Avoid big cities, not the Corona!
An article published on Newscientist states that people keep dying of nitrogen dioxide poisoning in the UK. The news is published with a photo of a street with an intense volume of traffic.
It is not difficult to see that nitrogen dioxide comes from car exhaust! You can find many reports about nitrogen dioxide gas in airspaces and associated diseases in many ‘-gov’ attached links. How did I come to this topic? Of course, air pollution is a problem. I would like to talk about our bigger and current problem, the ongoing COVID-19 issue.
Let’s put a pause on air pollution issue … for now.
In my previous post and in my youtube video, I tried to explain our immunological war with viruses.
Why is it important for you to know this issue with a little bit of detail? In either one of the two television talks, you hear that the coronavirus harms the group of people over 60 years old or those people with pre-existing diseases (diabetes, blood pressure, kidney, heart … all). Since this is the common point of experience all over the world, we hypothetically foresee that those in this group are in danger hypothetically.
However, we face two basic questions here?
- Will it be limited only in the group of people at advanced ages and suffering from pre-existing diseases?
- In other people, ‘WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS’ that will increase the likelihood of developing a severe disease?
And we all wonder:
Why do some people have a stronger immune system? What does a Strong Immunity mean?
I would like to summarize my previous article here so that I can clarify the situation that creates differences among people.
- Viruses are intracellular agents.
- Inside the cell, the viruses are destroyed by the so-called “INNATE” immune system.
Features of the innate immune system include:
- It protects us from intracellular agents (parasites, viruses, or some bacteria entering the cell).
- It is the first-line defense against intracellular agents.
- Defense methods occur via the T-helper 1 cells belonging to T-lymphocytes. They are called “Th1” for short.
Once again, we must highlight here the importance of Th1 as an immune element in the fight against viruses.
Besides the innate immunity, there is another part called “humoral immunity” in the immune system.
The humoral defense system;
- does not fight against viruses inside the cell.
- tries to develop antibodies against viruses outside the cell.
- utilizes the second type of T-helper lymphocytes, called “Th2”.
The Th1 and Th2 defense systems are the mediators of the innate and humoral immune systems, respectively; however, they counteract each other.
Namely, one is active while the other is passive.
So, if we’re going to fight the virus, Th1 activation should be high.
When the virus enters the cell; Th1 activation occurs and causes the intracellular virus eaters, called macrophages, to release a type of gas.
Oxygen is combined with the arginine substance in the macrophage and the NO gas named nitric oxide is produced.
While NO is a harmless type of gas, it leads to the synthesis of virus-destroying agents with oxygen compounds in the cell.
These virus removing substances consisting of NO and Oxygen radicals are called NOx. These substances kill viruses.
NOx can kill the virus; however, they are harmful to the cell as well. So; after the fight with the virus, the environment needs to be cleaned.
The substances that we know as antioxidants take part in this cleaning process. However, sulfur-compound antioxidants are specifically the most consumed antioxidant type to clear away NOx.
The reservoir of all sulfur-containing antioxidants is called a thiol pool.
The potential of the thiol pool ensures the survival of the organ, in which the fight for virus destruction takes place!!
Let’s explain this further. The fighting organ (here the organs are the lungs) can be defeated by the virus because:
- either the scavengers are limited in quantity.
- or the virus is found in excessive quantities, causing NOx substances to attack the cell unavoidably.
Too much NOx (weapons comprising NO and oxygen radicals) and a depleted scavenging thiol pool will cause the cell to collapse. This time, the generated NOx intended to fight off viruses will attack mitochondria instead along with all the other organelles in the cell.
The attack on the mitochondria causes the mitochondrial membrane to disintegrate, triggering a cascade of events. Consequently, intracellular calcium levels increase as a reaction. Increased intracellular calcium is a signal. The cell must commit suicide. This intentional suicide process is called apoptosis. Apoptosis is a planned event, leaving an immaculate battlefield in the environment.
However; when there are too many viruses and a significantly intense war, there is no time for apoptosis. In this case; the damaged cell will not have time to commit suicide but it will let the water come inside to swell. The result will be necrosis.
Necrosis describes the collapse of the cell due to edema and inflammation, resulting from inadequate removal of antioxidants.
We can see this in corona cases. Edema develops and fluid and mucus accumulate in the lung. Also, clinical conditions occur due to intense inflammation.
So far; we have understood that when we are going to fight off the virus, we need to neutralize our weapons, the NOx molecules, with the sulfuric compounds that make up our thiol pool.
..
What are they?
Cysteine is the leading one; which is one of the major components of glutathione.
Cysteine is an electron donor. It means that it donates electrons required for neutralizing all free radicals categorized as NOx.
The sulfurous compounds in the lung mucosa are 40 times more compared to the blood levels. If this is not the case, the fight against the virus will be challenging.
Which factors can cause low quantities of sulfur compounds in the lung mucosa?
They might have been consumed for another purpose!
NOx substances might have occurred in the lung due to other reasons and sulfur compounds might have already been depleted to neutralize them.
…
NOx substances I mentioned earlier, which is nitrogen dioxide in Turkish and nitrogen dioxide in English, are very dangerous. They are synthesized when nitrogen combines with oxygen at high temperatures.
Just as the NO, namely nitric oxide, produced by our macrophages is harmless but NOx agents synthesized by the combination of NO with oxygen radicals are harmful; nitrogen dioxide synthesized from normal nitrogen in the air is similarly harmful.
This gas, nitrogen dioxide, is synthesized when nitrogen reacts with oxygen in the air under high temperatures. What generates that heat? Fossil fuels!!!!
For this gas, the World Health Organization and many institutions have set a limit. Because the danger it imposes to health is great.
If you wonder how nitrogen dioxide acts on the well-being, we can tell you that it makes the lung sick, like corona infections, by aggravating coughs and increasing the susceptibility to lung infections and pneumonia. In return for this, we will start depleting our thiol pool with each breath we take to counteract the effects of nitrogen dioxide, the so-called NOx compound. We will spend our major sulfur-compounds, glutathione and cysteine, in the lungs to neutralize it. Indeed, we spend it in the city, in traffic.
In the next article, we will list suggestions to increase the thiol pool.
Even though the current situation for the virus spread does not appear to be hectic, I would like to add my thoughts below:
Having written this article as simple as possible, I would like to invite my colleague physicians to think over the following questions:
* Is cleaning nitrogen dioxide away is possible in hospitals? (soda-lime?)
* Can the intravenous administration of acetylcysteine be used as an adjunctive treatment? I would like them to join me to think about these questions over.
….
Let’s come to the issue that is not in my area of expertise at all; the conspiracy theories I might say but it is actually a statement of the present condition.
You can click on the link below to see the map of the cities where nitrogen dioxide is at high levels in the air:
Wuhan is the leading city, followed by Europe in general, the north of Italy, and Istanbul in our country, unfortunately.
In the map; the nitrogen dioxide levels are high over the places having a high number of cars, high volumes of exhaust, and numerous factories along with high volumes of fossil fuel use.
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We should escape from cities. When we aim to protect our thiol pool, the first thing we need is fresh air.
Yours sincerely.
