Your body does not just produce glutathione. It recycles it. This recycling system is one of the most elegant features of cellular biochemistry, allowing each glutathione molecule to neutralise multiple reactive species before being broken down. Understanding how this system works explains why glutathione is so effective and why maintaining it matters so much. How … Read more
Sleep and cellular repair at a glance The brain’s clean-up: in mice, the space between brain cells widens during sleep and waste is cleared faster DNA maintenance: in zebrafish neurons, sleep helps reduce DNA breaks that build up while awake The redox link: severe sleep loss in flies and mice led to a build-up of … Read more
Ask most people what free radicals do and you will get a consistent answer: they damage your cells and cause disease. This belief is so deeply embedded in popular health culture that it has become almost axiomatic. But it is wrong, or at the very least, it is dangerously incomplete. Free radicals are not just … Read more
Exercise and your cells at a glance The principle: exercise is a short, controlled stress that prompts cells to adapt and become more resilient The name for it: hormesis, a beneficial response to a moderate, usually intermittent stress Key messengers: reactive oxygen species, NRF2 and PGC-1 alpha What changes: more mitochondria, stronger antioxidant defences and … Read more
In 1956, a radiation chemist named Denham Harman proposed one of the most influential ideas in the history of ageing research. His free radical theory of ageing suggested that the accumulation of oxidative damage from reactive oxygen species was the primary driver of biological ageing. The idea was elegant, testable and profoundly influential. It shaped … Read more
Key evidence at a glance Landmark study: Epel, Blackburn and colleagues, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2004 Who: 58 healthy premenopausal women, including mothers caring for a chronically ill child Main finding: higher perceived stress was linked to higher oxidative stress, lower telomerase activity and shorter telomeres in immune cells Type of evidence: … Read more
The antioxidant story sounded so simple. Free radicals damage your cells. Antioxidants neutralise free radicals. Therefore, the more antioxidants you consume, the healthier you will be. This logic drove decades of supplement marketing and convinced millions of people that high dose antioxidant capsules were a shortcut to better health. The science, however, has told a … Read more
It sounds counterintuitive. Exercise is supposed to be good for you, yet during a workout your muscles produce a significant surge of reactive oxygen species, the very molecules associated with oxidative stress and cellular damage. How can something that increases oxidative stress also be one of the best things you can do for your health? … Read more
The breakdown of cellular communication does not announce itself. There is no threshold event, no date after which things are measurably worse. The degradation is gradual, operating across years and decades through the incremental accumulation of small failures: signals that arrive slightly delayed, repair responses that are slightly less complete, immune activations that are slightly … Read more
Mitochondria at a glance What they are: structures inside most of your cells that turn food and oxygen into usable energy Where they came from: bacteria that took up residence inside another cell around two billion years ago Their own DNA: a small genome of 16,569 DNA letters, inherited from your mother More than power: … Read more
Chemistry students encounter redox reactions early and often find them confusing in a specific way. The definitions seem simple — oxidation is the loss of electrons, reduction is the gain — but applying them consistently requires remembering that the two reactions are always paired and always simultaneous. You cannot have one without the other. When … Read more
Oxidative stress at a glance What it is: an imbalance in which reactive forms of oxygen outpace the cell’s ability to control them Where reactive oxygen comes from: mainly mitochondria and a family of enzymes called NADPH oxidases The twist: at low levels, the same molecules act as essential signals The concept: formally defined in … Read more