Looks like cadmium has dangerous qualities, similar to iron. However, from the evidence currently
available (and that's all "science" can be, apart from the interpretation by "experts"😉 it seems
clear that if most Americans did not have so much PUFAs stored in their bodies and in their diets,
there would be much less of a problem, if there was a problem at all (probably just for those who
worked in environments that exposed them to massive amounts of iron, cadmium, or some other metal
like them). In particular, those who eat little PUFAs (today they are known as "essential fatty acid
deficient," even though this makes little sense, and even if there was evidence to support it, one
would have to ask why it's only been about a decade that the public has been informed of this,
considering the flawed experiments on rats that supposedly established the fatty acids'
"essentiality" was done over 60 years ago), incorporate the stable Mead acids instead of the highly
unstable arachidonic acid in the cells of their bodies. If you've got the Mead acids working for
you, your body is much less reactive, and that's includes conditions as mundane as common
"allergies," such as sensitivity to dustmite feces. As I said before, I agree with you that iron (as
well as cadmium and some other metals) can be dangerous, but there needs to be some highly reactive
substances in your body (another is oxidized cholesterol) in order to cause major health problems.
Molecular Biology Reports 24 (1/2) p.35-38 1997
Accumulation of ubiquitinated proteins in mouse neuronal cells induced by oxidative stress
Figueiredo-Pereira Maria E.1 Yakushin Svetlana2 and Cohen Gerald2 Ubiquitin protein conjugates are
commonly detected in neuronal brain inclusions of patients with neurodegenerative disorders. The
failure to eliminate the ubiquitin-protein deposits in the degenerating neurons may result from
changes in the activity of the ubiquitin/ATP-dependent proteolytic pathway. This proteolytic pathway
plays a major role in the degradation of short lived, abnormal and denatured proteins. Cadmium is a
potent cell poison and is known to affect the ubiquitin pathway and to cause oxidative stress.
Increases in protein mixed-disulfides (Pr-SSG) and decreases in glutathione (GSH) are often used as
markers of oxidative stress. To investigate the relationship between the ubiquitin pathway and
cellular glutathione (GSH), we treated HT4 cells (a mouse neuronal cell line) and rat mesencephalic
primary cultures with different concentrations of the heavy metal. We observed marked increases in
Pr-SSG as well as decreases in GSH, after exposure of HT4 cells or primary mesencephalic cultures to
Cd^{2+}. Furthermore, our results show that Cd^{2+} induced the accumulation of ubiquitinated
proteins. Detection was by Western blotting of total cell extracts probed with antibodies that
recognize ubiquitin-protein conjugates. These results suggest that the ubiquitin-pathway is closely
involved in the cell response to cadmium-mediated oxidative stress. Abbreviations: GSH -
glutathione; GSSG - glutathione disulfide; Pr-SSG - protein mixed disulfides.