizing atmosphere”. Somewhere along the line life evolved. Single-celled organisms. Weirdos by today’s standards. Methanogens and sulfate-reducing microorganisms. That was just life for a couple billion years. And then chlorophyll evolved. Chlorophyll changes everything. …
In the previous post, we introduced our unlikely hero superoxide, a free radical. We also introduced peroxide and the term “Reactive Oxygen Species” (ROS), the term that refers collectively to superoxide and peroxide and others in the family of pro-oxidant molecules. We evolved to thrive in the presence of oxygen and ROS after the Great …
Fire is a positive feedback loop where atmospheric oxygen (O2) oxidizes the hydrocarbon bonds (the bonds between a carbon and a hydrogen atom) in common fuel sources like wood, paper, fat, cellulose, starch, sugar, natural gas and gasoline. The oxidation reaction gives off heat. The heat causes more oxidation which causes more heat which causes …
Humans are electrical creatures. Our basic biology is controlled by the movement of electrons. In a biological system, instead of moving through a wire, the electrons move from one molecule to another. These reactions are called redox reactions, which is short for reduction and oxidation. when an electron moves from one molecule to another, the …
