Oxygen – the forgotten nutrient

Trayhurn, Paul (2017) Oxygen – the forgotten nutrient. Journal of Nutritional Science, 6. e47. ISSN 2048-6790

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Abstract

Oxygen is essential for the maintenance and growth of aerobic animals, similar to the essentiality of what are classically considered nutrients. Nevertheless, O2 is not customarily regarded as a nutrient, this reflecting the route by which it enters the body – through the lungs or gills in vertebrates, rather than via the mouth and gastrointestinal tract. A relative deficiency of O2 occurs at high altitudes and during deep-sea diving, to which distinct adaptations occur. 6 Deficiency is also evident in lung diseases such as emphysema. Without O2, mitochondrial respiration and oxidative phosphorylation cannot take place. At a molecular level, cells adapt to O2 deficiency by switching from oxidative metabolism to anaerobic glycolysis and there are changes in the expression of a multiplicity of genes, driven by hypoxia-sensitive transcription factors, particularly HIF-1. It is argued that O2 should be fully included within the remit of nutritional science alongside the other essential macro-nutrients.

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