Re: Hormesis is central to toxicology, pharmacology, and risk ass...

[Guest guest]

Perhaps in this case a more interesting phenomenon is the induction of

circulating binding proteins by the presence of something in the bloodstream.

For example, the presence of zinc ions inducing the synthesis of circulating

metallothionein seems to be well understood (although this is not my field).

The reason it's interesting is we'd see the loose zinc ions in the bloodstream

starting to try to substitute for chemically similar things both as ions and in

synthesis by the body as the level increased, but then hit a point where the

binding protein synthesis turned on. Once the binding protein is in the

bloodstream, probabilistically the zinc ions end up weakly attached to that

protein and thus have a far lower probability of interfering as an ion or

participating in a synthesis. This means the dose-response curve is not

monotonic, that is, there is a dose beyond which the response drops

dramatically.

I have often wondered if this is what the actual correct implementation of

homeopathy is about. Not the nonsense or the quacks, just the thing that some

practitioners can pull off in some cases which is the basis of the field. And

which would be considered irreproducible nonsense under the rules of modern

medicine: both the genetic makeup of what protein could be synthesized, and the

threshold at which the body does so, are individual.

Note that (grossly oversimplifying, and again outside my field) the synthesis of

a binding protein means the body dose response curve exhibits hysteresis (at

least that's what we call it in electronic circuits), where reaching a point on

the dose response curve actually changes the curve. The liver will strip and

dump the contents of binding sites on circulating proteins to the bile on a 24

to 48 hour cycle. This recycles the binding site to be available to handle a

future exposure.

Steve C

>

> the number of chemicals receptors in cells

> are limited. so it makes sense that after a

> certain dose, the toxic nature of a chemical

> would change drastically.

>

> Re: " Hormesis is

> central to toxicology, pharmacology and risk

> ass...

>

> Sharon

> Linear approximations to performance are

> almost always wrong, if only at the very low

> and very high end.

[snip]