antioxidants are our internal sacrificial anodes?

Ok, I'm going to make a new nutritional supplement: "oops! all electrons!"

ooh, then I must have gotten the terms wrong...

What I was thinking were the free radicals that are generated during basically most oxygen related reactions in the body, I thought that was called oxidation (at least, in terms of the body).

So, you know anything about how (or if) antioxidants are used against free radicals?

Thanks, this is an unexpected image and a fun fact for the next party.

The process you’re thinking of is oxygenation, not oxidation. Oxygenation is the binding of oxygen to other molecules, oxidation is the loss of electrons. When the iron in hemoglobin oxidizes (from Fe2+ to Fe3+) it stops binding with oxygen, and if it oxidizes further (to Fe4+) it can start oxidizing other molecules in your body. Your body has enzymes to reduce the iron back to a reactive state, but antioxidants also play a role in reducing oxidized molecules.

Pretty sure oxidation plays a major role in aging, but can't tell you the exact mechanism, I have no idea about it.

But about the blood rust idea, I don't think that can work, cause we don't have just iron particles that can directly interact with oxygen just floating around in our blood, we have a complex (I.e. hemoglobin) that contains significant amounts of iron, which somehow makes it really good for binding to and carrying oxygen.

Deviating a bit, carbon monoxide poisoning is really akin to suffcation iirc, cause it binds and occupies the hemoglobin, effectively reducing the amount of oxygen that can be carried by your blood.

However, do fact check me, I might be wrong about something...

Edit: BTW, it seems that "oxidation" might not be the right term to use here, so do understand that I am referring to free radicals here.

I'm no expert but I'm fairly sure that is basically true in a way. As per zr0's top-level comment. Forms of life that can make do with less cellular respiration, for example by using external sources to regulate temperature (cold- blooded), don't need to invite as much oxygen into their cells, and so they get less weird damage over time. Mammals in general have not adopted this strategy.

That's the exact theme of many stories on r/HFY

The 'Death Breathers' thing is a primary plot point /story device / world mechanic of the ludicrous, over the top, MARS ATTACKS! from 1996.

There are quite a few sci-fi stories and short stories built on a similar concept. One of my favorites is an alien ship lands on a random farm in the US and (leaving a lot of details out, read the book!) it comes to light that the aliens normally live at insanely hot temperatures like 900F (480C) and consider Earth an "Ice World" (that's also the name of the book). Anyway, one of the catches in the book is that farmer figures out the alien wants to trade (again skipping a lot of details) but all he has on him that he can give up is a cigarette (the farmer doesn't know it's super hot inside the ship). He does the trade and we later find out that most of the galaxy is INSANELY vulnerable to being 100% completely utterly addicted to nicotine. When the alien took in the cigarette it instantly vaporized and sent the nicotine into the air and they breathed it and became instantly addicted worse than any opiod addiction IRL.

Dude, I just had to use an old Mac with OS10.11 on it (I know not that old) to recover a laptop in target disk mode.

It still has the widgets!

I miss the widgets.

Doesn't it only work if you then return to a lower altitude? I wonder how long the benefits last for.

Now that I think about it, I don't actually know how this even works. Well I know what I'm going to go read about next.

Edit: My findings:

• At high altitude, cardiac output (the overall rate of blood pumped by the heart) increases, largely due to increased heart rate. This increased heart rate reduces as one acclimatises to high altitude (though I'm unsure of if it returns to baseline. It appears to be complex, and at least somewhat differing person by person. These individual differences may explain why some people experience health problems at high altitude, beyond the initial ill feelings caused from first arriving somewhere that's high altitude)

• The stroke volume (volume of blood pumped by each beat of the heart) is lower at high altitudes. This does improve as one acclimatises, but not entirely. This seems to be affected by blood pressure stuff, such as reduced plasma volume at high altitude. It seems to be complex enough that we don't fully understand how the various regulatory stuff works.

• Most of the acclimatisation occurs by increasing the number of red blood cells in the blood. The hormone erythropoietin, which usually exists at a low level in non-hypoxic conditions, stimulates the production of new red blood cells. At high altitude, the level of erythropoietin in the blood rises to around 1000 times its baseline level. Increased production of red blood cells happens for a few weeks, by which point, there is enough to make up for lower oxygen levels at high altitude.

• When returning to low altitude, it appears that the changes back to the baseline happen over a similar timeline.

Tangential fun fact: a red blood cell has a lifetime of around 4 months. A single red blood cell travels around 400 miles before it is old enough to be recycled by the body.

And if you meet flourine out on the wild, you will be F'ed. It will bind itself to you without your consent or caring about things like essential biological processes for life.

The funny (and scary) thing is how many conspiracy theorists will not get the joke or realize it's water.

Delicious fluorine for me please

fair. I guess only history remains to prove me right.

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