Warning. The following presentation contains information that might contradict what you
have previously heard or believed to be true about how the human body works and contains
material that is not suitable for closed-mind and individuals. Enjoy.
Let's take a look at the chemicals that we will be seeing in metabolism
and the importance of those chemicals. When we're talking about chemicals, we're talking about the
elements or the molecules that we need in order to live and we need molecules to live.
And so chemicals tend to have sometimes a bad connotation to them and we're going to take a
look at some of those bad connotations today and hopefully clarify any of the misconceptions that
we might have leading to future discussions about metabolism. So what's metabolism?
Well, metabolism is not about energy even though it is kind of sometimes about energy.
It's the chemical reactions that we have in the body. And what do we need in order to have chemical
reactions? We need chemicals. Chemicals are the things that are used within the reactions of the
body that allow us to have a normal functioning body. When we talk about these chemicals, we'll
classify them in terms of how they're going to be involved within the chemical reactions.
This is where we'll use words like reactants and those are the molecules that are interacting with
each other within the chemical reactions. Or we'll use the words like product and product is
looking at what molecules are coming out at the end of the reaction. In some of the metabolic
reactions, we'll have things known as byproducts and byproducts are really those molecules that form
during the reaction, but don't necessarily continue within the metabolism that we're looking at.
Or don't seem to have any use within the metabolic processes and we'll go about being eliminated
by the body. Now just to confuse everybody even more, sometimes we'll use the same word to describe
a reactant, a product and a byproduct. And so you may hear or read about things known as substrates
or metabolites. And when we talk about substrates and metabolites, we're simply talking about reactants,
products and byproducts. Other terms that we need to be able to be aware of and these include things
like a metabolite, which is simply those things that are used in the metabolic process, a toxin,
which is a metabolite that will interfere or may possibly stop metabolism, or a poison.
And a poison is a metabolite that will stop metabolism. And in the cases of toxins and
poisons, these are what's referred to as dose, that is how much is there, and duration, how long
am I being exposed to that metabolite in terms of its overall effect as being toxic or poisonous.
And so, everything has the chance to be toxic based off of how much is there and how it's going to
interfere with metabolism. The difference that we see between a toxin and a poison is that poisons
tend to be lethal, whereas toxins tend not to be as lethal as poisons. Okay, okay, I understand.
I'm already a little too much here. So, what's a chemical? And this is where we're going to kind
of go back to our junior high and our high school science classes and for some of you
interior college classes. And we're looking at the stuff in chemistry that we reference within
the periodic table of elements and then how those elements are going to interact with each other to
form all of the bigger chemicals within the body. And so, when we look at these chemicals and we
look at these molecules, we start with the atoms, which is going to be the building block of the
molecules. And those atoms will start to interact with each other to form a little bit bigger molecule,
and molecule simply just multiple atoms put together. And then those molecules will start
to interact with each other and build even bigger molecules, which we refer to as macro molecules,
macro simply being bigger. And when we look at this, what we do is we look at, okay, what does
the body need in order to survive? And this is where we look at atoms and molecules as the
building blocks of everything that we have within our body. In this, we divide them into three
distinct categories. And the three distinct categories we have was referred to as major,
minor, and then trace. Major, minor, and trace is not about importance. It's about how much is there.
And we usually start with the elements and then build from the elements into the molecules.
And so our major, minor, and our trace elements is all about how much mass, how much amount is
there. The majors we're going to need in grams and kilograms per day. The minors we're going to need
in milligrams to grams per day. And then the trace we're going to need in the very smallest
amounts that we tend to measure, which are the micrograms per day. So what are the major ones?
The major ones are going to be oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and then we can toss in phosphorus.
Phosphorus could also be classified in the minor elements. But the principal minor elements that
we look at are calcium, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chloride, magnesium, and iron.
And then the trace elements, boron, chromium, copper, fluorine, iodine, zinc, and manganese.
If we go back and think about the listing of metabolites in terms of metabolite, toxin, poison,
we tend not to have any type of toxicity issues when we look at our major elements.
However, as we start getting into the minor and into the trace elements, if we start
over consuming those elements, we then have to worry about toxic issues that come about. And
we'll talk about that a little bit more in detail when we look at nutrition issues in subsequent talks.
So those elements will start to interact with each other. The atoms will start interacting with each
other, start building bigger things together. And those bigger things are the molecules. And
molecules are simply just chemicals by another name. And so we have to look at a couple of ways
in which we talk about things. Anytime we talk about sugars, we're talking about carbohydrates.
And one of the easy ways to recognize if I'm looking at a sugar or a carbohydrate, if I'm
like reading any of the nutrition labels, is to look for things that end in OSE, glucose, sucrose.
Those are the sugars, cellulose. Sometimes we use different words to describe some of those sugars.
So like cellulose is also referenced as fiber.
And then we have fats. Fats we reference as lipids.
In these, we can also call them fatty acids. And the reason why I call them fatty acids is because
part of the molecule itself has what we call a acid end to it. That's an end that will give away
hydrogens to cause the pH of the molecule to be less than seven in a water environment.
And then we have proteins. Proteins are also sometimes referenced as the amino acids.
Amino acids will build into proteins and we need all of these within our normal diet in order to
have normal metabolism. There are other molecules that we'll be consuming within our diet here,
and those are things like nucleic acids.
Now sometimes the nucleic acids can get some bad recognitions and some bad
referencing, particularly when you discuss things like genetically modified foods,
the GMOs that are there where the nucleic acids have been changed, the DNA, the genes of whatever
food product we're looking at has been changed. But one of the things we have to remember when we
look at all of these molecules and they come into the body is that all of these molecules are
going to get broken down into their base units, the smallest parts of the big molecules
in order for us to use these molecules to build things. And so we'll think about it,
remember that our cells are great builders. They are great factories, put quotes around that in
terms of an analogy, that allows us to build things and build things and build things so that we're
able to survive, we're able to live. Other things that we're going to take in are things like
vitamins. Vitamins just like with the trace elements have kind of the minor elements kind of have a
maximum level for them in which if we over consume some of the vitamins, we might have toxic issues
that can't come about. There are a lot of vitamins that are necessary for us to have the chemical
reactions that are taking place. However, if we have too much of some of them, we can have issues
within the functionality of tissues where they start acting like toxins. Other molecules that we're
going to need are things like ions and we'll get to what ions are here in a second.
Now sometimes we get worried about chemicals because they kind of sound scary and they kind
of sound scary because when we talk about molecules in a scientific sense, we usually use the big
science words. And so just because something might have a scientific name doesn't necessarily mean
it's something we have to be afraid of. Here's an example I like to use a lot. Dihydrominoxide.
So di2hydro is for hydrogen, mon or mono 1 oxide oxygen. And so if we look at it in terms of how we'd
write this in our chemistry class, that would be H2O. But how do we talk about this in everyday life?
Well, that's just water. So water is not scary. However, dihydro monoxide can sound kind of scary.
And so once again, we start looking at these words within the chemical nature of metabolism.
We just remember big scary words aren't necessarily big scary words. They're just how we would explain
it scientifically. And I understand that sometimes we don't do a great job explaining those big
scientific words so that they're easily digested like water is a very easily digested word,
but dihydro monoxide, not so much. Continuing on looking at these various types of molecules,
one of the ways in which we look at molecules and how molecules will be able to interact with each
other in terms of metabolic processes is how are the molecules shaped? In this case here,
we have two distinct ways of looking at molecules. And those two ways of looking at molecules are
things like whether it is organic or inorganic. Now, organic might have a connotation to it,
a meaning to it outside of the scientific conversation of metabolism. Like if you go to the
story, you might see things that are organic or organically raised. Well, what does that mean in
terms of the material that we're eating versus something that is not labeled as being organic?
Well, organic in terms of our chemicals is just something that happens to have a carbon in it.
And all of those molecules that we need to eat in our diet, the carbohydrates,
the lipids, the proteins, the nucleic acids, those are all organic. And so to say that you are having
an organic diet, well, every diet is an organic diet because we're eating organic molecules.
Whereas an inorganic molecule is something that doesn't have carbon in it. And so what are the
things that might be inorganic that we would have in our diet? Well, water. Water is an inorganic
molecule. It doesn't have carbon in it. It's simply two hydrogens and one oxygen put together.
Salt, the table salt, the sea salt, the pink Himalayan salt, the not so much salt because we
have to watch how much sodium we have in our diet salt. Those are all inorganics.
Now, the other way that we can look at these organic and inorganic
relationship is by the shape of the molecule. And those are sometimes referred to as polar and non-polar.
And what we're really talking about with polar and non-polar is will that molecule or will that
element or will that atom be able to dissolve in water? If it's able to dissolve in water,
then it's polar. If it's not able to dissolve in water, then it's non-polar.
The other way to look at how the elements and how the atoms are going to interact with each other
is based off of how the atom is set up within the molecule. In this case here, we're going to look
at specific things known as ions. And in ions, what we have is we have atoms or molecules
that don't have an equal number of electrons to their protons.
And we have two distinct classifications here. And the two distinct classifications are referenced
as cat ion. That is, I have more protons than electrons.
And these are things that are going to be found in the first two columns
of our periodic table that we reference to in our chemistry classes.
Heading out to about the third column in our periodic table and in our transitional elements.
And we'll see them when we look at references to them as having a little plus
indicator next to the symbol for the element. The opposite of those are going to be the anions.
These are usually the last three columns heading into the noble gas column of the periodic table.
And these are atoms that are going to have more electrons than they're going to have protons.
And these are things like chloride and fluoride or chlorine and fluorine in the ion
base of the element.
And so when we look at the periodic table, we can very easily see whether or not we're going to have
a cat ion or an anion form from that atom or from that element.
Based off of where they lay within the periodic table. And that's going to be very important
because we need salts within our body and the salts are going to give us the ions. And so
when we look at salt salts are nothing more than a cat ion and an anion stuck together.
And we need those cat ions and those anions to help us out with where we're going to see water
within the body. And how are we going to be able to control the making of some metabolites that
might change the pH of our body? And once again, we'll talk a little bit more about pH of the body
later on in a different talk. But all of those are very important as it relates to the anions that
we have and the cat ions that we have within the body. And so that's the general gist of chemicals.
But if we take a step back and start thinking about, wait, I'm reading all these big scary
stories in the news about different types of chemicals. Well, there's a couple of things
that we have to remember about the about these big scary stories is that just because it might have
an effect in one form doesn't mean it's going to have the same effect in all of its forms.
So once again, we go back into the periodic table and we have this cluster of elements that are
usually referenced as being heavy metals. And one of the big scary, the quotes around big scary,
heavy metal that's out there is mercury. And mercury got kind of this big scary story to it
because we would see mercury within some of the food products that we're eating. And we used to use
mercury as a stabilizing agent in some of the vaccines that we would give people. But there
are different types of mercury. The first type of mercury, the mercury that we would see within
fish and within some of the living organisms that we might be eating is what's referred to as methyl
mercury. Methyl mercury is the neurotoxin. It's the toxic form of mercury that will accumulate
within the stuff that we eat. Whereas as mercury enters one thing, it's going to get eaten by something
else and that something else will start to compile and add up all the different mercury that's being
eaten into its tissues. And then we would eat it and we would get that mercury. And that's where we
start hearing about the mercury poisoning issues that might come about. But that's different than
the mercury that we would see with that we used to see within the vaccines. And that is what's
referred to as ethyl mercury. And ethyl mercury does not accumulate within the body. In fact,
our liver does a very good job getting rid of that form of mercury. And because it's able to get
be eliminated, it's not the neurotoxin that we think about when we hear about mercury.
There's also a lot of studies that are out there that have been done in
a different animal than humans. One happens to be a lot of studies are done with rodents, mice,
and rats. Other studies are done within cells and within cell cultures. There's a recent study
that's out there that says that the alternate type of sugar, the sugar substitutes, might have some
sort of effect on the DNA within cells. Well, that might be true, but it might not be true
because we haven't looked at it in terms of humans. We've only looked at it in terms of cells
and looked at it in terms of rodents. And what we have to remember is that humans are more than
just one cell. What happens in one cell is what happens in one cell. And it may not happen in
that same cell if we put it in other cells together in what's called a tissue. And those tissues might
act like a tissue until we put it in with other tissues to make the organs. And then the organs
might function in one way until we decided to stick organs together to make a system.
And all of those systems within our body are all going to function slightly different when they
have to work with each other in order for us to be able to survive. And so just because it's
happening in one condition doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen in all of the conditions.
And more importantly, humans are definitely not mice for rats. And our physiology might be slightly
different than the rat and or the mice physiology. And so even though we're seeing distinct types
of metabolism taking place in some organisms, doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see that same
type of physiology taking place in our body. So let's put this all together. What can we
remember or what should we take home as it relates to understanding about chemicals and metabolism?
And once again, this is just a stepping stone to other discussions on this topic.
So we may use lots of big words when discussing chemicals, but big words shouldn't automatically
mean scary thing or dangerous thing. Scientists tend to use scientific words. And sometimes those
scientific words can scare people. And we just have to remember that we're not trying to scare you,
we're simply trying to communicate in a way that all scientists know exactly what we're talking about.
Chemicals are necessary for living and everything we eat is made of chemicals. And so you can't have a
chemical free diet because if you have a chemical free diet, then you're not eating.
Toxins and poisons are dose and duration dependent effects. Just because the molecule has one effect
doesn't mean it's going to have the same effect in all conditions. To have a metabolic impact,
that chemical has to either act like a hormone or it has to alter the type and rate of chemical
reactions taking place in the cell. When you hear these stories out in the news, you have to be
willing to ask questions. If a news report says that a chemical is harmful, look into what model
was used, how was the research done, and compare what was being reported in the scientific studies
to what can and does happen within the human body.
And remember, humans are more than just one cell. The way which cells interact with other cells is
going to be dependent upon how all of the cells and tissues and organs and organisms are put
together so that the organism is able to survive. And if we're reading about studies done in rodents
or in other animals, we've got to remember that humans are not rodents, humans are not other
animals, humans are humans. And just because it's an issue for that rodent or that other animal
doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the same thing for humans.
Well, thanks for listening. I hope you found this to be a little informative,
raised some questions for you, and stay tuned for more discussions on the topic of metabolism
in the near future.