Posted 10/30/2020 8:44 AM (GMT 0)
Here's another I wrote early in the year, maybe I posted it here. Just skip over it if I did.
IMO, I believe that all bodily biological processes are not created equal. I'll rank a few as to which ones I believe are the most important and received most of my time when studying.
1. pH regulation. Without the proper pH, very few of our bodily processes will work and we will die pretty quickly. Our bodily processes are slightly acidic so constant pH regulation is required to keep us functioning. Inflammation is an even more acidic process and the more inflammation you have, the more pH must be regulated. Over time, this catches up to us and this is one of the reasons we age. I'll explain more later.
2. Methylation. The process of transferring a single carbon atom to another compound is about as important as anything that happens inside our body. It is responsible for making DNA, RNA, protein function, B and T cells in our immune system, polyamines, enzymes, etc, and just about everything is affected by methylation. It is very important in epigenetics and down regulating our immune response as we age. It is responsible for starting the transsulfuration pathway which is responsible for breaking down the sulfur, which is in animal protein. When our methylation pathway gets messed up, we don't handle animal protein very well and it leads to disease.
3. Polyamines. The polyamines are biogenic amines that are basically responsible for cell growth. They also help transport cations inside and outside the cell through ion channels. Outside of molecular biologists, few people care about them as they aren't the target of medications. I have put a lot of time into learning about polyamines because they were the starting point for the poor health hole I needed to climb out of. As we age, the concentration of intracellular polyamines decreases. This is due to inflammation. Inflammation lowers the pH which alters the polyamines feedback loop and prevents extracellular polyamines from reentering the cell. Age does the same thing. Age is basically the accumulation of inflammation among other things. Cancer is a polyamine issue.
When polyamines go outside the cell, they carry intracellular cations with them. If they can't go back inside the cell due to lower pH, many of those cations will be lost. So inflammation (and age) ultimately reduces our levels of Mg, Mn, Mo, Se, B, Cu, Li, among others. Since these elements act as substrates for many chemical reactions in the body, their decrease makes our health decline. We must ingest enough of these elements to replace what is lost and most people do not do that with the typical American diet. This is why diet is so important.