Intravenous H2O2 for Weight Loss

Hydrogen Peroxide, H2O2 is a molecule with diverse roles in physiology. It is generated as a byproduct of O2 metabolism in mitochondria and over time evolution has adapted to use this as a signal to modulate metabolic flux. H2O2 is deliberately generated by enzymatic systems in the immune system to inactivate pathogens and, again, has adapted these systems to serve as H2O2 generators in cell signaling. The point is, the human body is quite used to dealing with a little H2O2 and has sophisticated mechanisms to maintain it's concentration close to 0.

Why does this matter? Lets consider how life works. Aerobic life at least, has two main inputs: Food and Oxygen, O2. Oxygen is the oxidizer and food is the reducing agent in what is termed REDOX reactions. When introduced to each other in just the right way in salty water, energy comes out and that's why we stay warm/move about and such. That O2 is just floating around as a gas is very convenient, we can have that any time we want. So most animal life concerns itself chiefly with getting the reducing agents. This can be tricky, since often the reducing agents are uncooperative: they run away, cover themselves in spikes or are a tiger. Humanity, however has got quite good at the supply of reducing agents.

So, people eat more than they need to. The body takes the excess and stores it as fat, the most reduced of biomolecules, making it a dense energy store for times when food might not be available. Eating more than necessary is a fine strategy when food availability is unreliable. Except it isn't.

What can we do to remove stored reducing power from people without lots of tedious running around? Back in the 50's/60's when science pretty much did whatever popped into the minds it occurred to perfuse H2O2 into dogs <link> with quite substantial concentrations being "well tolerated".

So what's happening? While some H2O2 will run into a specialized enzyme called catalase, most will be removed by oxidation of the cellular redox buffer glutathione, leaving O2, H2O and oxidized glutathione. Fortunately, the body knows how to deal with the oxidized glutathione: it's rapidly returned to it's reduced form by glutathione reductase which in turn oxidizes NADPH. Where does that come from? Food or other stored energy, basically.

Let's look at the numbers. The linked study perfused 0.12% H2O2 at 15ml/minute. Let's back that off to 0.1% for a safety factor* and assume we could keep that up 24hrs/day. That's 0.65 moles of H2O2. Assuming that's reduced all reduced by NADPH, that's a substantial 5500kcal/day. That's about 1.5lb of fat, the average human is bigger than the average dog, so the potential could be even greater.

Now, that H2O2 would need to be diluted in ~40l/water, which tricky to fit in convenient a medical device but the weight alone would constitute extra free exercise!

*and to make the math easier