Paul Saladino· MD
one of the main reactions that our body is trying to control that involves redox is lipid peroxidation so what you can see here is that when you have an unsaturated lipids this is a poly and this is a monounsaturated lifted but it could be a polyunsaturated lipid if there were more double bonds here when you have an unsaturated lipid this double bond is susceptible to electrophilic attack by this this is a hydroxyl radical right here this is an OHA o with an extra electron so this is a hydroxyl radical this is essentially a free radical that is going to attack a hydrogen here adjacent to the double bond and form a lipid radical again we're getting kind of technical but I want people to understand these terms there's a lipid radical so here's an electron that gets donated over here to this molecule so there's a there's an unpaired electron here it goes to this molecule ends up here you get a lipid radical right so that's an oxidation reduction reaction there's a loss of electrons here and the hydroxyl there's a gain of electrons here in the unsaturated lipid and water is produced over here well this is the really bad offender this lipid radical and the reason it's a bad thing is because the lipid radical undergoes what it's called lipid peroxidation reactions and propagation and this is what we do not want to have happen in our bodies this is what creates lipid peroxides down here which are uniquely damaging to our cells