> The process of aging is merely a gradual using up of the body's enzyme potential. Aging is the decay of all sorts of other potentials too, and measurable declines take place in virtually everything our bodies can do. > A way he suggests looking at it is like electricity. > Electricity consists of flowing electrons, which can use any number of > metallic and non-metallic substances as carriers. He likens enzyme energy > to electricity. The 1000's of enzymes are really just protein > carries of one special kind of energy that flows from one "enzyme" > protein carrier to another. I realize we are getting this second hand & a lot is probably getting lost in the translation, but Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the late Nobel laureate biochemist (considered the world's best) & discoverer of vitamin C came pretty close to saying very similar things. He said life is more of an electrical phenomenon than anything else & that proteins act as semiconductors. The body has an electron pool which it draws on. When he started writing about this stuff circa 1960 the mainstreamers wrote him off as senile, although he was unquestionably one of the greatest scientists the West has yet produced. He was simply decades ahead of his time. > He identified the lymph system as the body's enzyme > reservoir, in particular, the leukocytes. This explains why leukocytes are > sent off to "battle" germ invaders --- they have most of the digestive > power to absorb them. This whole enzyme scheme sounds kind of close-but-no-cigar. The leuckocytes' are loaded with vitamin C which serves as both an electron donor and acceptor, & it is this which is rushed to the crime scene to blast the invaders with. Szent-Gyorgyi founded the field of bioenergetics (not to be confused with another field of the same name which deals with simple metabolic energy measurements & conducts starvation research & similar studies), the study of submolecular biology and the application of quantum mechanics to living systems. WARNING: do not attempt to apply quantum mechanics to higher life forms at home kids. Higher life forms have been known to become lower lifeforms if this is not done properly and under the supervision of a trained bioenergeticist. Howell's book does sound interesting though, & I'd like to try to locate it or one of the offshoots. Maybe we should search the WWW or online book resources. --Doug Schwartz [log in to unmask]