Toxin tolerance (random bio geekery)

[cjsmith]

A while back, on a community I follow, someone asked a Princess-Bride-style question about ingesting small amounts of poison in order to develop an immunity.

Here's [LJ-CUT TEXT="the answer I would have posted if I'd had my brain handy at the time."]

Oddly, I do believe there is some merit to this idea. Not a lot, as you probably expected, but some. There are many toxins whose presence in your system is basically counteracted by your liver. Alcohol is a good example. (Granted, it's mild as toxins go.) The liver filters out alcohol, along with a variety of other substances, from your bloodstream.

A liver that is exposed to a lot of alcohol makes more filtration capability. I'm sure you've heard people mention alcohol "tolerance". The biological basis for this is that the cells in your liver will gradually build more endoplasmic reticulum (the filter). If over a span of months you stop drinking like a fish, new cells that have divided since then won't have that level of filtration capability, and your "tolerance" will decrease again.

This leaves four questions:

1) Which toxins fall into this magical category -- liver filtration power increases with exposure -- and which do not? I don't know the answer to this.

2) While you're working to get your liver to build up its filtration capability, what other damage is done to your system by ingestion of small and gradually increasing amounts of a particular toxin? For some substances, the damage will undoubtedly be far worse than it's worth to build a superliver.

3) If two toxins are in this magical category, is one just as good as the other at building tolerance (filtration capability) for both? That is, instead of eating each poison in turn, can you just drink a lot of beer? Based on my EXTREMELY rudimentary understanding of the system, my guess is you just need to drink a lot of beer. (A LOT of beer. Like, destroy-your-life levels here.)

4) What are the disadvantages of having a superliver? For example, some long-term alcoholics cannot be anesthetized for surgery. I wish I were making this up. I don't know whether local works, but sedation and general don't. Their bodies filter that stuff right out, thankyouverymuch, and they're awake when the doctor starts cutting. Most of the folk in this community are probably young and healthy, but we won't be young forever, and the horror of this is something I'm not sure I want to contemplate. This will of course also apply to many (though I don't know specifically which) medicines a person might be prescribed, making those much less effective as well. Another disadvantage is early-onset liver disease. There are likely also disadvantages I'm unaware of.[/LJ-CUT]

Any biogeeks are totally welcome to chime in here and tell me what I've left out and what I've got wrong. :-) (The general anesthesia bit above is anecdotal, but at least it's from my biology professor, who I presume has clue. Her dad went through exactly that.)

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yikes. O'course, some of it could simply be your own natural response, for reasons other than what your liver is up to. I apparently soak up Versed (a sedative) like nobody's business, but general anesthesia works Just Fine for me. There are sooooo many factors....

[meep.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I felt quite a bit while they were taking me out. Thing is, if they hit you with enough stuff at the end of an operation, it pretty much wipes out the visceral memory of the pain. I remember it hurt REALLY BAD, but only in an intellectual sense. Mr. Payne, the nurse anesthetist, gave me a good dose after the boy was free and clear. Stu took two pics of me kissing the boy soon after and I was out of my gourd. That was not a pleasant sensation.

I'm not an alcoholic, but I process alcohol much faster than I did 10 years ago. I've always needed more novocaine than the dentists squirt me with initially, but it could be them being chintzy. Stu can walk around easily on high doses of morphine and/or codeine (was interesting when he had kidney stones -- the pain went away, but he had no trouble functioning, either)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Mr. Payne, the nurse anesthetist

You're really not making that up? :-)

I can walk around surprisingly well on Versed. After one procedure, I was told I was the first patient ever to leave the clinic on my own two feet. I think I did a little tap dance to convince them they could skip the wheelchair. I don't know what someone's supposed to be like after the dosage I had, but the medical folks seemed surprised.

This is all fascinating stuff. I wish I had more of a clue.

[meep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was his name. We forebore making any jokes other than to note to him he probably got a lot of comment about his name.

For a really funny medical name, take a look at the guy who was my orthodontist (http://www.drbonebreak.com/). I babysat his twin girls, and got my parents a pricebreak on my braces.