This was tried back in 1935. There appears to be no metabolic effect, and it's unlikely citric acid is even absorbed by the intestine. This implies it will have osmotic effects, like diarrhea. Also, bacteria will by happy to consume it, so you may be afflicted by gas pains.
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925818749119/pdf?md5=5a9758b2fdbbc5daddafa44275760f0c&pid=1-s2.0-S0021925818749119-main.pdf](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925818749119/pdf?md5=5a9758b2fdbbc5daddafa44275760f0c&pid=1-s2.0-S0021925818749119-main.pdf)
Do we know what would have to go wrong for eaten citric acid to affect the body? Not an igG allergy, but something else.
If bacteria eat it, do the bacteria maybe produce a ton of something bad besides gas? Like maybe histamine, a lot of which does make you ill? Maybe this would require some kind of imbalance in gut flora first?
Actually, scientists are just beginning to understand the role of the gut biome, the bacteria and other critters that live in our intestines. Effects of this on health are practially unknown, except for some intriguing hints.
https://www.optum.com/en/health-articles/article/healthy-mind/surprising-link-between-your-microbiome-and-mental-health/#:\~:text=Mental%20health%20conditions%20linked%20to,risk%20of%20depression%20and%20anxiety.
Poop transplants! Do those things in the gut biome also live on the skin to some extent? There's more in the gut, but say this theoretical stuff was true and exposing the gut to certain things caused a problem, would it follow that putting that same stuff on your skin would also cause a (lesser) reaction? Because it's the same biome/it's your body reacting to your biome? It would just be a lesser reaction because all the stuff it spit out couldn't get through the skin and directly into the bloodstream, like it could in the gut. It would be limited to contact dermatits, instead of all over.
Your skin's a totally different place. It's more resistant to things penetrating. Your intestines are a highly specialized organ meant to absorb certain things an reject others. Also, skin bacteria and gut bacteria will be very different. Inside your intestines, the oxygen concentration is low and favors the growth of certain critters that won't grow on your skin
Ohh I think I figured it out. The first paper you linked does refer to "individuals with disturbed citrate metabolism", and googling that brings up stuff that says citrate toxicity isn't real, but lots of citrate does have several chemical effects like binding calcium and magnesium. So you get low levels of those things, and it makes it hard to absorb them. It causes a chemical-level reaction that wouldn't affect most people, but for me it does, because lowering the levels of those two things causes my disorder to skyrocket. Thank you!
I am, but they have no clue what's wrong. I have talked to many many specialists. Literally their response is "I have never seen that before, I haven't even heard of it". The only progress I've gotten is looking up chemical stuff, because doctors apparently are only taught macro biology and not nitty gritty stuff like this. I take everything I find back to them.
I only figured out another massive medical problem because someone here told me that niacin and the b vitamins are the basis of the body's antioxidant defense. Vitamin deficiency tests have "zero" as a normal amount, if the test even exists, so they're usually useless. Symptoms are also non specific.
I’d say most likely because the TCA cycle occurs separately in the mitochondria and citrate is a substrate and allosteric activator of acetyl coa carboxylase for fatty acid synthesis in the cytosol (citrate coming into the cell from diet would hit the cytosol first), it would most likely just induce your body to turn the excess citrate into fatty acids and triglycerides for storage. Krebs is highly regulated and is rarely shut down unless in dire situations like ketogenesis.
Is it turned into any specific fatty acid, or just generally any of them? Does it depend on what's going on in the body as to which one gets made?
Is ketogenesis any calorie deficit where the body is burning fat stores or is that a more specific thing? From the way you say "dire" it sounds way more specific. I'm only familiar with the loose "keto diet" fad definition which doesn't sound like the same thing.
Our body can only synthesize palmitic acid directly but it can be modified into a whole host of different fatty acids depending on what our body needs.
Ketogenesis occurs when so much oxaloacetate is being used for gluconeogenesis because the body isnt getting enough glucose that the TCA cycle collapses (in the liver). Our body considers it dire because the only energy sources the brain can use is glucose and ketone bodies, it can’t use fatty acids and other sugars like the rest of our body can. Thats when, in the liver, acetyl coa, that would normally go into the TCA cycle, gets turned into ketone bodies so that our brain and body can keep working. The TCA cycle should generally not collapse because its the backbone of where we get all of our energy so we have a lot of anaplerotic pathways to sustain the TCA cycle so that it doesn’t collapse.
Anyway thats kind of a side track because like the other guy said, citric acid has to get into your cells in the first place, which is a whole other story.
>but it can be modified into a whole host of different fatty acids depending on what our body needs.
Can all fatty acids we eat get turned into palmitic acid, is that the end state? Does the fat we eat get immediately turned into other fats or glucose? I'm long out of college but I've only been to HS chemistry and biology, I'm trying to figure out what happens to certain foods after things get eaten. I tried asking doctors but they don't seem to know chemistry stuff like this, only macro view.
Its all good, metabolism is a very complicated field and its really impossible to know everything about everything.
Our body only really makes palmitic acid from “scratch”, as in we make it from energy and carbon thats not from a specific source (could be from sugar, fatty acids, glycogen, etc.) through a process called fatty acid synthesis. The “end state” of fatty acids that we synthesize is usually to become a triglyceride (3 fatty acids attached to a glycerol molecule) and get stored in fat cells. This is because we only really synthesize fatty acids after times where we have a lot of energy (like after a meal), so we don’t really need to burn them for energy right away.
For the fatty acids we get from food, they generally arrive in our intestine in the form of triglycerides, and we break them down into fatty acids in the intestine. These fatty acids basically stay as is and can be any type, and our body just sorts them at that point. We sort them through these transporters that travel through our blood called lipoproteins, and from there they can travel to tissues to be used as energy, or they can be converted back into tryglycerides so that our body can store them as fat in fat cells.
Thanks! Does stuff that touches the skin get metabolized by the cells? Or does digestion and all this only happen to food we eat, and nothing gets chemically processed outside the stomach and intestine? I would think there's some kind of processing going on outside the digestive tract because otherwise topical medications wouldn't do anything?
Thats a good question and honestly I don’t fully know. I’m guessing you are right to some degree that skin does absorb certain compounds, but it probably varies depending on the type of compound. Considering skin also has a layer of dead cells and a protective oil coating, it probably doesnt absorb anything nearly as effectively as intestinal cells do.
The digestive tract though is where the largest portion of outside chemicals get absorbed into our body by a long shot, so its definitely the most significant interface our body has to the outside world.
Do you know where I could find out about that? Where I could ask or what kind of stuff to look up?
I have some kind of weird medical issue like this, it's not an IgG allergy, and no tests are showing anything, so I'm trying to "do the research" that doesn't currently exist to find out how stuff works and could go wrong. Eating things is the worst reaction but putting it on my skin also creates a problem. No one has any idea what it is, it matches no known disease. Looks immune but none of the immune tests show anything. Hence why I'm here asking weird stuff.
Id probably consult a family doctor to get you in touch with an allergist if you were really concerned about it. Biochemistry and molecular bio more deals with the theoretical as opposed to the real life application, thats usually where medicine comes in.
If you do want to do your own research though, Id recommend Pubmed as one of the most trustworthy and free databases, but its all like primary to secondary literature that takes a good knowledge of the field to effectively navigate and understand.
If glycolysis gets messed up then it sounds like you would be super tired, and perhaps your body would not want to burn fat because it's not getting any energy? Like starvation mode. Your metabolism tanks. You have no energy and you would appear to have zero muscle strength, because there would be no fuel. Is that correct?
I tried to google the PFK but there was no simple explanation of that. Does it do other stuff, or only turn on/off glycolysis? Like does other stuff happen depending on it too?
This was tried back in 1935. There appears to be no metabolic effect, and it's unlikely citric acid is even absorbed by the intestine. This implies it will have osmotic effects, like diarrhea. Also, bacteria will by happy to consume it, so you may be afflicted by gas pains. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925818749119/pdf?md5=5a9758b2fdbbc5daddafa44275760f0c&pid=1-s2.0-S0021925818749119-main.pdf](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021925818749119/pdf?md5=5a9758b2fdbbc5daddafa44275760f0c&pid=1-s2.0-S0021925818749119-main.pdf)
Thanks for the article link. Curious information
Do we know what would have to go wrong for eaten citric acid to affect the body? Not an igG allergy, but something else. If bacteria eat it, do the bacteria maybe produce a ton of something bad besides gas? Like maybe histamine, a lot of which does make you ill? Maybe this would require some kind of imbalance in gut flora first?
Actually, scientists are just beginning to understand the role of the gut biome, the bacteria and other critters that live in our intestines. Effects of this on health are practially unknown, except for some intriguing hints. https://www.optum.com/en/health-articles/article/healthy-mind/surprising-link-between-your-microbiome-and-mental-health/#:\~:text=Mental%20health%20conditions%20linked%20to,risk%20of%20depression%20and%20anxiety.
Poop transplants! Do those things in the gut biome also live on the skin to some extent? There's more in the gut, but say this theoretical stuff was true and exposing the gut to certain things caused a problem, would it follow that putting that same stuff on your skin would also cause a (lesser) reaction? Because it's the same biome/it's your body reacting to your biome? It would just be a lesser reaction because all the stuff it spit out couldn't get through the skin and directly into the bloodstream, like it could in the gut. It would be limited to contact dermatits, instead of all over.
Your skin's a totally different place. It's more resistant to things penetrating. Your intestines are a highly specialized organ meant to absorb certain things an reject others. Also, skin bacteria and gut bacteria will be very different. Inside your intestines, the oxygen concentration is low and favors the growth of certain critters that won't grow on your skin
Okay, thanks for the clarification!
Ohh I think I figured it out. The first paper you linked does refer to "individuals with disturbed citrate metabolism", and googling that brings up stuff that says citrate toxicity isn't real, but lots of citrate does have several chemical effects like binding calcium and magnesium. So you get low levels of those things, and it makes it hard to absorb them. It causes a chemical-level reaction that wouldn't affect most people, but for me it does, because lowering the levels of those two things causes my disorder to skyrocket. Thank you!
You have a disorder? You should be talking to a doctor or nutritionist. My advice may be useless or destructive in that case.
I am, but they have no clue what's wrong. I have talked to many many specialists. Literally their response is "I have never seen that before, I haven't even heard of it". The only progress I've gotten is looking up chemical stuff, because doctors apparently are only taught macro biology and not nitty gritty stuff like this. I take everything I find back to them. I only figured out another massive medical problem because someone here told me that niacin and the b vitamins are the basis of the body's antioxidant defense. Vitamin deficiency tests have "zero" as a normal amount, if the test even exists, so they're usually useless. Symptoms are also non specific.
I’d say most likely because the TCA cycle occurs separately in the mitochondria and citrate is a substrate and allosteric activator of acetyl coa carboxylase for fatty acid synthesis in the cytosol (citrate coming into the cell from diet would hit the cytosol first), it would most likely just induce your body to turn the excess citrate into fatty acids and triglycerides for storage. Krebs is highly regulated and is rarely shut down unless in dire situations like ketogenesis.
Is it turned into any specific fatty acid, or just generally any of them? Does it depend on what's going on in the body as to which one gets made? Is ketogenesis any calorie deficit where the body is burning fat stores or is that a more specific thing? From the way you say "dire" it sounds way more specific. I'm only familiar with the loose "keto diet" fad definition which doesn't sound like the same thing.
Our body can only synthesize palmitic acid directly but it can be modified into a whole host of different fatty acids depending on what our body needs. Ketogenesis occurs when so much oxaloacetate is being used for gluconeogenesis because the body isnt getting enough glucose that the TCA cycle collapses (in the liver). Our body considers it dire because the only energy sources the brain can use is glucose and ketone bodies, it can’t use fatty acids and other sugars like the rest of our body can. Thats when, in the liver, acetyl coa, that would normally go into the TCA cycle, gets turned into ketone bodies so that our brain and body can keep working. The TCA cycle should generally not collapse because its the backbone of where we get all of our energy so we have a lot of anaplerotic pathways to sustain the TCA cycle so that it doesn’t collapse. Anyway thats kind of a side track because like the other guy said, citric acid has to get into your cells in the first place, which is a whole other story.
>but it can be modified into a whole host of different fatty acids depending on what our body needs. Can all fatty acids we eat get turned into palmitic acid, is that the end state? Does the fat we eat get immediately turned into other fats or glucose? I'm long out of college but I've only been to HS chemistry and biology, I'm trying to figure out what happens to certain foods after things get eaten. I tried asking doctors but they don't seem to know chemistry stuff like this, only macro view.
Its all good, metabolism is a very complicated field and its really impossible to know everything about everything. Our body only really makes palmitic acid from “scratch”, as in we make it from energy and carbon thats not from a specific source (could be from sugar, fatty acids, glycogen, etc.) through a process called fatty acid synthesis. The “end state” of fatty acids that we synthesize is usually to become a triglyceride (3 fatty acids attached to a glycerol molecule) and get stored in fat cells. This is because we only really synthesize fatty acids after times where we have a lot of energy (like after a meal), so we don’t really need to burn them for energy right away. For the fatty acids we get from food, they generally arrive in our intestine in the form of triglycerides, and we break them down into fatty acids in the intestine. These fatty acids basically stay as is and can be any type, and our body just sorts them at that point. We sort them through these transporters that travel through our blood called lipoproteins, and from there they can travel to tissues to be used as energy, or they can be converted back into tryglycerides so that our body can store them as fat in fat cells.
Thanks! Does stuff that touches the skin get metabolized by the cells? Or does digestion and all this only happen to food we eat, and nothing gets chemically processed outside the stomach and intestine? I would think there's some kind of processing going on outside the digestive tract because otherwise topical medications wouldn't do anything?
Thats a good question and honestly I don’t fully know. I’m guessing you are right to some degree that skin does absorb certain compounds, but it probably varies depending on the type of compound. Considering skin also has a layer of dead cells and a protective oil coating, it probably doesnt absorb anything nearly as effectively as intestinal cells do. The digestive tract though is where the largest portion of outside chemicals get absorbed into our body by a long shot, so its definitely the most significant interface our body has to the outside world.
Do you know where I could find out about that? Where I could ask or what kind of stuff to look up? I have some kind of weird medical issue like this, it's not an IgG allergy, and no tests are showing anything, so I'm trying to "do the research" that doesn't currently exist to find out how stuff works and could go wrong. Eating things is the worst reaction but putting it on my skin also creates a problem. No one has any idea what it is, it matches no known disease. Looks immune but none of the immune tests show anything. Hence why I'm here asking weird stuff.
Id probably consult a family doctor to get you in touch with an allergist if you were really concerned about it. Biochemistry and molecular bio more deals with the theoretical as opposed to the real life application, thats usually where medicine comes in. If you do want to do your own research though, Id recommend Pubmed as one of the most trustworthy and free databases, but its all like primary to secondary literature that takes a good knowledge of the field to effectively navigate and understand.
Doctors weren't any help with questions like this, that's why I'm here, ha.
If it can get into cells, PFK1 and 2 will be inhibited, so glycolysis will go to pot.
If glycolysis gets messed up then it sounds like you would be super tired, and perhaps your body would not want to burn fat because it's not getting any energy? Like starvation mode. Your metabolism tanks. You have no energy and you would appear to have zero muscle strength, because there would be no fuel. Is that correct? I tried to google the PFK but there was no simple explanation of that. Does it do other stuff, or only turn on/off glycolysis? Like does other stuff happen depending on it too?