Transcript excerpt from a YouTube conversation (Robert Whitfield MD and another speaker) describing aflatoxins found in food. The speaker recounts an anecdote showing aflatoxin B/G/M fluorescing under UV, states these compounds damage DNA and the liver, and explains that hepatic cytochrome P450 metabolism can convert aflatoxins to epoxides that are more mutagenic/carcinogenic. Brief note that the body attempts excretion via GI tract, sweat, and feces.
Questions this video answers
Aflatoxin B, aflatoxin G, and aflatoxin M.
Chapters
I'll tell you a story. So when I was doing my undergrad, I went around and I met this crazy guy. And he's the one who gave me that adage, the inch by inch life's a cinch. And I went in and I was like, hey, I'm interested in being a food scientist. Oh, great. Let me show you this. And he pulls out these test tubes, and he puts it under a black light or UV lamp. And one is glowing blue, one is glowing green, and one is glowing red. He's like, you know what this is? I said, I have no idea what the hell this is. That's literally said. He said, this blue is aflatoxin B that's been extracted from peanut butter. This green is aflatoxin G that's been extracted from soy sauce. And this, this magenta is aflatoxin M that was extracted from some goat milk down the road. I was like, what? He's like, yeah, these are all things that kill you. He's like, it goes right to your DNA. It breaks it down, it mutates, it kills your liver. This is in our food all the time. And I'm like, why do you have these? He's like, well, I'm just doing it for the food chemistry class. So they're aware these compounds are present. And what the kicker is, is when our body tries to excrete them, our cytochrome. Right, cytochrome P450, is enzymes in our liver. How do they get rid of these nonpolar compounds? They add oxygens to them. Right, to try to make them water soluble. Well, unfortunately, with aflatoxins in particular, when they try to add oxygens or protonate them to make hydroxyl groups, they actually make epoxides. And this group form is very. It's like a magnet to dn. So our body is trying to flush them out, but it's actually making them more carcinogenic and mutagenic than the actual native form. So that's an example of a toxin where we're trying to get rid of it, but it's actually becoming more effective in the body over time.
And then when you say your body can excrete some of that through the GI tract, which is how we eliminate. Right. We sweat, we poop. That's the game.
