How come you can build up tolerance to toxins, like snake’s, but you can’t build up a tolerance to others, like cyanide?
In: 106
Because cyanide cannot be attacked/broken down by our immune system. Cyanide molecules are tiny little innocent seeming things.
But things like venom on the other hand are made up of much larger much more complex molecules, typically enzymes or proteins, things that are large enough to be noticed and attacked by our immune system. The reason you can build a tolerance to snake venom is because your body can make antibodies for it which speeds up the immune response each time.
Mostly, it depends on whether your immune system can detect and attack it.
Snake venom is mostly amino acids that your immune system can deal with. Prior exposure will result in antibodies that aid in a quicker immune response, reducing the damage the venom causes. As with anything solved with an immune response, it still takes *some* time and the quantity of poison can do damage before the immune system removes it.
Cyanide is a simpler molecule that your immune system cannot handle and needs to be filtered by the liver. Prior exposure does not help this filtering process, and, if anything, will slow processing due to prior liver damage.
I would think the difference is something made by nature vs something lab created.
If it came from something alive, it will be within the spectrum of our life form to combat.
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To slightly contradict some of the other answers here, the human body HAS built up a certain tolerance to cyanide, evolutionary speaking. Because humans had to learn what was okay to eat and not okay to eat, the human body adapted remarkably to clear/breakdown cyanide very fast. For example you could (but NOT recommended ingest approximately 5mg of cyanide and clear it within minutes).
What makes cyanide poisonous isn’t the molecule itself, but moreso the amount you take.
Edit: 5mg is related to a possibly 150+ pound adult male. Ratio of cyanide to body weight slight applies
Heavy metals are cumulative poisons. They stay in the body for long periods of time, and repeated small exposure is as damaging as a single larger dose. They are also much more simple molecules than organic poisons, so your body can’t really break them down any further.
Organic poisons are more fleeting. They break down or get passed out of your system if they don’t kill you. Once your immune system learns them, it can speed up the process of breaking down some organic poisons into harmless chemicals that your body can pass.
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