Tag: oxidative stress
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Inflammation, Alcohol, and Pain
Pain is, at its core, a signal of inflammation. Understanding how the immune system generates that inflammation — and how alcohol use specifically adds fuel to the fire — makes it easier to understand how inflammation contributes to chronic pain, and what might help resolve that inflammation. How the Immune System Creates Inflammation When toll-like…
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Intestinal Permeability, Celiac Disease, and Tight Junctions
Intestinal permeability — how easily substances pass through the intestinal barrier rather than being kept out — plays a central role in celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. Remission Can Mean a Return to Normal Barrier Function Hollon et al. (2015) exposed intestinal biopsy specimens to gliadin and measured the resulting change in permeability across several…
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Nightshade Sensitivity: The Immune Mechanism, and Interventions
Some people experience joint pain as an inflammatory reaction to nightshades like tomatoes and peppers. Understanding the immune pathway behind that reaction — and what separates a reactive response from a tolerant one — points toward some practical places to intervene. The Immune Pathway Behind Nightshade Sensitivity Nightshade proteins are transported across intestinal microfold cells,…
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Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Type 2 Diabetes: Mechanisms, Markers, and Interventions
Type 2 diabetes can be assessed from the perspective of mitochondrial dysfunction as not just a side effect, but a factor in its progression. Symptoms like fatigue and difficulty concentrating can be a sign that mitochondria aren’t functioning properly, and that same underlying dysfunction may be feeding the disease process itself. When mitochondria are impaired,…
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Supporting Mitochondrial Health: Urolithin A and Light Therapy
Two very different interventions — a gut-microbiome-derived postbiotic and a light-based therapy — offer an interesting look at how mitochondrial function can be supported through different mechanisms: clearing out damaged mitochondria on one hand, and directly powering the electron transport chain on the other. Urolithin A Singh et al. (2022) ran a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled…
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Two Manifestations of Oxidative Stress: Cataracts and Steatotic Liver Disease
The following two examples — one on age-related cataracts, and one on Steatotic Liver Disease (SLD) — both illustrate how cells try to compensate for oxidative stress, and what happens when those compensatory systems eventually fail. Oxidative Stress and Cataract Formation Huang et al. (2022) investigated how biliverdin reductase A protects lens epithelial cells from…
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Antioxidants Aren’t Simply “More Is Better”
Supplements like quercetin, vitamin C, and vitamin E get a lot of attention as antioxidants, but the research makes a cautionary point: reactive oxygen species aren’t purely villains, and neutralizing them too well can have tradeoffs worth understanding before recommending a dose. Quercetin as a Protective Antioxidant Remigante et al. (2022) studied how quercetin can…
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What Happens in the Body When Alcohol Dehydrogenase Goes to Work
I’ve been digging into a few studies on alcohol dehydrogenase — the enzyme responsible for the first step of ethanol metabolism, oxidizing ethanol to acetaldehyde while reducing NAD+ to NADH. I found some genuinely strange toxicology, and some insight into hangovers. When It’s Not Ethanol: A Forensic Toxicology Case Ethanol is not the only substrate…
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