What Happens When You Add An Extra Oxygen Atom To A Water Molecule?
It can be pretty darned toxic.
It’s a common fact that we humans do need water to survive. Don’t drink it for 3 days straight, and we’d most probably be dying of thirst somewhere. Even the Rime of the Ancient Mariner has this to say about water:
“Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.”
But interestingly, we do produce water as a metabolic by-product.
Firstly, though, we have to look at acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which we derive from the foods that we consume. Each cell in our body operates the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle to oxidise acetyl-CoA within their mitochondria, and from there this molecule known as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is formed:
So now, when we’re doing a workout, for instance, we’d be oxidising all that acetyl-CoA in our cells, and we’d be generating quite a fair bit of electrons from that oxidation process.
These electrons get channelled to oxygen molecules to reduce those oxygen molecules into water molecules.
But of course, now it’s time for a bad chemistry joke:
Two chemists go into a bar. The first one says “I think I’ll have an H2O.” The second one says “I think I’ll have an H2O too” — and he died.
The first chemist orders a H2O — which is water. We can drink water. We need it to survive.
However, the second chemist orders a “H2O too”, which sounds like H2O2, which is the chemical formula for hydrogen peroxide.
Now hydrogen peroxide is toxic to our bodies, and that’s why anyone who drinks liquid H2O2 is essentially committing suicide.
But the problem in the energy generation process is that the electron transfer has to be darned near complete to get oxygen molecules completely reduced to water.
An incomplete reduction actually forms superoxide radicals, which can be reduced to the “less reactive” hydrogen peroxide (note, hydrogen peroxide is still on its own highly reactive).
Therein lies the problem.
Many of us are used to hydrogen peroxide products for bleaching hair — that’s how the term “peroxide blonde” also comes about.
It can do so by inhibiting melanocyte activity — melanocytes are cells at the base of a hair follicle that help to provide pigmentation and colour for the hair follicle.
What’s going to happen when the electron transport chain in our cells starts producing more hydrogen peroxide, especially during periods of high stress?
We start aging more quickly, of course:
Our hair turns white more easily, of course…
Our skin structures collapse more quickly too, of course!
And when we can’t maintain the transport of electrons in our mitochondria satisfactorily, we’re just asking to age more quickly by producing more H2O2 instead of H2O.
Hence the importance of Coenzyme Q10 in our cells!
It’s not easy to keep a sequence of biochemical processes evenly regulated, but these are definitely some things to look out for if we do want to age more gracefully.
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