Porphyrins: Oxygen and Electrons

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“Porphyrins are light sensitive pigments” bound into molecules we know as heme and chlorophyll. Heme and iron together make up the core of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in red blood cells; oxygen metabolism being our most basic function of life. Ten minutes of oxygen deprivation can lead to a rapid death. The porphyrins have special ‘electron transport’ qualities that make them ‘electrosensitive’ and interesting to industry. They also have chemical cousins called pyrroles which are similar and will be the subject of another descriptive blog-post because of the commercial value of the pyrrole group. But first, the porphyrins –particularly where an excess of circulating porphyrins caused by environmental poisons and electrical overload leads to dire malfunctions including the paralyzing, fatiguing, immune- deficient and ‘flu-like’ spectrum of ills.

 “Porphyrins are central to our story” writes Arthur Firstenberg in The Invisible Rainbow, “ not only because of a disease named porphyria [**see more below] but…because of the part porphyrins play in the modern epidemics of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes which affect half the world, and because their very existence is a reminder of the role of electricity in life itself.” –pp139-140, The Invisible Rainbow, 2017.

 “Adding thin films of porphyrins to commercially available photovoltaic [solar] cells increases the voltage, current, and total power output…  The properties that make porphyrins suitable in electronics are the same properties that make us alive… The secret lies in the highly pigmented, fluorescent molecule called porphyrin. Strong pigments are always efficient energy absorbers, and if they are also fluorescent, they are also good energy transmitters… Porphyrins are more efficient energy transmitters than any other of life’s components… [And] one more place these surprising molecules are found [is] in the nervous system, the organ where electrons flow. In fact, in mammals, the central nervous system is the only organ that shines with the red fluorescent glow of porphyrins when examined under ultraviolet light. These porphyrins…occur, however, in a location where one might least expect to find them –not in the neurons themselves, the cells that carry messages from our five senses to our brains—but in the myelin sheaths that envelop them, the sheaths whose…breakdown causes one of the most common and least understood neurological diseases of our time: multiple sclerosis. It was orthopedic surgeon Robert O. Becker who, in the 1970s, discovered that the myelin sheaths are really electrical transmission lines.” –pp145-147  …”The cells that biologists had considered merely insulation turned out to be the real wires. It was the Schwann cells, Becker concluded –the myelin-containing glial cells—and not the neurons they surrounded that carried the currents that determined growth and healing… The myelin sheaths –the liquid crystalline sleeve surrounding our nerves—contain semiconducting porphyrins doped with heavy metal atoms, probably zinc…   Toxic chemicals and EMF [the same combo of nuclear fallout, for example]…disrupts the porphyrin pathway… According to more recent research, a large excess of porphyrin precursors can prevent the synthesis of myelin and break apart the myelin sheaths, leaving the neurons exposed… [An] Italian team confirmed in 2009…that as much as ninety percent of the oxygen [used by the brain] is consumed…by the myelin sheaths.” pp152-153

“Porphyrins are light sensitive pigments that play pivotal roles in the [metabolic] economy of both plants and animals… In plants a porphyrin bound to magnesium is the pigment called chlorophyll… responsible for photosynthesis. In animals an almost identical molecule bound to iron is the pigment called heme, the essential part of hemoglobin that makes blood red and enables it to carry oxygen… Heme is also the central component of cytochrome c and cytochrome oxidase, enzymes [found] in every cell of every plant, animal and bacterium, that transport electrons from nutrients to oxygen so that our cells can extract energy. And heme is the main component of the cytochrome P450 enzymes in our liver that detoxify environmental chemicals for us by oxidizing them [for breakdown and clearance]… In other words, porphyrins are the very special molecules that interface between oxygen and life. They are responsible for the creation, maintenance, and recycling of all the oxygen in our atmosphere.” –136

“Piezoelectricity, a property of crystals that makes them useful in electronic products, transforms mechanical stress into electrical voltages [restated as turning a frequency into a current] and vice-versa, [and] has been found in cellulose, collagen, horn, bone, wool, wood, tendon, blood vessel walls, muscle, nerve, fibrin, DNA, [cell membranes] and every type of protein examined. …It was Otto Lehmann, already in 1908, who noticing the close resemblance between the shapes of known liquid crystals and many biological structures, proposed that the very basis of life was the liquid crystalline state. Liquid crystals, like organisms, had the ability to grow; to heal wounds; to consume other substances or other crystals; to be poisoned; to form membranes, spheres, rods, filaments and helical structures; to divide; to ‘mate’;…to transform chemical energy into mechanical motion.” –p143, The Invisible Rainbow.

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‘Accelerating Electrosensitivity’ and  ‘Accelerating Biology’ are two recent blog posts from May dealing with this subject:

Accelerating Biology

From ‘Accelerating Biology,’ which offers a description from Dr. Bruce Lipton about the flowing nature of liquid crystals as well as the bodily health implications of a ‘growth’ state versus ‘protection’ state:    “In multicellular organisms, growth/protection behaviors are controlled by the nervous system. It is the nervous system’s job to monitor environmental signals, interpret them, and organize appropriate behavioral responses… the nervous system acts like the government in organizing the activities of its cellular citizens… The body is actually endowed with two separate protection systems, each vital to the maintenance of life. The first…mobilizes protection against external threats. It is called the HPA axis which stands for the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis. [p147] When there are no threats, the HPA axis is inactive and growth [cell renewal, respiration, digestion, etc.] flourishes… Once the adrenal alarm is sounded… [the] visceral organs stop doing their life-sustaining work of digestion, absorption, excretion and…production of the body’s energy reserves. Hence the stress response inhibits growth processes and further compromises the body’s survival by interfering with the generation of vital energy reserves. [p148]

“ The body’s second protection system is the immune system which protects us from threats originating under the skin such as those caused by bacteria and viruses… it can consume much of the body’s energy supply. [p149] The HPA system is a brilliant mechanism for handling acute stresses. However…not designed to be continuously activated.[p151] The HPA axis’ effect on the cellular community mirrors the effect of stress on a human population. [p153] [It shifts] the members of the community from a state of growth to a state of protection. [p154] …[S]tress hormones are so effective at curtailing immune system function that doctors provide them to recipients of transplants so that their immune systems wouldn’t reject the foreign tissues…. Activating the HPA axis also interferes with our ability to think clearly… Adrenal stress hormones constrict the blood vessels in the forebrain…[and] repress activity in the…prefrontal cortex…the center of conscious volitional activity… and reasoning. [p150]

“Inhibiting growth processes [which includes natural immunity] is also debilitating in that growth…is required to produce energy. Consequently, a sustained protection response inhibits the creation of life-sustaining energy. The longer you stay in protection, the more you compromise your growth…To fully thrive, we must not only eliminate the stressors but also actively seek joyful, loving, fulfilling lives that stimulate growth processes.” [p147] Biology of Belief, by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD

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CytochromeP450 from Wikipedia: “Cytochromes P450 (CYPs) are a superfamily of enzymes containing heme as a cofactor that function as monooxygenases.^[1][2][3] In mammals, these proteins oxidize steroids, fatty acids, and xenobiotics, and are important for the clearance of various compounds, as well as for hormone synthesis and breakdown. In plants, these proteins are important for the biosynthesis of defensive compounds, fatty acids, and hormones.^[2]

CYP enzymes have been identified in all kingdoms of life: animals, plants, fungi, protists, bacteria, and archaea, as well as in viruses.^[4] However, they are not omnipresent; for example, they have not been found in Escherichia coli.^[3][5] More than 50,000 distinct CYP proteins are known.^[6]

CYPs are, in general, the terminal oxidase enzymes in electron transfer chains, broadly categorized as P450-containing systems. The term “P450” is derived from the spectrophotometric peak at the wavelength of the absorption maximum of the enzyme (450 nm) when it is in the reduced state and complexed with carbon monoxide. Most CYPs require a protein partner to deliver one or more electrons to reduce the iron (and eventually molecular oxygen).”

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** “Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired metabolic disorders of heme biosynthesis, due to a specific decrease in the activity of one of the enzymes of the heme pathway. Clinical signs and symptoms of porphyrias are frequently associated with exposure to precipitating agents, including clinically approved drugs…  The cytochrome P-450 (CYP) isoenzymes are… heme proteins which are the terminal oxidases of the mixed-function oxidase system (1). The 1 to 3 families of CYP are responsible for 70% to 80% of all phase I–dependent metabolism of clinically used drugs (2)…  The clinical consequences of genetic polymorphisms [mutations] in drug metabolism depend on…the activity of the drug… as well as the extent to which the affected pathway contributes to the overall elimination of the drug…” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1770015/

*The electron transfer system

Redox

“The uptake of an electron (as well as a positively charged hydrogen ion aka proton) by a receiving molecule is called reduction. Conversely, the donation of an electron (as well as a hydrogen ion) is called oxidation. In living cells, the effective proportion of reduced substances to oxidized substances is called the redox balance. The redox potential is measured in millivolts. A distinguishing feature of living cells is the dynamic maintenance of energy flows away from thermodynamic equilibrium. This is accomplished by constant electron transfer, which, at the same time, produces proton gradients to decrease or increase the electromotive force. The movement of these electrons and protons creates energy in the form of light emissions (photons) that are reabsorbed in the healthy cell. While normal cells emit less light, cancer cells [for example] are decoupled from this photon field and show an exponential increase in light emission (energy loss) with increasing cell density. This correlates with the observation that cancer cells have a diminished capacity for intercommunication. A fundamental principle of evolutionary biology states that the more complex an organism’s evolution, the more reduced it must be. In the reduced state, there are more electrons available for energy production. In order to insure the necessary predominance of the reduction status, any oxidation of a molecule or atom must be quickly reduced again. In living cells this takes place particularly by means of sulfur containing amino acids, sulfurous peptides with low molecular weights and other sulfurous molecules. Mounting evidence from recent research has confirmed [Otto] Warburg’s findings [about chronic oxygen deficiency in cancer] and has further shown that chronic deficits in the more efficient mitochondrial oxidative metabolism are factors in the development of many chronic diseases.”  –p57, AIDS, Opium, Diamonds and Empire, by Nancy T. Banks, 2010

“The common factor linking the diverse stressors that were overpowering the immune and energy systems of…AIDS patients was that they are all strong oxidizing agents or had that effect at the cellular level. Oxidizing agents are substances that have a deficit of electrons and because of their reactivity are known as free radicals. Free radicals alter the redox status of the cellular milieu and…over time create tissue damage that results in disease. Such damage, if caught early, can be neutralized and reversed by…appropriate reducing agents, such as vitamins and other nutritional compounds…[antioxidants]…along with detoxification and…compensatory therapy.” –p77, AIDS, Opium, etc.