Metabolism on Edward J. Edmonds

Essential Architecture

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In a previous essay, I described polyunsaturated fatty acids as respiratory inhibitors—compounds that damage cardiolipin, poison cytochrome c oxidase, and can induce a torpor-like metabolic state. This essay goes deeper into that story, exploring a distinction that determines when those mechanisms activate and when they don’t.

Building materials and fuel are not the same thing.

You don’t burn lumber to heat your house while your walls are falling down. You don’t metabolize muscle protein for energy while trying to get stronger. And you shouldn’t be oxidizing polyunsaturated fatty acids in your mitochondria when those same fatty acids are essential structural components of every membrane in your body.

Thyroid Hormone as the Guardian of Form

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Thermodynamic Imperative

Orthodox endocrinology frames thyroid regulation through the lens of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Thyroid axis—a homeostatic feedback loop where TSH serves as the master regulator, keeping circulating T4 and T3 within statistical reference ranges. This model has clinical utility. It generates treatment protocols. But it increasingly fails to account for observations that don’t fit: the paradox of centenarians with low T3 outliving their euthyroid peers, the metabolic stasis of hibernating mammals, or the catastrophic symptoms reported by individuals on restrictive diets whose bloodwork looks entirely “normal.”

When Architecture Fails

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a chemical reason you can’t build a membrane out of saturated fat. I want to walk through that chemistry, because it explains something important about why essential fatty acids are essential—and what happens when they’re missing.

Saturated fatty acids are chemically complete. Every carbon is bonded to its maximum number of hydrogens. No double bonds. No kinks. No electron-rich regions. They’re inert hydrocarbon chains that stack together like logs—stable, energetically dense, and utterly uninteresting from an architectural standpoint.