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The
Blood Ecosystem
Majid Ali,
M.D.
The blood is also
a dynamic, diverse, and delicate ecosystem. It is
far from a sterile conveyer belt for transport of
nutrients and wastes from one body organ to another.
The bowel dumps
into the bloodstream much good stuff (nutrients) and
much bad stuff (microbes and metabolic as well as
external toxins). In the bloodstream, hunter immune
cells swallow and kill microbes. The blood from the
bowel is directed to the liver via a separate system
of veins called the portal system, where it is
cleared of most toxins. Thus, the circulating blood
represents an ecosystem sandwiched between the two
other major ecosystems of the body. When the bowel
ecology is badly battered by sugar overload,
antibiotic abuse, pesticides, and other insults, it
causes adverse effects which my colleague, Omar Ali,
and I designated "oxidative coagulopathy"7
and which I discussed in the chapter entitled,
"Oxygen: The Great Communicator." A similar set of
conditions develop when the ability of the liver to
detoxify toxins is exceeded and toxins back up in
the blood.
The Blood Is an Open Ecosystem
In 1995, in
RDA: Rats, Drugs and Assumptions, I introduced
the concept that the blood ecosystem is an open
ecosystem.9 This seemed necessary in
light of my recognition that the circulating blood
is not a closed and sterile stream. Rather, it is in
a dynamic interface with the bowel ecosystem on one
side and the liver ecosystem (along with other body
ecologies) on the other. It is pertinent in this
discussion to recognize that the bowel is estimated
to harbor 50 to 100 trillion microbes at any time, a
number similar to that of the total number of cells
in the body. The author's microscopic studies
suggest that the number of microbes that cross the
bowel-blood barrier every day runs in tens of
millions, perhaps in hundreds of millions. Indeed,
in severe cases, as discussed in earlier chapters, I
observed PLFs in the blood to outnumber red blood
cells.
I discussed my
reasons for assigning the circulating blood a place
in the base trio of the Pyramid in the chapter,
"Oxygen: The Great Communicator." For advanced and
professional readers, I again recommend the article
entitled, "Oxidative Regression to Primordial
Cellular Ecology"8 for detailed
biochemical and microscopic evidence for my view
that the blood ecosystem not only provides the
essential link between the bowel and liver
ecosystems, but also a field of PLF kept in check by
oxygen and tracked down by hunter immune cells when
they grow. In OD states, the blood ecosystem also
teems with PLFs and spreads the adverse effects of
oxidosis and dysoxygenosis to every microecologic
cellular and macroecologic tissue-organ ecosystem of
the body.
*
Primacy of
Erythrocyte in Vascular Ecology
*
Contrasting Views of the Erythrocyte
*
Structure of
Hemoglobin
*
Erythrocyte
Metabolic
*
The Erythrocyte and
Redox Homeostasis
* Oxidative
Stress on the Erythrocyte
*
Hemolysis and
Oxidative Stress
*
The
Erythrocyte and Acid-base Homeostasis
*
The Erythrocyte in High-resolution Microscopy
*
Erythrocyte
and Oxidative Coagulopathy
* Erythrocytic
Nitric Oxide Biology
*
Erythrocytic
Regulation of Vascular Dynamics
* The
Erythrocyte and Coordinated Adaptation of Oxygen
Transport
*
Therapeutic Implication of
the Primacy of Erythrocyte in the Vascular Ecology
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