Enzymes: Part One

Worthington Biochemical Corporation has a website featuring an educational series of pages on enzymes. Understanding enzymes is critical to understanding health and medical issues on a substantive level. This and related blogs will walk through the series and hopefully supply readers, unfamiliar with enzymes, with some informative blogging. Introduction to Enzymes makes a number of noteworthy points. Enzymes are very important to research because of their critical role in biochemistry. Enzymology is a distinct branch of biochemistry.

Enzymes and Life Processes makes some basic points about metabolism, catalysis and the environment within which biological catalytic processes occur. Metabolic activities encompass processes associated with life. Generating energy and replacing cellular constructs and tissues are metabolic activities. Catalysis, an acceleration of biochemical reactions, makes metabolic processes possible. Yet it also makes metabolism possible within mild temperatires and ph levels.

More Benefits from Drinking Green Tea

Drink Green Tea For Healthy Teeth And Gums is a Science Daily article revealing yet another health advantage of consuming green tea. Green tea has been shown to help with weight loss as well as with helping to prevent heart disease and cancer.

Now evidence has been published in the Journal of Periodontology indicating that drinking green tea can help maintain healthy teeth and gums. The substance which makes these benefits possible may be an antioxidant named catechin. Specific effects promoting periodontal health may involve interference with the body's inflammatory response to periodontal bacteria.

Is a Means of Inhibiting Obesity on the Way?

Shutting the Door on Obesity is a HUM-MOLGEN article touching on a subject of considerable interest to many Americans- obesity. It cites a study showing that the intestinal enzyme MGAT2 is needed to build up fat in mice. An absence of MGAT2 can protect against high cholesterol as well as obesity. This suggest that the development of a drug, that can inhibit the enzyme MGAT2, could confer important health benefits.

Benefits of Tart Cherries

Can Cherries Relieve The Pain Of Osteoarthritis? is the title of a Science Daily article offering hope to sufferers of osteoarthritis. Researchers at Baylor Research Institute indicate that soft gelatin capsules containing a substance formed from ground whole cherries may offer pain relief. The brand name is CherryFlex®).

A previous Science Daily article titled Natural Painkillers And Strong Antioxidants Found In Tart Cherries revealed details about the benefits of tart cherries. That article touted antioxident properties of cherries in addition to pain relief. Anthocyanins were said to prevent oxidative damage. A further benefit of anthocyanins was a capacity to inhibit enzymes known as cyclooxygenase-1 and -2. This leads to pain relief through inflammatory reduction.

Sleeping Late

The website Wired features an article titled 3 Smart Things About Sleeping Late which, as you likely suspect, lists and describes those three things.

The three points covered are the need by some for more sleep- ten hours being fine, the fact that night owls tend to be more creative than their early rising counterpats and the interesting fact that a stress hormone called cotisol is at a peak level in the blood around 7AM. Waking at that time may lead to a more tense day.

Losing Weight

Many of us are looking for good advice on how to lose weight. The linked article (from Dr. Mao's Secrets of Longevity) 6 Ways to Stay Slim and Trim this Winter has some tips and information not generally known.

A particularly interesting piece of information was the revelation that upon reaching age 20 our metabolisms slow by about 10 percent every ten years of our lives. That would explain why we grow fatter despite not eating more or even when eating somewhat less than we did when we were young.

Another tip was that we consume five smaller meals per day rather than three larger ones. Most intriguing to me though was a recipe for elevating one's metabolism after waking. Two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar mixed with 12 ounces of warm water and a teaspoon of maple syrup thrown in, is recommended. Drinking green tea can also elevate one's metabolism but there are many other good reasons to drink green tea.

Regulation of Metabolic Pathways and Energy Needs

AMPK regulates energy expenditure by modulating NAD+ metabolism and SIRT1 activity, is a letter published in the journal Nature (online publication March 4, 2009 | doi:10.1038/nature07813). It was authored by Carles Cantó, Zachary Gerhart-Hines, Jerome N. Feige, Marie Lagouge, Lilia Noriega, Jill C. Milne, Peter J. Elliott, Pere Puigserver and Johan Auwerx. The paper is focused on the function of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) which acts as a sensor that detects changes in the ratio of adenosine monophosphate (AMP) to adenosine triphosphate (ATP within cells.

AMPK activation helps ensure that cells have sufficient stores of energy to meet their needs. This can be effected by suppressing anabolic pathways that consume ATP (a biochemical energy currency found in living organisms) while switching on catabolic pathways which generate ATP.

Allicin

Chemists Shed Light On Health Benefits Of Garlic is the title of a Science Daily article revealing the secrets of garlic's potent antioxident properties. Allicin is the name of a compound which flavors garlic. But it also confers antioxident capabilities the details of which researchers believe they now can explain. Research findings were published in the January 2009 issue of Angewandte Chemie, a chemistry journal.

Reactions with radicals occur when allicin decomposes. A decomposition product called sulfenic acid reacts extremely quickly with damaging radicals and accounts for the very effective antioxident properties of garlic.