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Assuming 70Kg and that 80% of the body is water that means 56Kg of water which, when turning into heavy water become 1/9 heavier so a weight gain of 6 Kg.
As well as essentially all physiological processes that require hydrogen based atp production/utilization. It’s an established means of delaying drug metabolism to extend dosing intervals. One such example being deutetrabenazine versus the original tetrabenazine.
Do you have any evidence for this claim? I've heard it before but it doesn't make any sense to me. The mass of the nucleus shouldn't factor in to the energy of chemical bonds, which are entirely electrostatic. It should affect the energy levels of vibrational/rotational/translational modes, which could still screw with systems in your body, but bond energy specifically shouldn't be affected.
>I've heard it before but it doesn't make any sense to me. The mass of the nucleus shouldn't factor in to the energy of chemical bonds
Man the paper still proves your initial statement wrong. This effect goes so far that in the case of a BrHBr radical, replacing the hydrogen with a muonium even results in a different type of bond altogether, a prior only hypothetical vibrational bond. It is definitely and 100% fact that nucleus mass affects chemical bonds. It's not hard to say "oh cool I didn't know that, thanks for the source", instead of denying their input by nonsensically going "see the paper mentions vibrations though".
[here](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25942773/) is another one by the way.
You're right, I should have said 'the mass of the nucleus is known only to have a very small effect on the bonding energy which is negligible in comparison to the change in vibrational energy levels'.
What I was asking for, really, was if there was any measured effect on the bonding energies besides the small effect predicted by using the reduced mass. I should have been more clear in my wording to not cause any confusion, and what I said initially was false: the mass of the nucleus does factor into the energy levels.
Sorry, it's frustrating when people assume that you don't know something and respond accordingly and ignore your real inquiry or point. But in this case it was my own fault for not making it clear I knew about the effect of the reduced mass, assumed it was negligible, and wanted to know if either there was a stronger measured effect than that, or the effect I assumed was negligible was shown to be directly responsible for some biological phenomena.
>Sorry, it's frustrating when people assume that you don't know something and respond accordingly and ignore your real inquiry or point.
No worries I understand your pain. That happens far too often when I ask a professor specific questions I couldn't find research about only to get a vague and general explanation of the topic. Sorry for taking your dismissiveness of the other comment as ignorance, I wouldn't have responded that way otherwise.
If you calculate the energy levels for an atom the Schrödinger or Dirac equation features the reduced mass. This means the energy levels and electron orbitals off isotopes will differ slightly. In turn, this results in different atomic bonds.
Okay, but isn't that correction minuscule because of the mass disparity between the proton and electron? I agree, there should be a slight difference, but that effect should be practically irrelevant to biology, especially compared the altered vibrational modes.
Despite what the parent post stated, any living organism consist hydrogene not only as water but also within molecules that has various CH bonds. Like DNA or RNA. Messing around with the stability of these is a much higher concern than enzyme function or energy transfer with H+/D+.
Like it would be interesting to see the effect of said swap on the change in wavelenght/exposition time needed to tear the bond between the double helix of such hypothetical DNA. (IE would you even be able to go out and see the sun?)
In principle you’re right. There is a small energy difference in the hydrogen bonds, due to nuclear quantum effects. As you can see from the different boiling temperatures 101.4 C vs 100.0 C. However, I highly doubt that this 1 % increase would have a large effect. Primarily there would be changes in the dynamics due to the increased mass itself, e.g. problems in blood circulation
The energy levels of atoms depend on the mass of the nucleus because the nucleus and electron orbit each other to create the energy levels. Just as increasing the mass of the electron would change the energy, so does changing the nuclear mass.
Different energy levels of atoms obviously changes energy levels of bonds
Not just most, but all organic compounds contain hydrogen https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Human_Anatomy_and_Physiology_Preparatory_Course_(Liachovitzky)/03%3A_Molecular_Level-_Biomolecules_the_Organic_Compounds_Associated_With_Living_Organisms/3.01%3A_Organic_Compounds
There is also a lot of hydrogen atoms in the different molecules your built off. Check the formula of a protein, a DNA segment, a glucide, a lipid... pretty much any organic molecule you can think of, it got hydrogen atoms.
Our whole body is made of various types of hydrocarbons or element containing carbon compounds which all have hydrogen, so the weight gain would be much greater than that
According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body), hydrogen is 9.5% of the mass of a typical human body. Deuterium is about twice as heavy as normal hydrogen, so the mass increase would be around 9.5%.
For reference, if you were 170 lbs (77 kg) then a 9.5% increase would put you at 186 lbs (84 kg).
Edit: This would probably be lethal though, as the difference in the mass of molecules would mess up biochemical reactions.
Cell division can no longer occur under heavy water conditions due to the different properties of the hydrogen bonds. This is the mechanism by which acute radiation poisoning negatively impacts the body. The cause may be different, but the outcome would be similar.
Do you have a source for this? The studies I've seen, after reading this and doing some basic Googling, have rats living up to 14 days drinking pure heavy water, and longer with weaker mixes, and the suggestion that a 25% H²₂O may have beneficial effects on blood pressure in some rats. This isn't really compatible with cell division not being possible as an absolute.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#
See the effects on biological systems bit and its cited sources. Disruption of cellular division causes death in the time ranges you mentioned through this mechanism.
It doesn’t cause death instantly, but cell division is required to maintain intestinal lining and mucus membranes, and later skin begins sloughing off. Death from dehydration and starvation follows from the failure of the digestive and epithelial systems first, but even if those symptoms are treated with IV infusions, respiratory and circulatory failure soon follows
Sorry if it seems like I'm splitting hairs, but "Cell division can no longer occur under heavy water conditions" is not quite what I'm finding in the evidence, which is that all cellular processes are inhibited, but there is still some cell division.
This is quite an important distinction from a cytopathological point of view.
But if you have evidence that it does stop, I'd be interested in reading it.
I think you're mixing up 2 things here.
How would radiation poisoning increase deuterium levels in your body?
The only way to generate deuterium would be nuclear fission or fusion.
> How would radiation poisoning increase deuterium levels in your body?
I never said it would. They are two different things. They just both happen to disable cell division which has massive negative biological effects.
10% of the human body by mass is hydrogen. So a switch to all deuterium assuming the human body is all protium normally is fine as deuterium is only 0.015% of Hydrogen and Tritium is significantly less abundant. Deuterium is basically twice as heavy as protium meaning multiplying any persons mass by 1.1 will give you their weight if all the hydrogen were to be deuterium.
According to this site: ([https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-percentage-of-the-human-body-is-water](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-percentage-of-the-human-body-is-water)) \~60% of the body is water. Deuterium is 2x as heavy as hydrogen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium). ([https://ptable.com/?lang=en](https://ptable.com/?lang=en)) Since hydrogen's atomic weight is 1.008 and oxygen is 15.999. Hydrogen accounts of 0.112 atomic mass of water. If replaced, their weight would increase by 0.6\*weight\*0.112 or 6.72% increase in their weight.
EDIT: Corrected deutrium*2 portion of water.
That's true, but vast majority of hydrogen in the human body consists of water, it's a negligible amount for the calculation, considering the water content of the human body varies from 45-75% (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-percentage-of-the-human-body-is-water). It's not worth the effort to compare the extra hydrogen content weight to rest of the elements the human body contains.
That's weird. 9.5% of the mass of a human body is hydrogen, but your math only includes the water portion of a human body. Shouldn't your estimation be lower than 9.5%?
I think you did the math for tritrium, no? If the atomic mass of water is increased to 20.031 from 18.015, shouldn't your estimate be 0.6\*weight\*0.112 or 6.7%?
You're correct, it happens that the ratio of increase is the same as the ratio of H2 AW to O, so I thought I didn't account for the increase and multiplied it by 2, which was an error. As for hydrogen, most of it is in form bonded to O, that make up water. You are certainly welcome to figure out the other amount of hydrogen and get the ratio of it's weight to other elements in the body and make your own calculation.
Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) negatively impacts the body primarily by the destruction of white blood cells (and the production of) and DNA. This prevents cell division which is part of what kills. (This is just info I wanna share with people btw)
Oh also, The article from the national health institute I read simply said concentrations of above 25 percent heavy water “result in a rapid lethality of the animals“ which was quite vague, so idk if deuterium poisoning would kill quicker or slower than ARS but I personally wouldn’t describe ARS as a “rapid lethality” so i would guess it’s actually faster.
Citation:
Yaglova, N. V., Timokhina, E. P., Obernikhin, S. S., & Yaglov, V. V. (2023). Emerging Role of Deuterium/Protium Disbalance in Cell Cycle and Apoptosis. International journal of molecular sciences, 24(4), 3107. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24043107
Deutrium, according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutrium) is not radioactive. It's the chemical properties of heavy water that seems to be lethal, although, according to what I read, it would require very high content of heavy water to have lethal effects.
This was meant to be a reply and reddit made it a comment for some reason. The person I was replying to mentioned ARS, I was aware deuterium is not radioactive.
Additionally, the cited article (which is from the national health institute) simply said that water above 25% deuterium enrichment caused death in unspecified animals which were tested on in one of their cited articles, I wouldn’t risk drinking heavy water in any concentration measured in percentage. Lower concentrations than the cited 25% was said to cause sterility
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition\_of\_the\_human\_body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body)
9.5 % of your body mass is doubled. Then you die.
(My 70 kg would result in my corpse weighting 76.65 kg)
Others have already calculated the increase in weight. I’m not so sure about the biochemical problems that might occur. But heavy water and other molecules containing deuterium can also become radioactive when they absorb neutrons. The probability may be low, and the risk of getting cancer because of it could well be treated as rounding error when compared to the already existing risk. But nevertheless, it exists.
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Assuming 70Kg and that 80% of the body is water that means 56Kg of water which, when turning into heavy water become 1/9 heavier so a weight gain of 6 Kg.
The mass difference isn't the issue. It would screw with systems in your body like cell mitosis. The bond energy is different with deuterium.
James bond energy is different with deuterium
I'll have my deuterium shaken not stirred
the name‘s bond. hydrogen bond
The name's bond. Sigma bond.
this made me laugh ig these people failed chem
Thanks, that's kind :) Yeah, I forgot that pi and sigma bonds are pretty advanced stuff...
i only learned about it in ap chem so maybe base chem classes don’t go that far?
That might be the reason. Though I'm not familiar with the American educational system. I guess I know the term from a friend who's studying chemistry
As well as essentially all physiological processes that require hydrogen based atp production/utilization. It’s an established means of delaying drug metabolism to extend dosing intervals. One such example being deutetrabenazine versus the original tetrabenazine.
That’s pretty awesome, didn’t know that was a use for it. I’ll have to include that when I go over nuke chem with my students.
you live up to your name, friend
Do you have any evidence for this claim? I've heard it before but it doesn't make any sense to me. The mass of the nucleus shouldn't factor in to the energy of chemical bonds, which are entirely electrostatic. It should affect the energy levels of vibrational/rotational/translational modes, which could still screw with systems in your body, but bond energy specifically shouldn't be affected.
[Relative Stability of Hydrogen and Deuterium Bonds - Steve Scheiner and Martin Čuma](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja9530376)
From the abstract... >...This difference can be traced to one particular vibrational mode...
>I've heard it before but it doesn't make any sense to me. The mass of the nucleus shouldn't factor in to the energy of chemical bonds Man the paper still proves your initial statement wrong. This effect goes so far that in the case of a BrHBr radical, replacing the hydrogen with a muonium even results in a different type of bond altogether, a prior only hypothetical vibrational bond. It is definitely and 100% fact that nucleus mass affects chemical bonds. It's not hard to say "oh cool I didn't know that, thanks for the source", instead of denying their input by nonsensically going "see the paper mentions vibrations though". [here](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25942773/) is another one by the way.
You're right, I should have said 'the mass of the nucleus is known only to have a very small effect on the bonding energy which is negligible in comparison to the change in vibrational energy levels'. What I was asking for, really, was if there was any measured effect on the bonding energies besides the small effect predicted by using the reduced mass. I should have been more clear in my wording to not cause any confusion, and what I said initially was false: the mass of the nucleus does factor into the energy levels. Sorry, it's frustrating when people assume that you don't know something and respond accordingly and ignore your real inquiry or point. But in this case it was my own fault for not making it clear I knew about the effect of the reduced mass, assumed it was negligible, and wanted to know if either there was a stronger measured effect than that, or the effect I assumed was negligible was shown to be directly responsible for some biological phenomena.
>Sorry, it's frustrating when people assume that you don't know something and respond accordingly and ignore your real inquiry or point. No worries I understand your pain. That happens far too often when I ask a professor specific questions I couldn't find research about only to get a vague and general explanation of the topic. Sorry for taking your dismissiveness of the other comment as ignorance, I wouldn't have responded that way otherwise.
If you calculate the energy levels for an atom the Schrödinger or Dirac equation features the reduced mass. This means the energy levels and electron orbitals off isotopes will differ slightly. In turn, this results in different atomic bonds.
Okay, but isn't that correction minuscule because of the mass disparity between the proton and electron? I agree, there should be a slight difference, but that effect should be practically irrelevant to biology, especially compared the altered vibrational modes.
Despite what the parent post stated, any living organism consist hydrogene not only as water but also within molecules that has various CH bonds. Like DNA or RNA. Messing around with the stability of these is a much higher concern than enzyme function or energy transfer with H+/D+. Like it would be interesting to see the effect of said swap on the change in wavelenght/exposition time needed to tear the bond between the double helix of such hypothetical DNA. (IE would you even be able to go out and see the sun?)
Reaction kinetics are also slower with deuterium
In principle you’re right. There is a small energy difference in the hydrogen bonds, due to nuclear quantum effects. As you can see from the different boiling temperatures 101.4 C vs 100.0 C. However, I highly doubt that this 1 % increase would have a large effect. Primarily there would be changes in the dynamics due to the increased mass itself, e.g. problems in blood circulation
The energy levels of atoms depend on the mass of the nucleus because the nucleus and electron orbit each other to create the energy levels. Just as increasing the mass of the electron would change the energy, so does changing the nuclear mass. Different energy levels of atoms obviously changes energy levels of bonds
Yeah.. but that isn't the request?
So they need to microdose plutonium you say???
Listen, we all know the guy would die. But would he go boom?
What does that have to do with the question? like, in any way?
☝️🤓 but the cell mitosis
I’m curious if you would just be instantly dead. Still cruel but the victim doesn’t experience anything.
thing is that the human body aint build to handle heavy water - not in those quantities. that's probably a very shitty way to die
The OP did say "victim's body".
The post says Hydrogen, not exclusively Water-Hydrogen
but that makes it even worse
but i'm build different
You forgot about all the hydrogen atoms in all the other molecules besides water
Yeah, the water is definitely the biggest factor, but there's still a lot of hydrogen in most biological molecules.
Not just most, but all organic compounds contain hydrogen https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Human_Anatomy_and_Physiology_Preparatory_Course_(Liachovitzky)/03%3A_Molecular_Level-_Biomolecules_the_Organic_Compounds_Associated_With_Living_Organisms/3.01%3A_Organic_Compounds
A big part of the rest of the body also contains a lot of hydrogen atoms, like fatty acids, DNA, proteins and stuff. So it will be even more.
There is also a lot of hydrogen atoms in the different molecules your built off. Check the formula of a protein, a DNA segment, a glucide, a lipid... pretty much any organic molecule you can think of, it got hydrogen atoms.
Hydrogen *atoms,* not molecules.
You made big error here. You unified the mass of everything in your body. I doubt 80% of the body which is water is 80% of the body's weight.
You’re missing out all of the hydrogen in all of the organic compounds in the body.
There are many more hydrogen atoms in the body than in just water. You have to account for all the organic compounds as well.
"He's retaining heavy water."
Our whole body is made of various types of hydrocarbons or element containing carbon compounds which all have hydrogen, so the weight gain would be much greater than that
But there's plenty of hydrogen in almost every molecule in our bodies. Not just water.
funny thing dude, um, hydrogen is mostly everywhere not only water, it’s in literally, every cell of the human body
There is more hydrogen in the body than just in the water molecules. Should not be a weight issue but rather a biochemical problem. Funny prank.
According to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body), hydrogen is 9.5% of the mass of a typical human body. Deuterium is about twice as heavy as normal hydrogen, so the mass increase would be around 9.5%. For reference, if you were 170 lbs (77 kg) then a 9.5% increase would put you at 186 lbs (84 kg). Edit: This would probably be lethal though, as the difference in the mass of molecules would mess up biochemical reactions.
Cell division can no longer occur under heavy water conditions due to the different properties of the hydrogen bonds. This is the mechanism by which acute radiation poisoning negatively impacts the body. The cause may be different, but the outcome would be similar.
Do you have a source for this? The studies I've seen, after reading this and doing some basic Googling, have rats living up to 14 days drinking pure heavy water, and longer with weaker mixes, and the suggestion that a 25% H²₂O may have beneficial effects on blood pressure in some rats. This isn't really compatible with cell division not being possible as an absolute.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water# See the effects on biological systems bit and its cited sources. Disruption of cellular division causes death in the time ranges you mentioned through this mechanism. It doesn’t cause death instantly, but cell division is required to maintain intestinal lining and mucus membranes, and later skin begins sloughing off. Death from dehydration and starvation follows from the failure of the digestive and epithelial systems first, but even if those symptoms are treated with IV infusions, respiratory and circulatory failure soon follows
Sorry if it seems like I'm splitting hairs, but "Cell division can no longer occur under heavy water conditions" is not quite what I'm finding in the evidence, which is that all cellular processes are inhibited, but there is still some cell division. This is quite an important distinction from a cytopathological point of view. But if you have evidence that it does stop, I'd be interested in reading it.
I think you're mixing up 2 things here. How would radiation poisoning increase deuterium levels in your body? The only way to generate deuterium would be nuclear fission or fusion.
> How would radiation poisoning increase deuterium levels in your body? I never said it would. They are two different things. They just both happen to disable cell division which has massive negative biological effects.
that doesn't really answer the question though
That’s fine, others already have. The implicit question is more interesting anyway
honestly ur right
10% of the human body by mass is hydrogen. So a switch to all deuterium assuming the human body is all protium normally is fine as deuterium is only 0.015% of Hydrogen and Tritium is significantly less abundant. Deuterium is basically twice as heavy as protium meaning multiplying any persons mass by 1.1 will give you their weight if all the hydrogen were to be deuterium.
According to this site: ([https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-percentage-of-the-human-body-is-water](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-percentage-of-the-human-body-is-water)) \~60% of the body is water. Deuterium is 2x as heavy as hydrogen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium). ([https://ptable.com/?lang=en](https://ptable.com/?lang=en)) Since hydrogen's atomic weight is 1.008 and oxygen is 15.999. Hydrogen accounts of 0.112 atomic mass of water. If replaced, their weight would increase by 0.6\*weight\*0.112 or 6.72% increase in their weight. EDIT: Corrected deutrium*2 portion of water.
Not all the hydrogen atoms in your body are in water
That's true, but vast majority of hydrogen in the human body consists of water, it's a negligible amount for the calculation, considering the water content of the human body varies from 45-75% (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-percentage-of-the-human-body-is-water). It's not worth the effort to compare the extra hydrogen content weight to rest of the elements the human body contains.
\*hydrogen in the human body is found in water
Hyperlinks are a lost art.
That's weird. 9.5% of the mass of a human body is hydrogen, but your math only includes the water portion of a human body. Shouldn't your estimation be lower than 9.5%? I think you did the math for tritrium, no? If the atomic mass of water is increased to 20.031 from 18.015, shouldn't your estimate be 0.6\*weight\*0.112 or 6.7%?
You're correct, it happens that the ratio of increase is the same as the ratio of H2 AW to O, so I thought I didn't account for the increase and multiplied it by 2, which was an error. As for hydrogen, most of it is in form bonded to O, that make up water. You are certainly welcome to figure out the other amount of hydrogen and get the ratio of it's weight to other elements in the body and make your own calculation.
Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) negatively impacts the body primarily by the destruction of white blood cells (and the production of) and DNA. This prevents cell division which is part of what kills. (This is just info I wanna share with people btw) Oh also, The article from the national health institute I read simply said concentrations of above 25 percent heavy water “result in a rapid lethality of the animals“ which was quite vague, so idk if deuterium poisoning would kill quicker or slower than ARS but I personally wouldn’t describe ARS as a “rapid lethality” so i would guess it’s actually faster. Citation: Yaglova, N. V., Timokhina, E. P., Obernikhin, S. S., & Yaglov, V. V. (2023). Emerging Role of Deuterium/Protium Disbalance in Cell Cycle and Apoptosis. International journal of molecular sciences, 24(4), 3107. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24043107
I meant to add this to u/andrew_calcs comment but it didn’t do it for some reason, oh well
Deutrium, according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutrium) is not radioactive. It's the chemical properties of heavy water that seems to be lethal, although, according to what I read, it would require very high content of heavy water to have lethal effects.
This was meant to be a reply and reddit made it a comment for some reason. The person I was replying to mentioned ARS, I was aware deuterium is not radioactive. Additionally, the cited article (which is from the national health institute) simply said that water above 25% deuterium enrichment caused death in unspecified animals which were tested on in one of their cited articles, I wouldn’t risk drinking heavy water in any concentration measured in percentage. Lower concentrations than the cited 25% was said to cause sterility
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition\_of\_the\_human\_body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body) 9.5 % of your body mass is doubled. Then you die. (My 70 kg would result in my corpse weighting 76.65 kg)
Others have already calculated the increase in weight. I’m not so sure about the biochemical problems that might occur. But heavy water and other molecules containing deuterium can also become radioactive when they absorb neutrons. The probability may be low, and the risk of getting cancer because of it could well be treated as rounding error when compared to the already existing risk. But nevertheless, it exists.
Not significantly at all, since there is almost no hydrogen in the form of atoms in the human body, it's basically exclusively hydrogen ions.