There are seven traits allowing ketones to serve as neuroprotectors during brain damage:
- they require only three steps to enter the Krebs cycle (footnote a) – compare with 9 steps obligatory for glucose;
- they cause inhibition of glycolysis, thus decreasing free radical formation;
- they increase production of ATP (footnote b);
- they increase mitochondrial energy efficiency;
- they increase antioxidant activity of glutathione peroxidase (footnote c);
- they spare pyruvate from processing in the Krebs cycle
Source: Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism (2008) 28, 1–16
Footnotes
a) The Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle is a metabolic pathway involved in the conversion (“burning”) of carbohydrates, fats and proteins into CO2 and H2O to generate energy in the form that can be used by living organisms.
b) ATP: Adenosine Triphosphate, the ultimate “energy molecule”.
c) Glutathione peroxidase: a powerful scavenger of free radicals.
Energy drinks usually contain a lot of of caffeine, sugar, usually taurine [used to prevent oxidative stress induced by exercise 30, and to enhance weight loss (2) and to reduce anxiety levels, (3)], B-vitamins, ginseng, inositol [preliminary results exist that it can be effective in treating depression, and panic attacks, (4)], an anti-oxidant carnitine, and Guarana, rich in caffein. (more…)
Glucose is an energy source for both neurons and glia in the adult brain but lactate, one of the monocarboxylic acids, being converted from pyruvate in astrocytes and supplied to neuron (“astrocyte-neurona lactate shuttle”) is an important energy fuel alternative to glucose as well. The role of exogenously added lactate as a viable energy substrate has remained controversial although recent data showed that exogenous lactate might be selectively taken up by neuron in intact rat brain (1). (more…)
In the brain, neuronal electrical activity and intricate metabolic energy provisions are closely related. Although both functions have been painstakingly researched by electrophysiologists and biochemists, insufficient interaction between the two domains leads to difficulty in extrapolating the properties observed in the in vitro studies to the properties of the whole in vivo brain. In this paper, we hope to clarify the relationships between neuronal energy status and neuronal electrical function.
“A man with his head is something much more then a man’s body plus his separate head” – J. Miller (1965)
Whole is equal to more than the sum of its parts (on some interdisciplinary methodological problems)
In the history of life sciences, perhaps beginning with Aristotle’s time, reductionism prevailed leaving the opposite philosophical approach, holism, outside scientific paradigm. Reductionism and reductionists are concerned with at least two dominant themes: a) the interactions between different domains of knowledge; b) the place of a part in the whole (1). (more…)
BRAIN EXTRACELLULAR FLUID
The brain is protected by a rigid bony case so it cannot expand in the case of fluid imbalance. Because of that, the brain needs to tightly control the flux across the cerebral capillaries and this line of defence or restriction of chemical communications between blood and brain, called blood-brain barrier, was introduced by the work of Erhlich et al., in nineteenth century and the classic experiment of Goldman confirmed the concept of the blood-brain barrier (reviewed in 1). (more…)
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool…. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.” — Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman (more…)
The best (imho) of the few known conventional theories of acupuncture belongs to an interdisciplinary team of theoretical biologists and brain morphologists working under Dr. Dmitri Chernavski, an academician of Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Physics, in Moscow. The group approached the problem from the point of view of concept of neurocomputing…
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