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.

PUFA on Edward J. Edmonds

Essential Architecture