What Happens When You Add An Extra Oxygen Atom To A Water Molecule?
It's not great news for our health when that happens!
It’s a common fact that we humans do need water to survive. If we aren’t drinking any water for 3 days straight, 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:
The Biochemical Energy That Our Bodies Need, Explained.
It is a common sight to see people slumped over or being one with the floor at the end of an exhausting workout. The inertia becomes too much to overcome. It’s difficult to stay up straight. If you’ve been in that position before, there are days when you would very much prefer to remain in that horizontal position rather than get up and get washed up. I…
When we’re engaging in any form of physical activity, we’d be oxidising all that acetyl-CoA (derived from our food) within 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 (which we breathe in) to completely 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 complete to get oxygen molecules completely reduced to water.
An incomplete reduction actually forms superoxide radicals (also known as reactive oxygen species, or ROS), which can be reduced to the “less reactive” hydrogen peroxide (note: hydrogen peroxide is still a highly reactive molecule on its own).
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.
When our body is in a state of stress, all cells would face issues with completely reducing oxygen to water. There would be more superoxides and hydrogen peroxide being produced.
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:
The Biochemistry Behind The Aging Process
Aging is unfortunately an inevitable problem that all of us humans will face. Multiple aspects of our lives can be affected as we age.
While people may tend to look at hydrogen peroxide used externally on the hair as a bleaching agent by inhibiting melanocyte activity, our body also can produce hydrogen peroxide internally to achieve the same effect. The external effect is more desired because it can make people look more physically attractive, while the internal effect is dreaded by people who hate the process of aging.
Our skin structures collapse more quickly too.
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 it is highly necessary to maintain an adequate concentration of Coenzyme Q10 in our cells:
What's The Deal With CoQ10 In Our Bodies?
A majority of the human population in today’s modern society is tired and overworked. I feel like that too sometimes - there are all these deadlines at work to meet, mortgages to pay, and the crises that comeseem to be neverending.
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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