QUANTUM ENGINEERING #73: SPACE LOSS DUE TO BRAIN SWELLING IS A POMC STORY

The circadian system orchestrates the temporal organization of many aspects of physiology, including metabolism, in synchrony with the 24 hr rotation of the Earth. Like the metabolic system, the circadian system is a complex feedback network that involves interactions between the central nervous system and peripheral tissues. Massive amounts of emerging evidence suggests that circadian regulation is critically linked to metabolic homeostasis and that dysregulation of circadian rhythms can contribute to all diseases. Conversely, metabolic signals feed back into the circadian system, modulate by applying what circadian gene expression is based on the light sensing from the environment. This alters behavior and disease phenotype. A loss of circadian periodicity causes metabolic derangement. Light controls food at all levels.

The podcast above was all about the treatment of idiopathic intracranial hypertension that manifests with optic nerve swelling, visual changes due to retinal blood vessel defects, and headache.  You might be surprised to know that idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) is also associated with tinnitus.  That should stop you dead in your tracks if you are black swan mitochondria considering my recent podcasts and blogs here.  You now know that your cochlea is lined with melanin.  In fact, every sense organ is between the environment and the brain.

CPC stands for a clinico-pathologic conference that we often see in medical schools that are used for teaching students and doctors.

Today you are going to medical school, albeit, a decentralized medical school lesson how why light trumps food.

What did the centralized podcast lesson above miss?  Melanopsin has been found as the dominant opsin in the human brain but it is also found in blood vessels of the brain and is critical in relaxing these blood vessels.  What happens when there is melanopsin damage to the vessels of the retina and brain when there is associated melanopsin damage?  Do blood vessels relax or do they become stenotic?  Might this be what the group of endovascular neurosurgeons missed above?  

I think so.

What happens when melanopsin damage occurs?  The weak covalent bond between it and vitamin is broken and Vitamin A is liberated.  The freed vitamin A destroys all the photoreceptors like heme proteins, nitric oxide, B12, monoamine oxidase, glutathione, and many others.  It ruins the ability of cells to use light to signal to and fro. Fidelity of signaling is destroyed.

Vitamin A is the first discovered fat-soluble vitamin and is primarily found in animal products or converted from dietary carotenoids in plant products. It is not a single compound but a group of derivatives including retinol, retinal, retinoic acid (RA), and some carotenoids according to different terminal functional groups.  In general, vitamin A refers to retinol, while retinoid refers to a general term that includes vitamin A metabolites and compounds and exhibits vitamin A-like biological activity.

Preformed vitamin A (usually from animal products) and provitamin A (including beta-carotene, usually from plant-derived food) are the two forms of vitamin A in the human diet. After being absorbed in the intestines, these two forms of vitamin A are converted to retinol and then oxidized to form retinal and RA to support the biological functions of vitamin A. The retinyl ester is the storage form of vitamin A in the liver and must be converted to retinol before being utilized, and these vitamin A derivatives are finally metabolized by the CYP26 family enzyme. 

CYP26 enzymes = the cytochrome P450 family 26 enzymes in ALL chordates. This includes all mammals.

The metabolic barrier provided by CYP26 enzymes in various tissues such as the testes likely ensures that RA gradients are regulated by enzyme expression and activity within the tissue and not by circulating concentrations. Therefore, understanding the destruction, activity, and expression of CYP26 enzymes in individual tissues and cell types is critically important for defining the relationship between all trans RA concentrations and biological outcomes within a tissue. This means retinoic acids also control all sexual behavior and fertility as well. Today we have record rates of infertility and transgenerderism. The link both are linked to the light humans live under. Few see this links.

Previous studies have shown that retinoic acid (RA), the bioactive form of vitamin A, is involved in the regulation of various intracellular responses related to biological rhythms. RA is reported to affect the circadian rhythm by binding to RA receptors, such as receptors in the circadian feedback loops in the mammalian suprachiasmatic nucleus.

Many people wrongly believe solar light cycles are tied to Vitamin D and its receptor in the skin, eye, and brain. Few know about vitamin A and how it controls the human photoperiod in our brains where our POMC neurons exist. It is the major player in determining photoperiodicity in the human brain because of how Vitamin A is covalently bonded WEAKLY to melanopsin. When blue light dominates an environment humans lost their photoperiodicity and develop sleep problems.

Photoperiodicity is accounted for by biophysical changes in Vitamin A in the brain. It accurately mirrors the changes in the brain and the body that occur between the seasons when you are a careful observer.

At the equator, light doesn't vary at any time of the year. As latitude rises light variation increases. Your body responds to every degree of latitude change via Vitamin A biology and POMC translation. Read that again.

 

When comparing the effects of the short days that occur in winter with the long days that occur in the summer Vitamin A (retinoic acid) swings in massive amounts. Researchers are finally beginning to understand how the brain converts the electromagnetic signal of light, first to an electric message (DC current), and then to a chemical one in the neuron synapse called a neurotransmitter. Vitamin A entangles the brain to the skin with its cousin Vitamin D. It is also critical in ephaptic communication I mentioned it to Dr. Huberman on Twitter and he brought it up during the Rubin podcast. Ephaptic signaling refers to extracellular signals generated by either a single neuron or a population of neurons, and the neurons need not be in physical contact. This likely has a quantum mechanical basis linked to coherence.

SUMMARY

Hypothalamic tanycytes are chemosensitive glial cells that contact the cerebrospinal fluid in the third ventricle and send processes into the hypothalamic parenchyma. Hypothalamic tanycytes sense vitamin A levels in the CSF. Did you know this?

We know that there are big changes between seasonal conditions on the planet even at the equator, and that seems to be how the wild animal controls weight gain and energy balance naturally in the environment. It also explains why obese women with IIH have massive alterations of Vitamin A too. Modern humans tend to gain weight in winter, and this is likely a new phenomenon related to their light environments. This is when they should be losing weight according to Nature's laws. If you open any newspaper in January in the northern hemisphere, you will see tons of ads for New Year's resolutions and gym memberships at this time to humans lose weight. This is unusual when you consider that wild animals do the opposite in January. Wild animals tend to get fatter going into the summer, and leaner into the winter when the light cycle is lowest and food is more sparse.

We now know that the human brain can sense retinoids, and regulate whole-body retinoid balance. This is how seasonal; light changes and local light changes sculpt the human ectoderm.

The reason becomes quite obvious when you consider that wild animals live by the dictums of their environment, but modern humans create their own environment via culture and socialization. This creation of their own environments destroys their photoperiodicity and dramatically alters Vitamin A signaling in the brain. Vitamin A is crucial in properly regulating the clocks tied to the hypothalamus that controls appetite, feeding, and energy balance. This is how quantum time is altered.

Today researchers have found that between winter and summer, retinoic acid changes dramatically in all mammals. There is a lot more to this ‘quantum dance’ of Vitamin A too. It appears there is much more powerful retinoic acid signaling during the periods of summer compared to the short days of winter. This implies that Vitamin A levels in the brain must be correctly tied to the seasonal alterations in ‘adiposity’ and depression result. Vitamin D gets all the press in the media, but Vitamin A control in your brain is way more important seasonally because of how it links to the POMC biology of melanin inside your body. It seems counterintuitive until you understand how QED works in the brain.

CITES

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10432198/

2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4283048/

3. https://advances.nutrition.org/article/S2161-8313(22)00023-0/fulltext

4. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jne.12886