MCT for Health

Posts

Is Hydrogen Sulfide Essential for Thermogenesis? How Is It Related to Omega-6 Fat Burning?

February 16, 2026

Do you often feel cold? Are you unable to warm up in a cooler environment? You may have a problem with hydrogen sulfide deficiency and with omega-6 fat metabolism. This condition is usually attributed to insufficient thyroid function, inadequate hormone production. But as studies in mice show us, the problem may also lie elsewhere, possibly even in a deficiency of NADPH molecules. But I am getting ahead of myself. How is thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue regulated in the first place? In one older post I pointed to a study in mice where, when they were placed in a cold environment, there was an increase in the production of succinic acid (succinate), which subsequently activated the formation of hydrogen peroxide, and this then triggered heat production by activating UCP1 proteins in brown adipose tissue. It appears that hydrogen sulfide (H2S), produced enzymatically (that is, via the CSE/CTH enzyme), also plays a role somewhere along this pathway. I found a study showing how therm...

On the Harmfulness of Saturated Fats

February 11, 2026

Yes, everyone knows that, after all, saturated fats are harmful ! Don’t eat them! Just look at the following image . Here we see how liver cells respond to specific free fatty acids, for example to the saturated palmitic acid (PA). We can see that palmitic acid alone produces almost no ATP, allows a large amount of calcium into the cell, causes an excess of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and triggers insulin resistance by reducing phosphorylation of the signaling molecule AKT (pAKT). The conclusion: do not eat saturated fats! It’s completely obvious. Or is it? Well, let’s continue with the same image. We also have the monounsaturated oleic acid (OA) and the polyunsaturated EPA (for example from fish oil). Then there are the combinations PA+OA and PA+EPA. And we see that PA in combination with a certain amount of unsaturated fatty acids does nothing fundamentally harmful. Why? I will use another study to show you how fat transport into the cell is probably related to the shape of unsatu...

Can the liver be saved by blocking AR?

February 07, 2026

What is AR? It is the enzyme aldose reductase. An enzyme that processes excessive cytosolic glucose into sorbitol. Before we look at a study involving AR , let us first look at what is required for fat formation in the liver. Also see an older post on the same topic. In the first study, we see that activation of the enzyme SCD1 is required for fat storage in the liver. Without it, this cannot occur. This enzyme desaturates longer saturated fats, namely palmitic acid and stearic acid, into monounsaturated fatty acids. Since palmitic acid C16:0 is formed mainly by de novo lipogenesis from acetyl-CoA molecules, it is at the same time rapidly elongated to stearic acid C18:0 and further desaturated by the enzyme SCD1 to oleic acid C18:1. Perhaps it is not so much about the desaturating enzyme SCD1 itself, but rather about the presence of oleic acid C18:1. This fatty acid is absolutely essential for fat storage in triglycerides. So essential that shutting down desaturation prevents fat stor...

Are plant seed oils a medicine or a poison?

February 01, 2026

It is strange. Mechanistically, it is clear that dietary linoleic acid is associated with increased oxidative stress and odd auto-oxidation products such as 4-HNE, which is a molecule that binds to enzymes in a way that prevents them from functioning properly . It even prevents its own removal, so its concentration increases, and it should be easy to arrange a simple experiment: give one group of people more linoleic acid in the diet than the control group receives, and the result should be a clear difference. But that is not how it works. Thus, for example, when Tucker Goodrich, a well-known blogger and proponent of the theory about the harmfulness of linoleic acid, is asked on the X network to support with a human study that linoleic acid causes inflammation, he presents a study with this conclusion : "Our meta-analysis suggested that increasing dietary LA intake does not have a significant effect on the blood concentrations of inflammatory markers. However, the extent of chang...

Is Alcoholic Liver Damage Really Caused by Alcohol?

January 27, 2026

Once again, I deliberately chose a provocative question for the title. It concerns the harmfulness of alcohol—specifically, ethanol itself. Do not understand this as me defending excessive or habitual alcohol consumption. No, alcohol consumption is addictive. But research conducted some time ago suggested that alcohol in small amounts might actually be beneficial, whereas now it is claimed that any amount of alcohol is harmful, even very small amounts. And that does not seem very likely to me, if I consider that alcohol can help activate the enzyme ALDH2, which appears to be very important for the detoxification of aldehydes derived from polyunsaturated oils, such as 4-HNE. Why am I asking this question? Think about it! What if there existed some dietary component that could suppress or even repair liver damage during alcohol consumption. Wouldn’t that imply that the liver is being damaged by some other substance? It could not be alcohol itself! With this, I loosely follow up on a prev...

Can glycine help extend lifespan or make you younger?

January 22, 2026

A slightly provocative question, right? But why not try to look for answers even to questions like this. We will look at two studies on aging and lifespan related to glycine. The first study directly shows in mice that administering glycine (8% by weight) in the diet starting at 9 months of age extends lifespan in male mice by approximately 6%, and in females slightly less, by 4%. The study was conducted at three different sites using specially crossbred genetically heterogeneous mice. Lifespan extension was consistent and statistically significant at all sites. Alongside the glycine test, other interventions were also tested at one site (aspirin at two concentrations, inulin, TM5441), but these did not demonstrate lifespan extension. The credibility of the results therefore appears to be high. The diet used was 5LG6 with 12% fat and 22% protein. Another important finding of this study is that supplementation does not worsen health status and is safe. Causes of death in the glycine gr...

Which amino acid suppresses chronic inflammation?

January 21, 2026

Many readers already of course suspect which amino acid it might be, but I’ll leave that for later. It is becoming increasingly clear that the main problem of modern civilization diseases could be one relatively little-known, but in our time overly active enzyme. You already know it from previous posts: aldose reductase AR, the beginning of the polyol pathway. Yes, it is the enzyme that converts glucose into sorbitol and subsequently the enzyme SORD breaks it down by converting it into fructose. It is also the enzyme that processes 4-HNE, an aldehyde derived from the omega-6 linoleic acid, into active inflammatory signaling molecules. I have already shown here how sorbinil, an AR inhibitor, completely suppresses inflammation signaling caused by LPS, i.e., bacterial endotoxins. Switching off AR interrupts signaling to other cells; no chronic tissue inflammation then takes place. This may be good in the case of inflammation activation by dead material such as LPS. It may not be so good d...