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Wellness Wednesday for January 4, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Is it best to have antioxidant foods with inflammatory foods that you already eat (grains/meat), versus on their own? Eg, black tea and ginger with red meat, versus black tea and ginger in the morning and red meat at night?

Given "meat" was a human dietary staple for a million years, and "grain" has been a dietary staple for (some for) 100k, both have dozens of useful dietary components with complex effects, and "inflammatory" in this context means "some response to harmful stimuli", and the scientific backing for their inflammation being, variously, observational diet-survey studies and questionable in vitro experiments - the claim that "meat and grain are inflammatory" isn't very useful.

Similarly, the claimed antioxidants in black tea and ginger also coexist with dozens of other compounds (although not useful ones), their antioxidant efficacy was demonstrated in in vitro studies with little relevance to human consumption (as distribution and metabolism significantly affects those compounds), said antioxidant effect has no proven relationship to whatever the claimed inflammatory mechanism of grain or meat was, and even if those antioxidants were effective, they'd be much less efficient at preventing oxidative damage than the evolved biological mechanisms for doing so - like catalase, glutathione, superoxide dismutase - complex, finely tuned proteins, as well as others.

So - evening, naturally.

  1. synthetic antioxidants can be more potent than the endogenous ones

  2. many popular polyphenols not only act as direct antioxidants but upregulate the production of some of the endogenous ones.

synthetic antioxidants can be more potent than the endogenous ones

this is of course technically true, but not true of the 'healthy antioxidants' people refer to. any specific examples you mean?

many popular polyphenols not only act as direct antioxidants but upregulate the production of some of the endogenous ones

That seems unlikely to be relevant to health overall? I suspect the studies supporting this are not good.

but not true of the 'healthy antioxidants' people refer to

I mean vitamin E and C are quite weak but there are plenty more interesting ones that are semi-popular.

I'm pretty sure a few popular polyphenols are more potent than GSH. I mean I haven't checked since a long time but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that EGCG (from tea) is more potent or equipotent.

That seems unlikely to be relevant to health overall?

Haha funny. What could be more relevant to your health than the thing that drives 90% of your body degradation, the multiplier of our decrepitude, the root cause of ageing, oxidative stress!

You have no idea what this evoke in my mind, I have read more than 10000 papers in pharmacology, including a few thousands in gerontology. Oxidative stress is the root cause and the co-factor to most age related conditions/diseases to exists. Even more, it is a cofactor in most human diseases.

There is nothing that is more relevant to your health, and there is nothing that is supported by as many corroborating studies on earth.

Now if your question was more about polyphenols than oxidative stress in general, I don't see a salient distinction.

The potency of some is comparable or superior to the endogenous antioxidants and their upregulation of them is indeed relevant.

However an optimal antioxidant prophylaxis does not necessarily involve polyphenols, they are good candidates though.

The potency of an antioxidant does not matter that much in practice as there are even more important criteria, such as:

  • the half-life, many antioxidants have bad half life, however their upregulation of endogenous ones, such as does the prodrug NAC, do last a long time.

  • the tissue dispersion, you want liphophilic ones and hydrophilic ones, or at least an amphiphilic.

  • reactive specie specialization, such as the key role of SOD for superoxides.

  • oral bioavailability, e.g. EGCG needs omega-3 and vit C for absorption and maybe piperine.

  • not paradoxically being pro-oxidative in various body conditions, a common phenomenon

One of the most potent antioxidant all arround is emoxypine, which not so surprisingly is btw the most potent anti-hangover agent.

The most neutral and effective mainstream antioxidant to take is NAC (gsh)

But why stop there?

NAC is a potent endogenous antioxidant.

however the limitation with antioxidants is that they dilute in your body and therefore are everywhere but in small quantity.

For various reasons, including antioxidative stress, you can't litterally saturate your body with antioxidants and therefore their effectiveness, while real, is often mild.

Some researchers have made a brilliant observation, 98% of our oxidative stress is generated in the mitochondria, as a byproduct of oxy(gen) energy generation.

The other observation to make is that the mitochondria respirate and that it is cyclycally, the only membrane in the human body to be electronically negatively charged.

Based on that observation, via an electron donor, they have been able to design a substance that specifically enter, magnetically, into the mitonchondria and accumulate in it.

Therefore for the first time in medecine history, we can saturate the mitochondria with an antioxidant, SkQ1, the biggest disruption of the century, which is empirically found to be 1000000 times more potent than NAC.

SkQ1 prevents alzeihmer, parkinson, tumors, and most age related diseases, in vivo.

What could be more relevant to your health than the thing that drives 90% of your body degradation, the multiplier of our decrepitude, the root c ause of ageing

Yeah, that would be relevant. But looking at wiki for causes of aging, 'oxidative stress' is one of many. And different kinds of oxidative stress need different responses!

If you've read so many papers, can you point me to a review that backs up your claims?

The potency of some is comparable or superior to the endogenous antioxidants and their upregulation of them is indeed relevant.

When asked which specifically, you said "pretty sure a few polyphenols" and "wouldn't be surprised ... EGCG". Any sources? Because I highly doubt.

Therefore for the first time in medecine history, we can saturate the mitochondria with an antioxidant, SkQ1, the biggest disruption of the century, which is empirically found to be 1000000 times more potent than NAC. SkQ1 prevents alzeihmer, parkinson, tumors, and most age related diseases, in vivo.

Is SkQ1 really a bigger disruption than ... sequencing the human genome, or human gene editing? Have you heard an ad for a scam medical product before? "The Atomic-Magnetic Nebulizer cures coughs, colds, canker sores, coagulation, cephalization, carcinization, and cataplexy! One of a kind! Only $99.99.99, terms and conditions may apply."