I'm blessed with asthma, chronic bronchitis, and severe sleep apnea, so I'm in a high-risk category for COVID-19. For years I have felt like I struggle to breathe practically all the time.
This past week I can take a good breath...and it feels good, like my lungs are effectively working again!
It can help the body better utilize oxygen. For example, methylene blue is the standard treatment for cyanide poisoning. It restores the disruption of oxygen processing in mitochondria:
https://journals.phy...siol.00967.2017
Methylene blue (MB) is an FDA-approved drug for the treatment of methemoglobinemia. As early as the 1930s, MB was shown to be an effective antidote for cyanide(CN) poisoning (12, 16, 21, 22, 24). Inexplicably, interest in MB as an antidote for CN poisoning has waned despite empirical evidence for its efficacy. MB is an oxidation-reduction (redox) dye, which is reduced into leucomethylene blue (LMB) in the blood and in cells by reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH; Ref. 41), or reduced glutathione (32). As a very potent reducing agent, LMB can provide electrons at sites distant from its formation to many oxidizing molecules such as O2, metalloproteins including methemoglobin (54), and possibly elements of the mitochondrial complexes (2, 14, 38, 53), restoring in the process their original conformations and functions. LMB is then reoxidized back to MB in the process, allowing a new cycle of redox to take place. The effects of MB on metabolism are even more complex: decreased blood lactate concentration (34, 47) due to decline in cytoplasmic NADH and increase in oxygen consumption through mechanisms that remain controversial (4). The potential mechanisms by which MB/LMB counteracts CN cardiotoxicity may include 1) restoration by LMB of the redox environment of cardiac ion channels altered directly or indirectly by CN through reactive oxygen species production (64) and 2) a direct effect of MB/LMB on the mitochondrial electron transport chain complexes (55, 57).
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In this light, it is interesting to note that in HT22 cells, a murine hippocampal cell line, MB enhanced complex IV activity (38). Poteet et al. (38) hypothesized that MB directly received electrons from NADH through mitochondrial complex I and was reduced to LMB, which then donated the electrons to cytochrome c and was recycled to its oxidized form, MB. In addition, LMB could also function as a free radical scavenger and decreased mitochondrial superoxide levels.
Complex IV is one of the main energy pumps in the mitochondria and methylene blue acts to improve its function through a enzymatic like process where it picks up and drops off electrons to aid in mitochondrial respiration.
Edited by abelard lindsay, 21 March 2020 - 04:29 PM.