Re: Detoxifying acetaldahyde

Disulfide bonds are found in the body wherever strength, flexibility, elasticity, or stickiness are required in protein structures. They may also be used as signalling switches to switch on or off processes such as secretion. They are a highly conserved structural element of G Protein-Coupled (GPCR) and ligand-gated ion channel receptors, something crucial to the fundamental integrity of biochemical communication in the body between secretory organs and cells and from cell to cell. They are a part of the tight junction protein matrix that keep the gut and the blood-brain barrier sealed.

Disulfide bonds even play a role in hair dressing. Hair straightening or a permanent wave involves breaking down the disulfide bonds between hair structural proteins using a chemical solution. Some hair relaxers contain formaldehyde for this very purpose. But formaldehyde is a known toxic carcinogen with adverse side effects even when used externally. Acetaldehyde is only slightly larger than formaldehyde and shares a similar toxic profile.



As robust as disulfide linkages are, being resistant to both heat and water, when an aldehyde such as formaldehyde or acetaldehyde comes into contact with a disulfide linkage,



the disulfide bridge is broken irreversibly by the formylation or acetylation, respectively, of one of the sulfur atoms and the reduction (addition of hydrogen) of the other:



Think of a long rope bridge across a deep gorge that has been ruptured in the middle. There is no longer any connection between the opposite sides of the chasm. In essence both the structure and functionality of the protein (tissue or enzyme or receptor) containing the critical disulfide bridge has been compromised.

Wondro (sulfurated flax oil) likely had several disulfide linkages on each of the fatty acids that had been vulcanized by heating during its production process. These disulfide bonds served no functional purpose in the body. However, they were irresistible targets for acetaldehyde produced in the throat and the gut by budding yeast metabolism.

Once acetaldehyde has broken into a disulfide linkage it loses its reactivity and cannot escape. Its potential threat to other critical body structures has been neutralized. By sacrificing its disulfide bonds, Wondro was able to block any damage that its captured acetaldehyde molecules might have inflicted throughout the body. The inescapable corollary to this is that all of the diverse conditions that Wondro was used for with beneficial results must have been related to acetaldehyde toxicity -- making Candida Albicans a common denominator of illness -- something that C. O. Truss was trying to tell us back in 1984.

See http://www.orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1984/pdf/1984-v13n02-p066.pdf

[Molecular imaging rendered using Jmol: an open-source Java viewer for chemical structures in 3D. http://www.jmol.org
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