Oxidation and Antioxidants
Isn't oxidation dangerous? Maybe I am breathing too much oxygen?
A recent phone call from a National Institute of Health physician member got me to thinking. He was concerned about whether people breathing too much oxygen could be harmed by that. CO2 narcosis is what it is called. I do not believe this possible unless artificial means such as hospital ventilators or sometimes with overused hyperbaric chambers are employed. Hyperbaric chamber recipients are given extra antioxidants to offset this. I have not herd of anyone on bottled or generated O2 24/7 being asked to take antioxidants but I suspect it may be a good idea even without extra oxygen.
If you are breathing improperly or in an unbalanced way such as with UDB you can not uptake oxygen optimally no matter how hard you breathe. In fact, breathing harder/deeper. effortful can make your breathing les so instead of more so. Unbalanced Breathing is more a mechanical breathing/nervous system issue, not an oxygen one. See also hyperventilation for more on the nervous stem aspects and breathing too often in an unbalanced way.
Oxidation often gets confused in the good guy-bad guy scenario.
Oxygen has at least four major byproducts.
1. Aiding cellular function often with an oxidized waste byproduct
2. Killing germs, viruses and parasites (which are transformed into another
type of oxidized waste
(see "soot" below)
3. To stabilize unstable molecules that have only one electron (as with 03 -
ozone that gives off an extra electron to a single electron
"toxic" molecule to stabilize it into a two molecule entity. So
this reduces waste and allows for constructive use of what might have been a
free radical
4. Being transformed into "soot, smoke oar ash" like from your
fireplace in the normal process of logs being burned up.
Breathing too much?
Some people worry about breathing too much because of the oxidation process
and the formation of free radicals. Oxidation is a natural event.
Nothing much in biochemistry occurs without it. It happens because that is a
primary purpose for oxygen. To give fire (life) to and to burn and to
make whole (as in the above ozone example).
So the more you breathe "burn" the more "soot" you produce and the more you have to "clean the fireplace". Oxygen is necessary for millions of life functions. Even if soot production were the only oxidative function which it clearly is not, would you not use the fireplace if you were very cold just because you knew the fireplace would get dirty? What you WOULD do is routinely clean the fireplace. That is what high fiber and antioxidant raw organic foods and intestinal cleansers do. They supply natural fireplace cleaners like soap and brooms. Certain supplements work similarly.
Antioxidants.
People take antioxidants like vitamin E, germanium, selenium, and COQ10
in supplements. This is good if they are eating poorly, breathing a lot more
then average and or are in a toxic environment. But if they are doing that
instead of eating a majority of raw living foods, they are deluding
themselves because the enzymes in the raw foods are much more efficient at
doing the work that the oxygen will have to be sidetracked to try to do.
Eating too much cooked food causes the oxygen that should have gone to other
NORMAL functions to be used up with a lot of the functions that the enzymes
should have done, and much better actually.
Digestion is critical with all this as undigested food causes massive diversion and oxidation of both oxygen and antioxidants to handle the debris instead of performing healing and cellular strengthening functions.
Elimination is also critical as waste product debris including toxins held in the small and large intestines may be recycled over and over again using up critical supplies of oxygen and antioxidants.
The answer is an holistic approach. Begin with learning to breathe better. No one thing is the all to be all but breathing and oxygen sure are on the top of MY want list. Learn to breathe so you minimize oxidation and get all the oxygen you most often will ever need.
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