Overview of deuterium from The Mitochondriac Manifesto.
Deuterium controls survival, growth and maturation when you’re younger… metabolism, disease and aging when you’re older
Deuterium is a special form of hydrogen that Nature uses to help regulate human life cycles. Present all around us to varying degrees, deuterium is nothing more than a common hydrogen atom with an extra neutron in its nucleus. In non-living systems, that extra neutron doesn’t do anything; deuterium behaves the same as regular H+ hydrogen in chemical reactions. But in living systems, Nature uses the extra neutron to regulate mitochondrial output, seasonal biorhythms, and so much more.
For example, deuterium helps babies grow in the womb. It helps myelinate the brain through your childhood and teen years (myelin: nerve insultion). And it’s used by the body to regulate your infradian biology as an adult. Problem is, after early childhood, excessive deuterium in your system turns a good actor into a bad actor when it comes to weight control, disease resistance, and anti-aging efforts.
That’s because deuterium speeds up the aging process by keeping maturation and weight gain programs turned on after their biologic purpose is over and done with. It does this mostly by depressing mitochondrial function and causing a cascade of consequences, including fat production.
To make it simple, deuterium reduces energy output of mitochondria. And we know from Dr. Doug Wallace’s work that mitochondrial dysfunction is the driving force behind modern disease as we know it. So whatever organs or systems accumulate the most deuterium in adulthood will be hardest hit by dysfunction and disease as the individual ages, because that organ’s mitochondria won’t be able to make as much energy to maintain and repair cells.
Deuterium serves several roles in survival, maturation and metabolism
Deuterium is a control factor the body uses to start or stop growth and metabolism programs, based on its presence or absence. For example, in the third trimester of pregnancy, mom’s body offloads her deuterium into baby to fatten it up to help it survive after birth. This reduces the mother’s deuterium load, which invigorates her energy production, while at the same time baby gets a growth aid. For these reasons, babies are like the fruit of a human.
Deuterium also prevents myelin from forming around the baby’s brain cells while it’s in the womb. This keeps babies’ brains as small as possible so they can fit through the birth canal (which in humans is pretty tight). But it also delays maturation of brain function until well after the baby is outside the womb. In fact, brain function continues to mature through this myelination process until a person’s mid-20s (one more reason children are especially vulnerable to wireless radiation: less insulation to protect the brain). This is Nature’s way of making humans as smart as possible, given constrictions of the birthing process.
Now what’s been happening in recent decades is that more and more toddlers to adolescents look like they were born with an “obesity gene” turned on full blast. Their weight regulation appears to be broken from inception – even more then you’d expect, given their family’s genes and lifestyle choices. But why would this be happening?
Excessive deuterium gets into the egg before it’s even been fertilized, damaging its 100,000 mitochondria. The germ line itself (the egg) is damaged before conception, which is passed on to that generation, and their progeny, in a compromised state.
By inheriting defective mitochondria, young children then become obese far in excess of normal baby fat. So instead of young children eating anything they want and not gaining weight, they actually gain weight regardless of what they eat or how much they exercise. And those frail mitochondria predispose the individual to diseases we’ve always associated with “getting old.”
Therefore, weak mitochondria are the single biggest factor in childhood obesity and disease. High levels of deuterium are causing kids to lose ATP production, eat more, and get fat as a result. All three are not good. But it’s actually the drop in ATP that causes organs to malfunction and disease to kick in due to compromised maintenance and repair systems, not excess calorie consumption or obesity by themselves.
Deuterium promotes growth and maturation
After early childhood, elevated deuterium from high exposure and/or slow elimination can cause precocious development and early-onset puberty. That produces rapid physical development in adolescents to early teens. But, to their detriment, it also means early development of diseases associated with aging because deuterium overload makes you live fast and die young, mitophysically speaking.
This is exactly what we’re seeing with so many childhood diseases showing up decades earlier than they used to. For instance, we’re seeing diseases such as arthritis, osteoporosis, and cancer that used to show up at age 50 and 60 now showing up in 20-somethings, teens, or even younger. Now you know why.
It’s because deuterium is Nature’s special way of getting animals and plants to grow and mature by regulating their metabolism. Unfortunately, that effect does not extend to regeneration and vitality. Instead, excess deuterium continues to promote aging, even when you don’t want it or need it. To put it simply, deuterium makes you age faster the more of it you have in your body.
But deuterium isn’t always bad
There are some places in the body where deuterium serves a beneficial role in adulthood. Meaning, it’s useful and welcome in some places and not others. It just becomes problematic when/where you have too much of it in organs and tissues that depend on mitochondria for energy.
So not only does deuterium not harm you when it gets into blood plasma, red blood cells (that don’t have mitochondria), sperm, eggs, or the uterine lining, as examples. But it’s actually beneficial, because those pathways help deplete it from the body. Another use for deuterium is that white blood cells need it to generate hydrogen peroxide so they can kill off bacteria.
In a nutshell, deuterium is not toxic for all people, all the time. Instead, it’s more a matter of it being in the wrong place, in the wrong amount, at the wrong time that makes it destructive to human health. In fact, our systems are designed around its presence. So it’s only when society’s ways concentrate deuterium in our food, our water, and in our bodies that it becomes an enemy to ideal health.
How deuterium harms the body
Deuterium behaves the same as regular hydrogen in most chemical reactions outside the body. But, in humans, deuterium becomes a villain after your body and brain have fully matured.
Crucial to understanding weight control, disease and aging, the last step of ATP production can only use regular H+ hydrogen atoms. That’s because the fifth structure of mitochondria’s electron transport chain – called the “ATP synthase or ATPase” – has a turbine motor head designed to fit H+ hydrogen as tightly as the gears of a watch.
The electron transport chain ends with the 5th cytochrome, also called the ATP synthase, or ATPase. Powered by protons running through its turbine motor, the ATPase completes ATP production.
But, like fabric getting jammed in a zipper, the deuterium atom, with an extra neutron attached to its proton, is too big to fit through the spinning head of the ATPase. This gums up the tiny rotor so it doesn’t spin properly, which breaks the ATPase and lowers ATP production. The electron transport chain then makes more oxygen radicals, which contribute further to the aging process.
ATPase blockages also decrease the magnetic field around mitochondria, because the fewer ATPases you have spinning vigorously in a mitochondrion, the weaker the magnetic field around it. Lower magnetic field weakens blood flow, hormone delivery, and DHA to the cell, as well as oxygen supply to the mitochondria, because they’re all drawn to magnetic fields. Deuterium also inhibits the formation of e-zone, because its extra neutron doesn’t fit in the e-zone’s crystal matrix.
That’s how deuterium in the diet is like pouring syrup into a car’s engine instead of oil. The net result being that ATP production suffers, as does blood flow, oxygen utilization, hormone delivery, and regeneration. What’s more, when deuterium clogs up the ATPase, the body can’t fix them. If certain species of bacteria aren’t available to unjam the ATPases, they have to be replaced.
To recap: Deuterium is like a hormone we get from our environment that regulates: (1) current energy consumption vs. storing it for later use, (2) maturation vs. delayed development, and (3) how our bodies interact with the seasons. Discovered just a few years ago, deuterium controls biological programs mostly by regulating mitochondrial production efficiency and hormonal growth programs.
Why “local” produce is good for you and “non-local”… not so much
Nature designed us to eat what’s available in our local environment by yoking deuterium in our food to UV light exposure of the seasons. That means the more deuterium your food has in it, the more UV light exposure you need to offset the decrease in mitochondrial efficiency.
To say it another way, when you eat fruits and vegetables in weak sun weather (i.e., late fall and winter) that were grown in strong sun weather (e.g., imported from sunny places), you create a seasonal mismatch with insidious health consequences.
You see, fruit is loaded with deuterium which slows down mitochondrial efficiency. That’s bad for your health… or it would be bad without ways to offset deuterium’s effects. Fortunately, Nature gave us the solution which required no thought or effort on our part: UV light. UV light makes your mitochondria more efficient at producing energy.
That means eating fruits and veggies that are ripe in your area should give you a net positive benefit. But when you import them from sunny climates, and eat them in your winter, the mismatch compromises your mitochondria and overall health because it slows down your mitochondria.
Concerned about organic vs. conventional vs. GMO? Instead, think about the water that was used to grow that fruit or vegetable
What’s the most important factor in food quality from a mitochondriac’s perspective? It’s the quality of water that food was grown with – specifically its deuterium level (for most mature adults). That determines how efficient your mitochondria are at making ATP.
Plants grown in coastal regions of California and Florida, for instance, tend to have the most deuterium because the heavy hydrogen of deuterium is released by rain clouds before regular H2O, as they travel inland. And deuterium naturally collects in waterways at lower elevations because it’s twice as heavy as regular hydrogen and last to evaporate.
Therefore, plants grown closer to water bodies tend to be higher in deuterium. Likewise, plants grown toward the equator are naturally high in it, while those grown further North, or at elevation, tend to be lower. Consequently, an avocado grown in California is not as good for you as an avocado grown in Mexico City (elevation 7,349 ft.), in terms of deuterium.
Those with excellent mitochondrial capacity (i.e., low heteroplasmy rate), and those living in stronger sunlight, can get away with eating more high-deuterium foods, because their mitochondria typically have more efficiency to spare. Meaning, their metabolisms are better equipped to offset any drop in output. Higher redox potential also makes them better able to withstand the burdens that GMOs, glyphosate, and poor-quality food place on their detox systems. Free radicals are usually less of an issue for them too.
Conversely, those with poor mitochondrial production to begin with are hurt more by high-deuterium foods and water, because they’re already low on power. They’re likely to have more inflammation. And so they don’t repair, renew, or maintain weight as well.
For these reasons, a cucumber that’s loaded with deuterium can be a highly fattening food for the wrong person – especially when it’s eaten out of season for your locale. And that’s why deuterium level in water, and in produce, is a bigger factor in people’s health than those grocery store labels we’ve blindly been trusting to bring us wellness. Deuterium clogs our mitochondria, increases calorie retention, and turns up inflammation.
Deuterium depletion strategies
Consume natural oils and fats. Drinking a natural oil, such as olive oil (not that I’m recommending you do), is theoretically the perfect way to make “metabolic” water that’s low in deuterium. You can think of the technique as active dilution of deuterium. Eating animal fats – bacon fat and lard, for example – does the same thing.
Eat naturally-raised animal products. As a food category, pasture-raised animal products are lowest in deuterium because mammals with mitochondria actively “filter” out deuterium through metabolism and their detox pathways. In contrast, grain-fed animals are higher in deuterium because they consume more of it in their food and water.
Avoid fruit that doesn’t grow locally (at that time of year). Eating fruit out of season increases accumulation of deuterium. Sweet fruits such as strawberries, pineapples, and bananas are highest of all whole foods in deuterium. That means eating them (imported) out of season can be the most fattening of all food types, because they’ve got both the sugar and the deuterium contributing to calorie retention. Shopping at local farmer’s markets is the easiest way to make sure the produce you’re eating was locally grown.
Avoid grains when you’re not getting UV light. Carbohydrates are among the most deuterium-heavy food types. From late spring to early fall, you can get away with it, because long light cycles make your mitochondria more efficient at producing energy. In other words, strong UV light exposure helps you burn off deuterium without adverse effect. On the other hand, the shorter light cycles of fall and winter turn the deuterium in grains into fattening foods. That’s when and why carbs are fattening, not otherwise.
Reduce vegetables not grown locally. Vegetables are generally higher in deuterium than animal products. The fiber does clean the GI tract and help you detox, along with antioxidants and water content. But loading up on veggies in the winter, like when you juice them, can contribute to weight gain, while decreasing ATP production.
Eat more plants grown inland. Plants grown near the coast tend to collect more deuterium, because deuterium-laden water is heavier than regular water. So it precipitates out of clouds first. Later, as rivers and streams flow towards the sea, the heaviest water tends to migrate downhill. That’s why organic produce grown in California and Florida may not be as healthy for you as conventional produce grown inland.
Drink water from higher latitudes and elevations. Water from polar regions like Iceland is naturally lower in deuterium (~125–135 ppm) than water from tropical regions near the equator (~145–155 ppm).
Drink natural spring water. Water that’s low in deuterium (and lighter in weight) is the first to come out of natural springs. Check out the website “findaspring.com” to locate natural springs all over the world.
Drink deuterium-depleted water. Deuterium-depleted water is now being used as a health supplement and therapeutic intervention. In fact, 25 ppm water is a registered drug that veterinarians in Europe use to treat cancer in dogs. So far, super-low levels (<50 ppm) are hard to make in commercial quantities, and terribly expensive. But I’m sure the cost will come down once supplement companies develop ways to make it cheaper/faster/better.
Get more sun. Sun exposure, even when it’s cloudy, helps reduce your deuterium level by supporting metabolism and detoxification pathways. As examples, red light invigorates cytochromes III, IV, and especially V so more ATP gets made. UV light raises melatonin levels to enhance autophagy and apoptosis. Heat, sweating, and exercise reduce deuterium through perspiration and urination. And, most important of all, the ETC makes deuterium-depleted water, which is the ideal water for hydrating proteins, making e-zone, and diluting your deuterium levels.
Soak in hot springs. Water that’s low in deuterium is the first to evaporate from hot springs. So the spring water itself is low in deuterium to begin with, and the vapor is even lower.
Adopt a ketogenic diet. Animals, like humans, have systems that deplete deuterium naturally. So a ketogenic diet high in fats and proteins helps lower your deuterium level, in addition to periods of ketotic fasting.
Have more sex (men). Deuterium collects in germ cells to support maturation of a fertilized egg. So the release of sperm is one way to deplete deuterium.
Ovulation and menstruation (in women). Women have built-in deuterium-detoxing advantages due to their monthly cycles. Their bodies accumulate deuterium in the egg and endometrium (which are put there to facilitate growth). So, with every monthly cycle, they’re releasing loads of deuterium. This is an unrecognized reason women tend to live longer than men.