An Anti-oxidant You Actually Need

Peat has written about uric acid and how important it is for proper metabolism. He has also written about how fructose raises levels of uric acid in the body and how people with high uric acid almost never get auto-immune conditions and/or cancer. Other compounds that raise uric acid are caffeine, niacinamide, inosine, saturated fat, etc.
Here is a study that does a good a review of the benefits of uric acid.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 101352.htm

"...Traditionally, uric acid has a bad reputation because high levels of the compound are associated with gout and other medical conditions. However, uric acid also has antioxidant properties. Since only humans and higher primates maintain high blood levels of uric acid near saturated levels, uric acid has been speculated to be one reason humans live so much longer than, for example, dogs and cats.
This recently released study, led by Assistant Professor Koji Itahana of Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, has also discovered how uric acid gets into cells to protect them in the event of stress. It goes through a transporter GLUT9 and is regulated by the protein p53, one of the most important tumor suppressors that mutated in about a half of cancers worldwide.
The team from the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program at Duke-NUS showed first evidence of how the p53-GLUT9 pathway is a mechanism that prevents the accumulation of Reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS are molecules containing highly reactive oxygen and at times of environmental stress can increase dramatically, and result in cell damage known as oxidative stress. Oxidative stress has been proven to cause aging, cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.
Understanding this antioxidant pathway will enable researchers and clinicians to better understand how to prevent aging and other such diseases. Interestingly, Dr. Itahana also showed that shutting down the GLUT9 antioxidant pathway in cancer may be an unorthodox way to target cancer once the patient already has the disease."

 

Re: The only anti-oxidant you need

So all those people drinking their own pee, maybe not quite as insane as I think? (No matter how this subject turns out, this is not habit I will be engaging in.)

 

Re: The only anti-oxidant you need

This was the first thing I thought of as well - urine therapy or whatever they call it.

 

Re: The only anti-oxidant you need

Bit of a comment from the peanut gallery, but where else would I talk about this. Caffeine is in the purine group of chemicals, the first breakdown product of purine is xanthine; caffeine is trimethylxanthine or three methyl groups and a xanthine. The stuff in tea is demethylxanthine or two methyl groups and a xanthine.

A further breakdown product of xanthine is uric acid.

All of this is from RP.

Edit: well, aguilaroja actually got the details right. But I was close!

 

Re: The only anti-oxidant you need

Dr. Peat has written about purines generally, in addition to uric acid. I lack a copy at hand, but recall there is some discussion in his book "Generative Energy" about the proportion of purines to pyrimidines.

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/caffeine.shtml

"Caffeine and uric acid are in the group of chemicals called purines.
Purines (along with pyrimidines) are components of the nucleic acids, DNA and RNA, but they have many other functions. In general, substances related to purines are stimulants, and substances related to pyrimidines are sedatives.

"When the basic purine structure is oxidized, it becomes in turn hypoxanthine, xanthine, and uric acid, by the addition of oxygen atoms. When methyl groups (CH3) are added to nitrogens in the purine ring, the molecule becomes less water soluble."

 

Re: The only anti-oxidant you need

Is there any connection to vitamin C? I'm under the impression that vitamin C effectively rids your body of uric acid and takes over its duties. Would this imply that taking in high doses of vitamin C will lower ones own body made antioxidant? The doc loves oj, so maybe I'm not understanding things correctly.

 

In a Peat interview I was listening to recently, Antioxidants KMUD,
Peat said uric acid was our main antioxidant.

I not sure but...I think he said next was cholesterol.

 

Re: The only anti-oxidant you need

Hhmm, your post got me thinking. Niacinamide is a pyridine, which is structurally close to pyrimidines. Would that explain why it is a sedative in high doses? Also, thiamine is a type of pyrimidine but it is not sedative. I wonder why?
In general, it seems (based on PubMed readings over the years) that pyridines and pyrimidines are beneficial to health, which would explain why Peat is fond of the B vitamins, caffeine, inosine, uridine, etc.

 

He mentioned Glutathione as the other important antioxidant.

 

Yes, but in one of his newsletters he says it is the oxidized glutathione (GSSG) that is beneficial, the reduced form is a hallmark of disease/aging. So, it is the GSSG/GSH ratio that matters and not absolute levels of each.
Similar to the NAD/NADH ratio.

 

What about Carbon dioxide (CO2) ?
Is Peat not saying CO2 is the most important anti-oxidizing substance in the blood ?

 

Yes, CO2 is probably the cardinal protector of the body. But I think of it more as a helper of oxidation than an antioxidant. Uric acid has some very specific functions in the body, and only a few of them overlap with CO2. I also think that when people hear about an antioxidant they think of something that can be supplemented with to increase levels. CO2 is trickier to "supplement" with than uric acid and its precursors.

 

SA--
I'm just recounting what Peat said in the KMUD interview "AntiOxidants."
Well...recounting as best I can from memory.
It did strike me and stick in my memory about the uric acid,
because I'd never even thought of it as an antioxidant before
(but then, I'm an scientific imbecile. )

Mittir says Peat said glutathione was the second most important antioxidant.
He's probably right.
For some reason I thought he said chlolesterol--also surprising to this imbecile...

 

@SAFarmer

I had to listen to first 20 minutes of KMUD interview on "Antioxidant".
In the beginning of the interview he mentioned that our innate antioxidant
system usually refers to glutathione in cells and the enzymes that reduce
glutathione when it is been oxidized and superoxide dismutase and catalyse
are considered to be at the center of our own antioxidant system
with uric acid as circulating as major protection against free radicals.
Later he added that quantitatively uric acid is our main antioxidant ( circulating)
and inside cell it is glutathione , because it's reductant can block lots of
oxidative molecules. Rest of the interview he talked about vitamin C, E etc.
I do not think he talked about CO2 as antioxidant in this interview.
I have found this quote from his article

@narouz

I have heard him talk about cholesterol being a major anti-stress and protective substance.

 

I have read Peat write a lot of the role of CO2 as anti-oxidant or helping to prevent free radicals forming. Not going to try and find all the quotes and references now.

Rob has done a good job of listing some references here:

http://www.functionalps.com/blog/2012/1 ... tioxidant/

 

[Edit: I've split the post below into its own thread here: The Only Hormone or Anti-Oxidant You Actually Need

I don't think there's any question that for Peat, and a century-old tradition of distinguished biomedical science, carbonates are the master controller of hormones and anti-oxidants, and really the only safe source that is virtually impossible to overdose on.

The larger question is how to supplement carbonates, which include CO2, bicarbonate, and even living at altitude and inhibition of carbonic anhydrase? Bag breathing is inconvenient and potentially hypoxic, and the CO2 from ingested bicarbonate tends to be released too early by stomach acid, while enemas or IV transfusions of bicarbonate are also inconvenient. Further, living at altitude may not be practical, and is limited in efficacy, while inhibitors of carbonic anhydrase are not safe in megadoses, due to potential side effects.

Really the only safe, practical solutions I've been able to find, after bio-hacking every idea I can find on the internet, is breathing CO2 from a paintball canister, and breathing sodium bicarbonate from a nebulizer or fast inhaler.

Both of these measurably increase exhaled CO2 to almost utopian levels, as good or better than elite athletes can achieve at 3000m of altitude, and exhaled CO2 is a good measure of CO2 in the blood gases.

The only minor tweak may be, optionally, to check the pH of the urine: to reduce alkalinity, breathe more CO2; to reduce acidity, breathe more bicarbonate. But the body is hyper-efficient at buffering with carbonates, provided it has enough carbonates to buffer with, and so it's unlikely you'll ever see a urine pH that's outside of normal -- unless you just don't have enough carbonates in your body to make a proper buffer.

I guess maybe the takeaway here is, start slow, build up your buffer of carbonates, and then increase the amount of carbonates you are breathing

 

Breathing CO2 from a paintball canister is new to me. How do I go about this? Is it not practical? Can it potentially help my workout performance?

 

Krebs cycle
Of these amino acids, aspartate and glutamine are used, together with carbon and nitrogen atoms from other sources, to form the purines that are used as the bases in DNA and RNA, as well as in ATP, AMP, GTP, NAD, FAD and CoA.[35]
Citric acid cycle - Wikipedia

CO2 and N2 as cancer preventatives and reversal agents?

 

If uric acid and cholesterol are so good for you, liver, sardines, anchovies, and sweetbreads should be high on the list of healthy foods. I think sweetbreads top the list for purine content. I asked the local butcher about ordering sweetbreads and he said I had to order them frozen, minium 20 pounds. I might do that. I asked a natural buffalo meat producer about 10 years ago about sweetbreads and he said the Dept. of Homeland Security wouldn't let him "harvest" them. ( I mentioned this to someone once only to be told I am full of ***t, but I'm not--at least not on this account--it's what the man said!) I read a book by a New York doctor, published circa 1970, heavily supported by scientific references, about how to live longer. He said eat more sardines and liver with the idea of getting more dna/rna material, but from what Haidut has presented it looks like these foods probably prolong life because of their antioxidant purine content.

 

Interesting. I've been wondering how lactate would interfere with uric acid excretion in urine (I've been studying on how glomerular hypoxia could cause an increase in serum uric acid levels, as it relates to how hypoxic conditions induce anaerobic glycolysis and produce lactate as a byproduct).


Is it possible that lactic acid would react with uric acid, and thus interfere with the excretion of uric acid through urine? As in:

Lactic Acid + Uric Acid = Glycolic Acid + Methyluric Acid

C3H6O3 + C5H4N4O3 = C2H4O3 + C6H6N4O3