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FREE RADICALS AND THE WHOLENESS OF THE ORGANISM
By Roger Taylor PhD
Today we know a great deal about the living world: the myriad beautiful
forms of animals and plants, and how they behave and interact with each
other. On the other hand, by taking them apart, we also have a compendium of knowledge on anatomy, physiology and biochemistry - now including even sequences of their genes. But between these two is a huge gap. We lack knowledge of the basic essence of life. What is it that distinguishes the living state of matter from the non-living state?
Big changes have been under way for at least the last sixty years. They
began with the publication in 1944 of Erwin Schrodinger's seminal little
book: "What is Life?". He was among the first to suggest that the unique
properties of life could only be approached through quantum physics.
Although it has yet to be much recognized by mainstream biology, we now have
a firm foundation for a real holistic biophysics. One which is already
putting holistic medicine on a really scientific basis, and will surely give
us many new insights - extending even into ecology and our relationship with
the living world.
Free radicals
A free radical is any atom or molecule which has one of its valences
unsatisfied. This leaves it with an unpaired electron in its outer shell. In
trying to get a partner for the lone electron, free radicals react avidly
with any neighboring molecules, and so can theoretically do damage.
According to much contemporary health literature therefore, free radicals
are bad news, being seen as the cause of many diseases, and even as the
major cause of aging. While test-tube experiments show that they can indeed damage biological molecules, there is now, as we shall see, considerableevidence in support of a role for free radicals in the very basis of life.
The case for this has been powerfully argued by Professor Vladimir
Voeikov, who is Professor of Biology at Lomonosov Moscow State University. He stems from a long and distinguished tradition of biology in Russia which has been largely ignored in the West. Some of the most convincing evidence comes from his own recent experimental work. What I write here is based on his publications - and especially from an article entitled "Reactive Oxygen Species, Water, Photons and Life".
In the broad sweep of this illuminating article, he gives us a new
conception of how molecules co-operate holistically to make a living being;
and even a new and credible schema for the origin of life. We can see how
free radicals are a key to understanding the central (but rarely
acknowledged) mystery of biochemistry: how all the multitudinous chemical
reactions are integrated into a unitary living being.
All biochemical processes are transactions of energy. So first we must
remember that energy comes packaged as a precisely-defined unit called a
quantum. The energy-content (or "size") of a quantum is measured in electron
volts, and depends on the frequency: thus a quantum of light is bigger than
one of infrared or microwave.
A molecule which absorbs a quantum stores the energy as some kind of
higher-energy state. A light quantum has sufficient energy to push an
electron out of its stable orbit into a higher energy orbit. The molecule
is then said to be in an electron-excited state (EES). But this higher
energy state is unstable and, after a while, the energy is released again as
a quantum of the appropriate frequency. The electron jumps back down to its
stable orbit, and a quantum of light energy is released.
This quantum can then either be directly transferred to another molecule
(where it may contribute to a chemical reaction) or it can be emitted as a
photon. In turn this photon can either be absorbed by another molecule, or
lost as heat.
Most biochemical reactions, as studied in the test-tube, involve
transactions of an infrared quantum rather than light. This is one reason
why the importance of light in the living being is still not generally
recognized in the West.
It is a different story in Russia, where they have benefited from the
work of Alexander Gurvich - a scientist who will come in due course to be
counted as one of the world's great names in biology. As far back as the
1920's, he discovered that dividing cells produce a very weak light
radiation (now termed biophotons) which could stimulate mitosis in resting
cells. Even then it was clear to Gurvich that this light constituted an
information-bearing signal. This finding lent support to his field theories
of biological organization.
Since then, scientists from many countries have contributed to the
development of what may be called "quantum biology". All this work is
pointing to the conclusion that a living being is unified by a single
quantum wave-function in the same way that an atom or molecule is. (For
further reading see Mae-Wan Ho's excellent book "The Rainbow and the Worm").
In this conception light plays a central role; and excited electrons,
rather than being confined to single atoms or molecules, are understood to
be de-localized and shared over large molecular ensembles, and even to the whole organism. Moreover, as the excited electrons decay they are
continually re-generated. Thus an organism normally stores a lot of light.
How is this light generated? It is here that free radicals come onto the
scene. Professor Voeikov makes the crucial point that none of the usual
biochemical reactions is of sufficient energy to generate light. This can
only be done by the reactions of energetic free radicals.
All the radicals of biological significance are derived from oxygen.
Principal among these are the superoxide anion radical O2- and the hydroxyl radical HO-. In addition there is an electronic re-arrangement of molecular oxygen called singlet oxygen 1O2. While not a radical, this has a high reactivity, greater than superoxide anion, greater than ozone, but less than hydroxyl OH-.
Together these are termed Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). Also important are certain molecules which can easily break down to become ROS - notably hydrogen peroxide H2O2 and ozone O3.
All these are generated by a variety of enzymatic and non-enzymatic
mechanisms which were initially thought to be confined to cells of the
immune system - especially neutrophil leukocytes. For this reason, the only function for free radicals was thought to be to kill microbes. However,
these mechanisms (and there is a growing list of them) were later found to
be everywhere throughout the body.
The body produces large quantities of ROS all the time - indeed it is a
fact that some ten to twenty percent of all the oxygen we breathe enters
this pathway. Along with this, some other facts should be taken into
account. The human brain uses some 20% of the oxygen we take in, and yet it has relatively few mitochondria. Since mitochondria are well-known to be the sites where oxygen is used to generate the energy molecule ATP at the end of the Krebs cycle, most of the oxygen used by the brain must represent a different type of metabolic pathway.
Of further interest are observations by Erwin Bauer - another
outstanding Russian biologist - in 1935. He collected data for the total
oxygen consumption during its whole life of each of a great range of animal species, divided by its mean body weight. This index, called by him the "Rubner Constant", increases by several thousand-fold in a sequence starting with the primitive coelenterates and ending with the primates. It stands, in fact, as the only known quantitative parameter which defines higher life forms. Note especially that for Homo sapiens this parameter is at least ten times higher than for other primates. This finding might suggest that as more highly-developed organisms must have more complex control systems, they will need to store more light in their bodies. And for this they will need more oxygen to generate the necessary ROS which generate the photons.
Why don't ROS do more damage?
The facts just stated are completely opposite to the current prevailing
view that free radicals are merely noxious errors of metabolism. That they
are produced in such quantities can only mean that they have an important
function. And, although free radicals can in principle do damage, there are
several means by which it is almost completely avoided in vivo. One is that
the radicals are produced exactly where and when they are needed, and are used immediately, so that the concentration in the body at any one time is extremely small.
And then there is the fact that radicals can neutralize each other, and
so any unused ROS react preferentially with each other rather than damaging biological macromolecules.
Finally, a back-up defence is provided by various anti-oxidants such as
vitamins A, C and E, and the cellular enzyme defenses of superoxide
dismutase, catalase, reductase and glutathione peroxidase.
An organism is unified by its photon field
To begin to understand the main function of ROS we must again emphasize the mysterious perfection of biological organization - even of a single cell.
The characteristic wholeness of an organism must have been present from the beginning; that is, long before the molecular signals, such as hormones and neurotransmitters, were evolved. Such wholeness could not have been achieved by molecular signals alone because these require time to diffuse towards their receptors. Instead it would seem to require an underlying network of essentially instantaneous communication.
This is what is now coming to be understood as a field of de-localized
electrons excited by light energy - now often termed a photon field.
Furthermore, as maintained by Mae-Wan Ho, for all life's processes to hang
together, they must also cohere into a single complex rhythmic order, in
which the fastest rhythms (and these are very fast: resonant energy transfer between molecules takes about 10-14sec) are nested into progressively slower ones, such as brain waves, heartbeats and hormonal cycles, ultimately to the slowest: the life cycle.
Indeed rhythmic oscillations are a hallmark of biological organization,
since they indicate coordinated behaviour amongst molecules which, in
isolation from each other, would behave randomly.
It turns out that sustained oscillations, indicating self-organization,
have been found in a number of processes involving ROS. Studying the output
of biophotons from isolated blood, Voiekov and his colleagues have found
first that this increases greatly on stimulation of ROS production.
Most remarkable was the emergence, under certain conditions, of
well-marked oscillations. The regulatory role of these biophotons became
obvious from the effects of reflecting them back into the blood: a low basic
output was increased by back-reflection; high output was reduced.
In the living organism, the light released forms only a small portion of
the total light energy produced; most of it is taken up by other molecules
where it serves a control function, to trigger or modulate biochemical
reactions. The rhythmic release of this energy, which is capable of a wide
range of frequencies, going up even to the megahertz region, is consistent
with their role as pacemakers of metabolic processes. Indeed Voeikov
suggests that modulations of frequency rather than amplitude may be the most
important informative factor for cellular regulation.
All these complex temporal patterns (which Mae-Wan Ho likens to a
symphony) are also precisely localized in space. Perhaps it could be
imagined as a non-material framework of three-dimensional music, to whose tune the material constituents of life rhythmically dance.
New ideas on the origin of life
The finding that ROS and biophotons can so easily be produced in simple
aqueous solutions has led Voeikov to propose a revolutionary alternative to the most commonly accepted understanding of the origin of life. He draws on recent evidence for dissociation of water under very mild conditions, merely by procedures such as mechanical agitation, illumination and freezing and
thawing.
The products of such dissociation include hydrogen peroxide and the free
radicals H+ and HO-, derived from non-ionic dissociation of water. These
radicals may then react with nitrogen and carbon dioxide to produce amino
acids and other complex organic molecules.
Moreover in the presence of simple catalysts such as iron oxide,
hydrogen peroxide breaks down to release oxygen.
In this way it becomes plausible to consider a scenario where oxygen
began to appear from the beginning, as soon as water appeared on earth. Even at this time, however, ROS and excited electrons would also begin to appear. These would soon self-organize, and develop structures of characteristic dynamic stability which could begin to deserve the name Life.
As Professor Voeikov writes in his introduction, we are approaching a
major turning point in biology where it lets go of its current basis in 19th
century physics and chemistry and gains its own proper theoretical
foundation. I hope this article will stimulate interest in such ideas, and
also, by providing a modus operandi for the activated oxygen therapies,
enhance their general acceptance in medicine.
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