On the topic, as oxidation is a pretty prevalent negative side effect of living, our body has multiple mechanisms to deal with it, no? So my question is: where do the “antioxidants” that we can eat come into the picture here? Are they like preventing oxidation from even occurring, or are they like the shields that our cells use to protect themselves from oxidative stress, or what have you?
Oxidation is the loss of electrons, whereas reduction is the gain of electrons. The mnemonic is OIL RIG: Oxidation Is Loss, Reduction Is Gain.
Oxygen is highly electronegative (second only to fluorine), meaning that it will strongly attract electrons. So, oxygen is good at oxidizing things. It’s good at stealing their electrons. (When the oxygen takes the electron, the oxygen becomes reduced!)
The reason that oxygen is so important in your body for respiration is because of its high electronegativity. It is used as the final electron acceptor in a chain of chemical reactions that are used to convert high energy molecules that you’ve eaten into different high energy molecules that your body can use.
Think of the analogy of a staircase and a ball. The ball is an electron and the stairs are energy states of different molecules along the metabolic pathway. As the ball goes down the stairs, the electron loses energy (which is usually converted to ATP or NADH). At the bottom of the stairs is oxygen, once the electron gets there, it doesn’t have anymore potential energy to lose, unless maybe you have some fluorine around. The final, reduced state of oxygen in this pathway is carbon dioxide. It’s no longer useful for respiration and thankfully can just be exhaled. How convenient!
An oxygen missing an electron (an oxygen radical) is highly reactive. This is not good. It’ll just steal an electron from whatever molecule is nearby. That may be DNA or any other molecule that it’s in your best interest to keep intact. Antioxidants are helpful as electron donors, neutralizing radicals before they do damage.
Cell mechanisms cause oxidative stress in the body which can lead to inflammation and faster aging. Antioxidants provide the body with an easy way to neutralise the bi-products.
I actually thought about this a few years ago, is it possible that we age because of oxidation to some degree? Is there a way to prevent that? I thought about it, how blood can rust and just had the connecting thought but I’m not smart enough to know if there’s any actual correlation.
Edit: Got some really cool responses out of this to think about, thank you everyone!
Pretty sure oxidation plays a major role in aging, but can’t tell you the exact mechanism, I have no idea about it.
But about the blood rust idea, I don’t think that can work, cause we don’t have just iron particles that can directly interact with oxygen just floating around in our blood, we have a complex (I.e. hemoglobin) that contains significant amounts of iron, which somehow makes it really good for binding to and carrying oxygen.
Deviating a bit, carbon monoxide poisoning is really akin to suffcation iirc, cause it binds and occupies the hemoglobin, effectively reducing the amount of oxygen that can be carried by your blood.
However, do fact check me, I might be wrong about something…
Edit: BTW, it seems that “oxidation” might not be the right term to use here, so do understand that I am referring to free radicals here.
I’m no expert but I’m fairly sure that is basically true in a way. As per zr0’s top-level comment. Forms of life that can make do with less cellular respiration, for example by using external sources to regulate temperature (cold- blooded), don’t need to invite as much oxygen into their cells, and so they get less weird damage over time.
Mammals in general have not adopted this strategy.
On the topic, as oxidation is a pretty prevalent negative side effect of living, our body has multiple mechanisms to deal with it, no? So my question is: where do the “antioxidants” that we can eat come into the picture here? Are they like preventing oxidation from even occurring, or are they like the shields that our cells use to protect themselves from oxidative stress, or what have you?
Oxidation is the loss of electrons, whereas reduction is the gain of electrons. The mnemonic is OIL RIG: Oxidation Is Loss, Reduction Is Gain.
Oxygen is highly electronegative (second only to fluorine), meaning that it will strongly attract electrons. So, oxygen is good at oxidizing things. It’s good at stealing their electrons. (When the oxygen takes the electron, the oxygen becomes reduced!)
The reason that oxygen is so important in your body for respiration is because of its high electronegativity. It is used as the final electron acceptor in a chain of chemical reactions that are used to convert high energy molecules that you’ve eaten into different high energy molecules that your body can use.
Think of the analogy of a staircase and a ball. The ball is an electron and the stairs are energy states of different molecules along the metabolic pathway. As the ball goes down the stairs, the electron loses energy (which is usually converted to ATP or NADH). At the bottom of the stairs is oxygen, once the electron gets there, it doesn’t have anymore potential energy to lose, unless maybe you have some fluorine around. The final, reduced state of oxygen in this pathway is carbon dioxide. It’s no longer useful for respiration and thankfully can just be exhaled. How convenient!
An oxygen missing an electron (an oxygen radical) is highly reactive. This is not good. It’ll just steal an electron from whatever molecule is nearby. That may be DNA or any other molecule that it’s in your best interest to keep intact. Antioxidants are helpful as electron donors, neutralizing radicals before they do damage.
antioxidants are our internal sacrificial anodes?
Ok, I’m going to make a new nutritional supplement: “oops! all electrons!”
Cell mechanisms cause oxidative stress in the body which can lead to inflammation and faster aging. Antioxidants provide the body with an easy way to neutralise the bi-products.
I actually thought about this a few years ago, is it possible that we age because of oxidation to some degree? Is there a way to prevent that? I thought about it, how blood can rust and just had the connecting thought but I’m not smart enough to know if there’s any actual correlation.
Edit: Got some really cool responses out of this to think about, thank you everyone!
Pretty sure oxidation plays a major role in aging, but can’t tell you the exact mechanism, I have no idea about it.
But about the blood rust idea, I don’t think that can work, cause we don’t have just iron particles that can directly interact with oxygen just floating around in our blood, we have a complex (I.e. hemoglobin) that contains significant amounts of iron, which somehow makes it really good for binding to and carrying oxygen.
Deviating a bit, carbon monoxide poisoning is really akin to suffcation iirc, cause it binds and occupies the hemoglobin, effectively reducing the amount of oxygen that can be carried by your blood.
However, do fact check me, I might be wrong about something…
Edit: BTW, it seems that “oxidation” might not be the right term to use here, so do understand that I am referring to free radicals here.
I’m no expert but I’m fairly sure that is basically true in a way. As per zr0’s top-level comment. Forms of life that can make do with less cellular respiration, for example by using external sources to regulate temperature (cold- blooded), don’t need to invite as much oxygen into their cells, and so they get less weird damage over time. Mammals in general have not adopted this strategy.